The Sabbath by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 19, 1878

The Sabbath.

By Editor

REV. W. E. IJAMS spoke yesterday morning, September 16, in the Green-street Congregational church, from the text, Mark 2: "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath." The preacher said that the subject of Sunday observance was prominently before the community, by means of the action of the clergy and others in petitioning the coming Constitutional Convention to recognize Sunday in the organic law of the State. He doubted the wisdom of such action, and did not believe it was supported by public opinion. Sunday observance was good, undoubtedly, but religious liberty was also good, and he desired the experiment of religious liberty to be thoroughly tried in this country. He deprecated any distinction being made in the law against the Jews and in favor of Christians. To be sure the Christians were in the large majority, but that fact should not be taken advantage of to put the Jews down with respect to religious observances—if it were, then religious liberty became a mere name and sham. But Christians were not united altogether in observing Sunday as the Sabbath. There were the Seventh-day Baptists and the Adventists, who held with the Jews that Saturday was the only Bible-appointed and true Sabbath—and it must be confessed that their arguments could not be answered. The seventh day of the week or Saturday, was the special day originally appointed, and no record of any change of the day by divine command could be found within the sacred volume. But to him it made little difference what seventh part of the week was observed, so long as one was. It was not observing the fourth commandment to the letter to keep the Sunday as Sabbath.

The above was a part of the notice made by the San Francisco Chronicle of Mr. Ijam's sermon, which shows clearly that he is not ignorant of what the Bible teaches upon the subject of the Sabbath, and that he knows the seventh day of the week or Saturday is the "special day" and only one commanded in the Bible and yet it makes "no difference" to him which day is kept. The best comment we can give is that which the Lord gave by the prophet Ezekiel: "Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things; they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean, and have hid their eyes from my Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them." Ezekiel 22:26.