The Seventh Day and the First Day.
THEIR CLAIMS TO BE CONSIDERED THE DIVINELY APPOINTED WEEKLY SABBATH, COMPARED IN THE LIGHT OF THE SCRIPTURES. If God has a law binding upon us as his creatures, it is important that we understand its claims; for that law is not only a rule of right by which our actions are to be regulated in this life, but it is the instrument in accordance with which all decisions will be made affecting our eternal destiny. We are to be judged, says James, by the royal law of liberty. James 2. And ages before James wrote, Solomon put on record these impressive words: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into Judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil." Eccl. 12: 13, 14.7If, then, there is a divinely appointed Sabbath for the human family, it is important to understand it, to know the precise time to be thus used, and the duties which belong to it, lest in the scrutiny of the coming Judgment we shall be speechless under the charge of duty neglected; or, if we shall offer to God an unacceptable substitute in place of what his law enjoins, we shall meet the withering challenge, "Who hath required this at your hand?" The word Sabbath means rest. The Sabbath-day is the rest-day. But no rest-day can lay any claim to observance on the part of the human family except such as can show in its behalf the example of some divine being in resting upon it, and some divine law clearly enjoining it. Any man might fix upon a certain day in which to rest, and it would become his rest-day; but it would be of no binding obligation upon anyone else. The State might enjoin all its citizens to rest upon a specified day, but there would be nothing necessarily divine about this; and the duty of obeying the injunction would depend upon the question whether or not it involved the violation of any higher law. But there can be no rest-day of the Lord, except some day upon which he has rested; and the only Sabbath which can be of any divine obligation, and the only one which we are anywhere in the Bible required to observe, is the Sabbath, rest-day, of the Lord. We are thus thrown back upon historical testimony in reference to the first question that arises as touching the respective claims of the seventh day and the first day to be considered the Sabbath. The first essential fact in the institution of a sacred Sabbath being the rest of some divine being on the day of that Sabbath, we have first to inquire upon which of these days, if either, we have any record that any divine being ever rested. It is a simple matter of history, in regard to which there can be no dispute. What saith the record? 1. THE SEVENTH DAY.—Did any divine being ever rest on this day? Gen. 2:2 declares expressly that God, after laboring six days in the work of creation, did rest on the seventh day, devoting the entire day to cessation from labor and the contemplation of his glorious work. And from this point to the close of the Revelation, in the New Testament as well as the Old, the seventh day is everywhere and always recognized as the rest-day. After the crucifixion of Christ, the holy women "returned and prepared spices and ointment, and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment." Luke 23:56. We have no instance in all the Bible in which any Bible writer, or any one approved of God, ever regarded it otherwise. 2. THE FIRST DAY.—Did any divine being ever rest on this day? In all the revelation of God to man, there is not an intimation of any such thing. On the other hand, wherever the first day of the week is mentioned in the Bible, it is mentioned as a day of labor. On the first day of the first week of time, God labored in the work of creation. On that first day when Christ arose, the women resumed the work they had suspended on the Sabbath, the day before. Luke 24:1. The other disciples were engaged as on other days. Two of them journeyed to Emmaus and back, a distance of fifteen miles. Luke 24:13, 33. On another first day, Paul went on foot twenty miles from Troas to Assos, on a long journey from Philippi to Jerusalem, joining his brethren at Assos, and proceeding thence by ship. Acts 20:6, 13. Once more the first day of the week is mentioned, and this time it is in the instruction which Paul gave to the churches of Galatia and Corinth to prepare their contributions on that day at their own homes; in other words, to engage in secular work, looking over their worldly affairs, which would be proper only on a secular day. These are all the times the first day is mentioned in the Bible; and the sum of the evidence is this: No divine being ever rested on that day; no inspired person, or any person acting under the direction of the Lord, ever rested on that day as a Sabbath; but, on the other hand, it is always spoken of as a working day, and such instruction given as would compel us to devote it to secular purposes. What a contrast between this and the record concerning the seventh day! Surely one can hesitate a moment in determining on which side the evidence lies in reference to the point now before us. 3. THE SEVENTH DAY.—The record in Genesis continues that "God blessed the seventh day." Gen. 2:3. This is another essential idea in the institution of a Sabbath. Some one competent to perform such an act must place a blessing upon the day, that is, make it blessed or holy time, and attach a blessing to its observance. This was done to the seventh day. 4. THE FIRST DAY.—Was any blessing ever placed on the first day of the week as a day of rest or Sabbath? There is not a syllable of the kind. Christ never mentioned the day, so far as the record goes, and the apostles spoke of it, as we have seen, only as a secular day. In this respect, also, it is wholly wanting. 5. THE SEVENTH DAY.—We read further in Gen. 2:3, "And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." To sanctify means to set apart to a sacred or religious use. In case of a day of rest this could be done in only one way, and that is by telling how it should be used, by giving directions to use it in a sacred or religious manner. But any such direction, as the reader will see at once, constitutes a law. Then a law was given for the observance of the seventh day, just as soon as the two preceding steps essential to the institution of a Sabbath, namely, the resting and blessing, had been taken. Without this, it would not have been binding on the human family.
A very important fact is thus brought out, which we wish the reader to mark well. It is this: that although the book of Genesis gives us no copy of a Sabbath law, it does give us the record that such a law was given in the very beginning when the Sabbath was instituted. And when the time came for God to promulgate in a formal manner to the children of men the principles of his moral government, as he did on Sinai, twenty-five hundred years afterward, the Sabbath law appears in the very bosom of the decalogue, drawn out in explicit terms, and pointing back for its origin to the great facts of the creation week. For whose benefit this law was given, both in its original enactment and in its promulgation from Sinai, our Lord informs us when he says, "The Sabbath was made for man." Mark 2:27. 6. THE FIRST DAY.—We now raise the vital inquiry concerning the first day of the week, Was there ever any divine law given for its observance? And the most strenuous advocate of Sunday sacredness is obliged to admit that there was not. What claim, then, has it upon our regard? None whatever; for Paul says that "where no law is there is no transgression," Rom. 4:15; and again, "Sin is not imputed when there is no law." Rom. 5:13. True there is an effort, more or less persistently made, to manufacture in its behalf apostolic example, which does not exist, and to draw some philosophical conclusions from the work of Christ which some theological teachers would fain persuade the people to believe to be just as good as law. But it is of no use. No reasonable mind will be satisfied with any such flimsy pretext. There must be law openly promulgated, and definitely expressed, or there can be no obligation. But of law for Sunday observance there is not the first syllable in all the Bible. Under these circumstances, men have done what a moderately inventive faculty, uninfluenced by the fear of God, would suggest. Having an institution which they are determined to keep, and needing a law in its defense, when they find none in the Bible what must they do next? Make one themselves. And this is just what they have done; and this is the only kind of law Sunday can plead in its behalf. The first of this kind was one mentioned in another portion of this paper, namely, the law made by Constantine, in A. D. 321, while he was yet a heathen, in behalf of Sunday as a heathen festival, and which was baptized by pope Sylvester into a Christian ordinance. This was the great prototype of all Sunday laws which have been, or which may be hereafter, enacted. We have now examined the claims of the seventh and first days to Sabbatic sacredness under three heads: First, the rest of some divine being as necessary to the foundation of the Sabbatic institution; secondly, the blessing necessary to the day; thirdly, a law enforcing its observance. Under each we have found the seventh day abundantly supplied with evidence, but nothing whatever in behalf of the first day. Other points we reserve to a future paper.