TWO HUMAN INSTITUTIONS.
By H. A. St. John
1. THE JEWISH SABBATH.—It is not contended nor pretended that the Jewish Sabbath is a Bible institution or even a Bible name. It was solely and simply the true seventh-day Sabbath of God's law perverted into a rigorous and tyrannical yoke of bondage. The Jewish nation were under this yoke of bondage when Jesus, the Son of God and Lord of the Sabbath, appeared among men. The Jews in the days of Christ enumerated about forty primary works which were forbidden upon the Sabbath, and under each of these primary works they named a long list of secondary works which they said were also forbidden. These forbidden works excluded the miracles and good works of Jesus, who taught and practiced that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath, of which he was Lord. The Jewish Sabbath was a superstitious, exacting, burdensome, tyrannical institution, to which man was made a menial slave. The Sabbath of the Lord is a merciful, beneficent, and blessed institution, "made for man." In the Lord's Sabbath there is only blessing, mercy, compassion, kind words, and kind deeds for the erring, the needy, the suffering, and the afflicted, as exemplified by the Son of God, who was a perfect pattern of the true Sabbath observance. In the Jewish Sabbath, at least in the days of Christ, there was hardship, accusation, indignation, madness, persecution, condemnation, and death. Yes, that Jewish Sabbath was all these wicked things to that holy One who was Lord of the true Sabbath, and the holiest and purest example of right Sabbath keeping that the world ever saw. 2. THE PAPAL SABBATH.—The papal sabbath is the pagan Sunday, or first day of the week. It was the "wild solar holiday of all pagan times," dedicated to sun worship, hence called Sun-day, or Sunday. It was selected early in the Christian era, by the papal or Catholic Church, and substituted for the seventh-day Sabbath of the Lord Jesus. Herein lies the guilt of making void a commandment of God by a tradition. The first Sunday law extant was made by Constantine in A.D. 321. This was followed by other decrees and papal edicts, enforcing Sunday observance more and more rigidly upon the people, until, at the council at Laodicea in A.D. 364, they anathematized those who still kept the true Sabbath day according to the commandment. There is wickedness and oppression in all Sunday laws from the first to the last. If this oppression and wickedness have not always been manifest, it was simply because said laws were from some reason inoperative,—a dead letter. All Sunday laws, in all places, have in them accusation, indignation, madness, persecution, condemnation, fines, imprisonment, and death, for all those who will obey God rather than man, by keeping the true Sabbath of the Lord, after the teaching and example of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of the holy Sabbath day.