THE "CONGREGATIONALIST" AND THE SABBATH.
By C. P. Bollman
THOUGH an advocate of first-day sacredness, the Congregationalist, in its issue of June 14, answering a question relative to Sabbath observance, after speaking of the difference of opinion regarding the origin of that institution, says:— "All can, at any rate, agree that—some two months or more before the promulgation of the decalogue—the strict keeping of the seventh day as a Sabbath was enjoined (Ex. 16:5, 22-30) upon the Hebrews. . . . The due obedience of this fourth commandment was guarded by some special statutes; and 700 years before Christ (Isa. 58:13, 14), we find Isaiah uttering solemn warning against its profanation, and promising rich blessings to its just observance. . . . When Jesus came, he found the nation to which he came not only thoroughly grounded in the observance of the day, but tied to it hand and foot by a Rabbinic superstructure of traditional laws, which made a burden of what was meant to be a blessing. All this he corrected, and left the occasion to his followers as the rest day of one in seven which it had been for 1,500 years." After a few rambling remarks in the usual strain relative to the mythical transfer of the Sabbatic institution from the seventh to the first day of the week, the Congregationalist continues, still speaking of the seventh day:515 "There is no lack of evidence outside of Christian circles that both Jews and early Christians observed this weekly festival, and that such observance was a rite which distinguished the Hebrews from other nations. Perhaps five years before the birth of our Lord, Ovid (Art. Amat., 1, 416) referred to the 'septima festa' as a part of the religious cult of Palestine. Twenty years, or so, after the crucifixion, Philo (Vit. Mos., 2, 137) boasted that the observance of the day was spreading among all nations; and, perhaps ten years later, Seneca—in a work which has not survived to our time, but which is quoted by Augustine (Civ. Dei., 6, 11)—complained because this Jewish and Christian observance obliged them 'to spend the seventh part of their life in idleness, and harm themselves by not doing a great many things when they ought to be done,' adding that, through the spread of that wicked custom (victi victoribus leges dederunt), 'the vanquished were giving laws to their vanquishers.'" As the Congregationalist says, this evidence is not from Christian sources, but from Jewish and heathen writers; and while that paper does not call attention to the fact, it is none the less a significant circumstance that these heathen writers charge that both Jews and Christians kept the Sabbath. The Congregationalist evidently recognizes this fact, however, and so seeks to turn aside the full force of it by saying:— "The early Christian church for a considerable period appears to have kept both the old Sabbath and the new Lord's day. It would have been clearly very difficult, if not impossible, for the majority of believers at first to observe the Lord's day as the Sabbath. The slaves of a heathen master, the children of a heathen parent, could not be in that respect their own masters." Just what thought is intended to be conveyed by saying that because many of the early Christians were slaves, "they could not at first observe the Lord's day as the Sabbath," is not clear; but the writer of the paragraph quoted has certainly given ground for the suspicion that he designed to convey the idea that that is the reason why the observance of the Sabbath was so long continued by the early church. Such a proposition is, however, most absurd, since the heathen would naturally have been much more opposed to the observance of the seventh day than they would to the keeping of the first, for the latter was their own great festival, as everybody is well aware; and there is every reason for believing that it was this fact, together with heathen prejudice against all things Jewish, that led to the adoption of the first day by the Western church, which was composed largely of converts from paganism. Indeed it is admitted by all that the observance of the Sabbath was continued in the Eastern church long after Sunday-keeping had become general among the Latin converts. It matters little, however, what impression the writer designed to give; the fact remains that Sabbath-keeping was so general and so long-continued among the early Christians that even the most zealous first-day advocates cannot deny the facts; and it is very evident that their numerous attempts to explain away these facts are by no means satisfactory even to themselves.