The Seventh Day or the First.
By O. Dickinson
To the Editor of the Oregonian: Some two years ago the question as to whether the Christian world was right in keeping the first day of the week instead of the seventh was brought forcibly to my mind by a new and carefully prepared presentation of the subject. From that time to this I have been as candidly and fully weighing all the arguments for and against the present view and practice as I was able, and I have to confess that I believe we are wrong. If God has commanded us to keep the seventh day of the week as a day of rest from labor, and a day of special worship of him, then men have no right to assume that the first day may be substituted for it. It is a principle in all good government that we submit ourselves to law, even though we may think something else, or some other way is equally good. In the family and in the school the child is required to obey, and we even expel him from the privileges of the school if he sets up his own wishes in opposition to his teachers, who require him to study on Monday rather than on Saturday. Monday may be a better day for him, and for all his companions than Saturday, and they may all choose that, but the rule of the teachers is that he be in school on that day, and he is obliged to obey. The wishes of the child, if submitted to, would break up the school. It would destroy all the authority of the parent and send the child forth into the world prepared to follow his own will and be without law—a hoodlum in society. The question then comes, Is there any other day than the seventh which God has ordained as the Sabbath? If there is another day, and God has made the change, then it is right for us to keep that other day. On this question, the one question of fact, the whole argument turns. It is said by a large share of the Christian world that the day has been changed, and to an investigation of this point I have applied myself, but can find nothing, either in the sayings of Christ or his apostles, which on any other subject or in any court of law would warrant us in believing that the original law, as given to the world on the seventh day of creation had been changed. Our Saviour says in His Sermon on the Mount that he came not to destroy the law but to fulfill. He came to obey the law. "I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me." He was careful "to fulfill all righteousness," even to the unnecessary things (as man views it) of circumcision and baptism. He never, in any instance spoke against obedience to any one of the commandments of God; but reiterated the duty on many occasions. When the Jewish traditions, which He found in practice worked against the spirit of love to our neighbor and good toward man, He rebuked those traditions, even though the Jewish doctors contended that they were founded upon the law of the Sabbath. He showed that it was right to heal the sick on the Sabbath day. When the disciples were hungry and had no means of satisfying that hunger but to nib out the kernels of wheat as they went through the field on the Sabbath, and the Jews found fault with it as a violation of the law of the Sabbath, he declared to them that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; that he was Lord of the Sabbath day, thereby indicating that he had the perfect right to interpret the meaning of the law in regard to it. But in no instance and by no word did he abrogate the law in its original purpose as given to man. This we find to be his course all through his teachings. He and his apostles never make void the law, but in every instance show that it is the law that is to assert its power more and more as men come into an understanding of the high and holy ends to which it reaches. It not only condemns the outward acts of violation, but lays hold upon the spirit within and declares that anger may be murder and even the look of lust adultery. If then the law of God, as given on Sinai, is not abrogated, and there has never been any change by one who has a right to make that change, then the law of the Sabbath still remains unrevoked, as all the other commandments remain in force to the Christian world. Looking at things in this light, which I must unless some one comes forward to help me out of the sorest trial of my life, I do not see but I must shut up my store on Saturday, and utterly refuse the hundreds who may come for supplies, although they may come with the sanction of good society, and with the approval of thousands of the best minds of the whole Christian world. O. Dickinson. Salem, Ogn., Jan. 8, 1879.