INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS.
Having often been solicited to give an account of my conversion from the observance of what is commonly called the Lord's Day, or Sunday, to the observance of the ancient Sabbath of Jehovah, the seventh day of the week, I submit this brief narrative to public notice, not so much for the justification of my present practice, as in the hope that it may be the means of leading many other Christian people candidly to examine this subject, which, as it appears to me, is very essential to the restoration of primitive Christianity. The narrative derives its importance, not from the person of the narrator, but from the practical exhibition which it furnishes of the working of divine truth upon the mind.
THE TRUE SABBATH EMBRACED AND OBSERVED.
EARLY PREPOSSESSIONS.
My parents, and nearly all of my family connections, being members of Baptist churches, or attached to that denomination—and I having been a member of the same for above twenty-five years, and more than half that time an accredited minister among them—all my preferences and prepossessions were with their peculiarities as churches of the Lord Jesus Christ. If there was one characteristic doctrine of the Baptists which I esteemed above another, it was this: "We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by the inspiration of God, and are a perfect rule of faith and practice." I could say with the Psalmist, "My heart standeth in awe of thy word; for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name."
MATURED ATTACHMENTS.
I believed firmly, that if there was a Christian people upon the earth who had kept the primitive faith from the days of the apostles, and had never symbolized with the errors of the church of Rome in her idolatrous and adulterous course, that people was the Baptist denomination. If there was any thing in my religious privileges in which I gloried, it was in thinking that I had never been deceived by the working of that mystery of iniquity. I was sensible that the Baptists had errors among them; but I regarded them as the errors of fallible human nature, and not as departures from the constitutional doctrine and law of the Holy Scriptures—some of them superinduced by an unwatchful and familiar intercourse with our more erroneous Pedobaptist brethren, and hence mediately, though not directly, the effect of that great apostacy which was predicted as to come and deceive all nations. Holding these sentiments, I was ardently and conscientiously attached to that denomination, as the most scriptural people on earth. I did not doubt but that I should remain united with them in time, in death, and in eternal life.
REGARD FOR SCRIPTURAL CHRISTIANITY.
Notwithstanding my prepossessions and attachments, it has been my prevailing desire, from the time of my conversion, to be a Scriptural Christian; and since I became a teacher of others, I have felt a growing sense of obligation to know and teach the whole counsel of God aright. The words of the Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples, saying, "Call no man master," "Call no man father," have for years been so deeply impressed upon my heart, that I have scrupulously refused to call myself a Fullerite, a Calvinist, an Armenian, or after any human name. Although I have my preferences in reading and approving the sentiments of great and good men, the Bible alone is my creed book.