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
So far as our Seventh-day Baptist friends are concerned, we have no
disposition to hold them responsible for the views which we, as
Adventists, hold. But so far as it regards our relation to this subject,
it is materially affected by these considerations. A failure to discern
this has led the gentleman into very absurd positions. When he attempts
to make a _Seventh-day Adventist conscience_, he must form it upon a
_Seventh-day Adventist model_. Before he can do this, all his bright
visions of a temporal millennium and good days to come, must vanish into
thin air. To say, as he does, that common sense would teach him to
pursue a certain line of conduct, is one thing; to say that, did he
occupy the position which we hold, common sense would teach him to do
the same thing, is another, and entirely different, thing. Let it be
borne in mind, therefore, that we are not now discussing the proposition
whether we _ought to be Seventh-day Adventists_, but, taking the ground
which he has _chosen_, whether, _as Adventists_, we ought to support the
proposed amendment. This being done, we are ready to inquire, What is
the peculiar faith of the people in question?
We answer, 1. They believe that Jesus Christ is about to come in the
clouds of heaven. 2. That they represent a body of believers which the
Lord is raising up in order that they may lift the standard of his
downtrodden law and Sabbath, as one around which those who will be ready
to hail him at his appearing, though few in numbers, will ultimately be
gathered. 3. That, in the light of prophecy, those who thus break away
from the errors of the papacy are in danger of persecution, not from
infidels and atheists, bad as they may be, but from those who, in the
guise of religion, shall, without warrant from God, endeavor to enforce
by statute law the observance of a day which finds no authority in the
word of God, but has for its support simply the _dictum_ of the man of
sin. 4. That the very body of men whose appearance in this country they
have for twenty years so confidently predicted, as being the ones who
should do the work in question, have actually appeared, and are
inaugurating the campaign which is very soon to be waged with
unrelenting fury against those who keep the commandments of God and the
faith of Jesus.
All these features of their faith were shadowed forth in our
communications in the _Statesman_.
With this understanding, how utterly empty and infelicitous is the logic
of our friend. Take, for example, his chosen illustration of the
islanders. There is in it hardly a single point _appropos_ to the case
in hand.
1. The island to which the missionaries are supposed to go is one in
which, according to his statement, the fourth-day Sabbath is already
acknowledged as such in their Constitution of government, and therefore
carries with it the sanction and authority of statute law; whereas, with
us there is no such Constitutional acknowledgment.
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