Sabbath Investigation by R. F. Cottrell

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 3, 1878

Sabbath Investigation.

By R. F. Cottrell

THE Evangelical Messenger, published at Cleveland, Ohio, in October last, published an article entitled, “The Law of the Christian Sabbath.” It is too lengthy to be republished entire; but I give the first division of it as a perfect refutation of all that follows in favor of the change to the first day of the week, by making the Sabbath over into a largely Jewish institution, and then abolishing the Jewish part, and quoting the usual texts which are claimed to prove that the apostles kept the first day instead of the seventh. My reply sent to the Messenger, as here given, will give the reader a general idea of what was contained in the subsequent divisions of the article.

“THE LAW OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.

“Opinions in regard to the nature and obligation of the Christian Sabbath have become, at the present day, so various and discordant, that a careful review of the subject seems to be a public need. Very many of these opinions have been adopted without much reflection, and are clearly erroneous; and their influence upon the public conscience is bearing most pernicious fruit. The first day of the week is treated by many professed disciples as a day for indolent enjoyment, or for a few and occasional acts of ceremonial worship, rather than as a day for religious culture. Without further preface the attention of the reader is invited to the following considerations:—

“I. A Sabbath was instituted by God in Paradise—was made for man—for the race—and as a law it became binding upon all men.

“1. ‘And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because in it he had rested from all his works which God created and made.’ Gen. 2:23. The import of this language is not obscure. Day, considered as a fraction of time could not enjoy either a blessing or even a sanctification. It was to be a blessing to man and a means for his sanctification. It was specially set apart for his benefit as a moral and accountable being; and the requirement was that he should ‘keep it holy.’

“2. Prior to the giving of the law of the ten commandments on Mount Sinai, it was written, ‘This is that which the Lord hath said. Tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord.’ Ex. 16:23. This language clearly recognizes an existing institution prior to the promulgation of the decalogue, and the decalogue recognizes the same fact. Its language is: ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ Ex. 20:8. A man cannot remember that of which he has no previous knowledge. The people of Israel must have had knowledge of an existing institution, else they would not have been called upon to remember it.

“3. The Sabbath was evidently made a memorial day, which has caused a weekly division of time through all nations from the very beginning of the world. We have both in the Bible and in the traditions of the ancient heathen world, very distinct traces of such a division, as well as of the peculiar eminence attributed to the seventh day. In Genesis 4:3, 4, we read that Cain and Abel ‘in the process of time,’ or, literally, ‘at the end or cutting off of days,’ offered sacrifices to God. It is not therefore a violent presumption that it was upon a Sabbath or seventh day. It was an act of religious worship. So we read that Noah entered into the ark seven days before the commencement of the deluge. Gen. 7:4, 10. Seven days also intervened between the two occasions when the dove was sent forth from the ark. Gen. 8:10, 12. Homer calls the seventh day “The day in which all things were framed.” Another of the ancient heathen called it ‘The birth-day of all things.’ Several of them speak of the seventh day as ‘holy.’ The Sabbath was therefore a well-known and positive institution from the very beginning; and it was made—not for the Jews only—but ‘for man.’—Theta.”

To the Editor of the Evangelical Messenger:— In your paper of October 1, 1877, I find an article by “Theta” under the heading “The Law of the Christian Sabbath,” concerning which I ask the privilege of making a few remarks and inquiries.

To all that is said under the first general division of the subject, of the institution and universal obligation of the Sabbath “upon all men,” I have not a word to object, but can heartily endorse it all. I think indeed there can be no reasonable objection raised against it. But how the Sabbath became “in many respects, a Jewish institution,” merely because God reaffirmed it to Israel at Sinai, and they were the only people who continued its faithful observance, I cannot see so clearly. I cannot see how the fourth commandment of the ten should become Jewish from this fact any more than those against murder, theft, false witness, or any other one of the whole decalogue. The “special prohibitions and penalties” of their municipal code could be enacted and abolished without affecting in the least degree any one commandment of the universal moral code, as expressed in the ten commandments, and distinguished from all other laws by being given by God's own voice and written in his own handwriting in tables of stone.

But, waiving this objection, I can agree most heartily with the third proposition, that, “So much of the Sabbath as was peculiar to the Jews has been abolished; but the original law given to Adam is still in full force.” The Sabbath therefore neither gained nor lost anything by being for awhile a “Jewish institution.”

I fail to find a word concerning the weekly Sabbath in Rom. 14, but I agree with the writer that the expressions of this chapter “clearly refer to the ceremonial law,” and consequently they have no bearing upon any commandment of the moral, or “original law.” Neither were the sabbaths (plural) belonging to the “hand-writing of ordinances,” of Col. 2:14-17, which were blotted out, being only a shadow of things to come, ever any part of the original law. These were festivals and sabbaths “beside the Sabbaths of the Lord,” mentioned in Lev. 23. “The types of the Jewish ceremonial law were clearly fulfilled in Christ.”

How does the writer learn from John 20:26, Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2, and Rev. 1:10, that “the apostles and early Christians were in the habit of observing the first day of the week?” I cannot find it in these texts. The first does not mention the first day, and it cannot be proved that it was the first day when Jesus made this visit to the common abode of the twelve and found Thomas at home; the second speaks of the only recorded meeting for religious worship upon the first day of the week, an all-night meeting at Troas; the third makes no allusion to Christian assemblies, but gives direction what each one was to do by himself, at home; and the fourth cannot be shown to refer to the first day of the week at all. The beloved disciple was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. To assume that this was the first day of the week, is to assume the very thing to be proved. Where is the first day of the week called the Lord's day? Not in the Bible; but “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.” He calls it “my holy day;” Isa. 58:13; and the Lord Jesus “is Lord also of the Sabbath.”

The meeting at Troas was a night meeting. It took place either on what we now call Saturday night or Sunday night. The Bible uniformly begins the day at the going down of the sun; therefore for a night meeting to be held on the first day of the week, it must be held on the evening before the first day. If this meeting was held on what is now called Sunday evening, the whole transaction took place on the second, and not on the first day of the week; but if it truly was held on the eve of the first day, the fact that Paul started on a long journey at break of day proves that he did not regard it as the Sabbath.

Rom. 14 says nothing about the Sabbath, neither does it mention the seventh or the first day of the week. Yet “Theta” says: “In our judgment the apostle is here speaking of the controversy about which of the two days was to be observed.” Where is the history of this controversy in the apostolic church? Is it in this chapter? Read and see. My friend must have a very fertile imagination to paraphrase the text thus: “One man esteemeth one of these two days above the other; another esteemeth them alike sacred. He that regardeth, or observeth the seventh, regardeth it to the Lord, and he that observeth it not, does it conscientiously, worshiping God on the first.” Now if this was really what the apostle meant, could he not have come a little nearer to saying so?

But I am happy to agree with the writer in such utterances as the following: “The original Sabbath given to Adam was as a memorial of the past, while [all] that which was instituted in the ritual law for the Jewish nation alone, was typical of something in the future.” “No one of these passages countenances the idea that the Sabbath which was made for man, and instituted in Paradise nearly three thousand years before the promulgation of the Jewish law, was intended only as a part of the Jewish economy. Nor does either of them furnish the slightest evidence that the original appointment has been recalled. It was therefore designed to be perpetual.”

R. F. COTTRELL. Ridgeway, N. Y.