“The Wild Solar Holiday”
By L. A. S.
‘The Use of Sunday,’ is a topic considered by Rev. Edward Everett Hale in a recent issue of the Christian Register. Mr. Hale considers Sunday as a holiday, and inquires whether “we” have “as yet hit on the best ways” in which the public “can use its summer Sunday holiday.” He rightly discerns that the first-day institution rests upon a wholly different basis from that of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. “The consecration of Sunday is,” says Mr. Hale, an “offering, or tribute, which this nation of ours makes one day in seven to religion.” The observance of the seventh day is an offering made to God,—a recognition of the day as belonging to God, of his right to call it “My holy day.” God does not call the first day his holy day, hence Sunday observance does not call the worshiper’s mind to the Word of God, give opportunity for the exercise of faith in that Word, or for a manifestation of loyalty to God by rendering to him what is his. Mr. Hale recognizes Sabbath observance as a vital part of the worship of God, by saying: “No act or word by which a subject can defer to a king, or a child to his father, or the thing made to the maker, can be conceived which should be a more distinctive tribute than is this offering, or gift, of one day from every seven.” The true Sabbath, however, is not an offering, or gift, from man to the Creator, but from the Creator to man. “Moreover also I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them.” Eze. 20:12. “By a sort of common consent,” says Mr. Hale, “the community at large leaves the use of this holiday—for holiday it is—to the direction of the people who are called the clergy of the country.” Not so of the seventh day, “the Sabbath of the Lord.” The proper use of that day is plainly specified in the law of God, and it is not left to any human authority to devise ways for its observance. Mr. Hale relates that on a beautiful summer Sunday in a New England town, he attended the service at the leading church in the place, and made note of the fact that “thirty-five people wanted to spend an hour of Sunday in that way,” while “the rest of the population of the town, and a thousand or two ‘boarders’ who were in the town, had devised other methods;” which leads him to doubt “whether the class of the clergy to whom the American people has entrusted this affair is doing the best it can for the profitable use of the immense privilege which the American people has put into its hands.” Evidently sabbath observance is not prospering under their administration of the trust which they assume to hold.5 The testimony of this eminent clergyman, and of many others who might be cited, shows that the Christian church has wandered away from the standard of true Sabbath observance, and is adrift upon an uncharted sea of speculation. The only remedy is to return to the day God specifies as his, and to the Word of God as the infallible authority and guide in its observance. L. A. S.