WE have seen that the Christian Sabbath is, or was, the blessed and sanctified seventh day. It was Christian because it was Christ who created it by blessing and sanctifying it, and giving it to the race. It was Christian also, because it was the sign of Christ's everlasting covenant, and of the soul's submission to His divine will.
Perhaps the majority of the nominal Christians of the day would not criticize or deny these propositions if we use the past tense was, instead of the present is. It is the teaching of the church that Christ, while incarnate on the earth, changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, in commemoration of His resurrection on that day; so that all, and more than all, that the seventh day was to the Jewish church, the first day now is to the Christian church.
This leads us directly to the study of the New Testament record concerning the relation of Christ and the Sabbath.
But before we enter upon this study, which will be the theme of the next article, let us ask the New Testament record what authority there is for this assertion that Sunday has taken the place of the Sabbath as the day for Christians to observe. It is boldly declared that the record shows plainly that Jesus made the change, and that the apostles and the early church observed the first day of the week, not the seventh.
We agree that if such change was made by Christ, and observed by the apostolic church, the New Testament record must make it clear and plain. It is here, and here only, that we can look for divine authority for the observance of Sunday.
With the Sabbath it is far different. If the seventh day is the Christian Sabbath to-day, it is so because Christ created it and gave it His benediction of blessing to the race in the beginning. Because He also enshrined it in the heart of His sacred law, spoken in awful solemnity from the summit of Sinai, and written not on perishable parchment to pass away, but on the flinty adamant to stand forever. It is the Sabbath to-day because Christ is "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever." One "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." It is so to-day because Christ, as He said, came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil or obey it, and therefore because the example of His life confirms the keeping of the seventh day. If the seventh day is the Christian Sabbath, it is not necessary that the New Testament should give its origin, any more than it is necessary that it should repeat the Old Testament account of the creation of the world. Not so, however, with the Sunday. All agree that before the time of Christ, Sunday was a heathen festival, or, as the North British Review calls it, "the wild, solar holiday of all pagan times."
As such a festival, it was a mark of apostasy from the worship of the true God, the Creator, with no claim whatever to the observance of the faithful.
If it has such claim to-day, therefore it is because, and only because, the New Testament record plainly shows that the seventh-day Sabbath, consecrated at creation, is abolished, and the first day instituted as the Christian Sabbath, to take its place.
Reserving, as we have said, the New Testament record of the seventh-day Sabbath for the next paper, we will now ask, What does that record say of the first day of the week?
The answer is, It only mentions the first day eight times, and six of these mentionings refer to the same first day, the day on which our Lord arose from the grave. Not one of these texts ever refers to it as a Sabbath, or the Lord's day, nor do they give it any sacred title whatsoever. Neither do they in any way show that Christ, the apostles, or the early church considered the day as any other than an ordinary working day.
To show that these assertions are absolutely true, we purpose to quote the eight texts referred to in their order, commenting as briefly as may be necessary.
1. "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher." Matt. 28:1.
This record was written about six years after the resurrection of Christ,—six years after the first day of the week, as we are told, had come to be the Christian sabbath or Lord's day, observed by all Christians as sacred, while the seventh day was now only a working day. Yet the text gives no hint of this change. The first day of the week is still simply the first day of the week, the day following the Sabbath.
2. "And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint Him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulcher at the rising of the sun." Mark 16:1, 2.
This record was written about ten years after the resurrection, and the remarks on the first text apply here with added force. Sunday is still spoken of as simply the first day of the week, the day following the Sabbath.
3. "Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene." Mark 16:9.
Here no comment is necessary.
4. "And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment. Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulcher, bringing the spices which they had prepared." Luke 23:56 to 24:1.
Altho this record was written twenty-eight years after the resurrection, still it gives no hint of the change of the Sabbath. Sunday is still simply the "first day of the week," and the text records without apology that the holy women intended to do work on that day that they would not do the day before, because the preceding day was the Sabbath.
5. "The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulcher, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulcher." John 20:1.
Here we have a record written sixty-three years after the resurrection,—sixty-three years after the time when it is assumed that the seventh day had ceased to be the Sabbath, and the first day, or the Christian sabbath, or Lord's7day, had taken its place. Yet no hint is here given of such a change. Why did not inspiration say, The first day of the week, which is now the Lord's day, or Christian sabbath? There is but one answer to this question. The early church did not at that time keep the first day of the week. Sunday has no such right to our reverence as is claimed for it.
6. "The same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you." John 20:19.
