Sunday Is Not the Seventh Day
The New York Observer begins a discussion of the question of the “best use of Sunday” by saying:— The question that needs to be asked, and asked with redoubled earnestness in this age, is, What sort of difference does the coming of Sunday make? In what respect is the seventh day better than the first, second, or third day of the week? Can it be that the Observer’s almanac puts Sunday as the seventh day of the week? or that the Observer does not know that Sunday is the first day of the week, and not the seventh? If not, why does the Observer, speaking of Sunday, “inquire in what respect the seventh day is better than the first, second, or third day of the week?” The Observer is, of course, considering Sunday as the Sabbath. But what value can its conclusions have when they are all based upon the idea that Sunday is the seventh day of the week? Sunday may be a seventh day or a seventh part of time, but it is not and can not be the seventh day of the week. The Sabbath is and always must be the seventh day of the week; for the Creator, having worked six days, rested on, blessed, and sanctified the seventh day, and that made the week, with its seventh day the Sabbath. That is how the week originated, and the Sabbath and the week are inseparable. The Sabbath is a part of the week, occupying a definite and fixed place in it. The Creator instituted the week, and man received it from him, and his eternal and unchangeable law commands the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath, because of his resting on and blessing that day at the close of creation. This is why men persist in getting Sunday mixed with the seventh day of the week. They acknowledge that they are bound to observe the seventh day as the Sabbath, according to the commandment; but no amount of mixing up of Sunday with the seventh day will make it the seventh day. It is surely a bad cause in which men are forced to make assumptions contrary to revelation, to history, and to the almanac.