Which Day Is the Sabbath?
By R. F. Cottrell
The article in the True Missionary, No. 12, by Eld. W. M. Jones of London, is worthy of the most careful study. The fact that so many millions of the human race, besides the Jews, though descended from Abraham, have always called, and do still call, the seventh day of the week the Sabbath, should stop the mouths of those who would excuse themselves from keeping the Sabbath of the Lord by the puerile claim that we cannot tell which is the true seventh day of the commandment. If Abraham and his descendants never knew which was the rest-day of the Lord—the day on which he rested after he had made the world in six days—then, indeed, the commandment so solemnly spoken by the mouth of God at Sinai, to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, was spoken in vain, since no one, from that day to this, has ever known the day. And to say that the true day of God’s rest, or Sabbath, was unknown to the Israelites, is equivalent to saying that the great Jehovah, the maker of the heavens and the earth, delivered a commandment in the most solemn and terrible manner which he never intended should be obeyed. It is simply to charge God with trifling and folly. And this is precisely the case with those at the present day who say, “We ought to keep the seventh day, if we only could tell which is the seventh day.” If God’s own providence has so ordered it, or so suffered it, that we cannot know, if we would, what he means when he says to us, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy;” “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;” “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, . . . and rested the seventh day;” then we are under no obligation to keep the commandment; for he does not intend that we shall, since in his own providence it is out of our power. Who is to blame? This weak and blasphemous excuse casts the blame of man’s disobedience upon the infinite Law-giver, the Holy One. Let us repeat. If the rest-day of the Creator was unknown to Israel at Sinai, they were under no obligation to keep the fourth commandment of the decalogue; for it was out of their power—God’s providence had made it impossible. But if they did know the day, and could keep the command, the same is possible to the present day; for we have an unbroken chain of testimony, unimpeachable, in the millions of the descendants of Abraham from that day to this. It is not the testimony of “two or three witnesses” merely, but of millions, who have all the while persisted, and do still persist, in testifying that the name of the day now called Saturday was the Sabbath always from “old, old, OLD time”—from the very beginning. It is also a fact worth noting that “the Italians, in their daily life, call the seventh day, Sabbath.” And to this it may be added, that, in regard to churches, it is not the Italian or Roman church, but the Protestant, that has given the sacred name, the Sabbath, to the first day of the week. Roman Catholic writers speak of “changing the Sabbath into Sunday” by the authority of the church. They say the church “abolished the Jewish Sabbath and substituted Sunday in its stead.” And one of them, in controversy with Protestants, says, “Why do you not keep holy the Sabbath day?” “You will answer me, perhaps, that you do keep holy the Sabbath day; for that you abstain from all worldly business, and diligently go to church, and say your prayers, and read your Bible at home, every Sunday of your lives.” “But Sunday is not the Sabbath day. Sunday is the first day of the week; the Sabbath day was the seventh day of the week. God Almighty did not give a commandment that men should keep holy one day in seven; but he named his own day,” &c. But I did not intend to say so much. I took the pen to commend the article of Bro. Jones to our other papers, not excluding the Youth’s Instructor. It is truly instructive.