THE LAW FOR SUNDAY by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 22, 1877

THE LAW FOR SUNDAY.

By Uriah Smith

We spoke last week of Paul's visit to Troas, and showed how much it is worth to Mr. Exley to prove his Sunday law. He next appeals to 1 Cor. 16: 2: “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him.” This he connects with the previous instruction about the Lord's supper, and claims that this was to show them how to observe the Lord's day, every week till the Lord should come, appropriately closing the worship of the day by laying by in store as God had prospered them. But Paul does not say, “Observe the Lord's supper every first day of the week,” but, “As often as ye do this,” etc., implying that the frequency of this observance would be left to inclination and custom. The connection between this and the 16th chapter none but a theologian would ever discover. But how does he know that this act of laying by was to conclude the service of the day? Paul does not say so. How does he know but that it was to be done on the first part of the day? Where does Paul say Sabbath, rest, or worship on this day? Not one syllable anywhere. These are not put in by inference, but by pure assumption. But was it not implied in the kind of service to be performed? Let us see. “Lay by in store.” Where? Not at church, but at home; for so the word means. See the best commentators on this point. And what is the work to be done? Looking over secular matters to see how God had prospered them. Instead of proving that this was the Sabbath, it proves positively that it was not; for such work was never allowable on the Sabbath day.

The next effort of Mr. E. to find a law for the keeping of Sunday will surprise the reader more than any of his preceding efforts. He refers to Paul's comparison in the book of Hebrews of the old and new dispensations, and his exhortations to his brethren to draw near to Christ, “and not forsake the assembling of themselves together.” He says: “This shows us that all the Hebrew churches were in the unvarying practice of meeting together, and beyond fair question on the first day of the week.”

Alas! What an ignominious end of a labored argument is this! We looked for some law for Sunday like that which God gave from Sinai, saying, “The first day of the week is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work,” etc. But instead of this, we find a disjointed, illogical, far-fetched attempt to prove that the Hebrew churches assembled for worship on the first day of the week; but even this is not certain, but only “beyond fair question”! Thus from an impotent beginning the argument drives on to a more impotent conclusion. It grows weaker and fainter and feebler as it proceeds till finally it fizzles out in that confession of supreme weakness—“beyond fair question.” We do not have to say, in respect to the seventh day, “Beyond fair question;” but God gave the law and we can show where and when and how. We want the same in respect to the first day of the week.

Again he says: “We know that the first Hebrew church met on the first day of the week, that it was the day of Pentecost.” Hold on, Mr. E., you don't know any such thing. The writer of the Acts does not say that it was the first day of the week. Pentecost was the fiftieth day from the offering of the wave sheaf. No man knows that that was on the seventh day, as it must have been to bring the Pentecost on Sunday. It was more probably on Friday, which would bring the Pentecost on the seventh day, or the Sabbath. So Prof. Hackett, of Newton Theological Institution says, “It is generally supposed that this Pentecost signalized by the outpouring of the Spirit, fell on the Jewish Sabbath, our Saturday.” And he gives this, not simply as his individual opinion, but says, “It is generally supposed.” One first-day had passed between the ascension of our Lord and the day of Pentecost; and why was not that day marked by the outpouring of the Spirit if the intention was to honor the first day of the week? It certainly would have been. But no; the great object was to mark the antitype of the Pentecostal feast, and so the disciples waited till the day of Pentecost had fully come.

Again, if the object was to honor the first day of the week, when Peter gave an explanation of the remarkable manifestation, he should have said, “To-day is the first day of the week; this is ordained as the Christian Sabbath; and therefore the Spirit is poured out as ye see and hear.” But he only said, “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel that the Spirit should be poured out, not on the first day of the week, but in the last days.” Nothing was ever more completely made out of nothing than this argument for Sunday from the day of Pentecost.

Our author follows with a long list of flowery panegyrics on the first day of the week, in reference to which all that need be said is, that rhetoric is not always reason and sound is not always sense. They amount to nothing till he shall show some precept for the institution in praise of which he grows so eloquent.

He finally ends his article by reference to this command: “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.” This, then, we are to understand, is the great command for Sunday-keeping which we were promised and for which we have been looking. But where is the command which sets the first day of the week apart as the Sabbath? Reader, have you found it? You have just as much as a certain professor in astronomy made a wonderful discovery in the heavens. A mischievous boy fastened a fire-fly to the outer glass of his telescope, and the professor soon after looking through his instrument was surprised to find that he had discovered a new star of the first magnitude!

U. S.