CALIFORNIA CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR AND THE SABBATH.
By W. N. Glenn
There is no time when otherwise sensible men become so utterly “at sea” as when they undertake to make of none effect the plain word of God. This fact is, perhaps, more than in any other regard, conspicuously demonstrated in the widespread effort to break the force of the fourth commandment in its declaration that the “seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.” The determined effort to compel men by civil law to acknowledge another sabbath than that commanded by the Lord, is only equaled by the persistent manner in which men of learning will pervert the word of God in order to lead the masses away from its plain declaration. The attempt to explain away the word of God, and thus betray the confidence of the people, is infinitely more baneful in its result than to openly deny it. When a man, however learned, squarely denies the word, the commonest mind can understand his meaning and choose between infidelity and the truth. It is then a mere matter of faith. But when one in whom the people have confidence as a professed teacher of the Scriptures ingeniously endeavors to show that they mean something entirely different from what they say, then the people are deceived. And the longer such a teacher has labored to bring himself into such delusion as to really believe his incongruities, the greater is his influence in leading the people astray. At the late Christian Endeavor convention at San Jose, Cal., a Baptist minister of advanced age and long experience delivered an address on the Sabbath question. Taken as a whole, it would be hard to find its equal in confusion of speech since the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel. If he himself should see the like from any one else—on any other subject—sprinkling for baptism, for instance—he would surely ridicule it. We notice a few characteristic propositions:— “If I had time I would be glad to tell you of the creation Sabbath; to show you that just as the six days of creation were indefinite periods of time, so the seventh day, God’s Sabbath, has already lasted about six thousand years.” The reader will notice and remember that he here admits that the “seventh day” is “God’s Sabbath.” To this he adds that “God’s great rest day of Sabbath and redemption work is not yet completed.” But the record places the sanctification of the seventh day after the resting on it. If that day “is not yet completed,” then the record is false; for it records as having been done even before the fall an act which could not be done until the day was “completed.” The record says that “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Gen. 2:3. Again the learned speaker says:— “Adam kept not God’s Sabbath—he did not live long enough. That reminds me of a young lady who was asked if she had ever read ‘Æsop’s Fables.’ She replied, ‘O yes, when they first came out!’ I wondered if she would like to confess her age, if that were true.” It is no wonder that such an absurd proposition should “remind” him of something ludicrous. But the ludicrous nature of the proposition did not lead him to abandon it; so he continued:— “Adam was not old enough to keep God’s Sabbath, but please bear this in mind: Adam’s sabbath was on the first day of the week. The first day Adam ever saw was a sabbath. God did not make Adam and Eve until Saturday, along toward night, so Adam’s week began with a sabbath. If I had time I would try and show you how creation sabbath on the first day of Adam’s week is exactly the same as the Christian sabbath on the first day of Adam’s week. The first day of Adam’s week synchronizes with the first day of the Christian week.” Ordinarily it would seem that the bare reading of such assertions would be enough to show any one their utter futility; but the fact that a large convention listened to its delivery with manifest approval, shows that in these days almost anything that may be said in support of Sunday observance passes for wisdom. So we ask the reader to take a second look at it. Note again the assertion, “Adam’s sabbath was on the first day of the week.” Adam was created on the sixth day, and as God’s Sabbath was the seventh day, Adam’s first-day sabbath could not come until after God’s seventh day was past. But the author of this wonderful address says that God’s rest day “is not yet completed.” According to this logic, we have not yet come to Adam’s first-day sabbath. As to the statement that “the first day Adam ever saw was a sabbath,” it is falsified by the Scriptures, which show that Adam was created on the sixth day, the day before the Lord rested. The Sabbath had not yet been set apart, and that sixth day seems to have been a very busy one. Adam was created; the animals came before him and he named them; and afterward Eve was created and presented to him for a wife. Dominion was given him over everything that had been created in the earth, and instruction was given in regard to food for man and beast. But according to the logic of this address, the sixth day was a sabbath, and the sixth day was the first day of the week. The Scripture record of the sixth day’s work also falsifies the statement that “God did not make Adam and Eve until Saturday, along toward night.” There was no such day known then as “Saturday;” but as it is everywhere understood that Saturday stands for the seventh day, so we take it for granted that he means the seventh day, especially so as he calls it a Sabbath day. And here again we are confronted with the dilemma that “the seventh day, God’s Sabbath,” has lasted about six thousand years, and “is not yet completed;” therefore Adam’s first-day sabbath has not yet arrived. All the talk about “Adam’s week” is only calculated to deceive and bewilder the mind that endeavors to follow such perversion of the Scripture. God established the week by the six days of creation and the seventh day rest, and there is no record of any change of that arrangement. No change of month or year could work any change in the week. If Adam had an individual week, distinguished as beginning on the day of his birth, then why not every man reckon his week and his Sabbath in the same way? Altho the foregoing quotations show the general character of the address, we give one more:— “I believe that for twenty-five hundred years the patriarchs kept the first day of the week precisely as Adam did. I would be glad to show you also that the children of Israel in the land of Egypt kept the first day of the week. The sun-worshipers to-day all over the world observe the first day of the week. Surely this is not without authority.” Authority, forsooth! Authority! Behold the authority for Sunday keeping: (1) “I believe;” (2) what the Israelites did in the darkness of Egyptian bondage; (3) what the sun-worshipers do all over the world. But we like to agree with people when we can, so in the main we agree with the statements of the last-quoted paragraph, altho perhaps not in the same sense in which the author does. We believe that “the patriarchs kept the first day of the week precisely as Adam did,”—that they kept it by working on it and resting the seventh day, as the Lord did in creation, and as he ordained that man should do when he set apart the seventh day. See Gen. 2:1-3; Mark 2:27, 28. We believe also that many of the Israelites fell into Egyptian idolatry during the long, dark night of their bondage; for as soon as they were escaped from bondage, they were reminded of the true Sabbath of the Lord—even before they came to Sinai. See Ex. 16:5, 22-29. And we know that “sun-worshipers to-day all over the world observe the first day of the week,” and that from this custom in ancient times the day has its name. But instead of taking these things as authority for the religious observance of the day, we deem them very good reasons for not doing so. There is but one legitimate authority for Sabbath observance, and that is the plain commandment of God, the language of which no Protestant has yet dared to change, notwithstanding the many claims that God has authorized the change. Inasmuch as the address herein alluded to has been sent forth by the California Christian Endeavor Society as the beginning of a scheme to “agitate” and “educate” the people with a view to working up a sentiment favorable to a state Sunday law, we may take occasion to notice some more of its vagaries. The speaker announced that he had “fourteen lines of argument” on the subject of a Christian sabbath, and the convention manifested a very eager desire for some ground upon which to base state legislation on the subject. However, I can assure my readers that none of the fourteen arguments are any better than those here quoted. In fact, these are given precedence in the order of presentation.