Thomas Motherwell Preble

Thomas Motherwell Preble (1810–1907): The Preacher Who Put the Sabbath Into Print

Thomas Motherwell Preble, usually identified in the early sources as T. M. Preble, lived a life marked by revival preaching, sharp doctrinal conviction, public controversy, and a willingness to publish what he believed the Bible required. The official Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists biography remembers him as the first American Adventist preacher to accept the seventh-day Sabbath. His writings helped lead Joseph Bates, J. B. Cook, J. N. Andrews, and other early believers toward the Sabbath, even though Preble later abandoned the doctrine himself.

Preble was born July 13, 1810, in Anson, Maine, to Motherwell and Susannah Preble. When he was ten, the family was living in Norridgewock. He worked as a farm hand before entering Parsonsfield Academy at twenty-six. While studying there, he began preaching. He was ordained first as a Calvinist Baptist and later became a Free Will Baptist minister.

In 1837 he married Helen Mair Eaton in Weare, New Hampshire. Their daughter, Susan Jennie Preble, was born in 1838. During one of his early pastorates in Nashua, Preble accepted the Second Advent message. He became a forceful revivalist, writing, “I bless God, that I have been willing to give the ‘midnight cry.’” After only six weeks, his congregation excommunicated him on February 15, 1842, because of his Advent preaching.

That rejection did not quiet him. He helped lead a Second Advent Conference in Nashua, worked with Joshua V. Himes and other Advent preachers, and traveled through New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts. At camp meetings in Atkinson and Exeter he preached to crowds of thousands and baptized converts. In early 1843 he baptized thirty-five people in Nashua. At Athol, Exeter, New Salem, and other towns, his reports describe crowded meetings, weeping hearers, opposition, and a growing expectation that Christ would soon appear.

As October 1844 approached, Preble accepted Samuel S. Snow's “Midnight Cry” message and traveled through Maine proclaiming, “Behold he cometh.” Like other Advent believers, he passed through the Great Disappointment, but he did not abandon the Second Advent hope.

Around August 1844, Preble became convinced that the seventh-day Sabbath was a matter of great importance and that he had a duty to share what he had learned. The precise path by which he reached the conviction has been discussed by historians, but his proximity to Sabbath-keeping Advent believers in Washington, New Hampshire, and to Frederick Wheeler is the most plausible explanation. J. N. Andrews later wrote that Preble had been led to embrace the Sabbath through his acquaintance with Sabbath keepers in New Hampshire.

On February 13, 1845, Preble wrote a letter to John Pearson about the Sabbath. Joseph Turner published it in The Hope of Israel on February 28, 1845. That article was not a minor notice. It set off a new round of debate among Millerite believers and placed the seventh-day Sabbath in front of Advent readers who were still searching for meaning after 1844.

Read the local scan of The Hope of Israel, including the text edition from the 1844-1845 archive collection. The surviving publication is the first doorway into Preble's Sabbath witness.

In March 1845, Preble expanded the Hope of Israel article into his famous twelve-page pamphlet, A Tract: Showing that the Seventh Day Should Be Observed as the Sabbath Instead of the First Day; According to the Commandment. This was the second and more developed publication: not merely a letter in a periodical, but a compact argument designed to be read, carried, and handed to others.

Preble argued that the Sabbath was established at Creation, remained part of the Ten Commandments, and could not be displaced by church tradition. He distinguished the moral law from the ceremonial law and examined the common arguments for Sunday observance. He appealed to Christ's warning in Matthew 24:20, the creation account, the fourth commandment, the practice of Jesus, and the history of the church.

He also traced the later change from the seventh day to the first day through church history. His blunt conclusion was memorable: “TRUTH is what I am after,” and if he had only one day left to live, he would give up error for truth as soon as he could see it. He declared that the “little horn” of Daniel 7:25 had changed times and laws and challenged Sunday keepers to face the authority behind the change.

The tract included answers to objections, a brief history of the Sabbath, a discussion of Friday-evening-to-Saturday-evening observance, and a short supplement addressing questions about the globe and the timing of the Sabbath around the earth. The complete local 1845 tract collection and the scanned 1845 edition preserve the argument that changed the direction of early Adventism.

