p. 73 | OAKLAND'S SUNDAY MASS MEETING

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 4, 1889

OAKLAND'S SUNDAY MASS MEETING.

By John Norton Loughborough

A MASS meeting for the purpose of working up an interest on the enactment of a Sunday law in California, was held, according to appointment, in Hamilton Hall, the evening of January 22. The meeting was presided over by Prof. S. P. Morse, of Highland Park College. The principal speaker of the evening was the Rev. M. C. Briggs, D. D., of Santa Clara. The Political phase of the meeting will be noticed later. We wish at present to call attention to Dr. Briggs's argument from the Scriptures in favor of Sunday.

His position was, that Sunday was the original seventh day; that the Sabbath was transferred from that to the sixth day at the exode from Egypt; and that the transfer back again was at the time of the resurrection of Christ, when the Sunday was again made the Sabbath. The first form of idolatry, he said, was sun-worship, and the Sabbath was perverted, not by changing the day, but by dedicating that day to the sun. The gentleman's statement was all the proof he gave for this point. The whole heathen world followed this perversion, the Egyptians among the rest; and the Israelites, who were in Egypt in bondage, had become idolaters. To save them from this, God discards his own day, upon which he rested, and substitutes another, which he calls his rest day, upon which he did not rest!! And for proof of this, many passages were read which had no more application to the point necessary to be proved than they did to David's sling; neither did the doctor tell us just how they proved it. And lastly, the Sabbath was transferred back to the true seventh day at the resurrection of Christ. For this he perverted the Greek of Matt. 28:1, a perversion which has been exposed again and again.

And all this, said the learned doctor, was indicated by such terms as the eighth day. You will notice, he remarked, that the "morrow after the Sabbath" follows right along after the Sabbath. Strange indeed! In our simplicity we could not help querying if that was not also true of every day in the week,—the morrow after a day follows that day.

Well, we pass over the mistake of a thousand years between the creation and the exode, and other errors much worse. We have heard and read many defenses of the Sunday-sabbath; but we never heard a weaker one than that given by the Rev. M. C. Briggs, D. D. Logical argument was wanting; proof was wanting. An effort was made to supply these vacancies by plastering the slight wall with the untempered mortar of assumption, dogmatism, and an out-and-out wresting of the word of God. To such arguments and proofs, to such pitiful shifts, are defenders of the pseudo-Sabbath driven. So may it be. "Yea, let God be true, but every man a liar."

M. C. W.