"WHICH? SABBATH OR SUNDAY? SEVENTH DAY OR FIRST DAY?"
THE above is the title of the leading article in the "Contributions" department of the chief Methodist Episcopal paper in America, the Christian Advocate, of September 23. The writer is Abbie C. Morrow. From the position of the article, with no disclaimer on his part, the editor evidently indorses it. It is certainly worthy, because of the journal which gives it publicity, of a passing notice. The first paragraph presents these astounding statements:—
Some fourteen years ago a little tract was put into my hands, entitled "One Hundred Reasons Why Christians Should Keep the Seventh Day." It contained one hundred Scripture passages on the Sabbath, and not a word besides. It confused me, hurt me, stunned me. Holding it in my hand I prayed that if the Adventists were right, God would open the way for me to worship on Saturday. Then I laid it aside, and forgot all about it. Afterward, when the truth had been made clear to me, I found the tract and put it in the fire.
This is indeed a remarkable confession. Here were "one hundred Scripture passages upon the Sabbath and not a word besides." Why should passages from the Word of God confuse, stun, or hurt a Christian? If the Spirit of that Word were in the heart, why should the Word itself confuse, stun, or hurt? In the light of many scriptures did not those passages of Scripture reveal that the heart was not right, even as, "Thou shalt not covet," showed Paul that he was a sinner? See Rom. 7:7.3But when the Christian is confused about the way, where should he go? That he should pray there is no doubt; pray that God would give him a heart to do all that the Lord had commanded. But where would he find God's directions? In the "inner consciousness" of a natural heart which is ever glad to forget all about unpleasant duties?—No; but to the Word of God. It is the Word that is the lamp to our feet and the light to our path (Ps. 119: 105); it is by the Word that we are kept from the paths of the destroyer (Ps. 17:4); it is by the Holy Scriptures we are to be indoctrinated, reproved, corrected, and instructed in righteousness, and built up (2 Tim. 3:15, 16; Acts 20:32). Any inward voice contrary to the Word of God is but the voice of ignorance, lust, sin, or Satan. Why did not the writer take the law taught in the Methodist catechisms, and the example of Jesus Christ? And how did it help the matter to cast into the fire "one hundred Scripture passages on the Sabbath, and not a word besides"? Why not rather hide the Word in the heart?
Further on in the article the writer attempts to show that the seventh day is not obligatory. She tells us that this article is called out by a recent letter, the writer of which said she went to her pastor, who could give "no satisfactory proof—in fact seemed very uneasy." Of course there is no satisfactory proof of Sunday sacredness, and yet the writer of the article states that "there is overwhelming proof" from the Word of God that Christians should keep the first day, a part of which is the following:—
The Sabbath was given to man in the garden, in his innocence (Gen. 2:3); continued to him as a merciful provision after he sinned (Gen. 8:10-12; Job 1:6; 2:1; Ex. 16:23-26); and confirmed on Mount Sinai (Ex. 20:8). Then the Sabbath or seventh day became a Jewish institution. The Jew was commanded to keep it. Lev. 19:30.
[2] The law spent all its force on Christ, our Substitute, as he hung upon the cross for us. When Christ died we died; when he rose again we rose with him. Col. 3:1-3, R. V. "We have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were holden; so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter." Rom. 7:6, R. V. We are "dead to the law" that we "might live unto God." Gal. 2:19.
[3] If we were under the law, the Seventh-day Adventists would be right, and we must keep "the Sabbath," the seventh day, or be disobeying God.
[4] "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all." James 2:10, R. V. If a man were suspended over a precipice by a chain of ten links, and one of them were to break, his death would be as certain and terrible as if every link had been broken. The least infringement of the least commandment puts the law-breaker under the curse as surely as if he had broken them all. "The law hath been our tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor." Gal. 3:24, 25, R. V. We "are not under the law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid." Rom. 6:14, 15. Because we are not obligated to keep the seventh day, which pertained to the old creation, to Sinai and to law, shall we be careless about the first day, which pertains to the new creation, to the church, and to grace? —No, beloved! One sight of the cross and what it cost our Lord to give us this day will make us long to sanctify it. Impelled by love, we shall be more faithful than if compelled by law. And "love is the fulfilling of the law." Rom. 13:10.
We number the above quotations for convenience' sake. Our comments will be numbered to correspond.
1. If, because the Jew was commanded to keep the Sabbath, that made it "a Jewish institution," and not binding upon Gentiles or Christians, is not this just as true of any of the other precepts of the Decalog? The Jew was commanded, "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me," "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," "Honor thy father and thy mother." If the fourth or Sabbath commandment is not binding, why should the first, or sixth, or seventh, or fifth, which we have quoted above, be binding? If because the Sabbath was commanded the Jew, it became a Jewish institution, logically every command in the Decalog became Jewish also. Christians may therefore worship other gods, kill, disobey parents, commit adultery, steal, and covet. But this is not so. God does not call the Sabbath "Jewish," but "the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." The Scriptures were all given to Jews and through Jews; and Jesus Christ was a Jew, and tells us that "salvation is of the Jews." John 4:22. But the Jew then, as God's people are now, was only God's channel of light to the world; the law, the Sabbath, the Word, the Saviour, were all of God to the whole world.
