Some One-Thousand-Dollar Reasons for Keeping Sunday.
By Editor
WE come now in this one-thousand-dollar prize-essay to the discussion of the change from the seventh to the first day of the week in the observance of the Sabbath. It is true that, as shown last week, the author of this essay leaves no room for any change; nevertheless he insists that there has been a change, and insists on giving "reasons" for it. And as reasons to be worth $1,000 ought to be pretty good, we shall, as far as in us lies, give our readers the full benefit of them. To get a full and fair statement of the question before us, we shall quote again a passage referred to last week, as follows:— “Accepting the conclusion that the Fourth Commandment is still in force, it may very properly be asked, Why, then, do not Christians obey it by keeping holy the seventh day of the week as it directs? By what right is this plain precept disregarded and the first day of the week observed? This question is a natural one, and unless a satisfactory answer can be given, the Christian world must stand convicted of error.” Now we are prepared to hear what he proposes shall be the “satisfactory answer,” and which we have good reason to suppose the American Sunday-school Union considers “a satisfactory answer,” seeing they paid $1,000 for it. Mr. Waffle’s first effort at “a satisfactory answer” is the following: “The fact that the observance of the first day of the week is so nearly universal and has been of such long continuance, is very significant.” That certainly is not a satisfactory answer. In fact, it is no answer at all. It is simply a begging of the question. But he says it is “very significant.” Significant of what? Why this:— “It suggests that there must have been some good and sufficient reason for the change.”—P. 184. That is to say: The “plain precept” of God has been disregarded by nearly everybody for a long while. Therefore there must be some good and sufficient reason for it. In other words: It must be right because nearly everybody does it. But he knows that such doctrine as that will never do, even in a one-thousand-dollar prize-essay, so he immediately adds this caution:— “Too much should not be made of this, for the church has sanctioned many false doctrines, and been tainted by many corrupt practices.” That is the truth. And one of the falsest of her many false doctrines, and one of the most corrupt of her many corrupt practices, is the disregard for the “plain precept” of God as laid down in the Fourth Commandment, and the substitution for it of the observance of the heathen institution of Sunday, in defense of which Mr. A. E. Waffle writes, and the American Sunday-school Union prints, this one-thousand-dollar prize-essay. His next attempt at a satisfactory answer is this: “We have taken the custom of keeping the Sabbath on the first day of the week as we found it; and while this does not exempt us from the duty of inquiry, it throws upon those who question our course ‘the burden of proof.’”—P. 185. Can anything be too absurd to find a place in a prize essay on the Sunday-sabbath? Here is a proposition that is contrary to the commonest kind of common sense, as well as to the rules of logic and of evidence. Says Dr. Carson: “It is self-evident that in every question the burden of proof lies on the side of the affirmative. An affirmation is of no authority without proof. It is as if it had not been affirmed. If I assert a doctrine, I must prove it; for until it is proved, it can have no claim to reception. Strictly speaking, it exists only on its proof; and a mere affirmation of it is only an existence on affirmation. If I obstinately refuse proof, I leave my doctrine without foundation, and a simple denial of it is sufficient. No man can be called upon to disprove that which alleges no proof. It is a truth as clear as the light of the sun, that, in every instance, proof lies with the affirmative, or with the holders of the doctrine or rite. If presumption has the privilege of casting the burden of proof on the other side, then every man has a right to decline defending his own opinions, and to cast the burden of proof upon those who dispute them. Can anything be more monstrous?” Yet in this grand prize-essay, this monstrosity is just what is presented as “a satisfactory answer” to the question, “By what right is the plain precept of the Fourth Commandment disregarded and the first day of the week observed?” One other statement he makes in this connection, which we wish to transcribe. He says:— “It is not claimed that the apostles began to keep the Sabbath on the first day of the week immediately after the death of Christ.”