p. 78 | Answers to Questions by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 16, 1882

Answers to Questions.

By Editor

Understanding that you advocate the keeping of Saturday as the Sabbath, and claim that it is the seventh day, I wish to ask for information:—

1. Do the other churches admit that Saturday is the seventh day?

2. If they admit this, what reason do they generally assign for not keeping the seventh day?

3. What reason is assigned for keeping the first day by those churches which insist on a strict following of the letter of the law?

Chicago, Ill., Jan. 18.

Answers.—1. There is no point in which all churches and all classes are better agreed than that Saturday is the seventh day. It is proved by their constantly referring to those passages in the New Testament which speak of the first day of the week, and urging them as favoring the observance of Sunday. And, of course, if Sunday is the first day of the week Saturday is the seventh day. The laws of the several States, which the churches are so zealous to enforce, testify to the same thing. In a recent trial in this city for a violation of the Sunday Law the Judge closed his instructions to the jury as follows:—

"I do further instruct you that the 8th day of January, 1882, was and is the Christian Sabbath, the same being the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday."

The law of the State of New York uses the same language: "The first day of the week, commonly called Sunday." The general literature of the churches, catechisms, confessions of faith, doctrinal essays, sermons, etc., all teach the same thing. We could go further and easily prove that Saturday is the seventh day, but the question does not require this; it only inquires how far it is admitted.

2. The reasons assigned for keeping the first day are about as various as the advocates of keeping first day are numerous. There is no manner of agreement among them as to what is the proper ground on which to base Sunday observance. And the reason of one year is not the reason of the next, as they are constantly changing their ground. Some claim the validity of the commandment with a change of its subject from the seventh day to the first day. Some claim that the commandment does not require a specific day, but is kept by the keeping of any day. Some claim that the commandment and its subject are utterly abolished and a new first-day institution erected on its ruins. Some claim that the Sabbath was abolished and nothing erected in its stead, but the church having adopted a day, custom and the necessity for uniformity require us to keep it. And some claim that neither abolition nor change was effected in the Scriptures, but that the church has the right to make such changes, and has exercised this right in substituting the Sunday for the Sabbath. These are some of the positions assumed, contradicting one another as well as the Scriptures. In one thing only they agreed, namely, to oppose the Sabbath of the Lord, and to compel others to do the same, in spite of Bible and reason. Of late the position is becoming popular that it is not necessary to prove the divine institution of the first day of the week, but to give it a civil basis and enforce it upon all as "a sanitary regulation." But this is an idea raised for the occasion. The necessities of the case require that something decisive be done, and in the confessed absence of divine law, a human law is the best thing to rest upon. And surely, learned divines would never lower that which they call a Christian institution to the level of a mere "police regulation" if they had the inspired testimony of the word of God to enforce it.

3. We know of no churches now, except the Seventh-day Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist, "which insist on a strict following of the letter of the law." It is so generally admitted that Sunday is the first day, and so well known that the law says "the seventh day is the Sabbath," that the idea of close conformity to the words of the law is generally abandoned.