Sunday in Paris by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 18, 1866

Sunday in Paris.

By Editor

“REV. WM. PATTON, D. D.,” of Chicago, Ill., now sojourning in France, writes to the N. Y. Independent, concerning the observance of Sunday in the city of Paris:

“I have had sight and experience of a Parisian Sunday, and it conveys a sad, but healthful, practical, lesson. When I awoke in the morning, the same din and bustle and hucksters’ cries from the streets below, saluted my ears as on other days. I looked out of the window, and the shops were all open, and vehicles of every kind were driving about as usual. After breakfast I started for the American Chapel, and, on the way, saw that all kinds of traffic proceeded uninterrupted, while, nearly opposite the chapel, the masons and laborers were busy hoisting the stones and laying them in place on a new building. At rare intervals, shutters were up at a shop-window, though these increased considerably in the afternoon. In the evening, as I went to another place of worship, through the Champs Elysées, there were crowds of people amusing themselves in every conceivable way, walking, riding, with games, at puppet shows, at concerts and dances, at refreshment saloons, etc., etc. Only he who has witnessed the scene can imagine it. A French pastor, in Paris, tells me that it is now rather the practice of many workmen to labor on Sunday and take a holiday on Monday! Now, in such an atmosphere, worldliness has every possible advantage over religion, and the wonder is that the churches can maintain a foothold in the community, and that piety can avoid universal lukewarmness and backsliding. There must be some connection between the feeble progress of pure religion in France, and this method of secularizing Sunday. There must be, also, some middle and tenable ground between such a day and a rigid, Judaistic, Puritan Sabbath. Neither seems to conform to Scripture, nor to meet human wants. There may be changes of opinion yet to come in America, as to the precise scriptural basis of the weekly day of worship. There will probably be many, ere long (judging from exegetical tendencies in biblical scholars), who will doubt the safety of resting it on the fourth commandment; and who, dropping a Jewish Sabbath as authority, will prefer to cling to the ‘Lord’s Day,’ or ‘the first day of the week,’ as an independent institution; on the single warrant of the example and teachings of Christ and the apostles, and not as an alteration of a command of the Decalogue—one of the hardest of things to prove.”

Such a confession from such a source, is worthy of note. It is refreshing to find a doctor of divinity acknowledging, first, that Sunday-keeping cannot be defended from the fourth commandment without altering the commandment; and second, that the alteration of the commandment is “one of the hardest of things to prove.” Equally significant is the intimation that they must cling to the “Lord’s Day,” or “first day of the week, as an independent institution, on the single warrant of the example and teachings of Christ and the apostles.” The theological training necessary to create a D. D. of the present day, is not sufficiently Biblical to dispel the illusion that any such independent institution exists. But let them search for it; and they will find that, like some other imaginary theological creations, it is without body or parts, center or circumference, name or location. It has neither superstructure nor foundation, substance nor shadow. This institution, also, will be found “one of the hardest of things to prove.” Neither Christ nor his apostles have ever given precept or example for any such thing. Our Lord never took the day into his lips; he never religiously rested upon it, nor placed upon it any sort of sanctity whatever. The apostles never gave it any title of sacredness. They ever called it simply first day of the week. And the only example they have left us concerning it, is to make it a secular day.

We rejoice in the Rev. doctor’s Sunday experience in Paris, inasmuch as it has called out such a confession. Let it be passed around; and let the agitation on the Sabbath question continue. As surely as light dispels darkness, so surely, upon investigation, must every honest mind come to the conclusion that the observance of Sunday, as a Sabbath, finds no aid or comfort in the Scriptures of truth. We believe, with the writer, that “there may be changes of opinion yet to come in America, as to the precise scriptural basis of the weekly day of worship,” and that more and more will be found “who will doubt the safety of resting” the observance of the first day, “on the fourth commandment,” which so positively and unalterably requires the observance of the seventh.