The Constitutional Amendment: or, The Sunday, the Sabbath, the Change, and Restitution: A discussion between W. H. Littlejohn, Seventh-day Adventist, and the editor of the Christian StatesmanLittlejohn, Wolcott H.
Religion
The Constitutional Amendment: or, The Sunday, the Sabbath, the Change, and Restitution: A discussion between W. H. Littlejohn, Seventh-day Adventist, and the editor of the Christian Statesman
Littlejohn, Wolcott H.
Sabbath; Seventh-Day Adventists -- Doctrinal and controversial works; Sunday; Sunday legislation -- United States
It is claimed that, in going around the world eastward, a day is gained;
and in going around westward, a day is lost, to the traveler. From these
premises it is argued that a definite day cannot be kept. Has it ever
occurred to the gentleman that his own theory would be somewhat
disturbed by the same trip? Mark it, it is exactly one-seventh part of
time which is to be kept. It will hardly be urged that all the old
watches in the land are reliable enough to be trusted in a journey of
this length, and, besides, suppose we had lived in a period when such
time-pieces were not known, then what? Oh! says the objector, we would
have gone by the sun. Then you agree with us, after all, that the sun
presents the most available method of marking the day; but remember,
now, that you are on your journey round the earth, westward; you travel
six days, each one considerably lengthened out by the fact that you are
going with the sun; you stop and rest on the seventh day, which you call
the Sabbath. Unfortunately, however, as you have been lying still, it is
considerably shorter than your six days of work; by this means you have
cheated the Lord out of one-seventh of the whole time which all of the
six days had in excess over the one on which you rested. Traveling
eastward, the opposite would be true, and your days of rest would be
longer than your days of labor, and would not, therefore, represent
one-seventh part of time.
Again, we might show by argument the complete anarchy into which the
community would be thrown by the realization of this doctrine, that each
man for himself is at liberty to fix upon his weekly Sabbath. Nothing
would be easier to prove than that it would seriously obstruct your
courts of justice; that it would render stated worship impossible; in
fine, that it would bring confusion into every walk in life.
Do you reply that you will obviate the difficulty by legislative
enactment, and that you will make this whole nation, from New York to
San Francisco, regard the Sunday for the sake of uniformity and good
order? I answer; first, have you then improved upon God’s great plan?
Did he not know that a definite day would be the best, and would he not
have been likely to give it to us? Secondly, then you admit that it is,
after all, possible to keep one and the same day across the whole of
this continent; for were this not true it would be idle for you to
attempt to produce uniformity by legislation. But putting this
concession of yours in regard to the western, alongside of God’s
enforcement of a definite day for centuries, on the whole of the
eastern, continent, the circuit of the globe is made, and the
possibility of keeping a definite Sabbath on both hemispheres is
established.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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