Keeping Saturday for Sunday.
By Uriah Smith
READER, if you are one of those who have turned their steps to all the commandments of God, by the observance of his holy Sabbath, you have doubtless more than once been designated as one who “keeps Saturday for Sunday;” and you have probably considered, also, how fair an index this is of the little understanding such have, either of our motives or our position. We can inform our friends that we do not keep Saturday for Sunday. Our reverence for Sunday is not so great notwithstanding the antiquity of the institution, and the multitudes who observe it, that when we keep another day we keep it for Sunday. We keep Sunday for Sunday; and we intend to keep it as it was originally designed to be kept, and according to the only divine example we have for keeping it; that is, by honorable labor; and we endeavor also to keep the Sabbath, as such, esteeming it holy unto the Lord and honorable, not doing our own ways. Isa. 58:13. But in keeping Saturday as the Sabbath, do you not keep it for Sunday? No; for Sunday is not the Sabbath. In observing the seventh day as a day of rest, we have both divine precept and example to support us. We have the most positive testimony that that is the day which the Creator set apart as a rest-day for man. Those who observe the first day of the week acknowledge the existence and necessity of a Sabbath, but they have taken a day of their own choosing on which to observe it. The guilt therefore of departure from the sacred oracles in this matter, rests upon our opponents and not upon us. The charge which they so often apply to us belongs to them; for they have departed from the original institution, and keep Sunday for Saturday! They remind us of the fable of the lamb and the wolf, in which the wolf, though farther up the stream than the lamb, accused him of roiling the water which he was to drink. There is another expression equally erroneous and perhaps as frequently used. People will often, addressing a Sabbath-keeper on the Sabbath, tell him that they believe this is his Sunday! So thoroughly have their minds become imbued with a First-day Sabbath, that it seems impossible for them to separate the two ideas of Sunday and Sabbath; and whatever day a man observes as a day of rest, it must be to him his Sunday. It is a fact, however, that our Sunday falls on the same day that theirs does; only we regard it as Sunday merely and nothing more. But we do not expect that the world will cease to regard us in this light. We only hope that the time may soon come when large numbers more may cease to keep Sunday for Saturday, and be added to those who are accused of “keeping Saturday for Sunday.”