PROBABLY no point of Bible truth has been more prominently before the public for the last quarter of a century than the question of the day which Christians are bound to observe as the Sabbath. Altho the Bible plainly asserts that the seventh day was constituted the Sabbath of the Lord at creation (Gen. 2:2, 3; Ex. 20:8–11), the fact still remains that a transference of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, at some time and by some authority, has apparently taken place; for not only the world at large, but the mass of Christian people as well, observe not the seventh but the first day of the week, while those who regard the literal teaching of the Scripture, and rest on the "Sabbath day according to the commandment," are strikingly in the minority.
Many, on the strength of this fact alone, have felt free to dismiss the matter without further thought or investigation, and have thus sought to excuse themselves in the violation of a considerable portion of plain Scripture teaching. Such an important item of religious belief and practise, it is argued, as a change in the Sabbath institution, would not have been suffered by an overruling Providence to occur. It is not reasonable to suppose, say the advocates of the Sunday sabbath, that the great body of Christians at any time could have been induced to alter their practise in the vital principle of religion without sufficient reason for so doing. Had it been possible, say they, for a few in any age to fall into an error so grave as a change of the Sabbath, they would have been promptly and deservedly rebuked by the church leaders, and the defect would have been remedied before the church to any extent had been estranged from truth by the misconception. This point will be considered later in the light of the Scriptures.
In our world, where all the once fair and glorious handiwork of God has been marred by sin, we can not accept the maxim, "Whatever is, is right." Everywhere is visible the sad desolation wrought by an invading foe. Wrong by usage is not transformed into right. Evil, tho time-honored, loses none of its cruel deformity. Sin, tho popular and pleasant as the fruit of the forbidden tree to our first parents in Eden, brings fatal ruin none the less surely. An error that resembles truth is made only the more dangerous, and is, consequently, the more carefully to be avoided, because of such resemblance. God's immutable Word must ever be the standard by which all doctrines shall be measured; the Bible, and the Bible only, is the Christian's guide to eternal life.
That the Sabbath has been changed from the seventh to the first day of the week, is self-evident; but let us seriously consider "by what authority" the change occurred. Let us look closely and see "whose is the image and superscription" which the Sunday sabbath bears. To examine the origin of evil and its development in our world, to learn what bearing it may have on the question of the change of the Sabbath, is the object of this series of articles, and upon this investigation, with the Bible before us, the reader is kindly invited to go with us in next week's paper.
