THE TWO HEMISPHERES AND THE SABBATH.—NO. 2.
By W. H. Littlejohn
BY ELD. W. H. LITTLEJOHN. No proposition can be plainer than this: If God designed to construct a law which would give to each individual the privilege of selecting for himself the day of the week which he would hallow, then he has never done anything which would defeat man's enjoyment of this prerogative. God assuredly did for forty years render it impossible for any of the children of Israel, who were then his people, to celebrate for the Sabbath the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth day of the week without violating his positive commands. Do you inquire in what manner he did this? I answer, By enacting that the manna which was to be eaten on the Sabbath day, should be gathered and prepared on the sixth day, and by ordaining that that which was gathered and kept over from any other day should corrupt and breed worms, thereby rendering it utterly unfit for food. As a consequence of this action, each individual was debarred from keeping any day except the seventh by the necessity under which he was thereby placed of abstaining from food entirely for the period of twenty-four hours each week, should he attempt to do so. But, as we have seen above, God's direct providence and laws must harmonize; and, as they could only be made to do so upon the supposition that the seventh day, and that alone, is the one which he would have sanctified by the people, we are again brought to the conclusion that it was the one which the commandment was designed to honor. Since, therefore, the commandment reads the same now as it did then, it must also mean the same; and, therefore, when rightly construed, still commands the hallowing of the definite seventh day of the week. Thus much for the first proposition under discussion. We turn now to the consideration of the second, i. e., Can such a day be celebrated the world around? If the logic employed thus far has been sound, it would seem a work of supererogation to bestow time in elaborating an argument on this phase of the subject. It will be remembered that it is not within the scope of this article to debate the point as to whether the ten commandments are obligatory alike upon Gentiles and Jews; for those whose views we are criticising are agreed with us that this is the case; else there would be no propriety in examining those commandments in reference to our practice in the matter of keeping a hebdomadal rest-day. In other words, there would be no reason in any effort on their part to so construe the fourth commandment in the light of nature as to show that it cannot enforce the observance of a definite day, unless they first concede the point that it does enforce one day or another. We repeat, therefore, that if the conclusion which we have drawn thus far respecting the teaching of the Sabbath law is just, the second point is already proved. For if God has given us a precept worldwide in its requirements and explicit in its declarations, whose injunctions men everywhere are to obey in celebrating a definite and particular day of rest, then it must be true that those men, wherever they may be found, will be able to fulfill the obligation resting upon them; or, at least, if they cannot do so, it will not be because God himself has commanded a thing which is in the abstract impossible. Granting that under some circumstances it might be true that an individual for some temporary cause—as, for example, the being cast away upon a lone island—might be unable to locate the day of rest, still it would never be true that the day itself could not be identified in such a locality provided he had the necessary information for that work. Otherwise—as we have elsewhere said—the God of Heaven might be shown to have stultified himself by commanding that which under any circumstances could not be performed. Realizing the true signification of the work in which we are engaged, and believing firmly in the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, we must either be able to prove that the construction we have just put on the law is altogether untenable, or else we must follow that construction to its legitimate conclusion and decide that, whether we are able to do so or not, there must be some means by which the definite seventh day can be found on any and every point on this globe. Any decision short of this would dishonor God. So far, however, as the construction of the law is concerned, we are confident, on the one hand, that it cannot be overthrown by any line of argument which can be advanced, and, on the other hand, that it can be strengthened and enforced by many very cogent reasons which our space has not permitted us to bring forward. Now, therefore, as we comprehend the situation, and realize that there is nothing less at stake ultimately than the faith of men in the Book of God, let us cast about us with a view to ascertaining, if possible, whether there be not a clew to the situation which, if carefully followed, will lead us out of this labyrinth of deistical sophism. In other words, if we shall find it impossible to elucidate the question perfectly, let us at least make an earnest effort to throw upon it a sufficient amount of light to make it in a very high degree probable that we shall be safe in concluding that a definite Sabbath day can be kept upon a round world. The first step to be taken in this direction will be that of ascertaining what sort of a day is referred to in the commandment. This may be done in brief by stating: 1. That it is a twenty-four-hour day, commencing and ending with the setting of the sun, as proved by the fact that in the twenty-third chapter of Leviticus the Lord expressly directs that they should keep their Sabbaths from even to even; 2. That the keeping of the same Sabbath day by persons in different parts of the world does not involve the hallowing of the same identical hours; but consists in the observance of the same day when it comes to them, and as it comes to them, while it is traveling around the earth. This is proved by the fact that on the eastern hemisphere such a course was pursued by the people under the sanction of the Most High. Having accepted these statements as true, we shall find our work considerably abbreviated and simplified; for, in the first place, we perceive that, as the setting of the sun is a physical event which, in all portions of the world designed for habitation, is clearly discernible, all men everywhere are provided with a means by which they can readily determine the exact period of time when they should commence and end the day of rest. In the second place, we immediately comprehend the fact that if we can locate the point on the earth at which the day commences its journey, we shall be able to fix the precise time when it will pass over any given portion of its surface. We may experience some embarrassment in reasoning in regard to the day as traveling westward around the globe, because we have not hitherto been in the habit of viewing the subject in that light. Nevertheless—practically speaking—we have admitted that it does so. For example: The names applied to the days of the week are uniform in a large portion of the world. Take, if you please, the English-speaking nations; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc., are used by them uniformly to designate the same days of the week. But every well-informed individual knows that Sunday, for instance, is entered upon by the citizens of London several hours before it is by those in New York, and that the latter, in their turn, commence it several hours before it reaches the locality of San Francisco. By this we learn that it passes from continent to continent around the world in a manner similar to that in which a train of cars—provided there was nothing to intervene—might be supposed to pass around our planet, requiring for its transit a period of only twenty-four hours. The only difficulty, therefore, with which we shall meet, as remarked above, will be that of identifying in its passage the particular day which Jehovah has sanctified and blessed, and commanded us to consecrate. Fortunately for us, our labors are largely abbreviated by the fact that both Moses and Christ have significantly located the period in question in both Arabia and Judea. Moses said, “To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord;” and Christ, who kept his Father's commandments perfectly, recognized the truthfulness of the statement of the prophet by observing the same hours which he had pointed out as those which were to be consecrated to the Lord. Moses by inspiration, and Christ by his divinity, spoke with an authority which could not be questioned. Neither could have been mistaken, and neither could have willingly misrepresented. Both were right, and both are to be credited as fully as though the God of Heaven had uttered his voice from the sky and said to them, “The last day of your week harmonizes with that of the creation week, and is the one I have required you to keep holy.” Here, then, we have a starting-point from which to depart in the prosecution of the search before us. We can readily calculate the precise number of hours which regularly intervene between the setting of the sun in Judea, and the same event where we reside.