—P. 189. Then on what day did they keep the Sabbath immediately after the death of Christ? Did they keep it on the seventh day, or did they keep no Sabbath at all between the death of Christ and the time when they began to keep the first day of the week? In either case, is there not just as much apostolic example for not keeping the first day of the week as there is for keeping it? There certainly is. After having begged the question of “a satisfactory answer” through more than five pages, he comes to the discussion of the question of reasons for the change. This he introduces with the question:— “Was there any reason for such a change?”—P. 190. And in answer to his own question he again begins at once to beg the question thus:— “If the apostles were guided by the Holy Spirit when they made it, we need not ask for the reason.” This might be readily enough allowed if the apostles had anywhere told us that they did make the change. But when, as Mr. Waffle himself says, “So far as the record shows, they did not give any explicit command enjoining the abandonment of the seventh-day Sabbath, and its observance on the first day,” and when men insist upon palming off upon us by the authority of the apostles something that the apostles knew nothing at all about, we insist that we do need to ask for the reason. But Mr. Waffle continues to beg his question. He says:— “But since the reality of the change is disputed, we may say that if good reasons for it can be discovered, they furnish presumptive proof that it really took place under divine direction.” But if reasons were discovered which should seem to us good, does it follow that these would be good reasons in the sight of God? Does it follow that these reasons will bear the test of the Judgment? And if, without any command of God, reasons should be discovered which seem to us good for the performance of what we deem religious duties, and we insist upon men’s performing these supposed duties, then what is that but to make human reason, instead of the word of God, the standard of human duty? And what is that but to usurp the8prerogative of God? And what is that but to imitate the papacy? This is just what is done by Protestants when they insist upon the observance of Sunday, when, even as they admit, so far as the record of God shows, there is no command for it. Though they number to the one hundredth figure their so-called reasons for it, we care not. If there be no command of God for it, there can be no reason for it. At last, by the help of all this beating about, Mr. Waffle actually reaches the place where he introduces the “reasons” which he has begged so hard may be admitted. The first of these is this:— “One such reason can undoubtedly be found in the abuses which had gathered around the Jewish Sabbath. Christ would not burden his church with such a Sabbath as the rabbis had made; and the easiest way to get rid of these abuses was to change the day.”—P. 190. “The Gentile churches would never have accepted the Sabbath of the Jews as they had come to observe it.”—Id. “Christians were not to observe the Sabbath precisely as the Jews had kept it before these abuses arose and while they were acting in accordance with the divine law.”—P. 191. To take the space to refute such puerile “reasons” as these, seems to us an imposition upon the good sense and intelligence of our readers. As for the first, if there be any truth at all in it, we should be obliged to believe that Christ changed almost every precept of God; for there was scarcely one which the rabbis, the scribes, and Pharisees had not made void by their traditions and abuses. As for the second, it really has no place; for the great Author of Christianity never asked the Gentile churches, nor any other churches, to accept “the Sabbath of the Jews as they had come to observe it.” But he does ask all to accept the Sabbath of the Lord as he himself observed it, and as he taught that it should be observed. For this cause he swept away the traditions and abuses that the Jews had heaped upon it. As for the third, what is said there, is, in fact, that “Christians were not to observe the Sabbath in accordance with the divine law” (), which is simply abominable. But such are the “reasons” for disregarding the plain precept of Jehovah. It was for such “reasons” as this that the American Sunday-school Union, “after a painstaking and protracted examination,” paid a prize of $1,000. There is, however, just one redeeming feature of this subject. That is, the author of these “reasons” relieves the apostles from all responsibility for them. He says:— “We do not say that the apostles saw these reasons, and were governed by them. We offer them in explanation of the fact that they were led by the Spirit to make the change, and as suggesting a probability that it would be made.”—P. 192. We think Mr. Waffle does well to relieve the apostles from the folly of any knowledge of these preposterous “reasons.” And we are certain that all will do well to remain just as far from seeing and being governed by these “reasons” as were the apostles. In this we have an instance of “apostolic example” that we can all safely follow. J.