"Scientific Basis of Sabbath and Sunday."
THERE has come to our table a book with the above title, by the Rev. Robert John Floody. Introduction by G. Stanley Hall, LL.D., President of Clark University. Second and revised edition. 360 pages. It is published by Herbert B. Turner & Co., Boston. We confess that we looked for something better. We are told on the title-page that it is "a new investigation after the manner and methods of modern science, revealing the true origin and evolution of the Jewish Sabbath and the Lord's Day, for the purpose of ascertaining their real significance and proper observance." The author is Master of Science, Bachelor of Sacred Theology, etc. We wonder that he did not say in the very beginning that he did not believe the Bible. It would have saved him many words. Why in the world he should speak of it as "inspired," and as the "Sacred Record," we can not see. The evidences he brings show that the early Sabbath of the seventh day as a sacred day was very wide-spread, but it does not seem even to occur to the author that this common knowledge had its source in the origin of the Sabbath at creation. No, all these great nations were moon-worshippers, and the week and the Sabbath came from the phases of the moon! It does not seem to occur to him that all the "holy" days connected with moon-worship might be perversions of the true. The reason why these obvious explanations do not occur to the author is quite patent. He has adopted the conclusions of "higher criticism," which sets aside the Bible as a mass of traditions and legends written at a very late date, and unworthy of credence. Yet the vague, fragmentary record of archeology, often uncertain in meaning, is taken as confirmed truth. The Biblical feast of the new10moon is counted idolatrous, and because the monthly festival and weekly holy day are mentioned together, the Sabbath must have originated in moon-worship! The moon, he declares, was the chief object of worship, when the testimony is to the effect that the sun was the chief god because of his blazing, terrific splendor. Because the Hebrews in idolatry patterned after other nations and chose a king like other nations, therefore they got their Sabbath from other nations! He tells us that there are two Decalogues, entirely different, the one in Exodus 20, the other in Exodus 34; that Moses wrote very little of the Pentateuch; that the earliest law of the Sabbath (Ex. 34:21) was after 850 B.C.; that Ex. 20:22 to 23:33 was written about B.C. 750; that Deuteronomy was written about B.C. 622; the creation story of Gen. 1:1 to 2:3 was written about B.C. 450, and that not till then did people have the Sabbath as a memorial of creation. It would puzzle one to find a decalogue in Exodus 34, but Mr. Floody tries to tells us what it is. It would be easier to find one in Genesis 1. In his "scientific" study he declares that Mr. Gamble's sliding position on the adjustable sabbaths "is not borne out by facts" (page 87), which is true. The theories devour each other—a case of Kilkenny cats. His New Testament argument is deplorably weak. Other first-day apologists have done much better. He tells us what things should not be allowed and what things are permissible on Sunday, just as the men of other minds have no rights in the matter, and then argues the right of the State to make Sunday laws, and makes an appeal for concerted action. He gives a little thought to the advocates of the Bible Sabbath, calls them Saturdarians, a strictly "scientific" term, we suppose, in the vocabulary of higher criticism, inasmuch as the seventh-day Sabbath people do not advocate Saturday nor keep it, as the seventh day is not identical with it. Another of his many examples of "scientific" inquiry is shown in the following from page 321: "Why should the Saturdarians commence the day at sundown? No doubt it is to have the identical time of Palestine where the commandment was given." The truly scientific mind will inquire. If Mr. Floody had asked a single intelligent advocate of the seventh-day Sabbath, he would have learned to speak with less confidence. We have not space nor time nor disposition to point out all or half or one-fourth of the defects in this book, which makes such high claims and weak performances. Shall we accept as a "scientific basis," on which to build the hopes of eternal life, the conclusions of one who denies the Biblical record concerning man and the Sabbath; who prefers the questionable conclusions of men that pile their hypotheses against God's word on the sandy foundation of uncertain data; whose suppositions ever lie against the Bible when it would be the easier, truer way to favor the moral Record; who will quote as authoritative testimony to "the will of God" the spurious epistles of Ignatius, long ago repudiated by scholarship; who sets aside with a wave of the "scientific" hand all divine law for the Sabbath, but urges that Sunday be established by human law? We beg to demure. The book is neither scientific nor Scriptural, and is worthy of the higher criticism, the exponent of which it is.