Keeping the Spirit of the Sabbath on Sunday.
By G. D. Ballou
FREQUENTLY we are met with the statement, candidly made, no doubt, that "We keep the spirit of the fourth commandment on the first day of the week." Let us see if this can be a true and consistent statement. In the days of our Saviour, all his followers observed the Sabbath according to the letter of the commandment. Even after his death the holy women who had followed him and assisted in his mission "returned [from the sepulcher], and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment." Luke 23 : 56. Jesus himself had also thus observed the Sabbath. Every one knows that they then kept the seventh day of the week. Furthermore we know that they worshiped "in spirit and in truth." For four thousand years the letter and spirit of the Sabbath commandment had required the holy observance of the seventh day of the week. Now will some one tell us how, without any change in the letter, the spirit of that commandment could require the observance of an other day of the week, for an entirely different purpose? and if it require the observance of another day, why should it necessarily be the particular first day of the week? Why not let the spirit of Sabbath observance fall on Wednesday or Thursday or any other day, just as well as on Sunday? Then we might have the remarkable spectacle of a neighborhood in which each family was keeping the Sabbath on different days of the week, yet all doing it in perfect harmony with the command which clearly designates the seventh day as the Sabbath. But our first-day friends say, "We want only one day for worship." Then why not choose the day of God's own appointing? Could not your neighbor keep the spirit of Sunday observance on Friday just as well as you can keep the spirit of Sabbath observance on Sunday? "But all the people keep Sunday, and hence we should keep it." Oh, I see, Sunday is a day of very particular importance because all the people keep that day; but the Sabbath—well, of course it is a command of God, but it does not make so much difference about it, because—well, because the people don't have much regard for it. We can change the spirit of Sabbath observance from the Sabbath to Sunday, because all the people disregard the Sabbath, but we cannot change the spirit of Sunday observance to any other day, because the people would not agree with it. To illustrate farther: Your daughter's birthday falls on the eighth day of June. She has two neighboring young lady friends whose birthdays both fall on the first day of July. Now you think a great deal of your daughter, and you want her birthday party to be a grand affair. How much persuasion do you think would be necessary to convince you that your daughter's birthday could be just as greatly honored by undertaking to celebrate it in connection with that of her two friends? If you are like thousands in the world, your daughter's birthday is a grand affair and you would receive it as an insult for any one to suggest its being celebrated on any other day than the real anniversary of her birth. Suppose our present Congress should pass an act requiring the celebration of our national independence on the 23d of February. Such a howl of disgust would go up from the entire nation as was never before heard in this country. It is astonishing that people who are wise in all the affairs of this world will manifest such signal folly in spiritual things. All the days appointed by men as memorials of great events, are very important occasions, and it is very necessary that the particular day set apart should be observed, unless the observance of some day of greater significance interferes. But the Sabbath, an institution of the Creator himself in honor of the workmanship of his hands and his rest, is thought to be a day of no consequence whatever. No matter if all the holy prophets and apostles and the Lord Jesus Christ have left their example in honor of God's command. Yet, because the people have chosen to honor another day for another purpose, God's memorial has become obsolete. Truly, God is forgotten, and his word and honor are despised. Salmon River, N. Y., Aug. 19, 1885.