The question put by the Lord to Job, whether he knew the paths that led to the house of darkness, or the query by Jeremiah respecting the deceitful heart, “who can know it,” may well be asked respecting the position assumed by No-Sabbath Sunday-keepers. As we witness their gyrations, the queries will involuntarily arise, Do they really know, themselves, what position they want to take? Or, when trying to describe it, Do they say what they mean? Or, having said it, Do they mean what they say? An article on the Sabbath question appears in the Advent Christian Times of March 28, which affords a curious subject of study. It commences: “A friend says, ‘I wish you could see that your position, that the first day of the week is the Sabbath, is untenable.’” To which the editor responds: “In reply I would say that I hold the Sabbath as the apostles and early Christians did.” This sentence deserves to be set off with a score or two of exclamation points; but we will restrain our feelings, only remarking that to those who understand the Sabbath question, and Eld. Himes’ practice, this declaration will sound remarkably cool. For instance, whenever in his “journal,” published from week to week in the Times, he comes to the first day of the week, he calls it the Sabbath. But did the apostles ever call the first day by that name? When they say, Sabbath, anywhere in the New Testament, do they mean the first day of the week? Never. They always mean the seventh day; and this Eld. H. will acknowledge. Yet this day, which the apostles never called the Sabbath, and never observed as such, he persists in calling the Sabbath and devoting to Sabbatical duties, and then has, we had almost said the effrontery, to affirm, “I hold the Sabbath as the apostles and early Christians did.” He continues: “The first day is called Sabbatos in Acts 20:7, or Sabbaths. A day of rest and sacred worship.” In what language the first day is called Sabbatos in Acts, whether Fejee or Choctaw, he does not tell us. Groping about, like a blind Cyclops, in his Sunday cave, he perhaps imagines he has here found some Greek; but he hasn’t. The word in that form cannot be found in the Greek. The construction of the Greek in the passage in question, “Ἐν δὲ τῇ μιᾷ τῶν σαββάτων,” is exactly parallel to that of Matt. 28:1, which is fully explained in the recent tract on Sabbaton. But what shall we understand by the first day being called “Sabbaths,” plural. The burden of one Sabbath, we had supposed, was all it could well sustain; what can be done with it, if it means more than one, we leave those who have a lively imagination to try to conjecture. Immediately following the remarkable declaration last quoted, comes this sentence: “I do not associate it with the seventh day, with its rigors of the law.” Why does he not associate the term Sabbath, and the idea of rest and worship, with the seventh day? Does it not all come from the institution of the seventh day in the beginning? Is there any other law enforcing such an institution, but that which enjoins the seventh day? Yet he coolly says, “I do not associate it with the seventh day.” Has a person a right to thus tamper with the institutions of God? Has he a right thus to tear them away at pleasure from their original associations? He objects to the rigors of the law, meaning, as of course he must, the Sabbath law. But what are the rigors of that law? It requires that we should remember the day to keep it holy, refraining from our own work, keeping the day as a memorial of God’s rest at the close of creation week. That is all; but if this is too rigorous, how would he have us keep a Sabbath? Would he have us keep a Sabbath not entirely holy? and not altogether exempt from our own work? We quote again: “But still with the practice of the early church I feel a sympathy, and cling to the Christian Sabbath, ‘Lord’s day,’ or first day of the week, as a day that should be observed by the church.” If he feels a sympathy for the practice of the early church, he feels a sympathy for seventh-day keeping; for it can be indisputably proved that the early church kept that day. When he clings to the “Christian Sabbath,” he clings to an imaginary institution. The name is unscriptural, and the idea of a distinctive Christian institution cannot be found in the entire Bible. The Sabbath is one from Genesis to Revelation, not the Sabbath of Jews or Christians as such, but the Sabbath of the Lord, and binding on all who worship the true God. And when he applies the term “Lord’s day” to the first day of the week, he makes an application which is an entire perversion. Why will men persist in calling that the Lord’s day, which, so far as we have any record, the Lord never even took into his lips, a day which he never claimed as his, which neither he nor his apostles ever honored in the least degree, but which they devoted to the secular duties of life, the same as all the other working days. Do we ask why they do it? It is because they are fast bound to the blind chariot of tradition, and are led in disgraceful captivity in her triumphal procession. And when he says that it, the first day, “should be observed by the church,” in the name of reason and revelation, we would like to know why. What law is there for such observance either human or divine? Perhaps, however, we should not have said, human; for there is Constantine’s heathen Sunday edict; while any number of papal “bulls” have thrust their horns under to uphold the baseless fabric. Once more we quote: “As it is a day of rest [italics his], I know of no more appropriate name for it than the Sabbath.” When those who make this claim will produce some proof that the first day is a day of rest, they may perhaps do something toward justifying the double theft of appropriating the Lord’s day to their own use, and stealing the name of the Lord’s institution to grace their own. Of course if the day is a Sabbath it must be called so; but they know, as well as we, that nothing is so named in the Bible except the seventh day, upon which God rested in the beginning; still they know of