“WHO CHANGED THE SABBATH.”
By C. P. B.
THAT the Sabbath has been changed so far as it is possible for man to change that which God has established, all are agreed; but when it comes to stating the reason and manner of the change, there is not the same unanimity of sentiment. Some hold that the Sabbath was given only to the Jews, and was never binding upon any but the Jews; and that there is now, properly speaking, no Sabbath. Of course this view involves the abrogation of the decalogue and in this contradicts the words of our Saviour who said, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” It also contradicts the divine declaration that “the Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27), i. e., for the race. Others, however, admit the perpetual binding force of the law of God, but aver that Christ and his apostles changed the Sabbath; and that whereas the fourth commandment did formerly enjoin the sacred observance of the seventh day, it now performs the same office for the first day; and this without any explicit statement to that effect in all the Scriptures! It was no doubt the utter absurdity of this view which drove the antinomians into the still worse error (if indeed all errors are not equally bad) of holding that the moral law is abolished. But then assaults upon the law of God are sufficiently accounted for by Paul in Rom. 8:7, and until men come under the new covenant and have the law of God written in their hearts (Jer. 31:31-34), we must expect to see the carnality of which the apostle speaks cropping out in various ways. The very nature of the Sabbath law forbids the idea that it should at one time enforce one day and at another time another day. The fourth commandment sets forth explicitly the reason for enjoining the observance of the Sabbath, namely, the creation of the world and God’s rest on the seventh day of the creation week, and to change the day must of necessity change the reason for its observance, and to change the reason for an institution is to entirely change the institution itself, or rather it is to destroy one institution and establish another in its stead; and this is just what has been done, as far as man could do it in the case of the Sabbath, for instead of the seventh day being kept as a memorial of creation, we have another day kept for another reason. Seeing the difficulties which surround the positions already noticed, but unwilling to return to the observance of the original Sabbath, a few have taken a position even more absurd, if possible, than the others, namely, that the first day of the week, as we now have it, is the true seventh day, and that the day anciently observed is really the sixth day of the true week. According to this theory the Sabbath has not been changed once but twice, i. e., from the seventh to the sixth day of the week and then back again to the seventh, which by that time had by some hocus pocus become the first day now known as Sunday! Of course every fact of history, both sacred and profane, as well as every principle of logic and common sense, is against this view; but that makes no difference to those whose minds are so peculiarly constructed as to be able to entertain such an idea. In fact, one who can believe that theory is capable, with a very little effort, of believing almost anything except the truths of God’s word. Indeed we seriously doubt sometimes whether any do really believe this theory. But still others hold that the change from the seventh to the first day of the week was made this side of Christ and the apostles, but in harmony with the will of God. This position is thus set forth by one of its adherents:— “The selection of Sunday, thus changing the particular day designated in the fourth commandment,552was brought about by the gradual concurrence of the early Christian church; and on this basis, and on none other, does the Christian Sabbath, the first day of the week, rightly rest.”—Christian at Work, Jan. 8, 1885. In order that none may misunderstand what is meant by “the early Christian church,” we supplement this quotation with another from the same paper under date of Feb. 18, 1886, as follows:— “We hear less than we used to about the apostolic origin of the present Sunday observance, and for the reason that while the Sabbath and Sabbath rest are woven into the warp and woof of Scripture, it is now seen, as it is admitted, that we must go to later than apostolic times for the establishment of Sunday observance.” This latter quotation shows clearly that the editor of the Christian at Work does not think that the apostles, nor the church in the days of the apostles, had anything whatever to do with the change; and in this he is manifestly correct, as can be demonstrated by the most reliable historians. We have room in this connection for only a single extract, and until that is controverted (and it never can be), it will not be necessary to cite any other proof. Neander, of whom “McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia” says that he is “universally conceded to be by far the greatest of ecclesiastical historians,” gives this pointed and candid testimony:— “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far from them and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday as a sin.”—Rose’s Neander, page 186. This is a plain statement of an undeniable fact; but as truth on this point is not in much demand, an effort has been made to suppress Neander’s testimony, and so it appears only in the first edition of his history. Let no one think that such a historian as Neander, and such a paper as the Christian at Work would make such statements if the facts of history did not compel them to do so. The truth is that the claim made by some that the apostles observed the first day of the week, is so utterly groundless that men of learning do not care to hazard their reputation on statements which even a tyro in history can readily disprove; and so all, except those polemic divines who care more for their particular creeds than they do for the truth, refuse to longer peddle the pious frauds by which Sunday sanctity has so long been sustained. But the fact remains that the change has been made; and if Christ and the apostles did not make it, how was it accomplished? If there is no divine authority for the change what authority is there for it? And if it was not introduced in the days of the apostolic church, when was it brought in? Surely these are proper questions,—questions which history will answer, as we shall show in future articles.