p. 4 | SURRENDERING

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 26, 1879

SURRENDERING

A singular and significant movement is commencing among the Jews in reference to the Sabbath. Is this people who have so long observed the Sabbath to surrender it at last, just as a great movement is inaugurated to elevate it to its proper place in Christian worship? Some at least, it seems, are willing to subordinate principle to convenience and profit. The Inter-Ocean of June 19 thus speaks of the movement:—

“Is the sacredness of the Sabbath to be transferred from Saturday to Sunday by Jew as well as by Christian? Are synagogue and church to stand open together, and shall one day commemorate the creation and the resurrection? It appears that the more progressive portion of various Jewish congregations here, for the sake of convenience, favored the holding of public services on Sunday, not giving up, however, the regular service on Saturday. A custom of double service of this sort has sprung up in the Sinai congregation of this city, which seems to threaten a disruption of the organization. Dr. Kohler, the minister, has resigned by reason, he says, of the differences of opinion among his people on this Sabbath question; and the meeting held on Tuesday evening, which accepted his resignation, broke up in some confusion, while a set of resolutions, covering the matter of Sunday service, was before it and undisposed of.

“While there is no disposition on the part of any of the Jews to recognize the Sunday as differing in character from either of the five days that succeed it, there is a disposition on the part of some to forego the strict observance of their Sabbath, and, purely as a matter of greater convenience, to hold their public religious exercises on the same day as the Christians among whom they dwell. Of course this offends the more conservative branch—the rigidly orthodox Jews—and, remembering how tenacious some of the evangelical Christians are for the strict observance of the day which they have invested with the name and sanctity of the Jewish Sabbath, it is not to be wondered at that a suggestion to weaken the reverence for the Sabbath of his fathers should strike a devout Jew with something like consternation.

“There is not in this country any branch of business in which Jews usually engage that can be carried on with any profit on Sunday. Those who stand fast by their own Sabbath are practically compelled to keep two holy days in a week, and the consequent loss of time becomes a serious burden, from which it is not strange that some are seeking a way of escape. Where the Jews are persecuted there is not the least danger of their relaxing the strictness of their Sabbath observance; but the tendency of toleration from others is to induce an assimilation in habits of domestic and public worship, as in all other matters, to those of the people in whose midst they are. Jews are not likely to be Christianized, nor Christians Judaized, by living together; but both may possibly be humanized, and many uncomfortable points of difference may be worn away.”