Some Common Objections to the Sabbath.
By N. J. Bowers
1. “It makes no difference which day we keep, only so we observe one day in seven.” But it does make a difference, our accusers themselves being judges. If it matters not which day we may regard as holy, why is it that we are charged with Sabbath-breaking, for working on Sunday? Why do ministers and others find fault with us because we regard the seventh day (Saturday), as a holy day? Do we not keep one seventh part of time? Certainly. Our practice and belief in this matter, then, is unimpeachable, according to the standard furnished us. Where then is the consistency of the charges brought against us? 2. “The world is round. Nobody can keep the seventh day.” Can any body keep Sunday? Oh! certainly. When Sunday comes, the globe undergoes a wonderful transformation. It flattens out into an immense plain, so that everybody can keep the “Christian Sabbath,” and then doubles up into a great ball for the six succeeding days. This is indeed a wonderful phenomenon. But anything to avoid the claims of the Lord’s Sabbath, and to bolster up the pope’s. The putters forth of this doctrine do not, in their zeal, stop to consider that the objection rebounds with equal force against the observance of Sunday. Can the “first day of the week” be kept at the poles, under the equator, and in the Sandwich Islands? Certainly. So can the Sabbath. 3. “Nobody knows when the seventh day comes.” Wonder if any body can tell when the day of the resurrection comes? Millions testify, both by daily precept and weekly practice, that such a thing is possible. If our first-day friends can find Sunday, surely we can find the day just preceding it. They give us the key to unlock the difficulty. It is then easy to determine the day. “The Creator did not bless any particular day, but the Sabbatic institution.” The institution of the Sabbath could not have been blessed; for it owed its institution to this act of the Creator together with his act of resting on the Seventh day. If then the expression, the seventh day, means the Sabbatic institution, that institution was abolished; for we are told that the Jewish Sabbath, the seventh day, has passed away. But it is said that the Sabbath was re-enacted. But the Sabbatic institution, the seventh day, was not re-established; for it is claimed that “the first day of the week,” and not the seventh, is now obligatory. Therefore, according to this oracle, there is no sacred time in this age. 4. “We should keep the Sabbath in the spirit, and not after the letter.” It has been said that only the ceremonial part of the Sabbath was put away, and that the ceremony consisted in the observance of the seventh day. It never was clear to my mind why the simple observance of one day was more ceremonial than another observed in a like manner; why the seventh day was more ceremonial than the first, the fourth than the third or sixth. We do not offer on the Sabbath “two lambs of the first year without spot, and two-tenths deals of flour for a meat offering, mingled with oil, and the drink offering thereof.” Num. 28:9. Such ceremony was necessary for the Jew, but the requirement does not reach us. Col. 2:16. 5. The apostle Paul is made to teach some very absurd things, and contradictory, according to the gospel of Sabbath opposers. It is asserted on the authority of Rom. 14:5, 6, that we needn’t keep the Sabbath, or we may, convenience or caprice may dictate, while in Col. 2:16, we are taught that Sabbath is abolished, and cannot now be regarded as holy, and the great apostle expresses a fear in Gal. 4:10, that he had expended labor in vain on the brethren at Galatia, because they observed the Sabbath. But it seems that this very same Paul did the same thing that he was afraid to have them do. Acts. 18:4; 13:14, 42, 44. May we all be saved from the fate of these “children of disobedience,” who thus are engaged in the infidel work of making God’s word a writing of absurdities and incongruities. N. J. BOWERS.