p. 13 | Frank Admissions

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Jul 24, 1913

Frank Admissions

IN its issue of June 6, 1913, Everyman, an English magazine, prints an article on "The Continental Sunday," by Rev. James Adderley. In the course of his discussion he made the following sensible and truthful admission regarding the divine authority of the Sunday sabbath:—

Is it not time that we more frankly allow that the old-fashioned Sabbatarian argument will not hold water? Can these statements be denied? (1) That, historically speaking, the Christian Sunday is not the same thing as the Jewish Sabbath; (2) that our Lord's attitude toward the Sabbath was revolutionary, in the sense that he went against the religious view of his day, which is the view that modern Sabbatarians want to rehabilitate and fasten on to the Christian Sunday; (3) that St. Paul knew nothing of a Christian sabbath on the first day of the week; (4) that the "first day of the week" was a day of joy and worship, and had no connection with the Sabbath; (5) that even when Constantine, in the fourth century, combined the Mithra festival and the Christian Lord's day and decreed a holiday, he did not forbid some work, and therefore was not reconstituting the Sabbath; (6) that the first Reformers were opposed to making Sunday a sabbath, as savoring of Judaism.

The writer argues for a Sunday observance from the standpoint of making the day useful and health-giving. Speaking of the enforcement of a Sunday rest, he justly observes:—

Peace will never come so long as Christians try to force a law which they think is divine upon people who either suspect that the law is not divine or reject the God whose law it is supposed to be. We all agree that we want a weekly rest. Why should we quarrel over the particular day, and why should we try to coerce our fellows in the name of religion? We do not dream of doing this about any other religious duty, not even about religious duties the sanction for which is undoubted. Why should we choose the one religious practise the sanction for which is extremely doubtful, and impose it on others?