to that of Pitcairn’s Island. The inhabitants of this region, like
those of the island mentioned, sailed eastward to this continent
across the Pacific Ocean, and failed to drop the required day in their
reckoning. The result was, that when we purchased that territory, they
were found to be keeping Saturday instead of Sunday. We believe,
however, that the mistake is now rectified.
STATESMAN’S REPLY.
ARTICLE ELEVEN.
THE TRUE THEORY OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
The third theory of the Christian Sabbath, in the order in which we have
been considering the different theories, affirms that the Sabbath was
instituted at the creation of man, and that it has never been abolished
or superseded. This theory further maintains that the essential idea of
the law of the Sabbath is not the holiness of any particular portion of
time, but the consecration of a specified proportion of time, viz., one
day in seven; that, in accordance with this essential idea of the
Sabbath, a change of day was admissible; that a change was actually made
by divine warrant, on account of, and dating from, the resurrection of
Christ; and that the first day of the week, the Lord’s day, is the true
Christian Sabbath, having its moral sanction in the fourth commandment.
Enough has already been written in these columns, in disproving the
opposing theories, to show that this theory of the Sabbath is the true
one. Two things being admitted, there appears to be no escape from this
theory. Let it be admitted, first, that God instituted the Sabbath for
all mankind, and that its law is of unchanging as well as universal
application. This is readily conceded by those with whom we are now in
discussion. Then, in the second place, let it be admitted that the
inspired apostles, under the guidance of Christ and his Spirit, and with
their manifest approbation, ceased to observe the seventh day, and
actually observed the first day of the week. This our opponents are very
loth to admit. But the testimony given by us at considerable length is
simply overwhelming and incontrovertible. The third theory, and it
alone, harmonizes the immutable law of the Sabbath with the actual
change of day.
In further confirmation of the correctness of this theory, it remains
for us, in concluding this discussion, to show that this third theory
accords with the fourth commandment, and meets every aspect of the
design of the institution of the Sabbath.
The principal feature of the design of the Sabbath is the setting forth
of God’s sovereign control, as creator, of man and the time of man, as
God’s creature. Called into being by the Creator, and made lord over the
irrational and material creation, man was taught that his time was to be
used for God’s honor. It was a trust from the Creator; and that man
might not forget this, one-seventh of the time in regular recurrence was
marked out to be consecrated specially to the Lord of all. This is the
very idea in the commemoration of the work of creation. It is to keep
alive the knowledge of God as the Creator and Sovereign Ruler of man. To
commemorate the creation, is to keep before the mind, week by week, the
duty of using our time for the honor of the Author and Upholder of our
being.
Nor is the example of God’s resting the seventh day made insignificant
by this theory of the Christian Sabbath. “In six days God made the
heavens and the earth, and rested the seventh day.” God’s people in
different parts of the world do and must begin their work at different
times, and yet in each locality they labor six days and rest the
seventh. It is the proportion of time which is the law of the
commandment, enforced by the divine example; and hence the Christian
Sabbath, in the true import of the commandment, is as really the seventh
day as the Jewish Sabbath. The Christian labors six days, and not the
seventh, according to the divine example and the divine command.
In this way, also, the true theory of the Christian Sabbath meets the
design of the institution as it was intended to arrest the current of
the outward life and lead up the soul to unseen and eternal verities.
And here there is a most important argument for the change of the day
for Sabbath observance. It is most reasonable to believe that, if there
be any work which more gloriously manifests the perfections of God, and
serves better to turn the thoughts of men to things above, than the work
of creation, the day which commemorates such a work would be the
appropriate time for Sabbath observance.
So far as the essential idea of the Sabbath connects itself with a
particular day, the argument is of great weight in favor of a change
from the seventh to the first day of the week. The weekly division is
the main thing, let the week begin when it may. It may begin on what we
now call the third, or fourth, or any other, day. It will matter little.
But as the first day, in our enumeration of the days, will always bring
to mind the great work of redemption, accomplished by the Saviour, who
on the first day of the week rose from the dead, the observance of this
day as the Sabbath best answers one of the principal designs of that
institution.
And then, how fittingly does the observance of the first day, the day of
the Lord’s resurrection, correspond to the design of the Sabbath as a
foretaste of the heavenly rest—the _Sabbatismos_ or Sabbath-keeping that
remains for the people of God. Rejoicing here on the Christian Sabbath
in what our Redeemer has done for us, we look forward with joyful
anticipations to the many mansions which he has gone before us to
prepare, that we may be “forever with the Lord.”
“Bright shadows of true rest; some shoots of bliss;
Heaven once a week;
The next world’s gladness prepossessed in this,
A day to seek
Eternity in time; the steps by which
We climb above all ages; lamps that light
Man through his heap of dark days; and the rich
And full redemption of the whole week’s flight.
