Sunday | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 25, 1866

Sunday.

[A CORRESPONDENT sends us this article with the following note: The enclosed article on Sunday, from The United Presbyterian, Wis., is good proof that the Papists have attempted to change the name. It is to be lamented that the writer had not been a little better informed, and gone a little further and admitted that the Papists had also attempted to change the day.]

Why is it that so many Christians still persist in the practice of adopting the Popish name of Sunday for the Lord’s day? It can be viewed by right thinking minds in no other light than as an irreverent profanation of a day that God has made sacred to his own service, and commemorative of the greatest event that ever transpired in our world—the finished work of redemption. The day has several Scriptural names, such as Sabbath, the first day of the week, the Lord’s day, &c.; each calculated to inspire in the mind a respect for its sacred and commemorative character. Why throw these aside and adopt one of heathenish origin, and the adopted child of Popery? It is well known that in their view the sacred character of the Sabbath has ceased, and therefore its very names—the Sabbath, and the Lord’s day—names of a peculiarly solemn significance, have been laid aside, and a heathen name adopted as more in accordance with the way and manner they desired this day of sacred rest, sacred to the Lord, to be observed. That the worldly and profane should follow the evil example, is not wonderful; but it is passing strange that Christians, who profess to regard it as holy to the Lord and honorable in his sight, should still persist in calling it by this Popish nickname.

In regard to the other days of the week the name is, of course, a matter of indifference; but it is not so with the Lord’s day. Sunday was the festival observed by the heathen in honor of Sol, whom they blindly worshiped as God. The Christian mind should instinctively revolt against the double profanity of robbing God’s holy day of the name he has given it, and calling it by the name of a heathen deity. How hard it is to rid the Church of Popish influences. We have seen it sometimes published that such a one would lecture on the evils of Popery, on such a Sabbath? no, but on such a Sunday! and involuntarily have we felt he had better begin by freeing his own mind from its cunning device of robbing the Lord’s day of its sacred character, by robbing it of its good name.

We hope ere long to see the terms, Sunday Schools, Sunday School Unions, &c., banished from the Protestant churches. These great and good institutions are designed to disseminate the pure light of the Gospel, and to dispel, not perpetuate, the superstitions and idolatries foisted into the church during the dark ages.