I

 I was raised to believe as my parent's believed.

I became aware my parents beliefs were not God's.

I had to choose.

I was raised to believe from sincere parents.

I became aware that their sincerity isn't always true.

I had to choose. 

I was raised to believe in lies.

I became aware the liars didn't know they lied.

I had to choose.

I was raised to believe the majority is right.

I became aware that was far from true.

I had to choose. 

I was raised to believe good.

I became aware of evil.

I had to choose. 

I was raised being loved.

I became aware love hurts.

I had to choose.

I was raised with excuses.

I became aware of human failings.

I had to choose.

I choose God.

I choose Love.

I am fault-filled.

I know we are all fault-filled.

I forgive.

I pray to be forgiven.

(Excerpt)

CHAPTER V. THE FATHERS AGAIN

We verily believe that there never was an extended argument made in favor of the Sunday-sabbath in which appeal for help was not made to the Fathers, and we never expect to see an argument on that subject that does not so do. The treatise now under consideration is by no means an exception. We wish that the American Sunday-school Union, or the trustees of Dartmouth College, or whoever else may have the management of a prize fund, would offer a prize of five hundred or one thousand dollars for an essay on the perpetual obligation of the Sunday-sabbath which should make no mention of the Fathers, and no reference to any human authority, but should be confined strictly to the word of God. Such a production would be worth such a prize as a curiosity in Sunday-sabbath literature, if for nothing else. 

To what purpose is a reference to the Fathers anyhow? What is the good of it? Suppose all the Fathers with one voice should say that Sunday is the Lord’s day, that the first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath; still to the man who fears God and trembles at his word (and to such alone the Lord looks, Isaiah 66:2) the question would be, What saith the Scripture? To that question there is but one answer that ever comes to anybody on this subject. That answer is, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.” The Scripture said to the Fathers, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” If the Fathers disregarded it, they sinned, that is all. The Scripture says to the American Sunday-school Union, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” If the American Sunday-school Union disregards it, the Union sins, that is all. The Scripture says to Mr. A. E. Waffle, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” When Mr. Waffle disregards it, he sins, and when he or any other teaches others to disregard it, he teaches rebellion against the Lord, that is all. 

Suppose the Fathers and everybody else from the apostles’ day to our own should have disregarded the commandment of God, it would still be just as much our duty to obey that commandment as it would if all had kept it strictly. It is not a question of what the Fathers did, but what they should have done. We are not to interpret the commandment of God by what men have done; but what men have done must be tested by the commandment. The law of God is the immutable standard, and men’s actions must conform to that or they are wrong. Mr. Waffle himself admits as much. Thus he says:— 

“We are under no obligation to follow the example of Christians who lived in any age subsequent to that of the apostles. Perversions of Christian doctrine and corrupt practices sprang up so early and prevailed so widely as to make such an imitation altogether unsafe.”—P. 203. 

Why then does Mr. Waffle, as well as do Sunday advocates generally, go to an age of “perversions of Christian doctrine,” an age of “corrupt practices” so widely prevalent as to make it “altogether unsafe”? This is why:— 

“We study their history because it throws additional light upon the teaching and the example of the apostles.”—Id. 

Go to an age of darkness to throw additional light upon the age of light itself! Go to an age of “perversion of Christian doctrine” to gain “additional light” upon the perfection of Christian doctrine! Go to an age of “corrupt practices” to gain “additional light” upon the only age of pure practices that the world has ever seen! Study the perversion of Christian doctrine, and the corrupt practices of men, because it throws “additional light” upon the word of God! Use a tallow-dip or a rush-light because it throws “additional light” upon the sun!! To what depths of absurdity will men not run in their attempts to justify their disregard of the commandment of God? What will they not sanction in their endeavors to make void the commandment of God by the traditions of men? 

The teaching of the apostles is the word of God, and the word of God is light. Apart from the example of Christ there is no such thing as “the example of the apostles;” and the example of Christ is but the shining of that Light which came into the world, to which men will not come because they love darkness rather than light. And these men, instead of coming to the true Light, run away off to an age of darkness, to an age of confessed “corrupt practices” and “perversions of Christian doctrine,” and there, by rummaging around among the Fathers, they manage to find some obscure passages in corrupt texts, and these are seized upon because they “throw additional light” upon the true Light. They run away into the darkness, where all things look alike, and in groping around there they find some men to whom they say, You look like us; you talk as we do; you walk as we do; your views of morals are just like ours;—you are our Fathers, and behold what great light is thrown, by your ways, upon the teaching and example of the apostles, that is, upon what we are doing. True, the apostles said nothing at all about it, but we are doing it, and you did it before us, and that is proof that the apostles intended to do it. 

We know that between the Fathers and these their sons there is a most striking family resemblance. They do look alike; they do talk alike; they walk alike; and their ideas of what constitutes obedience to the word of God, are just alike, and we would be fully justified in saying that they all belong to the same family, even though the sons should not own it, but when they take every possible occasion to advertise it and to parade the Fathers as indeed their Fathers, they cannot blame us if we admit it, and do our best to give them the benefit of the relationship. But even though this family resemblance be so perfect that we can hardly tell the Fathers and their children apart, there is one fatal defect about it all, that is, none of them look like Christ. Not one of them walks as he walked; for he kept the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord. It matters not how much they may resemble one another, the question with us is, Do they resemble Christ? It matters not how closely their words may agree among themselves, the question still is, Do their words agree with the word of God? 

