The Seventh Day Regarded by the Ancient Heathens by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 29, 1870

The Seventh Day Regarded by the Ancient Heathens.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

THE following may be interesting to Sabbath-keepers, as confirming the fact that the seventh day was set apart and kept from the beginning. It is from Leland’s “Advantage and Necessity of the Christian Revelation,” vol. 1, chap. 2, p. 72. He says:

“Some learned persons have added, that the seventh day seems for a long time to have been distinguished among the nations, and to have had a peculiar sacredness ascribed to it. Mr. Selden indeed has taken great pains to show that the seventh day mentioned by pagan writers, is to be understood of the seventh day of the month; and that there is no proof of the religious observance of the seventh day of the week among the ancient Gentiles. Yet it is plain, from that very learned writer’s own accounts, that there was a particular regard paid by them to the number seven, and that the numbering of days by weeks, consisting of seven days, was of great antiquity, especially among the Eastern nations. And I think a more probable account cannot be given of it, than that it was originally derived from a tradition of the history of the creation, and of a seventh day set apart by divine appointment, in commemoration of it; though, like other traditions, it came in process of time to be neglected, and the true original design of it lost and forgotten.”

D. M. Canright.

Battle Creek, Mich., March 22, 1870.