Sunday Fourth Commandment Breaking.
By Uriah Smith
IN a “Short Sermon on the Decalogue” which we find in an exchange, we read this statement respecting the fourth commandment:— “We break the fourth commandment by Sunday visiting and worldly talk.” The writer should have told us why. When we are warned that a certain course is in violation of a commandment so important as the fourth, and so generally transgressed, that warning should be backed up by facts so clear that they can but convince the judgment, and arouse the conscience. Shall we attempt to supply the lack? “We break the fourth commandment by Sunday visiting.” Why? Is it because the fourth commandment says nothing about Sunday that we violate that commandment by visiting on that day? Is this the way to break a law, to do those things about which the law says nothing? Is it because the fourth commandment enjoins the observance of the seventh day of the week, and Sunday is the first day of the week, that we break the commandment by Sunday visiting? Is it because God worked on the first day of the week that we should rest on it? Is it because God rested on the seventh day that we should rest on the first? Is it because the fourth commandment enjoins the observance of the seventh day as a memorial of God’s rest at creation, that we violate that commandment by visiting on the day he commenced to work? Is it because God never blessed the first day above any of the laboring days that we sin by visiting on it? Is it because he never sanctified the first day, which means to set it apart to a sacred or religious use, that we should not visit upon it? Is it because the fourth commandment cannot be so changed as to enjoin the first day without stating a falsehood that we ought not to visit on that day? Is it because Paul, by apostolic example as in Acts 20: 11, has given us license to perform our journeys on that day that we should not visit upon it? Is it because by apostolic precept he has enjoined secular business on that day, as in 1 Cor. 16: 2, that we should not visit upon that day, and that by visiting on that day we break the fourth commandment? How is this? By the law is the knowledge of sin. Rom. 3: 20. Sin is the transgression of the law. 1 John 3: 4. Where no law is there is no transgression. Rom. 4: 15. What law do we transgress by visiting on the first day of the week? Sin is not imputed when there is no law. Rom. 5: 13. In what respect then do we commit sin by visiting on that day? U. S.