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THE SABBATH QUESTION

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 16, 1879

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 54, No. 17.

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THE SABBATH QUESTION.

By N. Wardner

BY ELD. N. WARDNER.
Rev. B. B. Edwards, in his Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, says: “It is generally concluded that Baal was the sun; on this admission all the characters which he assumes in Scripture may be easily explained. The great luminary was adored all over the East, and is the most ancient deity acknowledged among the heathen.”
Josiah put to death the idolatrous priests that burned incense to the sun. He took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire. 2 Kings 23:11.
The worship of Baal and the worship of Jehovah were the great rival religions in Old-Testament times. As observing the seventh day of the week was a sign of the allegiance of God’s people to him as the Creator, so observing the sun’s day was a sign of the allegiance of the sun-worshipers to that god. Mr. Edwards says: “The ancient Saxons gave to the first day of the week the name of Sunday, because upon it they worshiped the sun.”
In the first Christian churches, Jewish converts were in the majority, and they sought to bring Gentile converts to adopt circumcision and other ceremonial observances. On the other hand, Gentile converts came into the church infected with heathen proclivities and prejudices. When the Gentile converts came to be in the majority, the ruling power in the churches passed into their hands, and their prejudices and old predilections led them to adopt principles and practices more and more in conformity with heathenism and in opposition to the Jews, as the history of the church from the second century to the Reformation abundantly proves. Especially was this true in adopting Sunday in place of God’s Sabbath. Constantine’s first decree in its favor was published when he was yet a professed idolater. Two years later, when he professed Christianity, he re-enforced that decree with the avowed object of making a distinction between Jews and Gentiles. “Let us have nothing in common with that most odious brood of the Jews,” he said, as his reason for this act.
Historians tell us that “at this time nearly all semblance of the former purity of the church had disappeared.” Roman Catholicism took form under Constantine’s fostering hand; and the bishops of Rome, who became popes, enforced the sun’s day in place of the Sabbath, under the false pretense of being Christ’s vicegerents. Thus a controversy arose between the Eastern and Western churches in regard to the Sabbath and the Sunday, which continued hundreds of years, until the Roman Catholic element, becoming almost universally predominant, crushed out the observance of the Sabbath by fines, confiscation, and torture. The Waldensian churches, however, would not yield; but all through the Dark Ages clung to the Sabbath at the peril of their lives.
It should be borne in mind that the essential principle of Protestantism is, “the Bible and the Bible only is the rule of faith and practice in religion.” Hence, every appeal to human authority or power, unsupported by Scripture, is a repudiation of Protestant principles, and a virtual yielding to the distinctive claims of Roman Catholicism. “To the law and to the testimony,” then. “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” If it can be right to yield to convenience or expediency in opposition to a divine law, then circumstances, instead of the word of God, form the rule of duty; and were God to sanction it, he would thus treat his own laws as impositions and his moral government as a farce. He says he sanctified the seventh day of the creation week, and Christ says he did it “for man.” The object evidently was that man might not forget his Creator, and that he might have a fixed time, divinely appointed, in which to dismiss the toils and cares of this world and turn his thoughts Godward and Heavenward. It is generally admitted that this is necessary to secure man’s highest moral good. God evidently so regarded it, and therefore provided it for him at the commencement of his existence. To have withheld it would have been to rob man of what he needed to fulfill the highest end of his being. It was the monumental proof of God’s relation to man as Creator, and his right to demand worship and service from him. To remove it from the decalogue would be to take from that law the seal of his authority—the evidence that it came from the Author of nature instead of from some other deity.
Men talk about the Sabbath as a non-essential part of the law, and are anxious to substitute Sunday in its place; but they do not reflect that they thus affix to that law the seal of a false god. God commands us to keep holy the seventh day, because he rested on it when he finished the work of creation, and sanctified it for that reason. It was of necessity a definite day, and not an indefinite seventh part of time. To substitute in its place the first day is to make the fourth commandment contradict and thus nullify itself. How can a command to work on the first day and rest on the seventh, be a command to work on the seventh day and rest on the first? How could the same sanctifying act make the seventh day holy and the first day common, and make the first day holy and the seventh day common? How could God’s declaration that he wrought on the first day and rested on the seventh, be a declaration that he wrought on the seventh day and rested on the first?
