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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 6, 1877

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 50, No. 23.

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STRAWS

By S. B. Whitney

It appears from recent numbers of The Examiner and Chronicle, one of the leading organs of the Baptist denomination, that the questions of the Sabbath and its observance have been discussed in the ministers’ conference of that denomination in New York. It is painfully amusing to observe the various and conflicting sentiments advanced, but it is a pleasure to know that it is arousing thought and inquiry upon the subject, so much so as to call out an editorial response. It also indicates something of the progress of the agitation of this subject. The reader can judge better of these things by having some of these utterances set before him.
The first question considered was, “In what respects, if any, did Christ modify the law of the Sabbath?” On this the following positions were taken: “We have clear evidence that the Sabbath was known to the Jews before the giving of the law on Sinai. See rule for gathering manna. The Sabbath is as much a part of the moral law as any commandment of the decalogue. ‘The Sabbath was made for man.’ But the minute specifications of the Pharisees made the observance of it most burdensome. These things Christ did completely annul. He did not for a moment modify God’s holy law.”
“Six times Jesus expressed himself on this question,—in the healing of the impotent man, the rubbing out of the grains of corn in the hands of the disciples, the healing of the withered hand, the restoring of the man born blind, the healing of the bowed woman, the curing of the man of the dropsy. In these instances he stood upon his own divine right, and affirmed that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath day. The law of benevolence was higher than the law merely ceremonial.”
“The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. The day was made primarily for physical rest; but Christ introduced also provisions for man’s spiritual development and joy. It may be possible to conceive of a state of spirituality in which all days shall be as a Sabbath. We are very far from this state now. Never was the Lord’s day formally substituted for the Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath faded out, and the Lord’s day, with the best features in the old day, took its place.”
The above makes a sorry exhibit for the claims of Sunday as a Christian institution, especially coming from the Baptists; yet it was “warmly approved with scarcely a qualification,” by more than a dozen ministers who discussed it.
The next point considered was the “observance of Sunday. Macaulay, Montalembert, Daniel Webster, Attorney-General Bates, the New York Tribune, Herald, Evening Mail, R. W. Emerson, Prof. Tayler Lewis, and other authorities, besides quite a long quotation from Dr. Williams, were read in support of a strict observance of Sunday. Some of the most impressive quotations from Scripture followed. No newspapers should be bought on that day. No street cars should be run, at least no Christians should ride in them. No ferry-boats should run, and no Christians should ride in them. No milk should be sold, nothing like business, but works of necessity and mercy. This we should enforce in our pulpits, in our press, and by voice and example on every hand.
. . . Ministers must teach by example, and with courage in the pulpit, organize in every town a society for Sabbath observance, write on the subject for the press.”
More than half a dozen “continued the discussion, recommending for promoting Sunday order, tract distribution, legislation, education of children, nicer defining of what is permissible, a holy rest at home, a careful distinction between the way to observe the Sabbath and the way to observe the Lord’s day. Dr. Hague, by invitation of the conference, spoke, affirming the perpetuity of the fourth commandment.”
The effect of the utter want of evidence for the change of the Sabbath displayed in the foregoing is seen in the article by the editor of The Examiner and Chronicle, who delivered himself in the following style:—
“YES, WE HAVE A CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
“Some very recent events and utterances seem to have had a bewildering influence on some minds in respect to our having a Lord’s day, and the obligations it imposes. Questions have come to us, from one and another, which it may be serviceable briefly to answer.
“God was the author of the Sabbath. It was one of the first things given to our world, and the original record of the gift is in Genesis 2: 1–3. The most authoritative and perfect commentary ever made on the nature and obligations of the supreme gift thus ‘blessed’ and ‘sanctified’ (Ex. 20: 8–11). It was not only ‘made for man,’ no commandment could more plainly or solemnly express his obligations to receive it and to keep it as an institution which Jehovah had blessed and ‘hallowed’—set apart with his benediction and consecrated to a specified sacred use.”
“As such it must have been known in the line of Seth through the twenty-five centuries preceding the incorporation of it into the ten great and perpetual moral precepts written in stone on Sinai with ‘the finger of God.’ The evidence that it was thus known we have in Ex. 16: 4, 5, 22, 23. The double portion of manna was to be gathered on the sixth day, for the assigned reason that the morrow was ‘the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord.’ But this first giving of the manna was in the ‘wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai.’ Thus, before the Sabbath was incorporated into the great precepts of the moral law on Sinai, the Hebrews manifestly knew that the Sabbath was a day to be held in holy reverence.”
“The prescribed ceremonial observances of this holy day were undoubtedly Jewish, and it was against these strictly ceremonial requirements, made more burdensome by the ‘mint and anise’ constructions of the Pharisees, that the Lord Jesus so frequently made his quiet, practical protests. But neither by word nor deed did he ever cast the smallest doubt on the obligations of men to observe the moral law of the Sabbath.”
“How comes it, then, that we observe the first instead of the seventh day of the week as the Lord’s day, or Christian Sabbath? The chief reason of all lies in ‘the fitness of things.’” Then follows a repetition of the thread-bare arguments on that point.
Thus the agitation is increasing. Unwittingly these ministers are strengthening the cause of Sabbath reform, by acknowledging the perpetuity and moral obligation of the fourth commandment, which they are obliged to do in order to show authority for enforcing any day of rest; and as they see the effect of this, and adherents to the Sabbath multiplying, it rouses them to more determined efforts to sustain their failing cause, and, if possible, counteract the influence of their own admissions. “The combat deepens,” and it becomes every soldier to stand in his place, and be ready to obey the word of command instantly. S. B. WHITNEY.