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

by Wolcott H. Littlejohn

We will suppose that a person entertaining the sentiments of the gentleman should have attempted to carry them out in the forty years during which God led the people in the wilderness; also, that his first experiment was that of Sunday rest. In this he would have failed utterly. Do you ask, How? I answer that God had decreed that no manna should fall on the seventh day (Ex. 16:26), and that the manna which was to be eaten on the Sabbath should be gathered on the day before (Ex. 16:5). It would therefore have been impossible for the individual in question to provide food for his Sunday rest. But, disgusted with this kind of Sabbath-keeping, suppose he should have tried, in order, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the result would not have varied materially. On Sunday, there was an utter absence of all food; on the other days, that which had been previously gathered, instead of being fit for use, would have been found corrupted and changed into loathsome worms, since God had told the people that only the manna which was gathered on the sixth day should be kept until the day following; and some of them, having made the experiment of disobeying in the particular in question, found the result as cited above (Ex. 16:19, 20). On the other hand, should the same individual have decided finally to consecrate the seventh day of the week, he would have found no difficulty whatever. Gathering his double portion of the manna on the sixth day, by a miracle of God it would have been preserved pure and wholesome through the last day of the week.

But how can this be accounted for on the hypothesis that no particular day was chosen by the Lord? If, indeed, he had adopted the indefinite plan, and had left the people to choose for themselves, it is certain that he did this because it was the best method. But if it were the best method, and if it were in accordance with his view of the statute, then, assuredly, he would not have stultified himself and mocked the people by first granting them a privilege and then, by his providence, preventing them from carrying it out.

Should it be suggested that this law was confined to the land of Palestine and to the Jews in its operation, I answer; first, that at the time spoken of the people were in Arabia, not in Judea, and that even should that be granted, which is not true, viz., that the fourth commandment related simply to the Hebrews, this does not affect the question at all, for no one will insist that Jews were only obliged by it when in Judea. Wherever they might be, they were required to keep the Sabbath, whether in bondage in Assyria, or traversing the known world in quest of gain. From Spain to India, from Scythia to Africa, this law was designed to apply and did apply for hundreds of years before it will be even claimed that it was abolished. This being true, it is established beyond question that God himself imposed upon men, traversing the whole of the eastern continent, a uniform day of worship.

Do you inquire when they commenced it? I answer, At sunset, agreeably to the direction in Lev. 23:32. Did they go eastward to the Pacific, or westward to the Atlantic, they were required to commence their rest at that hour. Was it impossible for them to do so? He that says so charges God with folly. Were they capable of carrying out the requirement? Then, at least on the eastern continent, the definite day was a practicable thing. God knew how his people would be scattered; he gave them the institution of the Sabbath, adapted to whatever circumstances they might be placed in; he marked out that Sabbath from the rest of the week, and in the outset settled beyond controversy the question that it was not movable in its nature. Therefore, he who would accept the theory which we have been considering and repudiate the one which we indorse, must do it in the face of God’s explanatory providence, in the teeth of his written law, and against the practice of his people, Israel, who for centuries have had no difficulty in finding the Sabbath in every latitude.

So much for the law and its history, making clear, as it does, that our opponents do not understand the possibilities of the case as God looks upon them. We will now proceed to the consideration of the difficulties which they discover in the realization of our theory.

It is claimed that, in going around the world eastward, a day is gained; and in going around westward, a day is lost, to the traveler. From these premises it is argued that a definite day cannot be kept. Has it ever occurred to the gentleman that his own theory would be somewhat disturbed by the same trip? Mark it, it is exactly one-seventh part of time which is to be kept. It will hardly be urged that all the old watches in the land are reliable enough to be trusted in a journey of this length, and, besides, suppose we had lived in a period when such time-pieces were not known, then what? Oh! says the objector, we would have gone by the sun. Then you agree with us, after all, that the sun presents the most available method of marking the day; but remember, now, that you are on your journey round the earth, westward; you travel six days, each one considerably lengthened out by the fact that you are going with the sun; you stop and rest on the seventh day, which you call the Sabbath. Unfortunately, however, as you have been lying still, it is considerably shorter than your six days of work; by this means you have cheated the Lord out of one-seventh of the whole time which all of the six days had in excess over the one on which you rested. Traveling eastward, the opposite would be true, and your days of rest would be longer than your days of labor, and would not, therefore, represent one-seventh part of time.

Again, we might show by argument the complete anarchy into which the community would be thrown by the realization of this doctrine, that each man for himself is at liberty to fix upon his weekly Sabbath. Nothing would be easier to prove than that it would seriously obstruct your courts of justice; that it would render stated worship impossible; in fine, that it would bring confusion into every walk in life.

Do you reply that you will obviate the difficulty by legislative enactment, and that you will make this whole nation, from New York to San Francisco, regard the Sunday for the sake of uniformity and good order? I answer; first, have you then improved upon God’s great plan? Did he not know that a definite day would be the best, and would he not have been likely to give it to us? Secondly, then you admit that it is, after all, possible to keep one and the same day across the whole of this continent; for were this not true it would be idle for you to attempt to produce uniformity by legislation. But putting this concession of yours in regard to the western, alongside of God’s enforcement of a definite day for centuries, on the whole of the eastern, continent, the circuit of the globe is made, and the possibility of keeping a definite Sabbath on both hemispheres is established.

Before me lies the draft of an electrical clock, which is styled, “The clock of all nations.” The design is an ingenious one, and serves to show at a glance the difference in time between prominent cities in all parts of the globe. For this purpose, a central dial is drafted, representing the meridian of New York. The hands on this dial indicate the precise hour of noon. Around this central figure are arranged twenty additional dials, on each one of which is marked by the hands the time of day as it will exist in the cities named, commencing on the east of New York with Pekin, and terminating to the west of it with San Francisco. By it, you perceive at a glance the precise variation of time in the different longitudes to which these cities belong.

For example, while the clock of New York indicates twelve, noon, the one in Pekin indicates twenty minutes before one in the morning; the one in Rome, fifteen minutes to six P. M.; the one in London, five minutes of five P. M.; and so on until you reach New York, where it is twelve M. Then passing westward of that point, where the time is, of course, slower, the dial for Chicago marks seven minutes past eleven A. M.; that of St. Louis, five minutes of eleven A. M.; that in San Francisco, fifteen minutes before nine A. M. By this means, the variation between Pekin and San Francisco is shown to be about sixteen hours, or nearly two-thirds of one whole day. By the same method, the reader will at once discern that it is possible to locate the commencement of the day at any one of these points in its passage around the world.