p. 6 | The Rapid Demolition of the Day of Rest

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 10, 1907

The Rapid Demolition of the Day of Rest

The January number of the Missionary Review contains an editorial entitled “The Rapid Demolition of the Day of Rest.” Never have we seen more decided ground taken for the perpetuity of the law of God than is taken in this article, and we feel constrained to quote quite largely therefrom. The editor says:—

Another form of modern laxity which works disaster to the whole life of family, church, and state is the growing disregard of all sabbatic law, this being used as a convenient term for the weekly day of rest. One of the worst features of the whole matter is that some Christian disciples lend this their sanction by practical antinomianism. On the plea that they are no longer “under the law,” they treat not only ceremonial, but moral law, as abrogated. The ten commandments, being graven on stone tablets by the finger of God, forever stand out and apart from all other regulations of the code, which were temporary and transient. The principle which abrogates the fourth of the “ten words” might as legitimately be applied to the other nine!

In Isa. 58:13, 14—curiously about midway between Moses and Christ, in connection with blessings pronounced upon the “repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in,” permanent ways of living—we find the following significant words: ‘If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.’

But curiously enough, after taking such a strong stand upon the law of God, the editor smoothly transfers all the sacredness and all the obligation and all the blessing over to the counterfeit institution which has done more than anything else to place the foot of man upon the Sabbath of the Lord. It is indisputable that the Sabbath to which the Lord refers in the Scripture quotation is the Sabbath of the decalogue, the seventh day of the week. The editor’s rebuke to those who would abolish the law is a deserving one; but the mistake which he makes in attempting to read Sunday into the fourth commandment is as inexcusable and presumptuous as that which he condemns in his antinomian brethren.