THE SUBSTANTIAL REQUIREMENT OF THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT
By Uriah Smith
A READER of the Christian Observer, a Presbyterian paper, published in Louisville, Ky., seems to be in trouble over the question of the day to be observed as the Sabbath, inasmuch as the day set apart generally by Christendom as the weekly rest day does not correspond with the day enjoined by the only law which the Bible has given respecting the weekly day of rest. The Bible says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” but Christendom says, The first day is the day to be observed as the Sabbath. Hence the reader above referred to requests the editor of the Observer to “give an outline of the authority by which the weekly Sabbath has been changed by any power in heaven or earth. This will settle the question of the day of the week.” And with this request, in an article under the heading, “The Substantial Requirement of the Fourth Commandment,” the editor says that he “gladly complies.” Both the request and the answer betray the deplorable misapprehension which almost universally prevails on this question; for in the first place, the Sabbath has never been changed from the seventh day to the first day of the week, and can not be so changed by any power in heaven or earth. This will seem like challenging the power of God. But consider: The Sabbath, as to its outward formula, rests upon two great facts: (1) That God, on the first seventh day of time rested from all His works which He had performed in the creation; and (2) that He blessed the seventh day, because that in it He had rested from all His work. Gen. 2:3. “Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Ex. 20:11. Now for the Sabbath to be changed to some other day from that on which the blessing was first placed, the facts named must be transferred and made true of some other day than that on which they occurred. But this can not be done. God can not do it; for God can not lie. Titus 1:2. And man can not do it; for the obvious reason that man can not invade the realms nor the prerogatives of God. Man may pretend to do it; but that does not accomplish anything. It only shows where we must look for the authority for any such change which may be claimed. We can look no higher than to the power which claims to make the change; that is, to man. The editor of the Observer says that he gladly complies with the request to “give an outline of the authority,” etc. We can assist him in this matter. It is only necessary to refer him to that power which the prophet declared would arise and make war against the Most High, and seek in every way to defame His name, and destroy His work. This is what the prophet foretold the predicted power would do: “And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High: and he shall think to change the times, and the law [R. V.]; and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time.” Dan. 7:25. The law here mentioned belongs to the same category with the other things spoken of, namely, things belonging to the Most High; that is, this is the law of the Most High, the law which contains the Sabbath commandment. And this scripture contains the only intimation anywhere given that any such thing as a change of that law would ever be attempted. As for Christ, He said that heaven and earth would sooner pass away than even a jot or a tittle of the law fail. Matt. 5:18; Luke 16:17. And what is this power which should think to change the law?—It is the little horn, which was to arise, and did arise, among the ten kingdoms out of the old Roman Empire; the power which Paul, holding to the same line of character, calls “that wicked,” “the man of sin,” “the son of perdition.” 2 Thess. 2:3, 8. All true Protestants know who this is. The Observer continues: We “enter on the question whether the substantial principle of the law on Sinai, which requires the observance of the days of God’s appointment, calls at the present for the observance of the first day of the week.” It sounds very strange to hear any one try to dissect the law of God, and single out its “substantial principle,” as if some part might not be “substantial.” It is not conceivable that the law of God can thus be discriminated upon. It is all essential. It says what it means, and its language is to be taken just as it reads. The Observer continues: “The first proposition in this matter is that the intent of the fourth commandment centers not on the specific day to be observed, but upon the great, broad principle that we are to observe the day which God may appoint.” Who can straighten out such a tangle as this? The commandment centers on no specific day; but we must observe the day God may appoint. Very well, has He not appointed the definite seventh day? Could He make the commandment more specific as to time? Now comes an effort to slip in adroitly other days, as if on the same basis. The Observer says: “Under the Jewish economy this included the great day of atonement, the annual festivals, etc., as well as the Sabbath day. At present these are no longer of God’s appointment.” Answer.