THE CONFUSION OF "SUNDAY" AND "SABBATH."
A CONTRIBUTOR to the Christian Statesman, in endeavoring to persuade men that they ought to use the name "Sabbath" instead of "Sunday" in speaking of the first day of the week, presents some really boomerang arguments. Some of his contentions lay bare the false claim of the first-day institution in a most remarkable manner. For instance, he says: We have no specific Bible record of when, how, or why the seventh-day Sabbath was discarded for the first-day Sabbath. To claim divine origin for a Sabbath of which the Lord has said nothing, is about as bold an assumption as any one could make. When the Lord did make a Sabbath day, He left a very plain record of when, how, and why it was instituted. The fact that He has left no such record of a change of the day is the best of evidence that He never made such change. For "surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets." Amos 3:7. Another assertion, which is without a shadow of authority in the Scriptures, is this: The Christian world has simply perpetuated what the apostles did in recognizing the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath. Apostolic authority is Rome's stock argument for all her unscriptural dogmas, and there is as much ground for her claims concerning any of her other institutions as there is for apostolic example in the matter of Sunday observance. Admit her claim in the absence of Scripture proof in one point, and one is logically bound to accept the entire Roman Catholic creed. There is no escape from it, and that is to-day the conspicuous trend of the professed Protestant churches that maintain the Sunday institution. The locking arms with Catholicism is more and more marked as the years go by. Another stultifying proposition, that no one would dream of advancing except in a desperate emergency, is the following: It was not requisite that six secular days should always intervene between Sabbaths. It would appear that when a fixed feast-day Sabbath fell upon any intervening day of the cycle of seven, a new starting point for the weekly cycle was recognized. The fallacy of this assumption is proved by the Sabbath commandment, "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." It is further proved by the falling of the manna for forty years in the wilderness. The command was, "Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall be none." If the intervening of a feast-day Sabbath during the week had marked the beginning of a new week there would have been no "sixth day" on which to gather the double quantity of manna, according to the commandment in Ex. 16:29. "God is not the author of confusion," but such confusion of the ceremonial or typical Sabbaths with God's memorial weekly Sabbath, which is "perpetual" in its character (Ex. 31:16, 17; Isa. 66:22, 23), would cause an interminable confusion not only of weeks, but of months and years. Suppose we apply it to our own time. It would work just as well with Sunday and the other holidays. When we run against another holiday in the middle of the week, suppose we begin counting another week. This will give us some idea of the confusion it would cause. Then take it in Mexico, where one-fourth or more of all the days in the year are holidays, and we have the system more fully illustrated. But men who want to argue for Sunday observance, always evade the logic of their arguments against the Sabbath of the Lord. This unwarranted confounding of the weekly Sabbath, sanctified in Eden for all time, with the temporary Sabbaths of the ceremonial system of worship, is a latter-day scheme for confusing the minds of the people with regard to the law of God. But the last proposition in the article to which we have referred recoils, if possible, more forcibly than any of the others upon the Sunday institution. We give it as an instance of smiting Sunday observance in the house of its friends. We do the italicizing: The Sabbath—its very name—was intended to be, and is, a sign. (Eze. 20:12). Those who call it Sabbath signify their regard for it, and those who try to keep it holy signify that they desire to keep the commandments. "Sunday," on the contrary, is not a sign of anything. The more secular and irreligious a man is the more certain he is to say "Sunday" instead of "Sabbath." To re-write the Fourth Commandment and insert "Sunday" for "Sabbath," would surely make grotesque reading and would inevitably create a grotesque feeling in the reader's mind, yet it would be better to do this than to keep up a distinction, which produces the "confusion" which certainly exists. Yes, the Sabbath is "a sign." God so calls it Himself. He says, "It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever." God's covenants and promises are all with the true "Israel;" for they are all yea and amen in Christ. The Sabbath to which He refers in Exodus 31 and Ezekiel 20 is, of course, the Sabbath of the commandment. As to Sunday's being "not a sign of anything," that depends upon the standpoint from which it is viewed. God never gave it as a sign of anything, but the name is a sign that in heathen worship it was dedicated to the sun, as other days were named in a similar way; but Sunday was a pre-eminent holiday, and for that reason was admitted into the church, some time after the apostolic age, in rivalry of the true Sabbath. Sunday as an institution is a sign sad to contemplate. It is a sign of the fulfilment of a prophecy, given through a vision to Daniel, that a certain blasphemous power would arise that would "speak great words against the Most High," and would "wear out the saints of the Most High," and even "think to change the times and the law." Dan. 7:25, R. V. And that power to-day holds up the Sunday institution as a sign that it has changed the law of God, and that it has the power to do so at will. Yes, "Sunday" is a sign of something, but it is not a God-given sign. As to re-writing the Fourth Commandment with "Sunday" inserted instead of "Sabbath," it would indeed "make grotesque reading." But why would it be any more grotesque than to write "first-day" instead of "seventh day." And this would certainly be legitimate if the alleged change had been duly authorized. But no observer of the Sunday-sabbath has ever yet dared to so write or print the Fourth Commandment. By some means the line has been drawn at that point. In lieu of it, however, men are trying to make it appear that Sunday is the seventh day of the week. But here again they stultify their position. For Sunday observers quite generally claim that they keep the day because Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week. So every attempt to overthrow the commandment of God ends in confusion.