Which Day Is the Sabbath?
By Editor
In an article in the Literary Northwest of January, 1893, entitled "Shall the World's Fair Be Open on Sunday?" Mr. Edwin H. Jaggard says some good things. For instance, in referring to the First Amendment to the Constitution and its bearing on the closing of the Fair, he says:— "No set of men can say to others that they shall in all things not harmful to others act out the dictates of their own consciences. That is an infringement of personal liberty." "Unthinking acquiescence has largely caused to be forgotten the controversy as to what day is the Lord's day under revelation. The Old Testament enjoined that the seventh day be kept holy. What warrant is there for changing this to the day of the resurrection. . . . Indeed it would seem to the average layman that Doctor McCosh made the best of their case when, realizing that the burden of proof rested on the Sundayites to show authority for the change, and that the New Testament did not furnish it, he sought for a reason in tradition. Thus he advanced a step. Tradition, however, failed to bridge the chasm. And the good Doctor got no further. He was left on its brink lost in hopeless contemplation." After speaking of the testimony which shows that Sunday regarded as Lord's day or sabbath was not known till long after Christ, and that Saturday was observed for centuries, he thus refers to the "unruffled complacency" with which "These ardent souls [Sunday-law people] consign sabbath breakers [by which he means Sunday breakers, if such can be] each to peculiar punishment of his own, and then themselves break the fourth commandment by turning Saturday into a day of national festivity." The writer is obviously not a seventh-day man, but he is evidently disposed to be fair. His words quoted above are worth thinking of by every Sunday keeper. First decide which day. He who decides aright will never ask for civil law to enforce its observance.