Joseph Bates later remembered reading Preble's short Sabbath article and immediately recognizing its force: “THIS IS TRUTH!” Bates accepted the Sabbath, studied further with Frederick Wheeler and the Farnsworth believers, and became the movement's great Sabbath advocate. Preble's writing also influenced the young J. N. Andrews, who later became one of the leading historians and defenders of the Sabbath.

The influence of Preble's two publications was larger than Preble's own later position. His Hope of Israel letter opened the debate; the expanded tract gave believers a portable case from Scripture and history. Historian Merlin D. Burt has described the article and tract together as the single most important influence promoting the seventh-day Sabbath among Adventists during 1845.

Preble remained a passionate Advent preacher, but by about the summer of 1847 he had abandoned his belief in the seventh-day Sabbath. He returned to the conviction that the Ten Commandments had been abolished at the cross and that Christians should focus on the Second Advent and the prophetic “seventh thousand year” millennium. The change created a striking historical tension: the man whose writing helped Bates and Andrews accept the Sabbath later wrote against the very arguments he had once published.

Preble continued to publish and preach. He operated a print shop in Buchanan, Michigan, remained close to the Advent Christian movement, and stayed aligned with Joshua V. Himes and Miles Grant after Himes was ostracized. In 1861 he wrote against the Sabbath, and in 1864 he published another series on the Sabbath and the law in The World's Crisis. Uriah Smith answered with Both Sides on the Sabbath and Law.

In 1867 Preble produced his largest attack on the seventh-day Sabbath, a 471-page volume responding to the writings of Jotham Aldrich, Uriah Smith, and J. N. Andrews. He argued against his own earlier 1845 reasoning and contended that the Sabbath had been abolished at the cross. The personal copy owned by Andrews still carries handwritten notes, preserving the intensity of the debate between two men who had once been moved by Preble's first Sabbath witness.

Preble continued as an Advent Christian minister through the 1870s and 1880s, preaching in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and New York. His first wife, Helen, died in 1864. He married Sophia Rose Smith in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, on August 24, 1865; she died in 1892.

He retired from active ministry near the end of the 1880s but continued studying, writing, and participating in religious life. In 1897 he published The Devil Destroyed! The Saints Victorious Over Death: The Lord Jesus Saves the World. In retirement he worked on a revision of Scripture called The God Like Narrative of the Bible, although the manuscript does not appear to have survived.

In 1907, at age ninety-seven, he still led an old-fashioned testimony meeting and rode in an automobile for the first time. He died of heart failure on December 13, 1907, in Somerville, Massachusetts, and was buried beside Sophia in Cedar Grove Cemetery near Dorchester. His story remains complicated but consequential: the author of the Hope of Israel letter and the expanded 1845 Sabbath tract became, for a time, one of the most important voices carrying the Sabbath into the early Advent movement, even after he later turned against the doctrine.

Thomas Motherwell Preble — Original Books and Publications

• Read The Hope of Israel (1844 local scan)
• Open The Hope of Israel scan from the Preble book folder
• Read the 1845 Sabbath tract — local scan
• Open the 1845 tract edition
• Open the complete Preble tract PDF

In mid-1844, Preble accepted the Seventh-day Sabbath in Washington, New Hampshire after hearing Frederick Wheeler and Seventh Day Baptist Rachel Oakes.

In February 1845, Preble wrote an article in The Hope of Israel (Portland, ME), which he expanded in March 1845 into a 12-page pamphlet titled A Tract Showing that the Seventh Day Should Be Kept as the Sabbath. Read the local scan of The Hope of Israel and compare the original publication with the later Sabbath tract.

When Captain Joseph Bates read Preble's pamphlet in early 1845, he examined the scriptures, saw the unchangeable obligation of the Fourth Commandment, and immediately embraced the Sabbath. Bates then traveled to Washington, NH, studied with Wheeler and the Farnsworth brothers, and went on to write A Seal of the Living God (1849), establishing the Sabbath as the seal of Revelation 7!

• Captain Joseph Bates — Converted to the Sabbath by Preble's 1845 tract.
• Frederick Wheeler — First ordained Sabbathkeeping minister in America.
• J. N. Andrews — Author of History of the Sabbath.
• Original Hope of Israel scan — Preble's February 28, 1845 Sabbath publication.
• Preble's expanded 1845 tract — The twelve-page Sabbath argument that reached Bates and Andrews.
• Official ESDA biography — Full source biography by Michael W. Campbell.
• Master Site Index — Complete directory of SundayLaw.com.