If men rest from work and devote themselves to religious meditation and worship, they must have a definite time for it. If the fourth commandment enjoins simply a seventh day, indefinitely, each one may choose any day or time he pleases; for “every one of us shall give account of himself to God.” Rom. 14:12. If each one is to give account of himself, he must decide and act for himself in view of what God commands; and no one has a right to dictate or interfere with this God-given liberty. Has God so revealed his law as to defeat his own design in regard to the Sabbath institution? The miracles of the manna are God’s interpretation in regard to which day he meant by the seventh, and which he declared to be the one on which he rested at the close of creation. A double portion fell on the sixth day, and none on the seventh. If kept over from any other day than the sixth, it bred worms and stank. Why did these events never vary if God intended men should have the liberty of choosing another day if they preferred to? Resting on the seventh day of the week is declared, in the New Testament, to be keeping “the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56; and the next day is called “the first day of the week.” Luke 24:1; Matt. 28:1. It is admitted that neither God, Christ, nor the apostles ever commanded men to keep the first day sacredly or called it the Sabbath. The “Lord’s day,” Rev. 1:10, is not said to be the first day of the week in Scripture, while the Lord always claimed the seventh day to be his sacred day. John wrote his gospel after he did the Revelation, and neither in that nor in any of his epistles does he intimate that the first day is sacred, but, like the rest of the evangelists, he represents the seventh day to be the Sabbath, and the first day of the week to be the day after the Sabbath. Paul, 1 Cor. 16:1, 2, exhorted the Corinthian brethren each one to reckon up his accounts on the first day of the week, and to lay by him according as God had prospered him, for the suffering saints at Jerusalem, that there might be no collecting when he should arrive on his way to relieve them. He said nothing about a Sabbath, a Lord’s day, or an assembly.
The meeting at Troas, Acts 20:7–15, was either on the night following the Sabbath or on that following the first day of the week. If the latter, then it was on the second day of the week according to the divine rule for measuring days. See Gen. 1; Lev. 23:32; Nehemiah 13:19; Mark 14:30. Compare Luke 13:14 with Mark 1:21, 32. The breaking of bread was after midnight, which would bring it on the second day of the week, even according to the Roman mode of reckoning days. If it was on the night following the Sabbath, as is evident, then the apostles and brethren traveled from Troas to Mitylene on the first day of the week, from fifty to seventy miles, which proves that they did not regard that day as sacred; and this is the only instance on record of their assembling for a religious purpose on the first day of the week, and this was a night meeting.
The meeting of Christ with his disciples after his resurrection was necessary to prove his own prediction that he should rise the third day. Had he not thus appeared, the Jews might, with propriety, have declared him to be an impostor. This was a sufficient reason why he should appear on that day. There is no intimation that it was to confer sacredness or dignity upon the day. It must occur on some day, and it no more made the day holy than his birth, death, or ascension made the days holy on which they occurred. God’s resting on the seventh day at creation was not what made it holy, but his act of sanctifying it was. Where is there a Scripture record that the first day had been divinely sanctified, or any reason assigned why it should be kept holy? If there is none, then thus to teach or practice is presumption and a sin.
Some claim exemption from obligation to keep the seventh day because the fourth commandment is not, in so many words, repeated in the New Testament; yet they insist that men ought to keep the first day as the Sabbath, although the Scriptures nowhere enjoin it, while they still teach that the Bible and the Bible only is their rule of faith and practice. Can the re-enactment of a law be necessary in order to perpetuate the duty it enjoins, while no command is needed to establish and enforce a new institution? Can men be under stronger obligation to do what God has not enjoined than to do what he has enjoined? Is it more sinful to neglect what God has not commanded than to disobey what he has commanded? God commands us to work on the first day, while Protestants teach that to do so is a sin. He commands that on the seventh day men shall not work; but Protestants teach that men may work on it. Thus they oppose their authority against God’s, and claim that he is pleased and glorified thereby! “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” 1 John 2:4.
1. It is claimed that “redemption is a greater work than creation,” and that “redemption was completed by the resurrection of Christ.”
