Sunday Communion by James White

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · May 27, 1875

Sunday Communion.

By James White

THE subject of communion has been connected by many professed Christians, with Sunday keeping, and Acts 20: 7 has been pressed into service, as if it were a help to that idea. But the light is spreading, and many have been led to acknowledge that Acts 20: 7 neither states a custom, nor declares a duty in that respect. The Disciples have clung most tenaciously to that groundless theory, but even they are beginning to see that there is no ground for the theory. McGarvey, a popular Disciple writer, in his Commentary on Acts, speaks on both these points, and really concedes the whole ground of dispute. He says:—

“It must, in candor, be admitted, that there is no express statement in the N. T. that the disciples broke the loaf every Lord's day, neither is it stated that they met every Lord's day.”

He might have gone further and said there is not a second instance of their breaking bread on first-day, and no intimation that the single instance in Acts 20 was connected with that time either by custom or duty.

Again he acknowledges that Paul pursued his journey from Troas, on Sunday morning; thus virtually confessing that Paul did not rest on that only Sunday to which they refer as a precedent for Sunday observance!

We frequently find the truth acknowledged where we did not expect it. The latest blow against this superstition (for we call that superstition which urges as a religious duty anything not taught in the word of God) we find in the Examiner and Chronicle, a celebrated Baptist paper. The question is brought up by a pastor in the following manner:—

“A SATURDAY COMMUNION SERVICE.—I am supplying two churches. We hold our Sabbath-school in the audience-room immediately after preaching. My afternoon appointment will not allow time for the Sabbath-school and communion season. In consequence, by mutual agreement, we have had the communion on the Saturday of our covenant meeting. Brethren and sisters related their exercises as our manner has been many years, and then celebrated the Lord's Supper, and felt greatly blessed. But a certain traveling Elder says we are doing wrong, and takes the trouble to make it appear so to all he can reach or influence. Now what does the Examiner say? Let us hear?”

To this a reply is made as follows:—

“The Examiner says the church has the right to celebrate the Supper just as they are doing it. The Supper was instituted on a week-day night, and it is not worth while for any ‘traveling Elder’ to make objection to a week-day observance of it.”

That is a bold step toward doing away with what has long been claimed as an “established precedent.” Thus, “our enemies themselves being judges.” There is really no precedent for Sunday observance, nor for Sunday communion, and it has always been acknowledged that there is no commandment for them.

We do not object to Sunday communion; we would as soon celebrate the supper of the Lord on that day as on any. But we do object to the endeavor to make it a church duty on a scriptural basis. And we are glad to have our objections sustained by so eminent church authority as the Examiner and Chronicle.

J. H. W.