THE SABBATH IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
By G.
THERE was nothing which so embittered the Jews against Christ as His disregard of their traditions. These were their own variations and explanations of the law of God, requirements which had no divine sanction. They had become much more tenacious concerning the observance of these traditions than they were of the commandments and ordinances proper. To such an extent was this custom carried that Christ said they had made of none effect the Word of God through their traditions. And of all their traditions there was none upon which they laid so much stress as those they had imposed upon Sabbath observance; nor were there any which Christ so conspicuously ignored during His public ministry. It was this public disregard of their authority in extraneous Sabbath laws that more than once determined the priests and scribes to have Him put to death. But at no time did Christ ever teach or intimate that there ought to be, or would be, any change of the day of the Sabbath. So also of the apostles; they were severely criticized for ignoring the authority of the Jewish rulers, and of violating the ceremonial law; but in no instance is there any record of their being accused of setting apart another day as the Sabbath. All manner of pretexts for persecution of the disciples were devised. Saul, in his exceeding zeal for the traditions of the fathers, sought every possible excuse for hailing men and women to prison and to death for believing in Christ. But he made no charge against them on account of their Sabbath observance. Nor was he himself, after he became a disciple and a minister of the Gospel, ever accused of setting up another Sabbath day. Nor is there any record of his ever acknowledging any other day as the Sabbath than that observed by the Jews. Yet there is nothing that would have been so quickly seized as a pretext for persecution, or so assiduously followed up, by the Jews of that day, as an attempt to establish another Sabbath day. This would have been especially true because the first disciples throughout Palestine were nearly all Jews. The ignoring of the Sabbath day would have been deemed by the Jewish rulers as the most heinous of all offenses. They would hardly have sought any other, so grave would have been the offense, and the conviction so easy of accomplishment. In such case the book of Acts would have furnished abundance of evidence that the disciples of the first century recognized a change of the Sabbath. But there is not a hint that such a change was even suggested. The silence both of the Jews and of the apostles would be indeed remarkable if there had been such a change.