What is there in teaching that Christians must keep the seventh, or
Sabbath day, to impart or perpetuate spiritual life? The very seed
of ruin is in such teaching. There is no Christ in it. It did not
originate with Christ, but is anti-christian. The Lord never taught
his disciples to keep the seventh or Sabbath day, nor did his apostles
ever teach this. The first Christians did not meet on the seventh
day “to break bread,” but on the _first day_. When they met on the
first day they did not observe it as the Sabbath. It was a different
day from the Sabbath, took its rise from a different event, and had
a different object and entirely different associations. The Sabbath
originated in God’s _resting_ on the seventh day. It pointed to this
rest and originated in it. It had no Christ in it, did not originate
with Christ, nor point to him. It had nothing in it to bring him, or
anything he ever did to view, and nothing can be done more directly
calculated to draw the mind entirely off from Christ than to fill the
mind of the christian with the Sabbath, and get the first day of the
week and all its hallowed associations and memories out of his mind.
The first day of the week derives its entire religious significance
from the resurrection of our Lord, and the commemoration of the
Savior’s sufferings keeps his death continually before us, pointing
back to his death for our sins, and forward to his second coming.
Are Christians to be perverted and their minds and hearts carried away
from the death of Jesus, his resurrection and his coming, and all the
sublime associations and memories connected with the first day of the
week; turned back and put to the meditations of a Jew, commemorating
the rest of God on the seventh day, after he had completed the work of
creation? Nothing can be more anti-christian than this. This is Judaism
in the most deadly type. It is literally turning away from Christ to
Judaism; from the day that brings the great event to view, that lies
at the foundation of the faith and the entire kingdom of God; the
resurrection of our Lord from the dead, and the death of Jesus for our
sins. If purposely designed to lead us away from the Savior and ruin
us, nothing could be more completely suited to the purpose than this
Judaizing, Sadducean, no-spirit, no-angel and no-resurrection theory.
The theory, on its face, carries its own condemnation; but, in the
numerous cases of ruin wrought by it, we have the demonstration of its
destructive character.