Is the Sabbath Fictitious?
THE editor of the Western Watchman (Roman Catholic) says in a sermon on "He taught from day to day in the temple": "The Jewish people had made one advance upon the worship of the pagan world. While the idolaters, in their moments of highest enthusiasm, came together once a month to pay homage to their gods, the Jews subdivided the month into weeks, and required that the people should come together every seven days; and the worship of the synagog was based upon the observance of the Sabbath, or this once-a-week observance. Now this Sabbath was a FICTITIOUS subdivision of time. You can not make it fit into any of the natural subdivisions. It was created by God by a special enactment. . . . Our Saviour came on this earth, and He was known as NO PARTICULAR OBSERVER of the Sabbath. One of the crimes charged against Him was His neglect of Sabbath observance." Somehow our Roman Catholic friends always bungle when they come to Scripture exposition. In the first place, the text is not found in Luke 14, as the paper notes it. In the second place, the Jews did not divide 'the months into weeks.' The week is based on the very work of God in the making of the earth (Genesis 1); and the crowning day of that week was the Sabbath, made of God, before a month had rolled its round. In the third place, we could hardly call that 'fictitious' which God Himself made, even tho we could not see something in nature to correspond with it. Man's moral nature is more than the physical nature of this world, and that moral nature needs the Sabbath. Now if God 'enacted' it 'by special enactment' (He did man also), it9can hardly be called 'fictitious,' any more than the earth or man is 'fictitious.' In the fourth place, a thing which our Catholic friends do not see, if man should 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,' he would remember God every day of the week, and hence be a daily worshiper. In the fifth place, Jesus Christ was not a 'no particular observer of the Sabbath.' When charged with Sabbath-breaking, He did not defend transgression, but appealed to the law to justify His right deeds. 'It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath.' Jesus did that which was lawful, according to law. The charge the traditionists brought against Him they bring against His followers to-day, with this difference: His sin in their eyes was in keeping the right Sabbath in the wrong way, and His followers are charged with keeping the wrong Sabbath in the right way. But according to the word of God, worth infinitely more than tradition, the true Bible followers of Jesus keep the right Sabbath—the seventh day; and Jesus kept it in the right way. Let us unite the two.