THE WEEK AND THE SABBATH.
In this age of unbelief everything divine that involves a cross is criticized; and it may truly be said that among all subjects of Bible truth none is more questioned to-day than that concerning the Sabbath. The whole world is ransacked to find an excuse for not keeping the day ordained of God. Not only is the day of the Sabbath denied, but the week to which it belongs is attributed to heathen origin. These things from the unlearned may be in a sense pardonable, but when leading ministers "put no difference between the holy and profane" (Eze. 22:26), the Word is made void, and the foul weeds of error choke the seeds of truth. Bishop Doane, of the M. E. Church, of Oregon, has stated that "Abraham borrowed the week from the Chaldeans, who kept the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the month as rest days, and when his descendants came to Sinai, they chose to observe every seventh day to commemorate their deliverance from Egypt." Upon this colossal premise of error he builds the proposition that "as the church then had the power to select the seventh day, so the church, after the resurrection of Christ, chose to keep the first day of the week." The Scriptures teach that "there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." Prov. 16:25. As the Word of God is the basis of every Christian practise and virtue, it is safe to abide by that revelation of his sovereign will alone. No satisfactory origin of the week can be shown, except the record of Genesis 1 and 2:2, 3, in which the Creator's six days of labor and the seventh of rest are brought to view. This measurement of time the Lord has identified in every age by the perpetual monument of the Sabbath, connecting himself to man by a constantly recurring cycle of his own appointment. God made the days and gave to each its place in the cycle, and to man a corresponding duty upon each, to follow, in his sphere, the Architect of the universe. The resting upon, the blessing of, and sanctifying for man of the seventh day made it "the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." Gen. 2:3; Ex. 20:10, 11.