Why Return to the Sabbath?
By Light of Home
THOUGHTLESS men claim that a return to the Sabbath is a return to Judaism. The central idea of the Sabbath is to remember God, not simply creation, in reverent, joyful love and worship. That, surely, is not "Jewish." It were just as consistent to say that it is "Jewish" to cease from idolatry, or to give honor to parents, as to keep the Sabbath. Judaism covered the Sabbath with a fungus growth of false ceremonials. Christ pruned that away and left the Sabbath fitted for Christian use. Few things have aided the growth of unchristian rationalism since the Reformation, more than the unscriptural rejecting of the Sabbath and clinging to the Sunday. Hence, a return to the Sabbath would check a strong tendency in the church to undue and destructive rationalism. It would bring God back into human life, through Sabbath-keeping, based on his law. A return to the Sabbath would give a broader view of the whole Sabbath question. The assumption that "the work of redemption is greater than the work of creation," has become a sort of current coin in the discussion of the Sabbath question. There are several serious objections to it: 1. It is illogical. Both works are infinite. Man can measure neither of them; much less can he compare them and say which is the greater. 2. It is not a scriptural proposition. The writers of the Bible attempt no such comparison. 3. It narrows the whole question, unjustly. We repeat what is said above. The central idea of the Sabbath is to remember God in reverent love and worship, and not any one act, or one department of his work. The Sabbath is God's memorial. As the memorial of a friend represents his entire life and character, and not a single phase of it, so the Sabbath tells of God, as Creator, as Preserver, as Redeemer. This is by far a broader and more helpful view than the incomplete one which attempts to confine the Sabbath to creation, or the Sunday to the resurrection. Christianity needs the whole memorial statue, not one side of the face, or one hand only. Christ unveiled this memorial, and left the real Sabbath to his church. Pagan prejudice against the "hated brood of Jews," threw God's memorial into the street, and placed the "venerable day of the sun" in its stead. Romanism legislated the "venerable" memorial of the sun, and sun-worship, into power. Protestantism accepted the legacy from Romanism, but sought to strengthen the foundation by putting the law of God therein. That law refuses to fit the place, hence the steady growth of non-Sabbatic holidayism and revelry. Sunday has not the grip of religious authority. Men who turn from it to the Sabbath, in the Spirit of love-born obedience, build firmly on the new foundation. Such men climb from the lowlands of indifference to the highlands of joyous obedience unto the law of God, written in their hearts. Such a foundation is very different from an inoperative civil law, and a crumbling tradition.—Light of Home.