The Day-Line and the Decalogue by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 3, 1907

The Day-Line and the Decalogue

By C. M. S.

Very frequently in print and in public we are confronted with the old “day-line” argument against the Sabbath question. An array of suppositious circumstances is paraded before the people to show how impossible it is to obey the command of Jehovah to keep the Sabbath designated in the decalogue.

It seems strange that men should think that God could not have a definite Sabbath on a round world. God made the world, and he made it round. God established the Sabbatic institution, and he commanded its observance. To teach that it is impossible to keep the Sabbath which God established on the world which he created, is to accuse God of requiring of man something he knew man could not perform.

God established the institution to commemorate the event, as the commandment itself declares. It would be a peculiar situation if he who made the world and established the Sabbath to commemorate the act should not have known of the day-line conflict (if there were one) between creation and creation’s memorial before he gave the command that was to make the two inseparable forever.

There is a day-line; and God’s providence has so arranged that it is in the locality where it would cause the least inconvenience—in the midst of the Pacific Ocean. When the descendants of Noah migrated eastward and westward from their ancestral home, they continued to observe the days as the days came to them. These emigrants went to the eastern shore of Asia; they went to the western shore of Europe; and as they traveled backward and forward, they found no difficulty in observing the

seventh day or the first day, whichever conscience might direct. They observed the period of rest when it came to them.

Then men crossed the Atlantic Ocean. They observed the weekly cycle in crossing, and rested on the day they regarded as the Sabbath. When they reached America, they continued to do it. There was no change—none was required. They went to the Pacific Coast, and still no change. So to-day a man can travel from San Francisco to New York, to London, to St. Petersburg, to Yokohama—two thirds of the way around the world—and his reckoning of the days will agree with that of the people wherever he is. Or he may begin at Yokohama and go the other way, around to San Francisco, and the result will be the same.

But when he crosses the Pacific, he finds that he must make an alteration in his reckoning. Why is this?—Because, in going with the sun, his days are actually more than twenty-four hours long. By traveling toward the sunset, he keeps the sun above his horizon longer than usual. In going contrary to the course of the sun, his days are actually less than twenty-four hours long. If he were to travel westward each day one-twenty-fourth of the earth’s circumference, each of his days would be twenty-five hours long. Or in going with the same speed eastward, each day would be but twenty-three hours long. Thus, when he had traveled twenty-four days (made the circuit of the earth), his reckoning would be one day ahead or one day behind the local computation, according to which way he had been traveling.

Now Providence has established a kind of clearing-house in the Pacific where his reckoning may be adjusted to harmonize with God’s appointed divisions of time. That is the day-line. There is nothing in it to wreck the Sabbatic institution, nor to encourage the seventh-part-of-time theory. In fact, the seventh-part-of-time theory is shattered every time one holding it crosses the day-line; for in that weekly cycle, at least, his sabbath is based upon the sixth part of time or the eighth part of time, according to which way he is going. If God required the seventh part of time rather than the definite seventh day, the observer of that period would not be at liberty to drop or add a day in crossing the Pacific; and when arriving on its farther shore, he would find himself one day out in his reckoning, and he never could adjust the matter until he had gone around the world in the other direction.

The establishment of an actual, definite day-line establishes the definite week and the definite day; and if there was ever anything definitely pointed out and commanded in the Bible, it is the particular day of the week that should be observed as the Sabbath. It was designated first at the close of creation week, then in the decalogue, and then by a threefold miracle for forty years in the wilderness in the giving, withholding, and the preservation of the “angels’ food” which sustained his people in their wanderings.

Now, if it were impossible to keep the definite Sabbath of the commandment on this round world, it is evident that God would either have made a flat world, or he would have refrained from giving the command he did concerning the Sabbath.

Is it possible to have a definite day of the week, or month, or year to the whole human family? If it is possible, its observance is possible. If it is not possible, then all chronology is thrown into confusion by the ensuing indefiniteness of dates. For instance, if the cable tells us that a certain battle was fought in China on January 10, we do not record it here as having occurred on January 9.

One who is earnestly desirous of obeying God’s command will find little difficulty with the day-line; and for these reasons: The day-line never bothered him when he was keeping Sunday, no matter in what part of the world he might be living. Sunday was a definite day. It came just as frequently as did Saturday. It had to be added or dropped in crossing the day-line, just as Saturday or any other day. Any argument he could make against the seventh-day Sabbath on account of the day-line was equally valid against Sunday or any other day as a sabbath. He kept Sunday, as he believed, to commemorate the resurrection of Christ. He kept it in Russia, in England, in America. He had no difficulty in finding the day to commemorate the event, even in Australia, on the other side of the world. He began his observance there at twelve o’clock midnight; but the people of Palestine, in which country the resurrection of Jesus occurred, would not begin their observance of that event until nearly seven hours afterward. As this did not worry him when he was keeping Sunday to commemorate the resurrection, why should it when he began to keep the Sabbath of the decalogue to commemorate the completion of creation?

The idea that there is an impediment to the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath because of the day-line is what a Christian Scientist would call “an error of mortal mind;” for the difficulty is wholly in the mind of the individual who does not wish to keep the Sabbath of the commandment. That is demonstrated by the fact that the day-line argument is used only against the seventh-day Sabbath.

God has set the sun to mark the beginning and the end of the day. He said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.” Gen. 1:14. To claim that in order to observe the definite seventh day, we must observe the identical hours as they are being struck off in Palestine, is to set aside utterly God’s method of marking the days. We can not have a Sabbath nor any other day all the way around the world at the same time. The people on the Pacific Coast of America do not consider that in order to observe the Fourth of July, they must begin its observance at nine o’clock on the night of the third of July, and cease their observance of it at 9 P. M., of the fourth, because the people on the eastern shore of the country are three hours ahead of them in time. They observe the day when it comes to them. So with the Sabbath; and so with Sunday.

C. M. S.