God has revealed no such thing. Where do men get their measuring line with which to fathom infinite power and wisdom? If redemption were proved to be the greater work, it would not prove that creation should not be commemorated as God has ordained; nor would it make the first day or any other day holy without a divine appointment and a sanctifying act, setting it apart to a holy use, as the seventh day was set apart. But redemption is nowhere in Scripture attributed to the resurrection of Christ, but to his death and blood. Do the Scriptures of truth teach falsehood here? Christ instituted the Lord’s supper to commemorate redemption, and baptism to commemorate his resurrection; and to substitute a day for that purpose, unauthorized, is casting dishonor upon these institutions and impeaching his wisdom.
The apostles continued, after Christ’s resurrection, to keep the seventh day, as before, declaring it to be “the Sabbath day according to the commandment,” and that the first day of the week was the next day after the Sabbath; and neither they nor any of the disciples, during New-Testament times, were ever complained of by either converted or unconverted Jews for teaching, by word or deed, that the day of the Sabbath was, or was ever to be, changed, or cease to be holy. Thirty years after the resurrection, Paul declared publicly, before his enemies, that he had done nothing against the law of the Jews or the customs of their fathers. Acts 25:8; 28:17. This would not have been true if he had ever taught, by word or deed, that the seventh day had lost any of its former sacredness, and they would not have needed to bribe false witnesses to condemn him. He had established many churches, and had “not shunned to declare all the counsel of God”; Acts 20:27; and he said that should an angel from Heaven preach any other gospel than that he had preached, he should be accursed; Gal. 1:8; for a greater than an angel had taught him what gospel to preach.
2. But we are told that “the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is Jewish, hence we Gentiles have nothing to do with it.” If so, then God is Jewish; for he claims it to be his Sabbath, and therefore Gentiles have nothing to do with him. The same is the case also with the decalogue and all the Old-Testament Scriptures. All were given through the Jews and to the Jews. Hence, according to this argument, Gentiles have no interest in the promises therein recorded. It follows, then, that there is no moral law revealed for Gentiles, nor any redemption from its curse; for Christ came to redeem those who were under the curse of the law that existed when he died, which was the only curse he ever bore for man. Gal. 3:13. Hence, if Gentiles are not amenable to that law, then they have no part in the redemption of Christ. But whatdid Christ mean, when he prayed, “Father, sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth”? (The New Testament did not then exist.) “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.” Did this prayer include none but Jews? All who were here prayed for bore the same relation to the word of God, and were to be alike sanctified through it. If Gentiles are subjects of God’s government they need God’s Sabbath for rest and worship, and to commemorate creation, and to honor their Creator, as well as do the Jews, and for the same reason.
3. Again, we are told that “the Sabbath law was abolished at the death of Christ.”
If so, then the other nine precepts of the decalogue were also abolished; for James teaches that they are one law, and that he who fails in one point is guilty of all; Jas. 2:8–12; for the same divine authority is involved in one command as in all, and may be repudiated in one the same as in all. Paul taught that men who are dead to sin are buried with Christ in baptism, and rise with him to newness of life. But some charge him with teaching that it is the law that is dead. If so, then the law should be buried, instead of the sinner. The grave is the place for the dead, and not for the living. On the contrary, Paul taught that the law that slays the sinner is spiritual, and is served after the inner, or renewed man. But if the decalogue were abolished, then what was sin before was innocent afterward! Then why did Christ call on men to repent of the transgressions of that law, if he were about to release them from its claims by destroying it, whether they repented or not? Only fifty days after his resurrection, the apostles, according to his instructions, went on, preaching repentance for what was done before he died, without intimating that any change had taken place in the law they had transgressed. The decalogue is the only moral code ever given to man; if it were abolished, then we have no need of an atonement, High Priest, or Mediator; for “where no law is, there is no transgression.” Rom. 4:15.
4. But says another, “Although the ten commandments were abolished, nine have been re-enacted, so that we are bound to obey the decalogue the same as before, except the fourth commandment, which was left out!”
