A SUNDAY ARGUMENT by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 3, 1880

A SUNDAY ARGUMENT.

By Editor

LEONARD BACON, D. D., in a lengthy article in the Christian at Work, on the fourth commandment, tries to solve the Sunday question, by admitting the absence of direct testimony on the subject from Christ and his apostles, and settles to this conclusion:—

“The ‘Christian consciousness’—let me rather say, the spirit of Christ in the hearts of those who, not having seen him, loved him—taught Greek and Roman, barbarian and Scythian, to count their days into weeks and to separate week from week by what we call the Christian Sabbath.”

“Christian consciousness” to indicate religious duty in the absence of Scripture requirement must be a splendid affair. It is so delightfully indefinite that all classes must admire and love it, except certain old-fashioned ones who persistently cling to the word of God, and vainly hope to keep the progressive Christians of this advanced age tied down to “the law and the testimony.” Paul wrote that “all good works” were inculcated in “the holy Scriptures;” but Paul did not live in the nineteenth century, and he was not a D. D.!

This Sabbath controversy brings to light some singular phases of human thought among professed Christians. Dr. Bacon has not a whit improved upon the methods of the Catholics on this point; indeed, the Catechisms of the Catholic church give a more plausible theory than he has offered—one more tangible and consistent, and not so subversive of the claims of divine revelation.

How easily people are convinced in favor of Sunday. Nay how determined they are to be convinced, reason or no reason. A gentleman of good standing both in the community and in the Methodist church told us, years ago when we were anxiously inquiring into this matter, that he had not a particle of doubt that Christ and his apostles changed the Sabbath, but he was always surprised that they did not say anything about it! Our inquiry as to how we should know that they changed it as long as they maintained a studied silence on the subject, failed to elicit any light from him, or to shake his confidence in his assumed fact.

We label the above “A Sunday Argument.” Such it is, put forth by one of the most eminent scholars in the land. It answers its purpose admirably. But if such an argument were put forth in favor of the Sabbath it would be overwhelmed with a flood of ridicule poured out from one end of the land to the other. But a “multitude of mighty men” cannot shield us from the judgment of God in the great day when every “refuge of lies” shall be swept away.