Saturday of the Blessed Virgin Mary
A brother writing us some time ago from Portland, Oregon, formerly a member of the Roman Catholic Church in Hungary, writes us that when he was young, knowing nothing about the Bible at all, his people possessed a book the title of which was “Saturday of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Her Fifty-Two Miracles,” by Paul Esteras. The preface of the book declares that “God freed the children out of the Egyptian bondage, and gave them on Mount Sinai the Ten Commandments, in which He specified Saturday as the rest day, which day was in later times observed by the Hebrews. . . . Yet the pious Christians always sanctified Saturday in honor of the blessed virgin, which many observe at the present time. Hence I believe that I shall not fall into disfavor with my readers, if, in order to increase this reverence, I have arranged one assertion for each Saturday throughout the year, fifty-two in all.” The book tells a series of traditional miracles to support this claim. How good it is to know that those who observe the seventh day have the simple Word of God upon which to rest their faith, more than all miracles! Yet the book is good in showing this—that the holiness of the seventh day must be reconciled.