Repairing the American Sabbath by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 11, 1913

Repairing the American Sabbath

By F. M. W.

A RECENT number of the New York Christian Advocate, a leading Methodist paper, feels that an earnest effort should be made to repair “the partial breakdown of the American sabbath.” And the editor believes further, that if this is done, “the first move must come from the church.” He would not “suggest a schedule for the Sabbath which would make the day irksome with artificial restraint,” but he feels “very certain that there has been a gradual diminution of the spiritual purpose of the Sabbath on the part of Christian people, which ought now to be strongly resisted.”

Commenting upon the same situation which exists in the relation of the great Christian church to Sunday observance, the Herald and Presbyter expresses the conviction that the church is very largely responsible for the fact that this is a “Sabbath-breaking generation.” In the opinion of this Presbyterian paper the question is, “Do we keep the Sabbath, or only Sunday?” “No man has any right to be called a factor for Sabbath observance who is so weak in backbone and knee and speech that he does not call it the Sabbath.”

This paper points out the growing desecration of the Sabbath. The great mass of people are given to pleasure rather than to the service of religion. “Until Christian people have enough respect for God and for his day to call it the Sabbath they need not expect the world to pay any attention to it.” The great difficulty, we are told, is not with the sects which refuse to recognize the first day of the week as the Sabbath, but— with those professed Christian people who believe in the Sabbath so slightly and so weakly that they never call it the Sabbath, nor assert the sacredness of the day by using the name which divinely designates it as the holy day of God.

We did not expect to say much on the subject just at this time, but Sabbath desecration is a sin that in God’s sight is as deadly and as hateful as murder or theft. It is one of the peculiarly aggravated sins of our own times. Christian people should stand up and protest against it. They should advocate and defend the cause of the Sabbath. If they do not do so more vigorously, by life and word, the Sabbath will increasingly become to the world merely Sunday, a day with a heathen name, and then . . . simply Sunday, to be trampled underfoot and desecrated with impunity.

We honor our Methodist and Presbyterian brethren for feeling concerned over the desecration of the day which they hold to be the Sabbath of the Lord, but we wish to inquire in all candor if the great reason why Sunday is not better observed by the great Christian church is not that it is only Sunday and not the Sabbath? Nowhere in the Scriptures of Truth is Sunday, or the first day of the week, recognized as a holy day. There is no divine command for its observance. It is a day with a heathen name and of heathen origin. It is an interloper in the Christian church. It was brought into the church at a time when Christianity was at a low ebb, when heathen influences were shaping the faith and practise of the church. One of its fathers, and one of the first to issue an edict regarding it, was a heathen. He required that only a part of the people refrain from labor during its hours, leaving the country dwellers free to follow their regular pursuits on that day.

On the contrary, the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath is clearly enjoined in the Sacred Word. This is the one Sabbath day recognized by the great moral law spoken from Sinai. It was the only day observed by our blessed Lord during his earthly ministry, and by his apostles. It remains to the present time the only day upon which God has placed his blessing, and the only period of time which has been made holy.

In saying this we are glad to be exempted by the Herald and Presbyter from that class which weakens the observance of the Sabbath—those who believe in it “so slightly and so weakly that they never call it the Sabbath.” It is possible that, after all, they do not so confidently “believe in it.” Many there are, we know, throughout the length and breadth of the land today who believe the seventh day to be the Sabbath of the Lord, but from motives of self-interest and because it is unpopular or inconvenient, are kept from giving their allegiance to the one true Sabbath of the Lord.

We invite our Presbyterian and Methodist friends to take their stand upon the platform of God’s immutable Word. Then on Scriptural basis they can defend the Sabbath of the Lord, and appeal in a way that is now impossible to the moral sense of their churches to cease trampling underfoot the rest day of Jehovah.

F. M. W.