The Sabbath in Ancient Scotland by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Feb 9, 1905

The Sabbath in Ancient Scotland

By William Ambrose Spicer

THE Roman missionaries to Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries found a far purer church than that of Rome. They never rested until they had vanquished it by corrupting it. Columba, the apostle of Scotland (in the sixth century), won the Picts and Scots to a faith that was doubtless even less tinctured with tradition than might be supposed from the accounts left by his biographers. He had a regard for God's Word and for the Sabbath. His own brief testimony for the Sabbath, as he was dying, has been quoted in Andrews' “History of the Sabbath.” More emphatic than this as an evidence of his regard for the Sabbath is the fact that centuries afterward multitudes of his followers were still keeping the seventh day as the day of rest, and working on Sunday.

Malcolm, of Scotland, married Margaret, the Saxon princess, in 1069. She was an ardent Catholic, and her first move was to set about the process of Romanizing the Scottish people. She gave crucifixes to the churches, and her royal husband acted as interpreter in Gaelic, while she held long conferences with the Scottish church leaders to persuade them to bring their practises into harmony with Rome.

On the controversy she had with them over the Sabbath question, Skeene, in his “Celtic Scotland” (book 2, chap. 8), following ancient chroniclers, speaks as follows:—

Her next point was that they did not duly reverence the Lord's day, but in this latter instance they seem to have followed a custom of which we find traces in the early monastic church of Ireland, by which they held Saturday to be the Sabbath on which they rested from all their labors, and on Sunday, on the Lord's day, they celebrated the resurrection by the service in church. Thus Adamnan tells us that St. Columba, on the last Saturday of his life, said to his attendant, Diormit, “This day, in the Holy Scriptures, is called the Sabbath, which means rest, and this day is indeed a Sabbath to me, for it is the last day of my present laborious life, and on it I rest after the fatigues of my labors; and this night at midnight, which commences the solemn Lord's day, I shall, according to the sayings of Scripture, go the way of our fathers.” There was no want of veneration for Sunday, though they held that Saturday was, properly, the Sabbath on which they abstained from work.

We have Queen Margaret's final argument for Sunday in the record of the chronicler, quoted by Skeene. She said:—

Let us keep the Lord's day in reverence, on account of the rest of our Lord on that day on which, we know, we were redeemed from the slavery of the devil. The blessed Pope Gregory lays this down, saying that “we must cease from earthly labor on the Lord's day, and continue instant in prayer, so that, if aught has been done amiss during the six days, it may be expiated by our prayers on the day of our Lord's resurrection.” Being unable to oppose anything to these weighty arguments of the queen, they ever after observed the due reverence of the Lord's day, no one being allowed to carry burdens, or to compel others to do so, on these days.

Thus, in the eleventh century, by the aid of the pope's decree and her husband's royal authority, Queen Margaret succeeded in turning the Scottish people from the Sabbath of the Lord to the papal Sunday. Now, after over eight hundred years of Sabbath-breaking, the people of Scotland are to hear the call to turn from papal innovations and return to the Sabbath-keeping of their fathers. Many have already heard the call, and a growing band are heeding it. Pray for Scotland, and for the workers who are pressing into lowland and highland with the message of Sabbath reform.

W. A. S.