What the Protestant Church of Lutherans Did and Do Teach Concerning Sabbath and Sunday.
By L. Jorgensen
1. DID TEACH.
*Extracts from sermons of Pontoppidan.*
Learn, therefore, to keep solemn and holy the Sabbath, in faith, by works of mercy and prayer.
On Sunday, thou shalt be especially diligent in prayer. Then it is a day of rest, sanctified by the Lord for worship and for prayers.
God has instituted a day of rest, the Sabbath, or Sunday, on which thy poor heart shall rest in Christ, thy Lord.
Whereas God rested on the Sabbath day, therefore thou also shalt rest in God and say, Come unto me, O Lord, put up thy dwelling in me, and keep Sabbath with me in my heart.
O God! how shamefully do we not use our Sabbath days. God’s holy rest-day is changed into a feast of devils; then people now will be carousing in eating and drinking, visiting and walking about, and misusing the time generally.
I believe the devil has just got all kinds of pleasures a-going on the Sunday in order to hinder the work of the Lord; and all kinds of lewdness, and vain and useless works, not done in the six days, must be done on Sunday.
O my dear Christian! these are the nets and the snares of the devil. The old serpent wants to catch you. Wake up! be on your guard! wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove.
2. DOES NOW TEACH.
Extracts from the Church Monthly.
As long as we believe that God has commanded us to keep Sunday as SABBATH, and in the fourth commandment ordered us to keep just this one day in preference to any other day, for rest and worship, we are superstitious, for this is more than the word of God teaches.
As long as we believe that this is one of the moral commandments of God, and consequently binding on our consciences, that we must stop our business on Sundays except works of necessity and mercy, so long our consciences can never be free and at rest. This is taught us by all experience, that those who hold this false opinion never have so much of disquietude or anxiety in their minds as on Sunday, because they feel the condemnation of a conscience, which falsely upbraids them for many things, as sinful, never forbidden in the word of God, viz., visiting our friends, walking, eating, drinking, &c.
Whereas truth only can make us free, it is necessary for us to know and acknowledge that God never instituted nor sanctified Sunday as Sabbath, nor laid the keeping thereof as a moral commandment on our consciences,—first, then, can we keep Sunday with a free conscience, and a happy, contented mind.