"JOSEPH COOK'S LECTURE ON SABBATH LAW."
By Wm. Penniman
SUCH is the caption of an article in the Christian Statesman of February 18, 1893. In beginning his lecture Mr. Cook read the fourth commandment and Christ's injunction to keep the commandments. Mr. Cook says:— The week seems to be as old as the human family. It existed in the old Acadian civilization long before Abraham. The fourth commandment is echoed by Christian practice in regard to the Lord's day. The history of the Sabbath through the ages should make us look to see what is in the Sabbath. "What is the Decalogue?" said a cultured Frenchman, and it is to be feared that some in this land are nearly as ignorant. A person would naturally think that this language has reference to the genuine Sabbath, but, alas! it only has reference to a counterfeit called Sunday. Thus wonderfully inconsistent, strange, and illogical it is for a learned theologian to attempt to find a law for Sunday keeping in the fourth commandment, when the truth of the matter is there is no divine law for it. As Mr. Cook's lecture is upon Sabbath law, let us look a little into this "Sabbath law" in which he finds his so-called sabbath. The Sabbath, then, according to this highly educated lecturer, is a legal institution. (Of course he means Sunday.) What kind of a legal institution is it? Is it one making a day, any day, or no day in particular, the Sabbath, or is it one making the seventh, or rest day, the Sabbath? The law is, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." It would be just the same if it read, Remember the rest day, as the word "Sabbath" signifies rest. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, or set it apart to a holy or sacred use (Gen. 2:3), "because that in it he had rested." Then how is it possible for weak, finite man to transfer this sanctity to another day. The "Sabbath law" of Mr. Cook will not apply to Sunday unless he can prove that the first day of the week is the seventh. So far as the transfer is concerned, God only could do the work, and that he has done it we have not the least shadow of proof. Furthermore, the Lord says (Ps. 89:34), "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips." Yet man attempts to alter the very words which God spoke with his own voice, and wrote with his own finger on tables of stone. It could be clearly demonstrated that the "Sabbath law" makes the Sabbath (not Sunday) a moral institution, in that Sabbath observance is a moral precept, and morality is unchangeable. The Sabbath is one of the "ten words," and the Psalmist says (Ps. 119:89), "Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven." In this age of light and knowledge it is about time for expounders of the law to cease reading the fourth commandment to find a law for Sunday. Again, Mr. Cook daubs with untempered mortar when he speaks of Christ's injunction to keep the commandments as having reference to Sunday keeping. Instead of this, in that greatest sermon that was ever preached on earth, he plainly includes the Sabbath when he says (Matt. 5:19), "Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments [of the law], and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven." We agree with the words that "the week is as old as the human family." This is a strong argument in favor of the Sabbath, for that is also as old as the human family, or as old as creation; and, as Alexander Campbell well said, "You might as well talk of going through creation again as to talk of a change of the day." Mr. Cook's argument is lame again in calling Sunday the Lord's day. The prophet says (Isa. 58:13), "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day," etc. The seventh day, or the Sabbath, is the only day which is called the Lord's in the Bible. Christ says (Mark 2:28) that he is Lord of the Sabbath, and how appropriate and forcible is his language, as he made the Sabbath (John 1:3; Heb. 1:2)! If learned men would look into their Bibles a little more instead of to the traditions of the ages, they would "see what is in the Sabbath," and see that Christ made it. We pity the cultured Frenchman who did not know what the Decalogue means, and we pity the highly cultured "doctors" much more in being ignorant, or at least seeming to be, of what a part of the Decalogue teaches.