When Doctors Disagree by H. J. Edmed

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 5, 1907

When Doctors Disagree

By H. J. Edmed

In the great “Message to the Nation,” recently issued by the Bishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of Westminster (R. C.), and the President of the Free Church Council, the statement is made that “sacred sanction . . . attaches to the Lord’s day” (Sunday). Some time ago, Canon Eyton, of the English Church, wrote: “There is no hint, no word, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday.” Dr. R. W. Dale added his testimony thus: “The Sabbath was founded on a divine specific command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday.” The Catholic Mirror (the official organ of Cardinal Gibbons), says, “Of those who follow the Bible as their guide, the Israelites and Seventh-day Adventists have the exclusive weight of evidence on their side, while Biblical Protestants have not a word in self-defense for their substitution of Sunday for Saturday.”

If the last three writers quoted are correct, whence do the representatives of the Christian church that sent that message, get their sacred sanction? When Protestants accept an institution of the papacy, as Sunday observance certainly is, does it not become true that they acknowledge the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, and accept its observances which are contrary to Scripture, as under sacred sanction? What then has become of Protestantism?

This reminds me of a series of articles that has lately appeared in the St. Cyprian’s Parish Chronicle, Durban, Natal, South Africa, wherein I find the following:— “If our authority for keeping Sunday be the fourth commandment simply, just as it stands, without interpretation, without reservation, the whole Christian world lies convicted of a most serious breach of God’s law. Stay! this is not quite true. There is a curious sect, called, I believe, ‘Seventh-day Adventists,’ which literally obeys. They alone, then, of all Christians keep the whole of God’s commandments. . . . The obligation to keep Sunday rests completely on the authority of the church. Sunday is not the Jewish sabbath at all, but the weekly joyous festival in honor of our Lord’s resurrection. Those who deny the church’s authority, if they desire to be consistent, should keep Saturday, as the Jews do (in theory, at any rate), and refuse to have anything to do with an institution which is admittedly Catholic.” (Italics mine.)

For many years the people who are represented by this paper have been contending that Sunday observance is a child of the Catholic Church, and has no Scriptural foundation whatever; and for this we have suffered all kinds of opprobrium and persecution at the hands of ministers and leaders of the various sects in the country. It is quite refreshing, therefore, to find a clergyman in South Africa who is bold enough to proclaim the truth on this matter. Men have said that Sunday-keeping is supported by the New Testament. Some have even gone so far as to twist a reason out of the Old Testament. But at last honorable men are beginning to admit our position, and to support the view that if one is to be a purely Bible Christian he should keep the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, which is the seventh day. This, however, is not the “Jewish sabbath” as suggested by my friend, but is the “Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” and that makes all the difference, because to be of any value at all, Sabbath-keeping depends solely upon the blessing of God.—H. J. Edmed, in South African Sentinel.