The Secularization of the Sabbath
ONLY in obedience to God is there power to stand for the truth against the influence of opposing popular custom. The Jews, who profess to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, but do not observe it according to the commandment, are showing signs of abandoning even a formal adherence to the Sabbath proclaimed at Sinai, and of conforming to the practise of the majority, who stand under the banner of the first-day institution. A Richmond, Va., paper prints the following testimony on this point from a rabbi of that city, spoken in a recent sermon to his congregation:— Our Sabbath day has been secularized till naught is left but an attenuated shadow of its once splendid spiritual dignity, authority, and sanctity. . . . One of the most lamentable things in connection with our problem is the fact that the violation of the Sabbath is accompanied by no qualms of conscience on the part of the actor, and no reproach or loss of standing in the eyes of the community. . . . The Sabbath is an opportunity for worship, for soul-training and development; hence its sanctified and dignified character and its religious necessity. Industrial idleness in order that there might be spiritual activity, freedom from physical labor and from purely selfish pursuits in order to give strength and thought to the spirit. . . . Now our problem confronts us. Does our Saturday Sabbath give us this opportunity for rest and worship? for physical freedom in order for soul communion? The answer is in the negative. Is there a way in which this opportunity for rest and worship may be assured us? I believe there is, and that my position may be made plain I would say that if the decision lay in my hands, I would transfer the service and the worship to the day on which we do rest—to Sunday. . . . True it is that Sunday has for us no sanctity, that it can not for us take the place of the time-honored and beloved Sabbath which our fathers and our fathers’ fathers before us have observed and hallowed. True, it can not for us, but it may for our children. We are the martyrs of the transition period. I believe that the move is inevitable, and the sooner it is done, the better. And this is by no means the first time that a change from the seventh-day Sabbath to first-day observance has been advocated by a Jewish rabbi in a Jewish temple of worship. . . .