SANCTIFICATION OF THE SEVENTH DAY.
By D. T. Bourdeau
WHEN we show the perpetuity of the seventh-day Sabbath, we are sometimes told that God merely blessed the Sabbath day, without attaching any importance to the particular seventh day. We readily admit that God blessed the Sabbath day. But which day is the Sabbath day? Says the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. . . . The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work." Ex. xx, 8-10. But we still have direct testimony on this point. The record says, "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work, which God created and made." Gen. ii, 2, 3. Here we have the plain declaration that God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. God first rested on the seventh day, and the seventh day became God's rest-day. He then blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Thus we see that the seventh day became the blessed and sanctified rest day or Sabbath as soon as God had created the heavens and the earth. But, says the critic, was not the act of sanctifying the seventh day, confined to the seventh day of the first week of time? We answer, It was not. God's act of resting was in the past when he sanctified the seventh day, and to sanctify means "to set apart to a holy, sacred or religious use." Webster. Now, past time cannot be set apart to a religious use. It is gone forever, and cannot be recalled, and consecrated to the Lord. We therefore conclude that when God had rested from his work, he sanctified, or set apart to a religious use, the seventh day in the future. But how far in the future did the act of sanctifying the seventh day reach? We find that it reached the seventh day that the Israelites kept about three weeks before the promulgation of the law. For Moses, while speaking of the seventh day in the wilderness of Sin, said, "To-morrow is the rest, the holy Sabbath unto the Lord" (French Trans., Ex. xvi, 23); and we have no account of God's hallowing or sanctifying the seventh day more than once. The fact that the next day was the holy Sabbath unto the Lord was sufficient to justify the Israelites for gathering a double portion of manna on the sixth-day, and authorized Moses to say, "Bake that ye will bake to-day, and seethe that ye will seethe, and that which remaineth over lay up for you to be kept till morning." If the fact that the seventh day was the holy Sabbath unto the Lord involved an obligation for the Israelites to rest from their work on the seventh day, was it not the duty of our first parents to turn away their feet from the seventh day, from doing their pleasure on God's holy day? Was not the seventh day the holy Sabbath or rest unto the Lord in the days of Adam and Eve, and in the days of the patriarchs? It is evident that the obligation to consecrate the seventh day to the Lord, did not originate at the giving of the law. The fourth commandment did not sanctify the seventh day. It refers us back to creation for the time when the Sabbath was made, and was given to guard an existing institution. We next come to the days of the prophet Isaiah, and find the Lord speaking as follows: "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, and honorable, . . . I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth." Isa. lviii, 13, 14. By reading the connection we learn that the Lord is speaking for the benefit of the repairers of the breach, those who would build the old waste places, and raise up the foundations of many generations; and it is evident that a breach has been made in the law of God, that the grand sabbatic building or institution has lain waste for many generations. It is also evident that the specifications of this prophecy are being fulfilled by the commandment-keepers of this generation. Now God here speaks of the Sabbath as being his "holy day;" and the Sabbath day became holy by God's act of sanctifying or hallowing the seventh day at creation. Therefore the act of sanctifying the seventh day at creation reached the seventh day in this generation. Again, the seventh day is still the Sabbath day or rest day—the day on which God rested; and the fourth commandment says that God blessed and sanctified the Sabbath day. God has never removed his blessing and sanctity from the Sabbath day, and the seventh day is still the holy Sabbath unto the Lord. We call the Sabbath holy because it is dedicated to the worship of God. The Sabbath is called holy in the same sense that places of public worship are called holy, or the pulpit sacred. The Bible puts a difference between holy and unholy, between a thing that is sanctified and a thing that is not sanctified. When mount Sinai was sanctified that Jehovah might descend upon it in majesty to proclaim his holy law, the children of Israel could not occupy it as they would their own ground [see Ex. xix]; and when the sanctuary was sanctified [Ex. xl] the priests were not permitted to use it as they would their own houses. Two of the sons of Aaron put no difference between the holy and the unholy, and there went out fire from the Lord and devoured them. Lev. x. At the present time men tell us that it makes no difference what day we keep, provided we keep one day in seven. They put no difference between God's holy day and a day that he has never sanctified. They hide their eyes from God's Sabbath, and God is profaned among them. Eze. xxii, 26. Their teachings make God the author of confusion. But God changeth not. My prayer is that my soul may not be gathered with transgressors in the day of God's fierce anger.