Where is the passage that teaches this? Who is it that says, “Thus saith the Lord,” when the Lord has not spoken it? Has God ever abrogated his own government and dethroned himself? No government can exist an instant without laws. Did he ever break down the distinction between right and wrong, and take away the only rule by which his subjects can know their duty, and then go through the farce of re-enacting nine precepts just as they were before, and do it privately, so that no man could know it, and thus expose them to ignorant transgression and its eternal consequences? Where is such re-enactment recorded? Only “those things which are revealed belong unto us.” Deut. 29:29. Some say this re-enactment occurred on the day of Pentecost. But no such thing is revealed in Scripture. If it were a fact, then there were fifty days in which no moral law or government existed, hence no sin nor righteousness! Yet the first sermon preached on that day thundered the command, “Repent,” and that too with reference to what they did before Christ died.
This theory implies that Christ abolished the Father’s laws, destroyed his government, and set up one of his own over its ruins, and thus became the ringleader in rebellion, and so justified men in their disloyalty to God! Was this what he meant in his prayer when he said, “I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”? If Christ did what he is thus charged with doing, he did the will of Satan, and what that fallen angel had for thousands of years been trying in vain to do! If he redeemed men from obligation to obey the decalogue, he redeemed them from the duty of righteousness, instead of redeeming them from sin. But he says, I came not to destroy the law. “Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven.”
5. But another asks, “Is not Christ said to be the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth?”
If this means that believers are thus made free to disregard the ten commandments, then Christ’s mission was to secure to his followers the privilege of Sabbath-breaking, profanity, adultery, theft, murder, etc., with the approval of God, who will say to them, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” But since this freedom is limited to believers, it follows that Christ is not the end of the law to unbelievers, and therefore they are obligated to be moral, and obey God’s law, Sabbath and all. What did the apostle mean when he said, “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments”? Is it not equivalent to saying, This is enmity against God, that we disobey his commandments, or desire to do so? “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Rom. 8:7. The apostle says love to God makes men delight in his law. Regeneration puts that law and love into men’s hearts, and makes obedience to it a pleasure. All truth is of God, and is like him. All error is of Satan, and has his nature in it. He who imbibes truth, imbibes a characteristic of God. He who imbibes error, imbibes a characteristic of Satan, which is enmity to God and his law. Yet we are told, “It makes no difference which we imbibe, if we are only sincere”! It makes but little difference if we are not sincere; for insincerity vitiates everything. But it makes all difference if we are sincere; for what we sincerely embrace becomes a part of ourselves, whether good or bad. The decalogue is the only code that teaches what true love to God and man is, and what it enjoins. This is why love fulfills it, being the essence and spirit of it. It is as perfect a revelation of God’s character as infinite wisdom could give. The beast (Dan. 7:25) is said to exalt himself against God, by attempting to change times and laws which he instituted. And now Christ is charged with doing the same thing. Is this honoring him?
6. Again, we are told that “Christians are led by the Spirit, and therefore do not need the letter of the law to guide them.”
God’s true children have always been led by the Spirit; and if such need not the letter of the law to guide them now, they never did; and why was it given? To claim that a Christian’s impulses and reason are a sufficient moral guide, is to claim infallibility for them,—which is the essence of Popery. God says, “To the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isa. 8:20.
7. But says another, “We cannot keep the commandments if we try, and therefore should turn from them to Christ.”
We, of course, cannot atone for past sin by keeping the commandments, even if we should keep them perfectly, and therefore must turn to Christ for pardon or be lost. But how can we follow Christ and live in disobedience to God’s holy law? Did he do so? If he did, he is no Saviour, but a fellow-sinner and under the curse of the law. He said he kept his Father’s commandments, and no one can follow his example and not do the same. He says, “Follow me; I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Every known departure from God’s commandments is a known departure from Christ; for he kept them all in letter and in spirit. He kept the spirit of the Sabbath by keeping the seventh day of the week, “according to the commandment.”
8. Again, says another, “It is only the righteousness of faith that is required under the gospel; for the apostle says, ‘The just shall live by faith.’”
The apostle quoted from Habakkuk 2:4, which shows that the Old-Testament saints all lived by faith. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews has many names of such saints, “of whom the world was not worthy”; and their faith made them obey God’s commands, thus proving the divinity of their faith. How can faith in God’s wisdom incline men to turn away from the rule God has given for man to walk in? Faith without obedience is the faith of hypocrites and devils. Disobedience shows that God is neither believed nor loved; for the apostle says, “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments,” 1 John 5:3, and that faith does not make them void. Rom. 3:31. “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” 1 John 2:4.
