"IF YE WILL INQUIRE, INQUIRE YE."
By Editor
This Inquirer's Department is conducted for the purpose of helping those who are studying the Bible. The answers are oftentimes only suggestive. They are never to be considered infallible, only as they agree with the infallible Word. The writer who may answer them does not consider that his opinion is infallible. He will simply give the best that he has, and plead with the inquirer to search the Word. Such questions only will be answered as, to the editors, seem to minister to the good of the readers and to the mission of the paper. We can not answer repeatedly in the same volume questions upon the same scripture. The name and address must accompany question, not for publication, but as an evidence of good faith, and that answer may be made by letter if deemed advisable. No letters are answered which do not contain the name of the writer. It is well always to enclose stamp for reply. 3279.— Have We the True Seventh Day?
Please give the historical proof or reference which will establish a connection between the Sabbath that Christ kept and the Saturday of to-day, which will prove that Saturday is the identical day indicated by the fourth commandment. Of course, the calendar gives Saturday as the seventh day, and encyclopedias confirm it. But they have a good reason for it, which reason I would like very much to have. C. W. D. There are some things which, if we will take time to consider, are self-evident. (1) It is not an uncommon occurrence for an individual to lose count of the days of the week. It is a rare thing for an entire family to do so, yet we may hear or know of an instance or two in the course of a lifetime. But no one ever heard of a neighborhood losing the order of the days of the week or the day, much less a township losing the day, or a county, a province, or a state. If one should lose such reckoning, the rest would immediately set him right. In the very nature of the case a change of the day is impossible unless there was concurrent agreement among the nations; but history records nothing of this kind. (2) It is a well-known fact, as a writer in the North British Review some years ago remarked, that Sunday is "the wild solar holiday of all pagan times." Religion would hold the pagans to the day. Religion has also held many of the professed people of God to the observance of the day which comes just before the first day of the week. Whenever the Jews and other nations have come in contact, the seventh-day Sabbath and Sunday stood related in the week as they do now. (3) The late Wm. M. Jones, D.D., of London, an antiquarian, prepared by great research, large expense, and indefatigable labor, "A Chart of the Week, Showing the Unchanged Order of the Days and the True Position of the Sabbath, as Proved by the Combined Testimony of Ancient and Modern Languages." This chart was completed in 1886. It gives in nine columns (a) the name of the language, when spoken, read, or used, (b) the name of the cluster of seven days called a week, (c-j) the names of each of the days in the original languages, the transliteration and translation into English in 160 ancient and modern languages and dialects; and 108 of these languages know the seventh day by the name of Sabbath or its equivalent, while the entire number bear testimony to the identity and order of the days of the ancient and modern week. That part dealing with European languages was compiled by the noted linguist Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte. (4) Astronomy and the testimony of the records of eclipses confirm the same, as does also the history of the Jewish people. These strong, obvious reasons, which might be greatly elaborated, furnish sufficient ground for the correctness of calendars and encyclopedias.