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The Sabbath in History

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jun 10, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 24.

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The Sabbath in History.

By B. F. Kneeland

Testimony: Divine and Human.

THE fourth commandment says: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Ex. 20: 8-11.
Sunday is the first day, and not the seventh. Why should Protestants follow the lead of the Roman Catholic Church in worshiping on the first day of the week, which the Bible says came "when the Sabbath was past"? Mark 16: 1, 2. It is beyond question that when Christ said "The Sabbath was made for man" and "The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day," He referred to the seventh-day Sabbath instituted at Creation and kept by God's people till the close of the Bible history.
Allow me to call attention to some statements from reliable historians and Biblical scholars who can not be accused of being prejudiced against Sunday observance.
Dr. Coleman says: "No law or precept appears to have been given by Christ or the apostles, either for the abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, or the institution of the Lord's day, or the substitution of the first for the seventh day of the week."—Ancient Christianity, chapter 26, section 2.
The Augsburg Confession declares: "The observance of the Lord's day [Sunday] is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church."—Cath. Sabbath Manual, part 2, chapter 1, section 10.
Sir William Domville of the Church of England says: "Centuries of the Christian era passed away before Sunday was observed by the Christian church as a Sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 321."—Examination of Six Texts, page 291.
"Unquestionably the first laws, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the Sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained, is the Sabbatical edict of Constantine, A.D. 321."—International Cyclopedia, Art. "Sunday."
Is it not passing strange that the murder-stained hand of a half-Christianized pagan should be the first to frame a law compelling people to rest on Sunday?
Just one word more from Cardinal Gibbons: "You may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we never sanctify."—Faith of Our Fathers, page 111.
Why not honor the Sabbath of the Lord? B. F. KNEELAND.