‘The milky way chalked out with suns; a clue
That guides through evening hours; and in full story
A taste of Heaven on earth; a pledge and cue
Of a full feast; and the out-courts of glory.’”
A REJOINDER.
“THE TRUE THEORY OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.”
It is a peculiarity of this discussion that we are prevented, in our
rejoinders, from anticipating the positions which our opponent has in
store for us. Were it possible to proceed upon principles of
consistency, in debate, and conclude that he, having adopted such and
such views, would continue to maintain them steadily for the future,
there would be a sort of satisfaction found in preparing material to be
employed hereafter. But we have learned, by actual experience, that in
this debate such anticipatory action would be labor lost. For example:
In the last reply, which had to do with the seventh-part-of-time theory,
we had intended to show that, were it true, and that, were the
observance of one day in seven all that is now required, even then
Sabbatarians stood upon a footing as safe as that of their opponents,
since the observance of the seventh day answered to the keeping of
one-seventh part of time, equally with that of the celebration of the
first day of the week.
Being prevented by want of space from indulging in these reflections, we
laid them over for another week, supposing that they would come in play
equally well at this time, Alas! what a mistake! We should have struck
when the iron was hot. Unfortunately, we are not now confronting the
no-day-in-particular doctrine, as we were then; but it is the “Lord’s
day” again, the first day of an indefinite week, “a particular, definite
day, enforced by the command and the example of Christ and the
apostles,” which once more stands before us. How it is that we have been
borne so rapidly over the space which separates these antagonistic
positions, the reader will have to decide for himself; for we confess to
a perfect want of ability, on our own part, to render him any
assistance. Without the slightest attempt at logical deduction, we are
first informed that the essential idea in Sabbath observance is not that
of the keeping of a particular day, but the consecration of one day in
the week, allowing the week to begin wherever it may. This, we are told,
would suitably commemorate God’s rest at the creation of the world; and,
also, that if, in addition, we make the day of our rest identical with
the first day of the week, we can thereby celebrate both creation and
redemption. For this very purpose, we are informed, the Sabbath
commandment was changed, so as to admit of the introduction of a new
day.
But pause a moment. Has the gentleman told us just what change was made?
Has he told us what words were stricken out? and how it now reads? The
reader has not forgotten that this is the very thing the opposition were
challenged to perform. He will perceive that this, also, is the very
thing which the gentleman has failed to accomplish, and cannot hereafter
do, since the reply under review is the last of his series. If it be
said that he has cited us to the fourth commandment, as given in the
twentieth of Exodus, as containing the law as it now reads, then he is
self-condemned; for he admits that the phraseology of that commandment
did enforce a definite day, and that, the last day of the week.
But once more: Passing over the absurdity of claiming a change in the
law, where there is no ability to produce the statute as amended, let us
go back from Sinai to Eden, along with the gentleman, and see if we
cannot find, independent of the commandment, evidence that the creation
Sabbath was not a portable institution, to be trundled about at the
caprice of any and every individual. Mark it, now, it is granted that
what is called the Jewish Sabbath law enforced the keeping of the
seventh day, and admitted of no other as a substitute. But whence is
this conclusion drawn? Undeniably, from the words, “The seventh day is
the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.”
But where has the gentleman learned that the creation Sabbath was
enjoined in the use of language less explicit and limited in its meaning
than are the words of the decalogue? If he knows anything about the
original decree of Jehovah, and the limitations with which he guarded
the Sabbath in the outset, he, like ourselves, is compelled to go to the
sacred record for information. If, in going there, he has been able to
find anything which would prove that the Edenic Sabbath was less fixed
in its character than that of Sinai, then he has made some progress. The
only scripture which will throw any light upon the subject will be found
in Gen. 2:1-3.
Unhappily for the gentleman, however, it is fatal to his conception that
the original Sabbath varied in any way from that of the Jews—so-called.
In the account of its institution, the language employed is almost
precisely the same with that subsequently traced upon the tables of
stone. It is there declared that God sanctified (_i. e._, set apart to a
holy use) the _seventh day_. The reason for this action is the fact that
he had rested upon it. Now, it will be observed that it was the
“_seventh day_” that God blessed and sanctified, and no other. It is
submitted, therefore, as the gentleman concedes, that the same
expression (_i. e._, the seventh day), when employed in the commandment
given to Moses, did locate the Sabbath institution immovably upon the
last day of the week, until the law was changed; that the same language,
when employed originally, must have produced the same result; in other
words, if the command to keep the seventh day, as given on Mount Sinai,
held the people strictly to the observance of the last day of the week,
so, too, Jehovah, in the beginning, restricted the whole race to a
Sabbath which was, equally with the other, the seventh, and, therefore,
the last day of the week.
