The Seventh and First Days.
A CORRESPONDENT sends us the following item clipped from a recent paper. It is a new device for explaining the change of the Sabbath, and as such will be interesting. We have long been waiting for something new on this question. “Our excellent editorial brother of the Journal and Messenger is entitled to credit for presenting an original view of the reason of the change from the seventh to the first day of the week, as the Sabbath. It is certainly novel, if not convincing.” “We believe that all time is estimated by its relation to the work of redemption; this world was made by Jesus and for Jesus, as the theater of human redemption. Hence, when Jesus lay dead full twenty-four hours in the grave of Joseph of Arimathea, that day was dropped from God’s record of time; the clock of the world stood still while its Creator lay in the icy embrace of death. When Jesus arose, on the first day of the week, time began again. Hence if our theory of the case be a true one, there was no necessity for legislation. The old law was still in its inherent force; but if that Saturday in which the world’s Maker lay dead dropped out of time, then that Sunday morning on which he rose was the true successor of the old Sabbath day. There was no need of a new command. ‘Six days shalt thou labor and the succeeding day shalt thou hallow unto the Lord’ is all that is needed; only now it acquires a new value and splendor as the anniversary of the resurrection of the Lord of time.” “There are many other explanations, if this does not suffice; thirty years of study on the problem has not presented us with a better.” The writer could hardly have made a better admission than is contained in the last sentence of the foregoing extract. For if the fact that thirty years of study could not produce a better reason than this for the change of the Sabbath, is not sufficient to show to any one that it is a hopeless case, nothing could. We had supposed that spiritualism was destined to take the lead in running men and women into everything that is ridiculous and absurd. But we are not sure, in view of the above, but that people are bound to reach the climax of folly on the Sabbath question. The writer certainly mistakes in regard to the day in which the great “clock of the world stood still,” and which should be dropped out of the calendar; for if any day deserves to be treated in that manner, it is the one which gave birth to the monstrous proposition here advanced. If this writer is correct, Sunday succeeded to the sixth day on which Christ was crucified, as the seventh day of that week. But lo! the evangelists, inspired to give us the gospel records for the benefit of the whole Christian church, who wrote many years after the event, and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, have misled the entire Christian world by making the blunder of calling it the first day of the week. And this blunder has been perpetuated for over eighteen hundred years till this prodigy arose, and after thirty years of hard labor discovered the mistake! Then, with a childlike simplicity and frankness that is most touching, he throws away all the results of his thirty years’ hard labor by exclaiming in the virgin ingenuousness of his guileless heart, “There are many other explanations if this does not suffice.” This is the best I have after thirty years’ study, but there are many others, if this won’t do. These, to be sure, are not so good and may destroy each other; but no matter; let us somehow explain this thing away.