9. But says another, “The object of the Sabbath institution can be secured by keeping the first day as well as by keeping the seventh. The particular day is not essential.”
Has God said so? Why did he make a distinction? Why did he not say a seventh day, or one day in seven if that was what he meant? No translator of the Bible ever dared to put “a seventh day” or “one day in seven” into the fourth commandment; simply because God so worded that command as not to allow of such a rendering. Why was God so particular to point out a definite day to be kept holy, first, by resting on it himself; secondly, by sanctifying it; thirdly, by three distinct miracles each week for forty years, making it impossible for his people to keep any other day of the week without starving? What kind of reverence does it show for men to insinuate that he thus deceived the world for 5,000 years, even down to A.D. 1595, till Dr. Bounds, of England, detected and exposed the deception, by showing that the fourth commandment meant a seventh day instead of the seventh day, as God declared?
To charge God with thus commanding and specifying what he was indifferent about, is to charge him with trifling in matters with which he has connected eternal blessings and penalties. It also charges him with trifling with his own veracity, pretending to be particular when he is not. If we have a right to assume that one thing which God has specified in a command is non-essential, we have a right to assume that all the rest are non-essential; hence we would have non-essential murder, adultery, theft, lying, covetousness, etc., etc.! His authority is as much involved in one specification as in all of them.
10. Again, we are told that “the apostles kept both days.”
If so, then they did not teach that the Sabbath was either changed or abolished, but that it was not, and therefore still kept it as the Sabbath. But there is no evidence that the apostles ever kept the first day of the week sacredly, and it is well known that the regard paid to it in after times was simply as a “church festival,” the same as “Holy Thursday and Good Friday.” Historians agree that the primitive Christians kept the seventh day as the Sabbath for more than three hundred years after Christ, and that it was kept by some of them all through the Dark Ages. Dr. Heylin says that no day but the seventh was called Sabbath for more than a thousand years after Christ. (History of the Sabbath, part 2, chap. 2, sec. 12.)
11. Again, we are told that “it is not essential to salvation which day we keep, and therefore we may as well keep one day as another.”
This is presuming without Divine authority, and is making self-interest, instead of God’s will, the motive of action. Christ’s motto was, “Not my will but thine be done”; and Paul says, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Rom. 8:9. Christ never intimated that any disobedience is non-essential; but said, “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” Hence, disobedience proves men not to be his friends. God’s commands are his commands, he being “God with us.” What did Christ mean when he prayed that his disciples might be sanctified and made one through the truth? Did he mean to pray that they might be one in rejecting and disobeying a part of God’s law? The Revelator was told that true disciples “are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.”
12. Another objector says, “We cannot tell when the seventh day comes.”
Why not, when it is unmistakably pointed out in Scripture? Luke tells us that the women who saw Jesus laid in the tomb “returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” Chap. 23:56. And upon the first day of the week they came to the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. Chap. 24:1. Matthew says, “In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week,” etc. Chap. 28:1. With such inspired testimony, who can doubt which is the seventh day that God commanded to be kept holy? After Constantine’s edict, A.D. 321, the churches became divided in regard to whether the Sabbath or the sun’s day should receive the most honor,—not which was the seventh day. This controversy raged for a thousand years, and has continued, more or less, ever since; and to suppose that all these opposing parties, and the Jews, should drop the same day out of their calendar, all over the earth at the same time, and no one mistrust it, is too absurd for even a lunatic to believe. But those who wish to keep Sunday are not troubled with doubts in regard to when that day comes; and no one who is willing to obey God finds any difficulty in deciding when either day comes. Civilized nations agree, and always have agreed, upon this question, as their almanacs and national records prove.
13. Again, the question is triumphantly asked, “Have so many wise and good men all been mistaken?”
This is not a question to be decided by human wisdom or goodness, but by Divine authority. Wise and good men have always agreed that God commanded that the seventh day be kept holy. In this they have not been mistaken. Now, when men take issue with what God commands, whose authority should we respect most? Can it be right to exalt theirs above God’s on the plea that they are wise and good men? Are they wiser and better than God? Let them show their wisdom by producing one “thus saith the Lord,” that the first day is the Sabbath, in place of the seventh, since, as Protestants, they profess to take the Bible only as their authority. If there is such a passage, they are the ones who can produce it. Yet, after 1800 years, not a single text has been found which says that the Sabbath has been changed, or that the first day is sacred.
