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THE SABBATH FOR MAN

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 27, 1876

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 48, No. 5.

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THE SABBATH FOR MAN.

By R. F. Cottrell

Much breath has been spent, much ink shed and paper wasted, to disprove the declaration that “the Sabbath was made for man;” yet it will be found in the end that the Saviour spoke the truth.
The following is a specimen of the logic used to prove that the Sabbath is an institution exclusively Jewish.
  1. The Sabbath was made for man.
  2. The Jews are men.
  3. Therefore, the Sabbath was made for the Jews.
Having thus proved conclusively that the Sabbath was made for the Jews, they take this conclusion as the basis, or major premise, of another argument. Thus,
  1. The Sabbath was made for the Jews.
  2. But the Jews are a separate and distinct class.
  3. Therefore, the Sabbath was made for the Jews exclusively.
By the same form of argument it could be proved that the Sabbath was made exclusively for any other distinct nation, people or church under heaven. The only position left for honest men is to take the Saviour’s words at par value, admitting the truth that “the Sabbath was made for man,” and acting accordingly.
But there is another class, large and respectable, who hold that the Sabbath was made for man, for the whole human race from first to last, without distinction; but that the day of its observance has been changed from the seventh, to the first day of the week. And having “no scriptural direction for the change,” as they are obliged to acknowledge, their first and best argument in its support is that the Sabbath commandment is indefinite, as it respects the day—that any one day of rest after six of labor fully meets its demand. A change of the day, they argue, is not the slightest change of the commandment.
According to their exposition, the Jews were required to keep a seventh part of time, no matter which day of the seven, and Christians are required to do precisely the same thing. How is it, then, that the day has been changed? According to their own showing, there has been no change of the day whatever. Why talk as they do of a “Jewish” and a “Christian Sabbath”? It is all one—any one day of rest after six of labor. Their very foremost argument for a change of the day of the Sabbath, if good and true, proves that there has been no change at all. Yet this class, like the no-Sabbath men, will tell you that the “Jewish Sabbath” was abolished at the cross, and that all now ought to keep the “Christian Sabbath,” ignoring the fact, and forgetting their own acknowledgment of it, that the Sabbath was made for man, the whole race without distinction. And what is this “Christian Sabbath” of which they speak, and for which they plead? It is a definite day the world over, the first day of the week and that only. No other day will do. It would be Judaism, as they view it, for one to use the right the commandment of God gives him, by choosing the seventh day of the seven for his day of rest and worship.
And such are the men who desire a “religious amendment” of our national Constitution, which shall give the power to “enforce” upon all the observance of a definite day, the first day of the week! Had Paul murdered logic as these men do, well might Festus have claimed that he was mad. To set out to justify a change of the day by an assertion which, if true, inevitably leads to the conclusion that a change of the day is an impossibility, since the commandment never required more or less than the keeping of an indefinite day—any one day in seven! Can sane men believe that God ever gave such a loose law to men? But they design to improve it, so as to enforce a particular day. And it would be a real improvement, provided the law of God were of such a character as they slanderously represent it to be. R. F. COTTRELL.