In order to avoid this conclusion, it will be required that, by some
means, he should be able to show that the same terms which were employed
by God, at one time, have a different meaning from that attached to
them, as employed by him at another time. Not only so, the Sabbath in
Genesis, like that in Exodus, is further limited and defined by two
additional facts. First, it was the day on which God rested; secondly,
it was the day which he blessed because He had rested upon it.
Therefore, before any other day could be substituted for it, these two
things must be true of it, as matter of history. This, however, can
never be the case, as it regards any day of the week, save the last;
consequently, he who celebrates any other is not celebrating the one
which God imposed in the beginning. So much for the definiteness of the
Sabbath which was given to Adam.
Should it be replied that what has been remarked is correct, and that it
is not argued that any one was at liberty to keep any other day than the
seventh of the week, until Christ changed the law, and thereby
authorized them so to do, we reply, Very good; that brings us back again
to the original proposition, which is, Did he make such a change? If he
did, then it is just as important that we should have clear and
conclusive evidence that such an alteration was made by him, as it is
that we should have the abundant testimony which we now possess that a
definite Sabbath was originally given to mankind.
All this speculation in regard to what might have been done with perfect
consistency under a given state of facts is worse than idle. What we
demand is this—What _has been_ done? Instead of concluding that Christ
did a certain thing because it would have been right so to do, first
show us, by actual Scripture quotation, that he really performed the
work in question, and the consistency of his action will take care of
itself. A theology which has no broader, firmer basis than individual
conception of the propriety of certain occurrences which may never have
taken place at all, is not worth the paper on which it is drawn out.
This, nevertheless, is the very material with which we are dealing.
Eleven articles, ostensibly written to afford divine authority for the
change of days, are concluded; and, from beginning to end, there is not
found in them a “Thus saith the Lord” for the transfer. Again and again
it is inferred that such and such transactions meant so-and-so. Again
and again it is concluded that such and such things are admissible, not
because of any scriptural warrant, but because they seem good in the
eyes of those with whose practice they best conform. The reason why this
is so, the reader will readily perceive. It is found, not in the fact
that the learned gentleman who represents the opposition is insensible
to the superiority of positive Bible statements over individual surmise,
but in the necessity under which he is placed, to employ the only
material which he has at hand. Meeting him, therefore, where he is, let
us prove the unreliability of such deductions as he is indulging in by
actual test. The points which he is attempting to establish are these:
1. The original idea of the Sabbath can be met by the observance of the
first day of the week, as well as by that of the last. 2. That the
commemoration of Christ’s resurrection can only be suitably carried out
by hallowing the first day of every week.
Now, as to the first of these propositions, it will only be safe to
decide that it is correct after giving it mature reflection. We have
already seen that God’s original plan for preserving the memory of
creation week was that of setting apart the last day of each subsequent
week for the imitation, on our part, of his rest thereon. To say,
therefore, that it would have answered just as well to allow the
individual to take any other day—say the first day of the week—for this
purpose, is to argue that God acted without cause in making the
selection which he did and enforcing it for four thousand years. If the
question were one of indifference, why did he not leave the day unfixed?
Why not allow them then to commemorate his rest on the first day, as the
gentleman would have done now, arguing that the ends of the original
Sabbath would, in this way, be fully met. Certain it is that no good
reason can be assigned why it would now be more proper to commemorate
the rest of Jehovah by a variable Sabbath than it has been heretofore.
This being true, the gentleman’s logic is found to be unsound, or else
the action of the Deity was inconsiderate.
Turning, now, to the second proposition, the reader will be instantly
struck with its unqualified antagonism to the first point which is
sought to be made out.
Remember, now, that the gentleman is arguing stoutly for first-day
sanctity. He is not so particular when the week begins, but it must have
just seven days, and the first of them must be devoted to the
commemoration of the Lord’s resurrection, Should you ask him why he is
thus particular in the selection of the first day of the week, he would
reply, “Why, that is the day on which the Lord arose, and it is his
resurrection, as the crowning act in the work of redemption, which we
seek to honor.” But, reader, would it not occur to you, immediately,
that this is a repudiation of all which he has said concerning the
Edenic Sabbath? Nosy, mark it; what God demands, is, that we should
honor the seventh day of the week, as the one which he rested upon,
blessed, and sanctified. If, therefore, the rest, the blessing, and the
sanctification of that day can be suitably remembered by the observance
of another day differing from it, then the assumption that an event is
most impressively handed down by the dedication, for this purpose, of
the very day on which it transpired, is unsound.
