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
Take, for instance, the meeting of Jesus with the apostles at the sea of
Galilee (John 21), while they were engaged in a fishing excursion.
Assuredly, this did not take place on Sunday; else, according to the
view of our friends, they would not have been engaged in such an
employment. Just what day it was, no one is able to decide; but all
agree that its character was in no way affected by the profoundly
interesting interview which occurred upon it between the Master and his
disciples. If it were, then there is at least one holy day in the week
which we cannot place in the calendar, since no one can decide whether
it was the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth.
If, however, you would have a still more forcible illustration of the
fact that religious meetings, were they never so solemn, can in nowise
alter the nature of the hours on which they occur, let me call your
attention to the day of the ascension (Acts 1). Here is an occasion of
transcendent glory. If the statements in the sacred narrative of events,
which transpired during its hours, could only be predicated of either
one or the other of the first-day meetings of Christ with his disciples,
it would at least be with an increased show of reason that they could be
woven into the tissue of a Sabbatic argument. Here are found many of the
elements essential to the idea of religions services, of which the
instances in question are so remarkably destitute.
In the first place, those who followed our Lord to the place of meeting
were intelligent believers in the fact of his resurrection.
In the second place, the assembly was not confined to a mere handful of
individuals, seeking for retiracy within an upper room where they were
in the habit of eating, drinking, and sleeping; but it transpired in the
open air, where Jesus was in the habit of meeting with his followers.
In the third place, the congregation was made up of persons whom the
Holy Spirit had thus brought together for the purpose of becoming the
honored witnesses of the resurrection and ascension of Christ.
In the fourth place, it was graced by the visible forms of holy angels
in glistering white, who participated in the services.
In the fifth place, Jesus himself addressed them at length, lifted up
his hands to heaven, and brought down its benediction upon them, and in
the sight of the assembled multitude, steadily and majestically rising
above them, he floated upward, until a cloud received him out of their
sight.
In the sixth place, it is said, in so many words, that the “_people
worshiped_ him there.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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