It Makes a Difference by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 18, 1902

It Makes a Difference

By L. A. S.

REPORTS from the Samoan Islands, in the South Pacific, state that the authorities there have decided on a change in the reckoning of the days of the week, the Western instead of the Eastern reckoning being hereafter to be followed. The Eastern reckoning being one day in advance of the Western, this means that the week there will begin one day later, the former Sunday becoming Saturday, Monday Sunday, etc.

Samoa lies to the east of the day line, and is therefore, as regards this line, situated in that part of the world in which the Western reckoning properly prevails. The Eastern reckoning became established there without reference to the position of the day line, and now this position is to be taken into account, and a change instituted accordingly. We have not yet learned just what reasons may have influenced the minds of the Samoan authorities in the matter.

The New York Independent, in making mention of this proposed change in Samoa's week, is moved to make some peculiar comments on the Sabbath as related to the week. It says:—

If what was Saturday now becomes Sunday, why cannot the Jews and the Seventh-day Baptists still call it Saturday, while the Christians call it Sunday, and both rest and worship on the same day by this perfectly proper convention? Or, indeed, why should not our American Jews send their chief rabbis on a tour around the world, in the right direction, and have them come back to find that their seventh day is our first day? We cannot see that it really makes any real difference where in the week you begin to count from, nor indeed that there is any beginning to the week. The entire difference as to the Sabbath day is a mere conventional formalism that has no inherent importance; and if any one thinks it has, let him take a trip around the world, and come back in line with other people.

No Jewish rabbi, of course, or other sane individual, would take a trip around the world merely to get “in line with other people.” The change necessary to conform with popular custom in the matter of Sabbath observance could be made without involving the trouble and expense of a twenty-four-thousand-mile journey. Such a trip would make no difference whatever with the right or wrong of the point in question. Going around the world does not change one day of the week into another. The days remain the same, and if an individual in traveling around the world finds himself at the end of his journey one day ahead of or behind those whom he left when he started out, the error is his and not theirs, and he must change his reckoning accordingly.

The Independent in stating its view arrives at the surprising conclusion that there is no beginning to the week at all; and if the week has no beginning, of course it has no end, for the end would mark the place of a new beginning; and so, having neither beginning nor end, there can be no week at all, and what we have called the week is a mere piece of imagination! And how surprising that sane people should have believed all along that there are fifty-two periods of time in the year, each one having neither beginning nor end!

This surprising conclusion, however, is strictly logical and necessary to one starting out with the assumption that it makes no difference whether he calls the first day of the week the seventh, or the seventh day the first. For if the week can begin just as well on one day as on another, then no day of the week can mark its beginning, for if it could, it would differ from the other days in this respect; so, since no day can be the beginning of the week, it can really have no beginning at all, and the Independent was logically bound to arrive at the absurd position which it stated. And as this line of reasoning, strictly followed from the premise first laid down, leads inevitably to the absurd conclusion that the week is not real, but only imaginary, reason dictates that this original premise—that it is proper to call Sunday the seventh day, or Saturday the first day, etc.—is altogether wrong, and must be rejected.

The Creator made the week. He fixed its beginning and its end, and man has simply to take the week as he received it from its divine Author. The seventh day—the Sabbath—marks the end of the week as God established it. We know which day is the seventh day, for it has been observed from the beginning by God's people, and that observance has never ceased from that time to this. Nowhere on the earth are the people in doubt as to which day of the week they are observing—the seventh day, the sixth day, or the first. When the seventh day comes, it is the duty of

the individual, wherever on the earth he may be, to observe it, in harmony with the directions given in the fourth commandment.

The editor of the Independent believes that Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and observes the day for that reason. But the position the paper takes when it would persuade Jews and other seventh-day people to call Sunday the seventh day, and come into line with the majority, is fatal to the only reason it has for Sunday keeping. For if the week really has no beginning, as it says, then plainly Christ could not have risen from the grave on the first day of the week, any more than on the second day, the fourth day, or the seventh day. The argument against the definite seventh day is really a no-Sabbath argument, and, if followed out to the logical end, would destroy all Sabbath observance from off the earth.

L. A. S.