Jesus and Sunday-Keeping

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 20, 1908

Jesus and Sunday-Keeping

INASMUCH as Jesus never observed Sunday, and never gave any instruction to any one concerning the observance of Sunday, it seems rather incongruous to find an article in one of the current magazines with the title, “Sunday Observance from the Standpoint of Jesus.” Nevertheless the writer attempts to make Jesus responsible for the present liberal tendency in Sunday observance. He wishes it to be remembered “that Jesus struck the blows which liberated the religious spirit from the shell of institutionalism and allowed it to expand,” and says:—

The modern tendency in Sunday observance, which rescues the Lord’s day from its gloom, and gives more regard to the relief of mental tension and the recreation of the body, is a movement back toward the law of God behind Jewish institutions,—a movement which owes its being to Jesus himself. It is a movement back to the heart of that principle of his, that the needs of man come first, the institution second.

It seems to be a peculiar perversion of that teaching of Jesus which called men away from following tradition to the keeping of the commandments of God, to make it responsible for a disregard of the plain letter of God’s law, and the following of tradition in the matter and the manner of Sunday-keeping. This can only be accomplished by a misinterpretation of the principles inculcated by Jesus.