SHOULD CHRISTIANS OBSERVE SUNDAY?
By R. C. P.
What Both Protestant and Catholic Authorities Affirm
THIS is not a new question. It is as old as the ancient pagan apostasy. It was revived by Constantine’s Sunday enactment of A. D. 321, and its papal enforcement during the following centuries. True Sabbath observance has ever been the seal of loyalty to God and of observance of His law. Sunday observance has ever been the mark of apostasy from God and His plainly revealed truth. The great pagan and papal apostasies were especially distinguished by this mark of apostasy; and the Protestant Reformation, while approaching the issue between true Sabbath observance and Sunday worship, passed the question as untimely. There are 250,000,000 Mohammedans who appeal to the command of their great prophet for Friday observance. (Gibbon’s Rome, volume 3, page 515.) How do we know that their claim is incorrect, if we disregard the Bible command? Eusebius, who was bishop about A. D. 313–338, and was associated with Constantine in the enforcement of his Sunday law of A. D. 321, said, “All things proper to do on the Sabbath we have transferred to the Lord’s day.”—Buton’s “Dictionary of Universal Information,” page 249. The ecclesiastical and civil rulers of that time were Constantine, Pope Sylvester, and Eusebius. “A coin of the reign of Constantine still exists which bears on its obverse the monogram of Christ, while its reverse exhibits the figure of Phœbus, with the inscription ‘Sol Invictus’ (the invincible sun), denoting his predominance and power. The first of the Christian emperors still consulted the entrails of beasts for omens; and the weekly Christian festival which he appointed to be observed throughout the empire, he associated with the first day of the week, not because it was to Christians the day of the resurrection, but because it was to pagans the venerable day of the sun.”—Cassell’s “Illustrated Universal History,” chapter 40, page 561. A tract entitled, “Why Don’t You Keep Holy the Sabbath Day?” issued by Burns and Otis, a Catholic publishing company of London, after reviewing the customary texts used in support of Sunday observance, on page 6 says: “It is absolutely impossible that a reasonable and thoughtful person should be satisfied, by the texts that I have quoted, that almighty God intended the obligation of Saturday under the old law to be transferred to Sunday under the new. And yet Protestants do so transfer it, and never seem to have the slightest misgivings lest, in doing so, they should be guilty of breaking one of God’s commandments. Why is this?—Because, although they talk so largely about following the Bible and the Bible only, they are really guided in this matter by the voice of tradition. Yes, much as they may hate and denounce the word, they have in fact no other authority to allege for this most important change. The present generation of Protestants keep Sunday holy instead of Saturday, because they received it as a part of the Christian religion from the last generation, and that generation received it from the generation before, and so on backwards from one generation to another, by a continual succession, until we come to the time of the (so-called) Reformation, when it so happened that those who conducted the change of religion in this country left this particular portion of Catholic faith and practice untouched.” The Literature Committee of the Methodist Conference of Victoria, Australia, has recently strongly approved a work written by the Rev. A. Madsen, bearing date 1912, entitled, “The Question of Baptism.” On page 74 of that work the following truthful admission in regard to the observance of Sunday solely upon the authority of tradition, is made: “Why do they, in common with other Christians, observe the Lord’s day? The Baptists set aside a positive command in Scripture to keep holy the Sabbath day, and regard the first day of the week—Sunday—as the Christian sabbath, and they do it on the ground of usage alone. There is no other. Nevertheless, Methodists are upbraided in unmeasured terms because they practice infant baptism, and cannot produce a Scripture passage which commands it, except by inference and implication. But the people who, in all moods and tenses, denounce infant baptism, and call it a ‘pious fraud,’ thereby most seriously reflecting upon the Christian integrity of the churches which practice it, have no better authority than usage for observing the Lord’s day as the Christian sabbath. And, moreover, on the strength of usage alone, they set aside a positive command in Scripture. . . . If usage and reasonable inference from statement and practice in the New Testament are pronounced to be invalid arguments to support infant baptism, by what logic can the denomination which repudiates these arguments make good its observance of the Lord’s day in the absence of express command for it—and, indeed, in the face of positive command to keep another day holy—when the only warrant available is evidence of a similar character?” A statement made by E. T. Hiscox, D. D., author of the “Baptist Manual,” before a Baptist minister’s meeting in New York City, presents the Baptists’ view. We quote from the New York Examiner, November 16, 1893: “There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day; but that Sabbath day was not Sunday. It will, however, be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, with all its duties, privileges, and sanctions. Earnestly desiring information on this subject, which I have studied for many years, I ask, Where can the record of such a transaction683be found? Not in the New Testament—absolutely not. There is no Scriptural evidence for the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week.” God’s command says, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” and it requires that the seventh day be kept holy. These facts, gleaned from an article by R. Hare in the Australasian Signs of the Times, are worthy a more extensive circulation. I have taken the liberty to pass them on, with the hope that they may impress others as they have me, with their forceful statements of facts concerning one of God’s plain commands. Reader, should we follow tradition or the command of God in Sabbath observance? More than 11,000,000 Jews witness to the correctness of the calendar which still marks the definite day enjoined by the command of God. More than 125,000 seventh-day Christians observing that day in all the world witness to the possibility of observing that command. What excuse shall we render if, in the face of such plain facts, we set aside God’s command by our traditions? R. C. P.