The Sunday Question in the Independent
The Sunday Question.—The Independent of November 7 has a symposium on “The Sunday Question,” in which is discussed authority for Sunday observance, Sunday laws, etc. Hon. W. P. Frye, of Maine, declares that “laws recognizing the Lord’s day as one dedicated to worship, to works of charity, and to rest from labor, should be enforced.” Cardinal Gibbons writes on the “Danger of Sunday Desecration.” He speaks of “the desecration of the Christian Sunday” as “a social danger against which it behooves us to set our face and take timely precautions.” Talbot W. Chambers, D.D., says that when the enemies of Jesus charged him with transgressing the Sabbath law, “he repelled their charge with unanswerable force, but in no way impeached the authority of holy time,” a fatal admission to the scriptural claims of Sunday; for Jesus and his enemies had reference to the seventh day alone. Dr. Chambers says again that the apostle Paul “was very far from” abolishing the Ten Commandments, or the fourth, in such passages as Rom. 14: 5, 6; Gal. 4: 10; Col. 2: 16, 17. Again: “The great apostle acknowledged the continuing and universal validity of the Ten Commandments which the Lord spake out of the midst of the fire.” Deut. 10: 4. He did not, “could not, mean to except any of them.” But how, as Dr. Chambers says, “the change of the day leaves the fourth commandment unimpaired,” is more than we can see. When God said “seventh” did he mean “first”? And when did he rest upon, bless, sanctify, the first day of the week? The next writer, Prof. J. Henry Thayer, D.D., Litt. D., of Harvard University Divinity School, begins his article with, “In strictness of speech, for the Christian there is no ‘law of the Sabbath.’ The Sabbath is an integral and distinctive part of Judaism, and Judaism for the Christian is ‘antiquated and abrogated.’ . . . There is no warrant in the records of primitive Christianity—either in the words of our Lord or his apostles, or in extra canonical literature—for the allegation that this Christian day of rest [Sunday] was ever identified with the Jewish, or regarded as its continuation, or invested with its sacredness, or upheld by the positive enactment and sanctions connected with the Sabbath in the earlier Scriptures.” Prof. T. H. Zahn, of the University of Erlangen, Germany, takes the same ground as does Professor Thayer. He says: “The observance of Sunday for them [the early Christians] stood in no connection with this [the fourth] commandment. . . . No distinction was made by them between Sunday and the other festival days which celebrated the memory of the great deeds of salvation.” The articles on “The Parisian Sunday,” “Sunday in Berlin,” and “Sunday in Italy,” do not strengthen the Sunday cause from a Biblical viewpoint. Dr. A. H. Lewis, Seventh-day Baptist, defines the position of the Seventh-day Baptists. He has one sentence the truth of which the Independent symposium demonstrates: “The observers of Sunday have no common ground of union or concert of action.” There are several articles on Sunday legislation, which we may notice hereafter. The Independent itself says editorially in reviewing the symposium: “As to the importance of preserving our American Sunday, none of our contributors, except Mr. Stanton and the Seventh-day advocates, would differ. Cardinal Gibbons and Father Doyle speak for the Roman Catholic Church; and it is encouraging to be assured of the help of that great church in all efforts [by law and otherwise] to preserve our rest day.” And why not? It is Rome’s day and Rome’s methods, and Rome will reap the triumph.