Perverting the Truth of God.
SOMEBODY has sent to this office, with a request that it be published in the SIGNS, a lengthy communication in which the effort is made to prove that Sunday has as good claims to respect and observance as the Sabbath. A specimen declaration is the following:— "We have nothing but tradition to show that the seventh day ever was a sacred day." Every reader of our paper who has any regard for the word of God, will approve of our refusal to use its columns to circulate such absurdities. But why will people allow their prejudices and selfish preferences to blind them to the plainest statements of the Bible. We have never yet seen any theory by which it was proposed to uphold Sunday, that was not founded in self-deception of its advocates or perversions of the Scriptures. The most common perversion of the word of God, in this respect, is that of applying the fourth commandment to the first day of the week. The Christian at Work is an advocate of Sunday, but its editor has too high regard for consistency to suffer such a theory to pass without disapproval. A Mr. Love, of Massachusetts, has been very zealous in behalf of Sunday, and has made strenuous efforts to uphold it by the authority of the decalogue. The Christian at Work exposes the sophistry of the position, and administers a deserved reproof as follows:— "The current number of the Bibliotheca Sacra contains an article on 'The Christian Sabbath in the New Dispensation,' by the Rev. Wm. D. Love, D. D., in which the writer maintains that the fourth commandment is binding upon Christians, and that the only logical and conclusive basis for the observance of the Lord's day is to be found in the recognition of its continued obligation. He sums up the matter in this wise: (1) If the fourth commandment is God's revealed will, it is transgression and peril to disregard it. (2) It gives the most consistent and beautiful array of divine truth. (3) We may know, a priori, that human nature needs to anchor to the firm foundation of God's commandments. (4) History tells us that wherever the doctrine of the abrogation of the fourth commandment has found sway, there Sabbath desecration has been the sure result." "The theory which Dr. Love in this article enforces has widely prevailed in England and Scotland, and among the Calvinistic churches of America. While a good deal has at various times been argued in its favor, it has not been entirely easy for its defenders to explain the reason for substituting the first in place of the seventh day, except by adducing the example of the apostles as sufficient evidence, and entirely authoritative in the matter. But if the example of the apostles is sufficient to account for a change so radical and vital, why, it may be asked, Is it not sufficient to afford a reasonable basis for the whole Christian observance of the Lord's day? The duty of devoting Sunday to religious uses may be logically grounded upon the authoritative example of the apostles, confirmed by the practice of the early churches, by the fourth commandment, the original sanctification of the seventh day, and the words of Christ, (Mark 2:27). A theory so grounded escapes the dilemma of making the whole commandment binding while changing an essential feature of it, into which a new reasoner would force a defender of the fourth commandment theory; and while recognizing the important bearing of the Jewish Sabbath on the question of keeping the Lord's day as more in accordance with the spirit of the new dispensation, which certainly does not magnify legal relations, and agrees better with Paul's words when he says, 'One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully assured in his own mind.'" "It is more than ever important in a day like this, when the institution of the Christian Sunday is vehemently assailed, that Christian thinkers be prepared to logically vindicate the religious uses of the day. It may be done, some devout Christians think, in the way Dr. Love points out. But the wavering and the unstable will hardly be convinced by an argument which, while enforcing the fourth commandment, changes one of its most essential features by substituting one day for another. A Jew who in Christ's time should have attempted to have his Sabbath on Sunday, would have speedily found himself in trouble. To say that a certain commandment is binding, at the same time excepting its most essential feature, is a good deal like saying that a certain law is binding because it is on the statute book, though time and custom have for centuries made it obsolete. We do not the less want a Sabbath observance: only we insist that it shall be placed on a firm and enduring basis. To say that the fourth commandment is binding, and then to except the especial day which it peculiarly prescribes, is to beg the whole question in a masterly manner." In these remarks the Christian at Work virtually ignores the authority of the fourth commandment. And it will find as great difficulty in retaining the other precepts of the decalogue after throwing away the fourth, as it finds in retaining the fourth commandment and rejecting the seventh day. This important question: Shall the Law of God, the decalogue, be accepted as the moral rule of life? has yet to be settled in the Protestant churches, and the opposers of the Sabbath are fast undermining the authority of the law, and leading the minds of the people to slightly regard it. The injury thus done to the morals of the world is very great, and it cannot fail to show disastrous results. Had the Sunday any Bible truth to sustain it, its advocates would have no difficulty in agreeing upon some line of advocacy and defense. All advocates of the Sabbath are agreed—they rest upon the plain word of the Lord, and recognize his law as the sole basis of Sabbath obligation. But not so with Sunday advocates. They have almost as many theories and systems as there are writers and speakers—each contradicting the others. 'God is not the author of confusion.'