Troubled about the Calendar.
By Editor
SOME time since there was noticed in our paper a letter from a correspondent in Ohio who was troubled to identify the Sabbath. He has favored us with another letter, in which he says:— "Cæsar, a heathen, made a new calendar under which civilization has progressed for nineteen centuries." And again: "You say you do not propose to change the calendar; but for all that it has been changed time and again. And when God permits it to be changed again, I believe we should take the hint, and conclude he does not want us to observe the Sabbath now." The writer appears to be in a needless dilemma. Needless, because a little study of the subject would show him that the cycle of the week has never been changed. In regard to the order of the days of the week there has never been any controversy, any question, nor any legislation. Discrepancies between the beginning of the year and the seasons have been corrected; in part under Cæsar, and in part under Pope Gregory, but these had nothing to do with the days of the week. Perhaps our correspondent knows—we are not sure that he knows—that the change made in the days of the month under Gregory was not generally concurred in when it was made. Also that some never concurred in it; Russia reckons by the Old Style at the present time. But all agreed with Rome in the order of the days of the week, and so Russia does at the present time. On this point, we repeat, there has never been any question. Every one can readily see that a change in the days of the week could never take place all over the world at once; it could not take place without creating discussion, and confusion also; for it would not be agreed to by all. Suppose that in the days of Cæsar he had tried to adopt a new reckoning of the week, would the Jews have agreed to it? Never. They would have clung to their own reckoning, and to the Sabbath of the decalogue. If Gregory had tried to make a change in the week, as he made in the month, those nations which did not adopt his calendar would have disagreed with him in the days of the week, as they actually did in the days of the month. But such was not the case. Russia has disagreed with Rome in the days of the month ever since the time of Gregory, but she has always agreed with Rome on the days of the week. Most people know all this to be true; but we are compelled to believe, by his own words, that our Ohio correspondent does not know it. And therefore not even "the hint" exists on which he seems to rest his case for the non-observance of the Sabbath. Did it exist, we are free to say that a hint based on the action of a heathen ruler would be too small a foundation for our faith in regard to Christian morals! We have "the law and the testimony;" the holy Scriptures, which an inspired apostle declared are able to make us wise unto salvation, and thoroughly furnish the man of God unto all good works. It will take a stronger hint than we have yet received to turn us away from the sacred word of God to human speculations. And we would call the attention of our correspondent to the fact that Paul's high eulogy on the holy Scriptures referred to the Old Testament, and not a word of it to the New. See 2 Tim. 3:14-17. If he revises his faith where he is so manifestly in error, he will have no trouble with his minor points.