"I am told that I can purchase, in the State of Connecticut, one hundred copper cents, bearing the impress and superscription of the United States Mint, and equal in every respect in value to the mint coin, for sixty-five cents, payable in gold or silver. But I admit them to be counterfeit. I admit, also, that I circulate this spurious coin. Now, will you undertake, for a fee of $10,000, to defend my cause against a prosecution for passing such false coin, and exonerate me from conviction in the United States' Courts."
The honest lawyer's answer unhesitatingly was, "I cannot argue your cause in the very teeth of so unquestionable a law as appears to exist on the Statute Books."[9]
The Sabbatarian replied:—"Then, as you admit your first day Sabbath a counterfeit, allow me to answer you as the celebrated Mr. Whiston did Chancellor King of England upon a similar question: 'If God Almighty should be as consistent, as just, and as jealous of his laws in the Court of Heaven, as my Lord Chancellor is in his, where are we then?'"
The Inference.—If, then, I cannot obtain an advocate on earth, (for no one of repute would undertake it,) to plead my cause with the offer of a fee of $10,000, for the violation of a law of man's making, what ground have I to expect that the only advocate to be obtained in the Court of Heaven, i. e. the Lord Jesus Christ, will defend my cause against a breach of that law which his father ever made punishable with death, temporal and eternal?—and who himself, when on earth, in his comment on that law, averred that not one jot or tittle could in any wise pass from it? (Matt. 5:18, 19.)
[9] If any person shall falsely make or counterfeit any copper coin of the United States, or pass or publish the same, he shall be subjected to a fine of $1000, and suffer imprisonment to hard labor for a term not exceeding three years.—Gordon's Digest, p. 922.
Published by the American Sabbath Tract Society,
No. 9 Spruce Street, N. Y.
SABBATH CONTROVERSY.
THE TRUE ISSUE.
One of the greatest difficulties which we who observe the seventh day have ever found in the Sabbath controversy, is to make our opponents understand what is the real question at issue. So long have their thoughts, feelings and habits, been moulded under one particular view of the subject, that it seems almost a miracle if one is found who can disregard all foreign matter, and look at the precise point in debate long enough to come to any certain and intelligent conclusion about it. But it is evident, that if an opponent is suffered to raise false issues, or to be continually striking off into the discussion of some point which does not affect the final question, we may prolong the controversy ad infinitum.