A MONUMENT TO THE SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH.
By C. P. B.
WE are sometimes challenged to prove that the day now commonly called Saturday, and which seventh-day observers keep, as they believe, in obedience to the fourth commandment, is indeed the true seventh day from creation, the original Sabbath sanctified by the Creator in Eden. We answer that there can be no doubt about it, for several reasons. First, nobody of intelligence doubts that we now have the identical seventh day which Christ and the apostles kept, and which they called the Sabbath, and which one of the evangelists tells us (Luke 23:56) certain persons rested upon according to the commandment. This ought to be sufficient; but in addition to this we have an imperishable monument to the original Sabbath, the true seventh day, created in Eden when the Sabbath was first instituted—a monument which still stands and marks the day upon which God rested beyond the possibility of mistake. This monument is the week, which has come down to us unchanged from the most remote antiquity, and through so many different channels that the possibility of mistake is entirely eliminated. Indeed, the week is at once a monument to the true Sabbath and an unanswerable testimony to the truthfulness of the Mosaic account of creation. And yet some even among professed Christians would cast it aside as worthless. For instance, some three years since the Christian at Work, referring to the origin of the week, said:— “The Chaldeans and the Egyptians got their year by observing the first rising of Sirius before the sun. In like manner we must conclude that the fact that seven days marked each changing of the moon would form the most natural division of time into weeks following the division into days covered by the rising and setting of the sun. It may be stated here that the Sabbath was known to the Egyptians, and observed before the exodus; and it was this Sabbath which was adopted by the Hebrews and given a new significance, just as were the three sacrifices, . . . and various other features which were borrowed from the Egyptian customs, and adopted under the theocracy.” Why anybody, especially a Christian writer, should say such a thing we cannot comprehend. Certainly the facts are against the theory here advanced. It is probably true that the Chaldeans and Egyptians did get their year in the manner indicated; but it is very far from the truth to say that either they or any other nation got the week from the changes of the moon. There is absolutely nothing in nature to suggest the weekly cycle; and so patent is this fact that the “Encyclopedia Britannica,” article “Calendar,” says:— “As it [the week] forms neither an aliquot part of the year nor of the lunar month, those who reject the Mosaic recital will be at a loss, as Delambre remarks, to assign to it an origin having much semblance of probability.” As intimated in the foregoing, the “Mosaic recital” does at least have “much semblance of probability;” and the truth is that, aside from the Bible account of creation, there is in history, as in nature, nothing whatever to suggest the origin of the week. We learn from secular history that the week “has been employed from time immemorial in almost all Eastern countries;” but aside from revelation we know absolutely nothing of its origin. That the weekly cycle could not have been suggested by the changes of the moon is evident from the fact that the moon does not change once in seven days, but once in seven days and nine hours, as nearly as may be; and an attempt to account for the week in that manner would, it is safe to say, never have been made had it not been that the very existence of such a cycle unaccounted for by either science or history (aside from the Mosaic record), is an unanswerable testimony to the truthfulness of the Bible account. It was for the purpose of destroying this testimony that infidel patrons of “science falsely so called” first invented and gave to the world the hypothesis that the weekly cycle had its origin in the changes of the moon. According to the book of Genesis, both the week and the weekly Sabbath had their origin in the facts of the creation; and to assign to them any other origin is to deny Genesis. But if we deny Genesis we must in like manner deny the whole Pentateuch. And where shall we stop?—Evidently just where infidelity directs us to stop,—when we have denied all inspiration. It is a fact that the Chaldeans and the Egyptians had both the week and some knowledge of the weekly Sabbath; but it is very evident that this knowledge had been handed down to them by tradition from the garden of Eden. From the “Encyclopedia Britannica,” article, “Babylonia,” we learn that the Babylonians had the Sabbath, and that they called it the “rest;” and theirs was a written language 2,000 years before Christ. But how came they to apply that title to the last day of the week? Only one answer can be given, i. e., they had a tradition of the creation, and of God’s rest upon the seventh day, just as the Scriptures teach. And as Babylon (Babel, Gen. 10:10) was, we might say, the mother of nations, it is not difficult to imagine how the Egyptians, as well as the other nations of the East, come to have a knowledge of the week and of the “rest,” which was the last day of the week. And the very fact that all nations have the same week, and that history attests that from the earliest ages the week has always and everywhere been the same, proves beyond a doubt that the day now known as Saturday is the identical seventh day of the original week, the divinely ordered Sabbath of the Lord. Seventy-one out of one hundred and seven ancient languages attest the fact of the knowledge of the Sabbath, while they all bear record to the existence of the weekly cycle. Even the Chinese, as is shown by Rev. Thomas Hamilton, A.M., of Belfast, in his prize essay, “Our Rest,” published by the Sabbath Alliance of Scotland, had not only the weekly cycle but the original seventh-day Sabbath, which they at one time observed. We know that the Hebrews had the Sabbath in Egypt, and that Moses and Aaron taught them to keep it (Ex. 5:4, 5), and that the Egyptians would not allow them to do so. But it by no means follows that they got the Sabbath from their oppressors; indeed, that seems very unlikely, even aside from the Bible narrative, which absolutely forbids it. However, there is no reason to suppose that they got the Sabbath from the Egyptians. If they had derived the Sabbath from that source they must also have obtained their ideas of its proper observance from the same source, and had they worshipped as did their masters, it is unlikely that there would have been any objection whatever to it. It is far more reasonable to suppose that they had it independent of the heathen among whom they dwelt. It is more than probable that Abraham kept the Sabbath; and we know that Jacob was familiar with the week (Gen. 29:18, 27); and, as with the Babylonians and Egyptians, to have the week was likewise to have at least some knowledge of the Sabbath. It is, then, altogether likely that the Hebrews took the knowledge of the Sabbath to Egypt with them; and the same is true of nearly all their ceremonies. But it has been argued that the religious forms of the Hebrews did resemble those of the Egyptians. Be it so; it does not follow that they borrowed them from the people among whom they sojourned. The fact of resemblance does point to a common origin, but that origin is amply accounted for in the inspired account of the common origin of the human family.696Immediately after the fall, God ordained forms for his own worship, and he instituted sacrifices which were to point forward to the promised Saviour. It was these forms that the heathen had corrupted; it was these sacrifices that they had perverted. And when God took his people by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, it was that they might be free from such corrupting influences; that they might keep his Sabbath, a thing they were not permitted to do in Egypt; and that they might offer unto him offerings in righteousness, free from the contaminating influences of pagan worship. Certainly the idea that the Hebrews borrowed these things from the Egyptians can be received only by those who deny the divine inspiration of the Pentateuch; it certainly cannot be by those who believe, with the apostle Paul, that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God.”
C. P. B.