The Seventh Day of the Week Not a Jewish Sabbath.
By James White
IN 1872 the writer was challenged to a written discussion on the subject of the Sabbath, by a Disciple preacher of high standing in his denomination. On the nature of the seventh-day Sabbath we then wrote the following remarks, which we still believe to be conclusive as proving its morality, and its entire separation from all Jewish or typical institutions:— The seventh-day Sabbath stands apart from all the other sabbaths, which were afterward ordained, in respect to its title; the reason of its institution; and the nature of the obligation to observe it. And, First, its title. In any and all of the yearly sabbaths, such as were peculiar to the Jewish system, there is no rest of the Lord from any work given as their basis; and therefore they are not the sabbaths of the Lord as is the seventh day, his Sabbath, or rest day. We find this distinction recognized in the Scriptures, as in Lev. 23. The yearly sabbaths are enumerated and enforced, “beside the Sabbaths of the Lord.” Verse 38. As all the other sabbaths were local and contingent, limited to that dispensation, to Israel, it was said in prophecy, I will cause all her sabbaths to cease. Hos. 2: 11. Secondly, the reason of its institution. We take the first sabbath given to Israel as peculiar to their dispensation; the fifteenth and twenty-first days of the first month, connected with the feast of the Passover. These, as each of the other sabbaths peculiar to their system, were (1) to commemorate an event in their experience; (2) they were typical of future events; (3) they were yearly and not weekly sabbaths. The weekly Sabbath, the seventh-day Sabbath, was made at creation, and commemorated that work; and in its institution it was related to God’s work only. But the others are relative to man’s action and condition as a sinful being. I cannot conceive how a greater difference could exist. Had man never sinned, it would then have been forever true, as it is to-day, that God made the world in six days. Had no system of redemption been devised or needed, it would still have been eternal truth that God rested the seventh day, and that he blessed and sanctified his rest day. But, on the other hand, had not man sinned; had no system of redemption been promised; had no types of the Redeemer’s work been ordained, then none of the typical or yearly sabbaths would have been instituted. Had man not sinned, the whole train of circumstances by which those sabbaths were called into being, would not have existed. They all stand related to man’s action as a sinner, and to Christ’s work as Redeemer. And as they point to, and have their fulfillment in, his work, they are appropriately denominated, “A shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” Col. 2: 14-17. But the Lord’s Sabbath, as has been shown, is of an entirely different nature. It is not so related to man’s action as a sinner, or to the work of redemption. It was not based upon any contingency, or upon any future work. But it had for its foundation a glorious work all finished and complete “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy;” a work in which Jehovah himself delighted, and which he pronounced “very good.” And, thirdly, the nature of its obligation. A difference in this is the necessary result of the truths before stated. In three respects I notice this difference:— (a) The obligation to keep the seventh-day Sabbath is based on primary and eternal truth. By primary truth I here mean that which grows out of the action of God alone—out of the original constitution of things; truth that existed before the fall of man, and would ever have existed had he never sinned. There is a class of secondary truths growing out of a perversion of God’s work; out of the contingent relation we sustain to God since the fall. And all institutions, and obligations corresponding thereto, growing out of these secondary relations are necessarily limited by their nature; they are typical or shadowy. I think that no person, on reflection, will dispute the ground I here take, that NO TYPICAL INSTITUTION OR MERELY POSITIVE DUTY CAN GROW OUT OF ORIGINAL RELATIONS; i. e., out of those relations existing from creation, and by virtue of creation. And, on the other hand, NO MORAL OBLIGATION CAN ORIGINATE IN, OR SPRING FROM, A SECONDARY RELATION; i. e., a relation growing out of man’s act of rebellion. In God’s own mind all moral relations and duties originate. Man may, and he did, create the necessity for a scheme of restitution and redemption; but no part of this plan is elementary. It owes its origin to wrong-doing; its necessity is laid in sin and rebellion. (b) The seventh day was from the beginning a hallowed or sanctified day. It was “holy to the Lord.” Ex. 16: 23; 31: 15. “The holy of the Lord.” Isa. 58: 13. “My [the Lord’s] holy day.” Id. The obligation to observe it has sacredness as its basis; the commandment guarded an original, sacred institution. The Sabbath, like its twin sister, marriage, though often and much abused, comes down to us from Eden’s purity and glory. (c) It is based on the right of property. God always claimed the seventh day as his; and this claim he based on facts as old and as unalterable as creation itself, as has been abundantly shown. But the obligation of the other sabbaths did not rest on any such original relation; and, coming yearly, they fell at different times on all the different days of the week which God gave to man for his own work. The days of the week on which any of them fell (except when they fell on the seventh day), were not holy by reason of any blessing or sanctification ever put upon those particular days. The consecration, in their cases, attached to institutions which were temporary, and (as to the days of the week) were movable. God never claimed the right in them that he did in the seventh day. He did not rest from his work on any of them. They could not be the Lord’s sabbaths, or rest, as the seventh day was and is. In a word, the duty to keep the seventh day holy is based on the original right of property, specifically declared. And if the eighth commandment is moral because it guards the right of property, evidently the fourth is moral for the same reason. Certainly, every relation upon which the institution and obligation of the seventh-day Sabbath depended is as old as creation itself—as old as any of man’s moral relations possibly can be. J. H. W.