p. 72 | On What Authority? by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 9, 1882

On What Authority?

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

A LEARNED Doctor of Divinity, recently, in a comment on Mark 2:27, 28 said: "It is not wise to base the entire Sabbath [Sunday] argument upon the fourth commandment of the decalogue." We think no candid person can dissent from this. The fourth commandment does not enjoin the observance of Sunday, gives no reason why any body should observe it, in fact ignores it entirely. It does state, however, that six days, including the first, are to be used in labor; and this is why it is so manifestly unwise to base an argument for Sunday observance on the fourth commandment.

Following close upon this statement, an article on the same text, by Dr. Lyman Abbott, appeared in the Christian Union. In it he says: "The current notion that Christ and his apostles authoritatively substituted the first day of the week for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament."

This is not news any more than the other, but it is refreshing to hear it avowed so plainly. Between the two men the Sunday festival is fairly crowded out; wounded in the house of its friends. Those who have looked to the learned men to bolster up the Sunday, will now have to rely more than ever on the mere dictum of these men, and let the Bible go by default. Can it not, then, be truly said of them that they are "subject to ordinances after the commandments and doctrines of men," and have only a "show of wisdom in will worship?" As for the true Sabbath, it stands firm. The Creator of heaven and earth calls it his "holy day," and Christ, "by whom the worlds were made," has also claimed it as his own. Both Old and New Testaments speak authoritatively on the subject. Truly, "their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges." E. J. W.