ANOTHER LAME SUNDAY ARGUMENT.
By G.
A certain doctor, whose writings on many topics are especially clear, has recently undertaken to sustain Sunday observance; and his efforts are a striking illustration of the weakness of human reasoning when the eye is closed to the plain Word of truth. Here is a specimen utterance: Sometimes we are asked for a text that ordered the time of the Jewish Sabbath changed. Find the text that ordered the method of Sabbath-keeping changed to a fire-building day, then find the text that orders the penalty changed from stoning, and in close proximity to such texts you may find the text changing the time of Sabbath-keeping. This is given for argument that Sabbath time has been changed; but no Sabbatarian could have given a clearer inference that proof for the change could not be found in the Scriptures. Even the doctor himself admits that there is no text for a change to a "fire-building day," or for the change of penalty from stoning for Sabbath-breaking; but how any change of manner of observance could prove a change of day must remain a question not answered by the doctor's illogical proposition. Those items of detail are not specifications contained in the Decalogue, which the Lord has declared unchangeable (Matt. 5:17, 18), but the time of the Sabbath and the general manner of its observance are specified in the unchangeable Decalogue. The doctor's proposition is a clear admission that he had no answer to give to those who asked a reason for the change. And his other assumption that the apostles and apostolic fathers observed every seventh day from Pentecost, and that seventh day was Sunday, is equally futile when you come to ask for proof. Men will put up pretexts for Sunday observance, of a character that they themselves would scout as absurd in any other connection.