Editorial by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 17, 1910

Editorial

By Editor

The Unbroken Circuit.—On the first page of the first number of the REVIEW was printed an article by James White, the editor, on the unbroken circuit of the weekly Sabbath, through all time. Under the title, “The Sabbath Not Lost,” he wrote:—

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” This language is definite; and while it assures us that the day here commanded to be observed is the same in its weekly returns with the day on which God rested, it assures us against any derangement of the week, or loss of time which might have been produced in the long lapse of time from the creation, by the general apostasy from the true worship of God. Had the true Sabbath been lost, it was certainly restored; and the day then known as the seventh day received the divine sanction. The same remark is applicable to the subject during the succeeding history of the Jewish nation. Had the weekly Sabbath fallen into total neglect, and the day of its regular recurrence been forgotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, by giving his divine example in favor of the day known by the Jewish nation as the proper seventh day of the decalogue, has settled the question conclusively, down to that time; so that the day known in the New Testament as the Sabbath, was the seventh day in regular succession from the creation of the world. A perfect uniformity among all the nations in the known world, as to the days of the week, both before and since the advent of Christ, is a further testimony that no derangement of the days of the week has ever taken place. Indeed, it will not be pretended that the account of time has been lost since the introduction of Christianity. Since that period, the Jews as a people have maintained a perfect uniformity in the observance of the ancient Sabbath, though scattered through every nation of the globe; and the Christian church, in all its divisions, has been known to observe either the seventh or the first day of the week; and for a considerable length of time, both of these days. So that we are as certain that the day now known as the seventh day of the week is the same with that enjoined in the fourth commandment, as we are of any fact for the knowledge of which we are dependent on the testimony of mankind.