NOTHING that is spiritual in its nature can be preserved by a carnal ordinance or commandment.
WHEN men lose sight of principles in a controversy, it is lowered to the level of personal strife; but the contest for liberty and justice can never be settled by such means.
GOD offers the Sabbath rest to all; and the person who will not take the Sabbath when it is offered to him by the Lord, will not really take it when it is accorded him by the “Christian public.” If he will not accept it from the law of God, he cannot accept it from the law of man. The acceptance or refusal of the Sabbath, by any individual, must be to God and not to man.
IF the Sabbath could be lost through failure of the law to enforce its observance, or by the general disregard of the people, would not the seventh-day Sabbath have been lost long ago? Yet it has not been lost; and the fact that it has survived without the support of either law or popular custom, is evidence that the Sabbath is not so perishable in its nature as some men loudly assert.
IF the first-day Sabbath is as good as the seventh-day Sabbath, it, like the latter, will survive without the aid of Sabbath laws and in spite of the disregard of world-loving people. And if it is not as good as the seventh-day institution, then plainly the latter ought to be adopted in its stead.
ONE man has the same right to “protection” in the observance of the Sabbath that another man has; the observer of the seventh day has a right to the same protection that is accorded the observer of the first day. And the first-day observer has no right to more “protection” in the observance of the Sabbath than can be justly claimed by the seventh-day observer.
THE Christian Church is in the world not to save institutions, but to save men. Christian institutions do not need saving; and if the church will devote her energies to the salvation of sinful men and women, the institutions will take care of themselves. Christian institutions do not benefit unsaved people; for only those who are Christians can appreciate them and make that use of them which their Author designed.