2. True, Jesus Christ suffered the penalty of sin, transgression of the law, but he did it "to redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." Titus 2:14. "Iniquity" is lawlessness, law-breaking. If Christ died to redeem us from law-breaking, as he certainly did, he died to redeem us to law-keeping, to obedience. While we are sinners the law holds us as condemned, prisoners of guilt. It holds over us the curse of the wrong-doer; death. We are under the law, under its condemnation, under its curse. But in Christ Jesus we are discharged from custody; "for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made" us "free from the law of sin and death." Rom. 8:2. To the sinner his transgression brings death. But when the perfect obedience to that law in Jesus Christ is placed upon us and within us, we are free. Rom. 3:21, 22; 5:19. We are justified in him. Why? That we should "serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter." Rom. 7:4. We are dead to the law's condemnation, that we may in Christ Jesus live its righteousness. Rom. 8:4. Christ died in vain were it otherwise.
3. As long as "Christians" are "under the law," they can not keep the Sabbath or any other part of God's holy law. Seventh-day Adventists believe what God's Word teaches, that he who is under the law is condemned by the law. He who is a Christian is justified from his transgression, and the law is written in his heart by the Spirit of God, that he may do the law. Eze. 36:26, 27. He is no longer under the law; he is with the law, in the law, and the law is in him, because he is with Christ and in Christ, and Christ, the perfect embodiment of the law, is in him.
4. James teaches just what is stated above; but he also says: "But he that looketh into the perfect law [Rom. 7:12; Ps. 19:7], the law of liberty, and so continually, being not a hearer that forgeteth, but a doer that worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing." James 1:25, R. V. "So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty." James 2:12. The transgressed law pressed home upon the conscience leads us to Christ, who, through faith, justifies, or makes us in harmony with the law.
But shall the justified one, who is under grace, sin? Madame Morrow quotes Rom. 6:15, which declares, "God forbid." But what is sin?—"Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 4:3. That law is the law of the Decalog, which says, "Thou shalt not covet," Rom. 7:7; James 2:10, 11. He, therefore, who knowingly breaks one point of that law, denies the "God forbid" of Rom. 6:15. For "know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" Rom. 6:16. God has commanded the seventh-day Sabbath. Jesus Christ kept it. God commanded, "Honor thy father and thy mother." Jesus Christ kept that command as well as every other one of the Decalog. He forgives us, that we may follow him, that he may again obey them in us. The first-day sabbath has been commanded in its origin only by paganism, followed by an apostate church. Who is obeyed in keeping it? It cost the Lord no more to give the first day than it did the fourth or sixth. All this, and volumes like it, are mere appeals to sentiment, unworthy of regard by one who would do God's will. What says the Word?
"LOVE"!! What is love?—Bible love is not a sentiment which leads us to do our own way. "If ye love me, keep my commandments." John 14:15. "For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love." Gal. 5:6. "This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous." 1 John 5:3. "This is love, that we walk after his commandments." 2 John 6. He who truly dies with Christ to sin, forsakes sin; and he who truly lives with Christ, lives Christ's life of obedience. "He that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk even as He walked." 1 John 2:6. What more need be said? What can a Christian ask more than God's law and Christ's life and example?
For the first day Madame Morrow endeavors to find proof in the "first days" of Jewish feasts, days which fell on no particular day of the week; in the meetings of our Lord on the first day of the week with his disciples, the records of which in Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24, and John 20 and 21 certainly disprove any first-day sabbath; in Acts 2:1, the day of Pentecost, in which the day of the week is not even mentioned; in Acts 20:7, a mere incidental farewell meeting, the day of which was used for labor; in 1 Cor. 16:2, a text which refers not to public collections, but private setting apart at home. She gives us no command for a Sunday sabbath, no divine example. There is none to give.
Then Madame Morrow turns to the "fathers" of the Catholic Church. She quotes from the spurious and unholy epistle of Barnabas, from the equally spurious epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians. Here we wonder that the learned and able editor of the Christian Advocate would admit such testimony. The first writer who unequivocally refers to Sunday as the Lord's day is Tertullian, who wrote in A.D. 200, but who also taught prayers for the dead and the sign of the cross. He expressly tells us that for those things they had no Scripture injunction.
But shall Christians look to apostasy for precept and example? Rather should they not look to the Word of the living God and the example of our Lord Jesus Christ? And in the light of these, "Which? Sabbath or Sunday? Seventh Day or First Day?" What say you, reader?
THE crown of patience can not be received where there has been no suffering. If thou refusest to suffer thou refusest to be crowned; but if thou wishest to be crowned thou must fight manfully and suffer patiently. Without labor none can obtain rest, and without contending there can be no conquest.—Thomas a Kempis.