nothing more “appropriate” (!) than to call the first day the Sabbath, or the rest-day. This is changing the truth of God into a falsehood. What being, whose example we are bound to follow, ever rested on the first day of the week to make it a rest-day? Where is it enjoined as such? We deny that there is the least particle of proof that that day should be called a rest-day or be so observed. The article continues: “As to the change of the day, we remark that none claim direct, express legislation on the subject. Br. Preble takes the ground that it was changed, but does not claim special legislation by either Christ or the apostles; but sustains his views by an array of circumstances and facts, if we rightly understand him.” No language was ever more aptly put than the last clause of the foregoing quotation: “If we rightly understand him;” that is, if the facts are facts, and if the circumstances have anything to do with the question, and if we can tell for what purpose they are presented. And thus must every intelligent person rise from a perusal of his works with a heavy burden of doubt and uncertainty resting on his spirit: “If we understand him.” Notice also the sophistry of this effort. He “does not claim special legislation” on this subject. What is that word, “special” put in for? Was there any legislation on the subject? If there was, why do they not produce it? If there was not, why do they not own that fact? The way in which it is put, is simply a barefaced attempt to gloss the matter over, and give the reader an impression that they have what they do not possess. But to come to the claim itself, we wonder how the law of God could be changed without any legislation. Suppose we should claim that a law of Michigan had been changed, and, being asked to state how or when, should reply, “Oh, there has been no legislation on the subject, but the law has been changed!” We should be charged, and justly too, with insulting common sense. The next paragraph is more self-contradictory than usual even on that side of the question. It reads: “By all means let us have a day of rest. Let us keep it as such, and let us keep it in accordance with apostolic usage, and in the spirit of the gospel. Neither Christ or the apostles enjoined Sabbath-keeping under the gospel.” Yes, by all means. God once enjoined a Sabbath upon his people. It proved a good thing. But he was so unwise as to abolish it; and now we must by all means take hold to make up the lack! And let us keep it in accordance with apostolic usage. They didn’t enjoin it and consequently did not use it. And let us keep it in the spirit of the gospel; for it is not enjoined under the gospel. That is, let us have a Sabbath, and let us not; let us keep it, and let us not! The remarks which we have thus far noticed from the Times, are simply introductory to an article which it quotes from the Advance—an article called out by a correspondent who objected to the use of the word “Sunday” rather than “Sabbath” to designate the first day of the week. To this the Advance replies that Sabbath is not the proper name for the first day of the week. Its first direct proposition reads: “1. No direct scriptural authority can be given for calling the first day of the week Sabbath. That name is ALWAYS confined in the Bible to the seventh day or the Jewish Sabbath. This holds as true in the New Testament as it does in the Old.” We give the emphasis as we find it. It then argues that to use the term “Lord’s day,” although it regards it as applying to the first day of the week, would be objectionable, as it is not convenient and would savor of cant; that to say “First-day,” as the Quakers do, would be “unusual, stiff and unnatural;” that to call the first day “Sabbath” would make confusion in many countries, where the term is still applied to the seventh day of the week or Saturday. In proof of this last proposition, it presents the following fact: “There lies before us, as we write, a Protestant religious newspaper, in the Greek language, published at Athens, each ‘Sabbato,’ or Sabbath, which means Saturday. There also lies before us a similar Spanish newspaper, published at Seville every ‘Sabado,’ or Sabbath; that again is every Saturday. The same holds true in Italian. What confusion would arise should evangelical Christians in Spain, Italy and Greece, and in the adjoining lands, undertake to call the first day of the week ‘Sabbath,’ when all their neighbors give that name to the seventh day.” This is an important fact. Let all Sabbath-keepers make a permanent note of it. On this point the Advance has the following additional significant remarks: “This linguistic fact, by the way, incidentally but clearly shows, by evidence from each branch of the Christian church, the Greek and the Latin, that the Christian ‘Lord’s day’ was not thought in early times to be ‘the Sabbath,’ with only a change of the day of observance; it was regarded rather as its successor, a separate though kindred institution, resting on distinct Christian grounds.” It further argues that Sunday, its “heathen origin” being now generally forgotten, has in it something even of “Christian propriety,” because the “Sun of Righteousness” arose on that day, and that, as Paul speaks of the “Sabbath day” as done away along with “new moons” and other Jewish “holy days,” it would seem wise to distinguish the weekly Christian worship day from the Jewish, by a separate name. Thus Sunday-keepers are driven to take the ground that the Sabbath of the Lord has been abolished, and to introduce this namby-pamby makeshift of first-day into the place of the sacred institution. But what shall be thought of the Times, when it quotes an article from the Advance, claiming that Sunday should never be called “Sabbath,” and introduces it with remarks, which, “if we understand” them, go to show that Sunday is named “Sabbatos, Sabbaths” in the New Testament, and since neither Christ nor his apostles ever enjoined Sabbath-keeping under the gospel, we should by all means make the first day into a Sabbath, and call it and keep it as such!