Here it would seem is the time of all times, and the place of all places, when Jesus should have spoken to them plainly on the change of the Sabbath, if it was His design to make such change at all. Surely now Jesus will tell them that His glorious event, which has taken place on this day, must henceforth be celebrated, making the first day of the week the Lord's day, or Christian sabbath, and that this observance will take the place of the observance of the seventh day. But not a word of any such instruction is recorded, either by John or any of the evangelists. This silence is absolutely fatal to the theory that Christ authorized any change of the Sabbath.
7. "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight." Acts 20:7.
There is no word here in the original for "when," this therefore should be omitted.
It would then read, "And upon the first day of the week, the disciples came together to break bread." It is not said that this was their custom. The first day is not called the sabbath, or by any sacred title. It is recorded elsewhere (Acts 2:46) that they broke bread "daily," and "from house to house," so there was nothing in their breaking bread on that day that distinguished it from other days.
This was at Troas. Verse 6 tells us that they had been there seven days. This was a final night meeting, continuing until midnight. It was in the dark portion of the first day of the week, or, according to the Bible reckoning of time, as all authorities admit, on our Saturday night.
In verse 13, Luke and those who were with him, say, "We went before to ship, and sailed unto Assos." Assos was on the other side of the isthmus from Troas. It was nineteen miles from Troas by land, but sixty by water, around the peninsula. These disciples stayed until after the Sabbath, Saturday night, then they sailed to Assos. Paul stayed to hold a final farewell meeting on our Saturday night, which, according to their reckoning, after sunset was the first day of the week. After this meeting he talked until the break of day, and then on Sunday morning he walked the nineteen miles to Assos to meet the others, "for so," the record says, "had he appointed, minding himself to go afoot."
Conybeare and Howson, in their "Life and Epistles of Paul," distinctly say of this meeting that "it was in the evening which succeeded the Jewish Sabbath."—Page 520. On page 522 they as distinctly say that it was on Sunday that he took this walk of nineteen miles to meet the others who had gone before to Assos.
Then you have apostolic example for doing common travel on, and not for keeping, that day.
The other disciples, after the Sabbath, spent the night in the sail to Assos. Paul, knowing that he should see their faces no more, spent the night in holding the only religious meeting that the New Testament ever records as having been held on the first day of the week. And even this was only on the first day according to Bible reckoning, and not according to our present Roman reckoning.
8. "Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the church of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." 1 Cor. 16:1, 2.
These collections for the poor saints often consisted of clothes and provisions, as well as of money. They were to be laid by—in store—by each person, on the first day of the week, according as he had been prospered during the week that now had passed. This was not a public collection. The expression is unmistakable, "Let every one of you," not every church, or every congregation, but "every one of you, lay by him in store." Other translations render it "with himself at home," and "at his own house at home."
The expression, "That there be no gatherings when I come," does not refer to public gatherings of the people for worship, for Paul always had these when he came. It refers to the gathering of these goods and cash, preparatory to sending them to the poor at Jerusalem. This was to be all done before Paul came, by each man each week, on the first day, reviewing his prosperity or adversity of the previous week, and laying by him in store accordingly. When Paul came all these stores thus gathered in each house were brought to him, and sent by him to those in need.
Concerning this text Kitto says: "The regulation has been supposed to have reference to the tenets of the Jewish converts, who considered it unlawful to touch money on the Sabbath. In consideration for them, therefore, the apostle directs the collection to be made on the following day, on which secular business was lawful, or, as Cocceius observes, 'They regarded the day [Sunday] not as a feast, but as a working day.'"—Kitto, Cyclopedia Bib. Lit., art. "Lord's Day."
Thus no one of the eight texts which mention the first day of the week, furnish any authority whatsoever for its observance as the Lord's day or the Christian sabbath. Instead it is plainly shown that the apostles and the early church did secular work on that day which they would not do on the day previous.
No one can, from any of these texts, learn anything concerning the Sabbath, other than that the Sabbath day, blessed and consecrated by Christ at creation, is still the Sabbath, and that the first day of the week is the day after the Sabbath,—an ordinary working day.
At what date the Sunday or first day of the week began to be generally used by Christians as a stated time for religious meetings, we have no definite information, either in the New Testament or in the writings of the fathers of the church. By none of the fathers before the fourth century is it identified with the Sabbath, nor is the duty of observing it grounded by them either on the fourth commandment, or on the precept or example of Jesus or His apostles.—Chambers' Encyclopedia, art. "Sabbath."
That all this is true will appear more fully in the next article, when we study the relation of the life of Jesus to the Sabbath institution.