But if this assumption be unsound, then all of the gentleman’s talk in
regard to the necessity for a change of days, in order to the suitable
commemoration of the resurrection of Christ and the completion of the
work of redemption, is without force. For, assuredly, if he is right in
supposing that God’s rest in Eden, on the seventh day, can he
commemorated as well on the first day as on the seventh, then the same
principle will hold good in regard to the events which transpired on the
first day of the week, _i. e._, they can be kept in remembrance by the
hallowing of the seventh day as well as by that of the first. But this
being true, his argument for the necessity of the change of Sabbaths is
gone, and his philosophy of the change proved to be unsound. The only
purpose which it has served in this controversy has been the revelation
of that which is really the conviction of its author, as it is that of
men generally, that there is no time in which great transactions can be
so suitably commemorated as that of the day on which they took place.
When the nation wishes to celebrate the anniversary of its independence,
it sets apart for this purpose the fourth of July, which answers exactly
to the day of the month on which the Declaration of Independence was
made. Substitute for this another day, and you have marred the
impressiveness of the occasion.
So, too, with God’s rest on creation week; it must be so celebrated that
all the associations connected with it will be calculated to lead the
mind back to its origin and object. Turn it around, as the gentleman
proposes to do, _i. e._, substitute the first day of the week in the
place of the last, and you have precisely reversed God’s order. You have
put the rest-day first, and cause the six laboring days to follow;
whereas, God, knowing that rest was only needed _after_ labor, worked
six days and then rested the seventh, not because he was weary, but
because he desired to put on the record for us an example to be strictly
followed. The gentleman, however, without the slightest warrant, has,
with a rash hand, laid hold of the divine procedure, and now says that
the order pursued was not necessary to the inculcation of the great
lessons which God designed to impart.
To this, I reply, 1. That God’s actions are never superfluous. 2. That,
if we err at all, it is safer to err on the side of the divine example.
3. That if the idea of God’s working six days is in any way connected
with a proper Sabbath rest, then it is indispensable that the Sabbath
should follow, and not precede, the working portion of the week. 4. That
if the rest of God, merely, is the object which we should keep before
our minds by a proper regard for the Sabbatic institution, the gentleman
has himself shown, by the logic which he has employed, that the only
suitable period for the keeping of that rest is found in that portion of
the week on which God ceased from his labors.
The remark of the gentleman that the work of redemption furnishes a
subject worthy of being remembered by observance with Sabbatic honor of
the day on which it was completed, is worthy of passing notice. The idea
which he advances is one which is quite prevalent, and employed with
great satisfaction by clergymen generally, when controverting the claims
of God’s ancient rest-day. The strength of the position lies in the fact
that it distinguishes between redemption and creation, assuming, perhaps
correctly, that the latter is more exalted than the former. Having won
the assent of the mind to this proposition, the reader is quietly
carried over to conclusions much less obvious than the first. Almost
unconsciously he is led to decide, with his instructor, that, since
redemption is a greater work than creation, it ought, therefore, to be
honored by a day of rest.
Now we shall not enter into this matter largely, but we simply suggest
that either this decision is the result of human, or else it is the
product of divine, wisdom. If it is human wisdom, then its teachings
should be followed with extreme caution. If it is divine wisdom, then
they can be obeyed with the most implicit confidence. Just at this
point, therefore, it is all-important that the test be applied. Has
Jehovah ever said that the commemoration of creation week had become
less desirable on account of the possible redemption of a fallen race,
by the death of his Son? The most careful reader of the Bible has failed
to find any such language; in fine, the intimation that such is really
the fact is rather a reflection upon the Deity himself, since, from it,
it might be inferred that the glory of his work had been dimmed by the
fall of the race.
But, again, if the Lord has not said that he would not have the memory
of creation cherished still, has he ever said that he would have the
work of redemption signalized by a weekly rest? Once more the student of
the Scriptures unhesitatingly answers in the negative; but if God has
failed to make this declaration, who shall presume to put words in his
mouth, and read the thoughts of his mind, as those having authority so
to do? The man who will undertake to do it is venturing upon ground
which lies hard by that of blasphemy. God never neglects to say that
which ought to be said; he never calls upon any man to go beyond his
commandments, for in them, says Solomon (Eccl. 12:13), is found the
whole duty of man.
Furthermore, were we to reason upon this matter at all, every
consideration would lead us to the conclusion that the inference of our
opponents is not correct. In the first place, redemption is not yet
fully completed in the case of any individual. In the second place, the
Scripture says we have (are to have) redemption through his _blood_
(Col. 1:14). But his blood, it is generally supposed, was shed upon
Friday, and, therefore, it is not impossible that the hallowing of that
day would more suitably commemorate redemption than that of any other
day. In the third place, it was proved at length in a former article,
that if creation was suitably commemorated by a day of rest, redemption,
which is an event entirely opposite in its character, would naturally be
celebrated by some institution of an entirely different nature. In other
words, the Sabbath inculcates cessation from labor by the indulgence of
inaction, while all the events connected with the resurrection of Christ
rendered inactivity impossible.