Your ShelfYour Projects

Manner of Keeping the Sabbath

5%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 28, 1911

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 88, No. 52.

Read the full edition

Manner of Keeping the Sabbath

By Mrs. M. E. Steward

MRS. M. E. STEWARD
The observance of the Sabbath began in Eden, continues through time, and the day will be honored in the new earth.
Definite time. Three scriptures give us the exact hours of the Sabbath day; these hours being the same as those of any other day. The record of the making of the days is found in the first chapter of Genesis; evening signifies night, and morning the light part. Thirty-five hundred years later the Lord directed, “From even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbaths.” Lev. 23:32. In the days of Christ, even is defined as sundown. Mark 1:32. Hence, God’s Sabbath day is from sundown to sundown.
Three conditions:—
1. “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day.
2. “And call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable.
3. “And shalt honor him [in three ways], not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words.”
Some one’s foot is on the Sabbath. Such an expression implies the greatest indignity and contempt. The indignity is intensified when God’s Sabbath is made the preparation day for a rival sabbath.
The Lord requires all people living to honor him by reverencing his holy day. He honored it himself by placing his blessing upon it, and on no other day. The Sabbath is the “delight” of the child of God, because it is the sign of the recreation of his soul in righteousness (Eze. 20:12); and the memorial of the creative power that is able to do this work. What reason we have for welcoming, delighting in, and deeply loving the creation Sabbath! what cause to “honor” and be grateful to him who gave it to us!
“Not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words.” Every moment of the Sabbath is sanctified time, set apart by its great Creator to a holy use. Gen. 2:3.
No work is allowable except to alleviate distress. Conversation on worldly business, on dress, and secular reading are prohibited. There should be nothing anywhere out of harmony with the pure, refined tastes of holy angels, and in which they could not participate. O the blessing that sweetly fills the home where angels bring the holy atmosphere and rest of heaven!
Loyalty to the fourth commandment is followed by great blessing.
1. “Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.” If one delights in the Sabbath, he will delight in its Lord; and if a person has an intelligent love for his Lord, he can not help loving the Sabbath also. Here is a test of true conversion.
2. “I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth.” Christians “sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Eph. 2:6. They are “above . . . and not beneath.” Deut. 28:13. And they have understanding superior to their teachers. Ps. 119:99.
3. “I will . . . feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father.” The heritage of Jacob was: (1) The forgiveness of sins, which he valued above everything else; (2) his were all the privileges of the first born; (3) as the lineal descendant of Abraham his was a world-wide blessing, and he had also the promise of eternal life.
These “exceeding great and precious promises” to the Sabbath-keeper have the guaranty of the highest authority in the universe,—“the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”
Sanitarium, Cal.