WHAT is there in teaching that Christians must keep the seventh, or Sabbath day, to impart or perpetuate spiritual life? The very seed of ruin is in such teaching. There is no Christ in it. It did not originate with Christ, but is anti-christian. The Lord never taught his disciples to keep the seventh or Sabbath day, nor did his apostles ever teach this. The first Christians did not meet on the seventh day “to break bread,” but on the first day. When they met on the first day they did not observe it as the Sabbath. It was a different day from the Sabbath, took its rise from a different event, and had a different object and entirely different associations. The Sabbath originated in God’s resting on the seventh day. It pointed to this rest and originated in it. It had no Christ in it, did not originate with Christ, nor point to him. It had nothing in it to bring him, or anything he ever did to view, and nothing can be done more directly calculated to draw the mind entirely off from Christ than to fill the mind of the christian with the Sabbath, and get the first day of the week and all its hallowed associations and memories out of his mind. The first day of the week derives its entire religious significance from the resurrection of our Lord, and the commemoration of the Savior’s sufferings keeps his death continually before us, pointing back to his death for our sins, and forward to his second coming.
Are Christians to be perverted and their minds and hearts carried away from the death of Jesus, his resurrection and his coming, and all the sublime associations and memories connected with the first day of the week; turned back and put to the meditations of a Jew, commemorating the rest of God on the seventh day, after he had completed the work of creation? Nothing can be more anti-christian than this. This is Judaism in the most deadly type. It is literally turning away from Christ to Judaism; from the day that brings the great event to view, that lies at the foundation of the faith and the entire kingdom of God; the resurrection of our Lord from the dead, and the death of Jesus for our sins. If purposely designed to lead us away from the Savior and ruin us, nothing could be more completely suited to the purpose than this Judaizing, Sadducean, no-spirit, no-angel and no-resurrection theory. The theory, on its face, carries its own condemnation; but, in the numerous cases of ruin wrought by it, we have the demonstration of its destructive character.
[MARK THOSE WHO CAUSE DIVISIONS.]
WE have no confidence in men and theories that have no power except to scatter, tear down and destroy. The time has come when the brethren should put their mark upon all this description of men we care not what their idol may be, who are simply prating, whining, complaining, and murmuring among loving disciples gathered by the labors and sacrifices of other men, but who never built up a church, healed a difficulty, or promoted peace any place in their lives. Nothing is so ridiculous as for such men to go grumbling round the country, finding fault with everything, pulling down other men’s labor, and building up nothing, all the while prating about progression and reformation. Tremendous progress, that miserable prating, whining, and grumbling that never builds up anything but always pulls down, catches the sheep and scatters them! Mighty reformers they, who never reformed anybody since God made them, who never built up a church or gave any prosperity to the cause, any place, or did anything more than scatter and devastate! Atheism has done this much, and will do it again. If men have found any new light worth anything, and are themselves men of any force, improvement will appear; fruits will follow their labors. But nothing can be more manifest than that God did not send those men who only spread desolation, who only pull down, scatter, and kill, we care not what fine theories they propagate, nor how prettily they may talk. We want men who will preach the Lord Jesus Christ, who will regard him, adore him, and obey him, and not a set of self-willed men, who idolize their own notions, and are determined to have them and propagate them, if the Lord’s name is forgotten, and the fold scattered asunder. Mercy and peace upon the Israel of God. Mark them who cause divisions and contentions.