The Sabbath and Christ’s Resurrection
THE Sabbath commandment gives as the only reason for keeping the day holy, the fact that God rested on the seventh day and therefore blessed it and made it holy. But the powers that have presumed to make another sabbath on the first day, without scriptural authority, have assumed as their warrant the fact that Christ rose from the dead on that day. Why should that fact be any more entitled to a day of recognition than his sacrifice, which took place on the sixth day, which day the Roman Church likewise idolizes, by a nominal fast? The ordinances which the Lord commanded in commemoration of his death and his resurrection, lay fully as much stress upon the one as upon the other. And inasmuch as the Lord did especially provide, in the communion and in baptism, for the celebration of those, the adding of a further testimony to the resurrection, to celebrate the occasion, the intimation that he did not have a substance of the occasion. But to emphasize the Sabbath rest by something especially pertaining to the memory of Christ, what could be better adapted to the purpose than the day on which he rested,—the seventh day.