—The Sabbath had nothing to do with the day of atonement and the annual feasts. It originated earlier in point of time. It was of an entirely different nature; it sprang from a different source, and was observed for a different reason. Moral and ceremonial or typical laws must not thus be confounded. Moral laws, of which the Sabbath is one, all grew out of the nature of the situation before the fall. The ceremonial and typical arrangements, of which were the great day of atonement and the yearly festivals, all grew out of the fall, and never would have had an existence had not sin entered, making a Redeemer necessary. This distinction, borne clearly in mind, sweeps away whole volumes of false reasoning, and a wilderness of confusion arising from the effort to blend moral and ceremonial into one. The moral laws are perpetual and eternal; the typical and ceremonial were dispensational, and temporary. They could be changed or abolished without affecting in the least particular the Sabbath or any moral law. Neither does the fact that the Third, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth commandments are shown, by the words of Christ, in their spiritual nature, detract anything from the definiteness of the requirements, but only magnifies them, as Christ was to do (Isa. 42:21); neither does it release the Fourth Commandment from the definite seventh day, which God has appointed. Reasoning on this point, the Observer says: “This throws light upon the Fourth Commandment. The specific matter named is the ‘seventh’ day. Yet the Jews of Moses’ day, under the sanction of this commandment, observed the ‘new moons,’ and the annual feasts of Passover, Pentecost, etc. They understood the principle of the Fourth Commandment to require the observance of these feasts.” No, they did not. No appeal was ever made to the Fourth Commandment to sustain the new moons or festivals. They rested on injunctions peculiar to themselves, just as the Sabbath rested on its own law. Then the editor of the Observer comes to the question, thus:— “The question, therefore, which now concerns us is whether God has so appointed the first day of the week. If so, the requirements of the Fourth Commandment apply to it.” “Yes; if it is so stated. But not at all if no such statement is made. Now we look for the statement. He introduces his proof for “The Sabbath in the New Dispensation,” with these words: “We have just seen that the Fourth Commandment requires10the observance of the day which God appoints.” He might have added, And we have just seen that God appointed the seventh day, in language which was not qualified nor limited, nor to be subject to any change so long as heaven and earth should endure. This would have settled the question, and left him nothing more to do. But he has undertaken to make out a case, and so drives confidently and blindly along. This is the turn he here takes: “The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath. . . . Of course He may change the day.” But did He change it? Where is the statement? We must have evidence, not far-fetched and groundless inferences. “But He appeared to His disciples on the first day of the week.” Suppose He did; did He say that henceforth that day should be the Sabbath? As He rose from the dead on the first day, when should He have appeared to His disciples, if not on that day? “The day of Pentecost on that year fell,” we are told, “on the first day of the week. Christ selected that day for the marvelous outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the initiation of the Christian dispensation.” Not at all. Christ had nothing specially to do with selecting the day of the week on which the Holy Spirit should at that time be poured out. The law of types fixed that; and had Pentecost fallen on any other day of the week, that year, the Holy Spirit would have been poured out on that day just the same. The Pentecost was fixed to the fiftieth day after the offering of the wave sheaf, and would, of course, occur on the same day of the week as that offering. Lev. 23:15, 16. The resurrection of Christ, on the first day of the week, was the antitype of the wave sheaf; and this occurred not because it was the first day of the week, but because it was the sixteenth day of the first month. The Pentecost was fifty days later, on a corresponding day of the week. The day was located by law, not fixed by special choice; and in the record no mention is made of the day of the week on which the antitype of Pentecost was fulfilled. We are next told: “His [Christ’s] entrance into His rest was on the first day of the week.” How? Answer.—The scripture says that He was out among His disciples, traveling to Emmaus with two of them, etc. But it does not say a word about His reproving them for traveling on Sunday, nor about that day being the Sabbath. Again: “This threefold example of Christ intimates that the day was changed by Him from the seventh to the first day.” Answer.—Will any man dare to go to the judgment on what he acknowledges is a mere intimation of a change? Show the record that a change was made by some authority higher than man’s. When? where? and by whom? He now turns for comfort to the apostles: “We find Paul recognized the continuance and obligation of Sabbath observance. By his instruction, ‘Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together’ (Heb. 10:25), he indorses that law.” On the first day of the week?—Nothing said about the day. With the voice of God ringing in their ears, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” dare men plead for a change on such pretexts as these? He adds: “But the same Paul did at the same time warn the Colossian Christians (a) not to accept any change made by human authority [we warn Christians the same to-day]; and (b) not to feel under any obligation to observe the seventh day of the week.” Where does Paul say this? Oh, we are told, in Col. 2:16. Please read the whole passage, Col. 2:14-17. Anything said about the seventh day of the week here?