We have not the disposition, even though we had the time, to go with Mr. Waffle and the American Sunday-school Union in their one-thousand-dollar excursion into that age where “perversions of Christian doctrine and corrupt practices sprang up so early and prevailed so widely,” because Mr. Waffle himself has told us that it is “altogether unsafe,” and, besides that we remember a statement in our Guide-Book, written about just such excursions as this, that says: “Be not deceived; evil communications corrupt good manners.” Moreover, we have before us the statement of what Mr. Waffle learned by it, and that is enough for us. Here it is:— 

“Every statement bearing upon the subject, that can be discovered in the writings of the Fathers, is to the effect that the Christians of the first two centuries were accustomed to keep holy the first day of the week, and that most of them regarded themselves at liberty not to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.”—P. 214. 

The commandment of God, written with his own finger on the tables of stone, says: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.... The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” But here we are informed that “every statement bearing on the subject, that can be discovered in the writings of the Fathers, is to the effect that the most of them [Christians] regarded themselves at liberty not to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.” But this is simply to say that they regarded themselves at liberty not to keep the commandment of God. Well, we know a great many people in our own day who regard themselves at liberty to do the same thing; and, like their Fathers, too, they will call themselves “Christians,” yea, they will even hold that to be the distinguishing feature of a Christian. The Mormons too regard “themselves at liberty not to keep the seventh-day Sabbath,” and also not to keep the commandment that forbids adultery, and they call themselves “saints.” Well, if disobedience to that one commandment is what makes a Christian, why should not disobedience to two commandments make a saint? Will Mr. Waffle or the American Sunday-school Union tell us why? 

The commandment of God directs the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath. The Fathers and Mr. Waffle and other Christians of that kind “regard themselves at liberty not to keep it.” The word of God likewise directs the keeping of the commandment which says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery;” the Mormons “regard themselves at liberty not to keep it.” The word of God directs the keeping of the second commandment; the Catholics “regard themselves at liberty not to keep it.” The word of God directs the keeping of the third commandment; Colonel Ingersoll and his kind “regard themselves at liberty not to keep it.” Now upon what principle can these “Christians” convince those “saints,” and Catholics, and atheists, of sin? We should like to see Mr. Waffle frame an argument that would show that they are wrong, that would not equally condemn himself, and all those who with him “regard themselves at liberty not to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.” 

Well, when Mr. Waffle finds that the Fathers, and others of their day, regarded themselves at liberty not to keep the commandment of God, what does he do? Does he say that they were disobedient? Does he repudiate such an example and hold to the commandment of God instead? Not he. He just settles down upon the sinful example as though it were righteousness itself. It is the very thing which he has been all this time striving to reach—something to strengthen and confirm him, and others whom he can reach, in their disregard of the commandment. For he says of these writings of the Fathers:— 

“Thus they strengthen the conclusion we have reached from our examination of the example and teachings of the apostles, that the latter intended to transfer the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day.”—P. 214. 

It never requires a great deal of evidence, nor of a very strong kind, to strengthen a conclusion we have already reached, especially when we have reached the conclusion without evidence. And that such is the way Mr. Waffle has reached his conclusion is plain by his own words. He had already written this:— 

“So far as the record shows, they [the apostles] did not give any explicit command enjoining the abandonment of the seventh-day Sabbath and its observance on the first day of the week.” 

If, then, the apostles gave no command for it, the conclusion which he has reached is, so far as the teaching of the apostles goes, totally without evidence. And as he has said that “the authority must be sought in the words or in the example of the inspired apostles,” when he admits that there is no command for it, he has nothing at all left but what he calls the example of the apostles, upon which to base his conclusion. And upon this we would remind him of his own words, that “the average mind is more readily moved by a direct command than by an inference drawn from the example of even inspired men.”—P. 242. He has reached his conclusion, then, by an inference drawn from the example of the apostles. But how does he know and how can he show that his inference is just? Oh, by studying the history of an age of “corrupt practices and perversions of Christian doctrine,” he learns “that the most of them regarded themselves at liberty not to keep the seventh-day Sabbath,” and that they “could hardly have made a mistake concerning the import of their [the apostles’] words and actions.” And so having landed himself and his whole Sunday-sabbath scheme squarely upon Catholic ground in the midst of an age of “corrupt practices” and perversions of Christian doctrine, his great one-thousand-dollar task is completed; his grand one-thousand-dollar prize is won, and there we leave him to enjoy it. 

We have now examined the reasons for keeping Sunday which have been given in a five-hundred-dollar-prize essay, and in a one-thousand-dollar-prize essay. We have been asked which is the better one of the essays. We can only reply that there is no “better” about it—each is worse than the other. Yet we are not prepared to say that the trustees of Dartmouth College, and the American Sunday-school Union, have done a wholly bad work in paying the prizes by which these essays were put before the world. We are certainly justified in supposing that these essays furnish the very best argument for Sunday-keeping that can be made in the United States; and we think it well that the utter groundlessness of the Sunday institution either in Scripture or reason, should be made to appear, as is done in these essays, even though it be at an expense of $1,500. Yet it does seem a pity to pay so much good money for so many bad arguments, in support of a worthless institution. 

The commandment of God reads the same to us that it does to these prize essayists and to everybody else. It says to all: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.... The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” And for our part we hope we shall never reach the point where we shall regard ourselves at liberty not to keep the commandment of God, for to keep the seventh-day Sabbath is the commandment of God. He who regards himself at liberty not to keep it, regards himself at liberty to commit sin. (End Excerpt)

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