Medical Journals and the Sabbath Question
ONE hardly expects to find in medical journals editorials on the question of which day of the week is the Sabbath; but in the November issue of the Pacific Medical Journal we find an article, at the head of which stands the caption, “The Sabbath Day.” The first utterances in the article are brief, and read: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Ex. 20: 8. “Which is the Sabbath day?—The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Deut. 5: 14. These statements from the Scripture answer plainly the question as to which is the Sabbath day. Then following these plain Scripture statements, the editor of the journal gives us the heathen name of each day of the week, telling the name of the heathen god that was worshiped on each of these particular days. The burden of the editor seems to be to try to show that each one of the days of the week has been observed as a sabbath day by various heathen nations; and when he comes to Sunday, he calls it “the sun’s day, the Lord’s day, the day of the resurrection of Christ,—our present Sunday. The first day is also worshiped as the sabbath day by the orthodox Christians, just as the ancients worshiped the sun itself.” And then at the close, the editor asks, “Which is the Sabbath day?” If a person actually desires to be muddled in his thinking, it is a very easy matter for him to enter into a line of reasoning that will completely befog him. It is perfectly true that different heathen nations of high intellectual attainment have devoted the different days of the week to the worship of some of their peculiar deities. And why should not his satanic majesty seek to place the true Sabbath on a common, secular plane by introducing all sorts and kinds of false sabbaths? The true Sabbath of Jehovah is to be observed in memory of the power of the great Jehovah Himself to create. And if we wish to let the Bible, and the Bible alone, speak upon the subject, there is no difficulty whatever. The Bible plainly enjoins the observance of the Sabbath. It plainly tells us which day is the Sabbath. Language could not be clearer, nor, at the same time, more simple, than the divine statement, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” That statement in the law of Jehovah is what the people of this earth will have to answer to in the Judgment. The apostle says, “So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.” James 2: 12. And when men come to stand before the bar of the great Judge Himself, they will not be able to plead ignorance.