"THE LAW OF THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH."
THE argument then here presented for First-day keeping may be summed up as follows: - The commandment enjoining a day of rest is indefinite, and leaves us at liberty to select any day we please.
- Redemption is greater than creation.
- The work of redemption requires that a day be kept in its commemoration.
- The work of redemption was completed on the first day of the week, therefore,
- It is more appropriate to keep the first day of the week as the Sabbath, than the seventh which had been kept until the days of our Saviour as a memorial of creation; and hence,
- We find the new institution called the Lord's day.
It is an acknowledged principle of argumentation that if a premise be wrong, no reasoning, however correct, based thereon can bring us to a right conclusion. But we claim that not the premise only is false in the reasoning for Sunday-keeping, but every argument based on it, in itself considered is false also. The conclusion therefore is doubly erroneous. The first point in the above summing up of the argument, namely, that the commandment is indefinite, is plainly contradicted by the Scriptures. The last also is contradicted; for the Son of man testifies that he is Lord of another day than the first day of the week. All the other points are merely the inventions of men; for the Bible is silent respecting them. Man first sits as umpire between the works of creation and redemption, and pronounces the latter greater than the former; a question upon which the Bible gives him no light whatever. Upon this human decision, he decides further, that the work of redemption must have a day set apart in its commemoration, nothing of the kind being found in the Bible. Following still on in the light of the fire of his own kindling, he concludes that the day which he has set apart in commemoration of redemption, can more appropriately be regarded as the Sabbath than the day which God originally appointed for another reason. He therefore lays his hands upon the sacred institution, transfers it to another day, thereby in reality annihilating the original, and then seizes upon the fourth commandment to enforce its observance. Is not this being wise above what is written? Is it not taking unwarrantable liberties with the word and work of God? And now, let us ask, who is willing to base his faith on so important a part of the worship of God as keeping the holy Sabbath, on such a foundation as this? Who in view of the fact that the Bible gives no warrant for such a course dare go on carelessly keeping the traditions of men till he meet the Judge of all the earth, who is a God of justice and jealous of his glory? But it may be asked, Do you then admit of no memorials of redemption? We do; but we plead for those which God himself has instituted. We are told in the New Testament that we have redemption through Christ's blood. And there are divinely appointed memorials both of Christ's death and burial and resurrection. Baptism represents the latter. And the former is commemorated by that institution which our Lord gave to his disciples when he gathered them to the last supper on the night of his betrayal. Suppose then that redemption is greater than creation—we do not say that it is not, we do not say that it is, we have nothing to say on that point; for the Bible says nothing—suppose it is greater, since God has given us two memorials of events connected therewith; viz., the death and resurrection of Christ, why is not this sufficient? Why press into this service another institution which has no fitness for such a work? A word here as to the probable reason why the Sunday institution has come to perform the office that it does in the minds of many, of a memorial of redemption, or rather of the resurrection of Christ. We have seen that there was a memorial of this event given to the church in the ordinance of baptism. So long as this existed in its purity, there was no need of any other. But this was corrupted. The "burial beneath the yielding wave," the rising from the watery bed to walk in the newness of life, was changed to the insignificant manipulation of sprinkling. The object of the baptismal ordinance as a memorial was thus destroyed, for there is nothing in the act of sprinkling that can in any way represent, or commemorate the burial and resurrection of Christ. A new demand is thus created for a memorial of the resurrection. A new institution is called for. And strange as it may seem, unfit as it may seem, contrary to all laws of analogy and reason as it may seem, the Sabbath institution is remodeled to supply the lack; and the Sunday comes to us fresh from the Papal mint, as the needed memorial. It was the Papacy which changed the ordinance of baptism so that it was rendered ineffectual as a memorial of the resurrection; it was the Papacy which gave us the substitute, and the reasons for it; for be it understood that most of the arguments which Protestants so nimbly wield in defense of Sunday-keeping, are the inventions of Papacy. The daughter has set for instruction at the feet of her mother. Papists claim to have changed the Sabbath, and they can make good their claim. They can make it good by history; and they can make it good to a certain extent from the Scriptures; for they can show as well as we, that neither God nor Christ ever changed it, and that therefore if the change is correct, it must have been made by the church with divine sanction. The arguments of both Protestants and Catholics, are to a great extent the same. The Protestant says them over, and claims that for these reasons(?) it must be that God has changed it. The Papist says them over, and contends that therefore the church had a right to change it. Both are equally groundless, but the Protestant no less presumptuous. The testimony in regard to the Papacy, we shall not now enter into, as we have already protracted this article so far beyond our original design. But having noticed all that portion of the Tract with which we have any controversy, we now take our leave of it, submitting our cause to the candid judgment of those who may read. We think the arguments brought forward by the Tract have been fairly met; but evidence which would satisfy our own mind might not be sufficient for all. We think however that a careful study of the Word with due reflection on the subject will convince all of the utter futility of the arguments for Sunday-keeping. Should it be so, none can contend that they should influence in the least either our faith or practice.