—Not a word; no reference to a weekly Sabbath at all, but to meats, drinks, new moons, holidays, or festival days, and the annual sabbaths. This is another instance of the inexcusable mixing up of the ceremonial and moral laws. The things to which Paul refers were “shadows,” or types; but “the body is of Christ.” Just as much reference here to the first day of the week as to the seventh; and if the seventh is swept away by this, the first goes with it. But a little apostolic practice must be had to go with the apostolic precepts, to make the evidence complete, and so Acts 20:7 is brought in: “And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow,” etc. According to the record the whole point in the narrative is Paul’s intention to depart on the morrow. This “morrow,” says the editor of the Observer, was on Monday. Thus he claims that the apostle delayed the entire day of Sunday to break bread and keep the Sunday sabbath with the disciples at Troas. By failing to perceive one plain fact, he throws the whole narrative out of focus, and entirely loses the point he wishes to make, as will in a few words appear. The meeting at Troas was not held in the daytime, but in the evening. Verse 8. The Bible day, as reckoned by the Jews, began with the setting of the sun. At sunset on the seventh day, therefore, the first day of the week began; and an evening meeting on that day, when “many lights” were required, would not be possible except in the first portion of the day, or what would be, according to our calendar, Saturday evening. Let these facts be carefully noted; for they determine the value of the whole narrative. So, then, the disciples, having come together Saturday evening, Paul began his preaching, spoke a long while, went down and healed Eutychus, returned to the “upper chamber,” and talked on till the “break of day,” and then departed. When?—Sunday morning! Sunday observers would like to avoid this conclusion; but it is not possible. Was this keeping the Sabbath? Ask the apostle, as he was toiling in his foot-journey across the base of the peninsula, while his companions were taking the ship around the promontory to Assos, where he had appointed to meet them, and did meet them, and so continued his journey. There was no waiting over here till Monday morning, in order to keep Sunday; but having rested over the Sabbath, Paul’s companions went before to ship, to take that along (verse 13), while Paul remained behind to hold an all-night meeting, and then took an all-day Sunday tramp across to Assos. That is the kind of apostolic practice we have in regard to Sunday. Of course 1 Cor. 16:2 must not be omitted; hence that is brought in to show that Christians had meetings on each first day of the week to make their “offerings of money” to God. This is as much against the Observer’s position as Acts 20:7; for what the apostle enjoins here is not a public collection, but a private contribution of anything they had to spare, laid by, by each one, “by himself at home,” which is what the words “par’ heauto” mean. But this would involve the looking over of secular affairs, and casting up of accounts, work not lawful for the Sabbath day, but wholly appropriate for the first day of the week. This proves that the first day is not the Sabbath. Like most of those who advocate Sunday observance, the editor of the Observer seeks to round out his argument by an appeal to the testimony of the Fathers. The first appeal is to what is called the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.” It is claimed that it refers to the Lord’s day. But there is this embarrassing feature about the testimony: the word “day” does not occur in the original. It is something about the Lord; but it may be the “Lord’s life” or the “Lord’s Supper,” which were frequent subjects of remark by the early disciples. It is piling assumption upon assumption to assert that it refers to the Lord’s day when the word “day” does not appear in it at all. The epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians is cited. We answer, There is no such epistle, and even that which purports to be such contains not a word of what is attributed to it about the Lord’s day. The epistle itself is a forgery, and the forgery is further forged to say something about the Lord’s day, which it does not say. Melito, bishop of Sardis, is said to have written a book on the Lord’s day. But his manuscript does not contain the word “day” at all. His treatise is something about the Lord, not the “Lord’s day.” Justin Martyr is appealed to in behalf of the proposition that all Christians understood Sunday to be the Lord’s day, and recognized it as the Sabbath; but Justin does not call Sunday the Lord’s day at all. He mentions Sunday, to be sure, but affirms nothing of it which is essential to a Sabbath, or would indicate that it was regarded as the Sabbath. On these points, the reader is referred to the “History of the Sabbath,” to be had at any Seventh-day Adventist office, in which all the so-called statements of the Fathers, many more than are here cited, are carefully examined, their false and fraudulent nature exposed, and the authorities cited which prove the statements made. To recapitulate, what have we?—An impossible proposition set forth as something to be proved; attempts at proof which are just the opposite of truth; no “example from the risen Saviour,” and no instruction from Him in regard to the day, for He said not one recorded word concerning it; no instruction of inspired apostles, nor example to regard the first day as sacred time, but rather to devote it to secular purposes. No element attaches to the first day of the week essential to make it the Sabbath. No divine being ever devoted it to Sabbath rest. No law has ever transferred it to the place of the seventh day. There is no law commanding its observance except a law from the man of sin, and no penalty threatened against any legitimate work upon it. And the apostle plainly says that “where no law is, there is no transgression;” and that “sin is not imputed when there is no law.” Rom. 4:15; 5:13. This is the “substantial requirement” of God’s law in this matter. Honest reader, search the Scriptures and see if you are not just as much at liberty to engage in any legitimate secular calling on the first day of the week as upon any other working day. But “if thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments.” Matt. 19:17. Christ sends word to His people, through the beloved John, in Patmos: “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” Rev. 22:14. U. S.