p. 3 | Proclaiming the Truth About the Sabbath

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 13, 1906

Proclaiming the Truth About the Sabbath

The Seventh-day Adventists and one of their fundamental doctrines, the observance of the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath according to the plain teaching of the Scriptures, have received marked attention in the Northwest. A Methodist pastor in the city of Portland, Ore., announced a series of lectures upon “Modern Substitutes for Christ,” the sixth lecture of the course being upon “Seventh-day Adventism.” A report of this lecture appeared in the weekly Oregonian of August 16 with the statement that “though speaking well of the Adventist Church as a congregation of people,” yet the speaker “denounced their religion in no uncertain terms as the enemy of the Lord’s day, or Christian sabbath.”

In the same issue of the Oregonian appeared an editorial on “Sunday Legislation,” in which some plain truth was told in a plain way about the Sabbath question. We quote:—

The reason for observing the seventh day is that the Almighty then rested after the labor of creating the universe. The fact of his having reposed during its sacred hours, hallowed the day to all eternity. Therefore, in keeping the first day instead of the seventh, the original reason for Sabbath observance is flouted. The example of the Almighty is set aside, and the commandment is ignored. In this connection it is useless to cite the custom of later ages. It is also useless to cite reasons for observing the first day instead of the seventh. There may be excellent reasons for keeping the first day sacred; but these only go to show that we ought, perhaps, to keep two days of the week holy, that we should not desecrate the true Sabbath for the sake of one of human invention.

There is no record that the Almighty ever revoked his command to rest on the seventh day. Therefore, all those who observe the first day of the week do not obey the original decree, and all laws which aim to substitute Sunday for the true Sabbath are unscriptural. The belief that Sunday-keeping is obedience to the Mosaic commandment is a piece of superstition, and those who quote the fourth commandment in justification of the practise turn from its clear intent.

Men who have not been trained to interpret into the Bible the meaning of the church creed have no difficulty in seeing that there is no Scriptural authority for observing Sunday, but that, on the contrary, the fourth commandment plainly points out the last day of the week, commonly called Saturday, as the day to be remembered and to be kept holy. If theologians would only adhere to the Protestant principle—the Bible, and the Bible alone, a sufficient rule of faith and practise—there would be no voice heard from a Protestant pulpit denouncing the religion of Seventh-day Adventists “as the enemy of the Lord’s day, or Christian sabbath.” The Roman Catholics speak truly when they say: “The Biblical Protestant has not a word in self-defense for his substitution of Sunday for Saturday.”

A reply to the Methodist pastor was made by Elder G. A. Snyder, which was quite fully reported in a subsequent issue of the Oregonian, as was also another sermon on Sunday laws. From the report of the latter discourse we take the following paragraph:—

Our opponents must admit one of two things: either that Sunday is a religious

day, and therefore not a proper subject for legislation under the Constitution, or else it is not a religious day at all, only a political institution. We do not care which horn of this dilemma they choose on which to impale themselves.

The same paper in which these reports appeared contained an editorial with the title “Keeping the Sabbath.” We quote this article in full:—

The advocates of Sabbath legislation will have to wriggle rather smartly to elude the dilemma in which Elder Snyder has entrapped them. If such legislation is enacted on religious grounds, the elder argues, it is unconstitutional, for Congress is expressly forbidden to make any laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Since there are many people in the country who keep the seventh day instead of the first, and many more who keep no day at all, Congress would invidiously discriminate in favor of certain religious views were it to enact a law for the observance of Sunday. Such discrimination among sects and opinions is contrary to the very genius of American institutions. Our government, as a government, knows nothing of religious opinions or warring sects. Such matters, we have found, are best left to the individual to settle for himself; and so long as he violates no moral precept and disturbs no other worshipers, the law will not interfere with his preference, whatever it may be. He may keep the first day or the seventh, every day or no day, as he may choose. Concerning such matters the law should be a very Galileo; it should care nothing about them.

Elder Snyder pertinently remarks that the Adventists, who keep the Scriptural Sabbath, or the seventh day, need no law to help them obey their consciences. Why can not other sects get along as well as they do? Why must they continually appeal to the state or the nation to assist them in doing what they think is right? The fact of the matter seems to be that they are more eager to compel others to conform to what they think is right than to walk in the straight and narrow way themselves. If every person were content to satisfy his own conscience about the Sabbath, and leave the same liberty to others, we should hear very little about Sunday laws; but religious freedom is the last privilege which most men are willing to concede to their neighbors. Most of us are determined that our friends shall go to heaven in our way or not go at all.

But the elder’s dilemma has another horn. The Sabbath is either a religious institution, or it is not. If religious, Congress has no right to meddle with it under the Constitution. If not a religious institution, why make such a fuss over it? Really, the elder’s argument is rather neat. Of course the advocates of Sunday laws can answer him, but just at this moment it is not entirely evident what they can say.

It is a pity that it is left to a secular paper to enunciate these simple principles of religious liberty. Those who claim to believe and to teach to the world the gospel of Christ ought to be the last persons to invoke the aid of the civil law in order to maintain religious observances. Jesus never did this. His appeal was to the conscience of the individual, the obligation to obey the Creator and Ruler of the universe.

On every hand we see plain indications of the approaching crisis over the question of Sabbath observance. The spirit of intolerance and the demand for the enforcement of Sunday observance are growing. But this will bring the truth to the front, and compel attention to the Scripture basis for the only true Sabbath, the seventh day of the week. All the world must hear the message against the beast and his image.