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The Church Did It

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 10, 1895

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 21, No. 40.

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The Church Did It.

—Archbishop Riordan, of San Francisco, preached Sunday, September 22, on “The Need of Better Sunday Observance.” While he based all holy-day obligation upon the Biblical Sabbath law, he, according to the Examiner of the next day, thus spoke of the change:—
The observance of Sunday lies at the root of our religious life. The Sunday is not the Sabbath; the Sabbath is not the Sunday. The Sabbath was the festival day of the old law, and was the last day of the week. The Sunday is the religious day of the new law, and is the first day of the week. There is nothing in ecclesiastical history to warrant their confusion. By the special ordinance of the early church the first day of the week was set aside in memory of our Lord’s resurrection on that day and the descent of the Holy Ghost upon that day. The first day was specially consecrated as that upon which all Christians should worship their Lord. The Sabbath exists no longer for us.
This witness speaks truly concerning the distinction between the Sabbath and Sunday. The Sabbath is enjoined by the law of God, which in God existed for all eternity, and of which our Lord says, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” Luke 16: 17. It was the day kept by Christ; and he commands, “Follow thou me.” “He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself also so to walk even as he walked.”
Sunday is based on the “new law,” the law of God as changed by that power whose history is given in advance in Dan. 7: 25. We may call it the early church; the Scripture shows it to be the apostasy, and Archbishop Riordan admits, more properly, perhaps, declares (admitted as well by many other learned prelates, Catholics, and Protestants), that the “early church” did this very work.
As to setting it apart in commemoration of the resurrection, we may well ask, in the language of Scripture, “Who hath required this at your hand?” We have no intimation of a change in God’s word.