The Week and the Sabbath
By James White
any regard to the day of the week, and it could not continue to fall on the same day of the week, therefore it could not be the sixth day of the former or original week as he professes to have demonstrated, but would vary, as he elsewhere observes, "by the changeable course of the moon." Hence, if the week, at the commencement of each year, was counted from the fifteenth day of the first month, there must have been longer or shorter weeks or days intercalated in the week at the termination of the year in order to make the first week of the next year commence at that point. This is evident. But neither Scripture, history, astronomy, reason or common sense will allow of any such reckoning. He counts largely on the credulity of his readers, who expects such vagaries to pass for scientific demonstration. 6. The writer himself acknowledges the blunder, when he says that the religious solemnity which had hitherto been paid to the Patriarchal week, was transferred to the first day of unleavened bread, on what day of the week soever it might happen to fall. But he also says that by this act there was a "newly instituted week," and that the sixth day of the old week was made the seventh of the new. That is to say, the solemnity of the seventh day Sabbath was transferred to the sixth day of the week, whether it happened to be the sixth day or not!!! 7. Again he has multiplied the blunder, for he first said "that which was anciently the seventh day of the week, became the first day of unleavened bread;": and in the next paragraph said that "the religious solemnity which had been paid to the seventh day of the Patriarchal week was transferred to the first day of unleavened bread," which he first avers was the same identical seventh day of the Patriarchal week!! Transferred from the seventh day of the week to another day, falling on the seventh day of the week! Verily, astronomy is a great science. The first day of unleavened bread was indeed a sabbath, but it was a yearly sabbath, fixed to a certain day of a month, not to a certain day of the week. 8. This theory impeaches the testimony of the Holy Ghost, by acclaiming that that was not the first day of the week, which inspiration declares was the first day of the week. This would make the New Testament record a fraud, which has deceived thousands, who have read in its pages that Christ arose on the first day of the week if it be so that he did not arise on the first day. Any candid, unprejudiced reader of the Bible will not be slow to see that there is but one seventh day of the week recognized in the Old and New Testaments. A few such astronomical calculations, backed up by a few modern essays on geology, would save the modern Voltaire, and Paines, a deal of trouble, by making the Bible a mere toy in the hands of worldly-wise men to display their learned folly, by means of "science falsely so-called." J. H. W. Will the Wesleyan please copy?