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The Repairing of Sam Brown

 

Chapter I - part 3


          They studied that night; and the next day Sam broached the matter to one of the older heads among his workmen, and also to casual customers. He got some pointers; and one man loaned him a book with arguments against Saturday keeping. Saturday night they hurried home from the usual shopping tour, and got together some good points. Sunday morning, instead of spending a lot of time on the newspaper, they were at it again. They went to church, invited the minister to dinner, and all afternoon gathered from him ammunition for the fray. By Sunday night, Sam Brown was all chuckles, and Sarah beaming smiles. Surprising to them that they had not gotten reasons for their hopes before. Now the truth could be vindicated. They contemplated indulgently the convincing of the man Richards, setting a lost soul right, and incidentally gaining a good workman for the usual six days in the week, and making business prosper so that they could give more to the church.
          As a last precaution, they looked carefully over their list of proofs for Sunday keeping:

         1. The Saturday Sabbath was given to the Jews only, at Sinai, as a memorial of their deliverance from Egypt, and was not kept before that time.

          2. The seventh-day Sabbath was abolished by Christ at the cross, after which He and the disciples and the early Christians kept Sunday in honor of His resurrection.

          3. We are not under the law and the old covenant any more, but are under grace and the new covenant.

          4. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is a greater event in the history of salvation than is the creation of the world; therefore its memorial is greater.

          5. God blessed the institution, not the day; and any day will do, for it is the spirit in which it is kept that counts; but we keep Sunday to be in harmony with others.

          6. It is impossible to know which is the right day, anyway, for time records have been lost because of the many calendar changes in history.

          7. With people living all over a round world, they cannot keep the same day at the same time.

          8. If Sunday keeping were wrong, God’s Spirit and our consciences would reveal the wrong to us.

          9. If Sunday is the wrong day, why wasn’t it found out long before this; and why don’t the great religious leaders and statesmen and historians know about it?

          10. To keep Saturday instead of Sunday puts us all out of kilter with the rest of the world; we would be laughed at; couldn’t do business; couldn’t hold a job.

          “There,” ejaculated Sam triumphantly, as he laid down the list of proofs, “if that don’t wreck the Saturday keeping business beyond repair and make it fit only for the junk man, then I miss my guess. Why, Sarah, any one of those arguments will make Richards look sick, poor man, and with these ten it’s like having forty ways for Sunday. His wife studied the arguments thoughtfully.
          “I was always taught that Sunday is the seventh day of the week,” she observed. “Maybe you’d better put that in as number 1l.
          “Now, ain’t that just like a woman?” he laughed; “don’t you see that that argument and number—let’s see—number two, would eat each other up, Sarah? Be logical. If we say Christ changed the day from the seventh to the first, sure can’t say that Sunday is the seventh. No, the calendar says Sunday is the first day of the week, and I calculate it’s right.”
          Sarah flushed. “Have you got all the texts ready to go with these arguments?” she asked as she changed the subject.
          “Yes, they are all here handy. All I will have to do will be to read ‘em to the young man; he’ll flounder around a little, I reckon, change the subject—like you did just now, —and then we’ll get on with Monday’s rush of work,” and he peered at his wife through lowered eyebrows in a queer way he had.
          “Good luck to your logic,” was all she said. And they were soon sleeping the sleep of the self-satisfied.

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