GOOD FRIDAY AND SUNDAY.
By Editor
THE Mail and Express of Friday, April 19, devotes a column to the discussion of Good Friday, as a non-biblical institution. It declares:— 'Our Lord did not ask us to keep Good Friday in his memory, nor any other set time; but he did say in respect to eating bread, "This do in remembrance of me;" and in respect to drinking of the cup, "This do as oft as ye drink it in remembrance of me." And the Apostle Paul says, "For as often as ye eat this bread and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come." 1 Cor. 11:26. As this was the only and exclusive method commanded by him for the celebration of his death and resurrection, it is, under the well-known principle of legal interpretation—expressio unius est exclusio alterius—"the express command of one method excluding all others." Instituting other, and, in the estimation of some, even greater, memorials of the death and resurrection of our Lord, has a tendency to magnify a particular day into undue importance attached by the ecclesiasticism of the Jews of the time of Isaiah to particular sabbaths, until their celebration substantially took the place of keeping holy every Sabbath day; and until Jehovah, becoming disgusted with their formalism and their lack of real reverence for, and obedience to, him, exclaimed: "Incense is an abomination unto me; new moon and sabbath; the calling of assemblies. I cannot away with iniquity, and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul abhorreth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them." Isaiah 1:13, 14.
"It is better to throw the inventions of man to the winds, and return to the simplicity of Christ as set forth in the Holy Scriptures." In parliamentary phrase, the point of order raised by the Mail and Express is well taken, and Good Friday must be ruled out of court, because "Our Lord did not ask us to keep Good Friday in his memory, nor any other set time." The same ruling must carry out of court the Sunday, which our Lord never asked us to keep in memory of his resurrection, no more than he did Good Friday. The cases are exactly parallel, and the influences which brought Sunday and Good Friday into the church, giving them at length a permanent place, were the same, viz., affiliation with pagan thoughts and practices, and a tendency to go beyond "that which is written." The Mail and Express says truthfully, "It is better to throw the inventions of man to the wind and return to the simplicity of Christ as set forth in the Holy Scriptures." To this we respond, Amen. Therefore we are in the field, and to accomplish this specific end, our warfare against man-made institutions and non-biblical observances is carried forward. The reader will remember that this Mail and Express is edited by Elliott F. Shepard, president of the American Sabbath Union. When he is called upon to defend Sunday, he assumes, with lofty disregard of facts, that Sunday is the Sabbath by virtue of the fourth commandment. When called upon to condemn its associate, Good Friday, he declares, very justly, as above. Not only does consistency on the part of the Mail and Express require it to disregard Sunday as a human institution, but every fact which can be brought against Good Friday stands with equal force against Sunday. There remains also the greater fact that the Sabbath, hallowed of God and the observance of which he commanded in the immutable fourth precept of the decalogue, remains unrepealed, and all effort to put Sunday in its place is a double wickedness against God, as compared with the bringing in of Good Friday which did not drive out any divinely ordained institution in order to find a place in the Romish Church. The Mail and Express finds truth a two-edged sword, and lies slain by its own hand. We cannot say to our fallen contemporary, "Rest thou in peace," but rather, "Arise thou, through repentance, to a life of obedience unto that which God has required." Throw the inventions of man to the winds, and return to the simplicity of Christ, as set forth in the Holy Scriptures.—The Light of Home.