No class of men differ more widely among themselves than these men; hence some or all of them must be in error. There is scarcely a question about which they differ more widely than on this Sabbath question. Some claim that the fourth commandment is still binding, but that the day has been changed. Others, that the day has not been changed, but that no particular day was ever enjoined. Others, that the day has been changed twice, once in Egypt and again by Christ. Others, that Christ did not change, but that he abolished the Sabbath. Others, that he abolished the whole decalogue, etc., etc. Thus they contradict each other on almost every phase of the subject. But the Bible teaches one uniform truth,—“The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”
14. Again, says another, “We may keep the spirit of the fourth commandment, and not keep the letter.”
Has God said so? This is saying that we may obey a command and not do the thing commanded, nor purpose to do it! If this principle be true, Eve might have eaten the forbidden fruit, and still kept the spirit of the command, “Thou shalt not eat of it”! Men might worship idols and keep the spirit of the command which says, “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them”! Or steal, and keep the spirit of the command which says, “Thou shalt not steal”! etc., etc. Such a principle would justify the reversing of every command in the Bible, and every threat and promise. When professing Christians resort to such pleas to justify themselves in neglecting a plain command of God, what wonder is it that deism and infidelity make such rapid strides? It does more to bring the Scriptures and Christianity into disrepute than the ranting of all the infidels on earth could do. How can we know the spirit of a command except by the author’s language? The decalogue was proclaimed by God and written with his own finger; and who knows its spirit if he does not? and who is so capable of expressing it truthfully? Christ kept the spirit of the fourth commandment by keeping the seventh day, and he has not taught that we can keep it in any other way. To be his follower is to follow his example and teaching.
15. Others say, “Although God commands us to keep the seventh day holy, yet Christians being united in keeping the first day, it is better to let well alone, and wrong to disturb the public harmony.”
This is equivalent to saying that it is well to disobey God, if men are united in doing so, and a sin to obey him if it is contrary to human custom! If so, then Christ was a sinner; for he taught and practiced in opposition to God’s professed people whenever they deviated from the Scriptures, and said, “I am come to set a man at variance with his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” “And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.” Matt. 10:34–38. Here is Christ’s denunciation against all compromising of God’s word for the sake of being on good terms with men; and it shows that no one can do it and be in harmony with him. “Thou shalt not go with a multitude to do evil.” The question at issue is between the authority of God and the authority of man. “And whether it be right in the sight of God to obey man rather than God, judge ye.” The majority of human votes is of no account against God’s word; for God alone is an infinite majority. Seven-eighths of mankind are idolaters; two-thirds of professing Christians are image-worshipers; and is it therefore the duty of all to conform to such practices, because the majority thus practice?
16. But says another, “God has abundantly blessed Christians in keeping Sunday, which he would not have done had it been displeasing to him.”
What man or people has not been abundantly blessed of God? “He maketh the sun to shine on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45), thus blessing them alike. David was staggered in view of the prosperity of the wicked, and the afflictions that often fell upon the righteous. The contrast in the Divine favor seemed to him to be on the side of the wicked till he learned from God’s word what their end would be. Christ said, “Judgenot according to appearances, but judge righteous judgment;” i. e., judge by God’s standard of righteousness,—“the law and the testimony.” If success in this world is proof of God’s blessing, no Christian sect has so much proof as Roman Catholics. For a thousand years they were almost the only representatives of Christianity, and to-day they far outnumber all Protestants together. See how God has blessed them in praying to saints and mutilating the Scriptures! Would God thus prosper and bless them, they ask, if he were displeased with their image-worship and selling indulgences? No nation has had so long and prosperous a reign as the Chinese. Their history reaches back four thousand years. Surely, God has abundantly blessed them in their idolatry; and would he have done so if it had been displeasing to him? But the saved are “they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish [confirm] the law.” Rom. 3:31. “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Matt. 7:14.
“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Matt. 7:22, 23. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not grievous.” 1 John 5:3.