Why Observe Sunday? by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 5, 1882

Why Observe Sunday?

By Editor

(From the Yolo Mail.)

Why observe the Fourth of July? or Washington's birthday? There is no command to do so in the Constitution or laws of the United States, or of any of the undivided States, and consequently there is no legal obligation on any citizen to observe either day. Yet they are generally observed throughout our country. And why? Plainly because of the love of country common to our people which attaches itself to its natal day as well as to the natal day of its greatest citizens—the father of our country.

Why observe Sunday? There is no command either in the Old Testament or the New so to do. Yet it has been the uniform practice of the church and of Christian people everywhere from the first century to observe it. And why? Because the astounding fact of rising from the dead by Jesus Christ was believed to have happened on that day—the first day of the week. And hence it was more natural for all who believed that fact, to honor that day, than it was for them to honor the day of his birth, that is, Christmas. And that observance has been kept up for eighteen centuries wherever Christianity has followers throughout the known world. The Christian term for the day, is the Lord's day, and not Sunday. It is a volunteer observance, and not a compulsory or obligatory one, in the universal Christian world, as in the case of Christmas, and just like the fourth of July or Washington's birthday. And for the same reason. All who are true patriots will honor these great American days without constraint or compulsion. And all who are sincere Christian believers will honor the Lord's day because of their faith in the resurrection, and need no Scripture command or legal obligation to constrain them so to do. Any other observance would be a mere outward formality, without merit or without benefit to anybody. To call Sunday the Sabbath, and thereby try to import into Christianity the legal obligation of the old Hebrews to observe the seventh day, or Saturday, as of divine command, is not only a proceeding wholly illogical, but wholly unhistorical, unscriptural, and unreasonable also.

The seventh day was the Jewish day of rest or the Sabbath, and was observed by converted Christian Jews, just the same as, and together with the Lord's day, for three hundred years or down to the reign of Constantine in the fourth century. Gentile converts, however, observed only the Lord's day. But neither of these two classes ever observed Sunday because of any legal or scriptural obligation, but only in honor of the day as that of Christ's resurrection and the great fact of immortality brought to light to them in that way. Saint Paul expressly condemns the intolerance of the Jewish converts who wanted the Gentiles to keep their Sabbaths and other national observances, peculiar to the Jews, and approves that while "one man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike" and is right in so doing. The theory that the observance of the Lord's day is obligatory on Christians, just as the Sabbath, (that is, our Saturday), was on the Jews, is of modern growth and of narrow extent, and is quite as unauthorized as would be the general adoption by the Christians now, of the old Jewish Sabbath, which, like circumcision and other national observances, formed a part of the customs and laws of that peculiar people. The truth is, the moment such observance becomes a matter of law, rather than of choice, from that moment it ceases to be the evidence of Christian faith or feeling, in which it first had its origin, and becomes wholly devoid of patriotic merit or Christian virtue.

The Presbyterian divines at Westminster, who undertook to make the observance of what they called the Sabbath, a part of the moral law and so obligatory upon the whole world, not only ignored the voice of the entire Christian church, ancient and modern, Catholic, Protestant, Greek, and Oriental, but condemned thereby even the very Scriptures, which they declared the sole foundation of their faith. At the time of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, its leaders declared Sunday no more obligatory or sacred than any other day, including such men as Luther, Calvin, Melanethon, Erasmus, and also Grotius. In the English church the same views were held by Cranmer, Tyndale, Knox. Barrow, Warburton, Baxter, Taylor, Whately, Paley, Bunyan, Milton, and many others. There is really no permanent authority in the entire range of Christian history, that upholds any other view, except the Westminster Assembly of Divines and their followers. So long as the church was kept free from the State, no attempt was made to legislate in favor of Sunday, but when these were united, then the law of the State became supreme, and the obligation was simply a State obligation, not a scriptural one, or one originating in the primitive church.

The first legislation of the kind began in the days of Constantine. He was a man of blood and of policy, the most infamous, as shown in the murder of his own wife, his own son, and his father-in-law. He issued his edict in the year 321, and it reads as follows:—

"Let all judges and people of the towns rest, and all the various trades be suspended on the venerable day of the sun. Those who live in the country, however, may freely and without fault attend to the cultivation of the fields, lest with the loss of favorable opportunity, the commodities offered by divine providence be destroyed."

The wording of the above imperial decree shows that Constantine recognized the need of rest as the basis of his legislation, and not at all as the Christian origin of the day. And that is the ground on which our modern legislatures put it, just as Moses did the Sabbath. On this ground it is a legitimate exercise of legislative power in the interests of the people, and has nothing whatever to do with its Christian origin or the faith that has kept up its observance as a Christian festival of free-will rejoicing for eighteen centuries. As a day of rest and freedom from work all can take part in its enjoyment and recognize gratefully the provision that not only sets apart one day in seven for repose, but forbids ordinary work to be done on that day and enforces the rule by appropriate penalties.

In order to afford our readers a correct understanding of the state of the Sunday controversy we must copy something from the secular press; for all papers have something to say about the Sunday laws now. The above from the Yolo Mail is one of the best articles we have seen, notwithstanding the evident errors into which the writer has fallen. We will notice a few.

1. It is not a historical fact that the first day of the week was kept by any class of Christians in the first three centuries. It is so often asserted (though without any proof) that it is quite easy to imbibe the idea that such is the fact.

2. The Sunday was never called "the Lord's day" in the New Testament. The Lord made the seventh day the Sabbath in the act of resting upon it from the work of creation. It was the Lord's own rest day, even as the work of creation was his. He always claimed the seventh day as his—"the holy of the Lord," "My holy day,"—but he never put forth a like claim to the first day. When specified in the New Testament it is always called "the first day of the week"—nothing more.

3. Gentile converts did not keep the first day of the week any more sacredly than they kept the sixth day of the week. Religious meetings were early held on both these days in honor of the crucifixion and of the resurrection. In process of time the precedence was given to the first day, as precedence was given to the Roman church over all other churches. So far as any sacredness was attached to the first day of the week it was of Roman origin—not at first as the Lord's day, but as "the venerable day of the sun." As a matter of policy it was adopted from the heathen by the Bishops of Rome, and soon supplanted the Sabbath of the Lord in that church.

4. Rom. 14 does not refer to the weekly Sabbath, as we have shown in a recent examination of this chapter.

5. It is a manifest error to class the seventh-day Sabbath with "circumcision and other national observances." The Sabbath was entirely separate from observances peculiar to the Jews; it was placed in the decalogue as part of the moral law, and the only reason of the institution and obligation was that of God's work and resting at the time of the creation. Jewish sabbaths, of which there were a number, were typical; the weekly Sabbath was commemorative. It belonged to Jehovah as his rest day (Sabbath day) from the beginning.

6. The Sabbath was not, in the Pentateuch, placed on the ground of man's need of rest. It was a memorial of the work of creation; a reminder of the all-important truth that there is a God of infinite power, to whom all creatures are indebted for "life and breath and all things." It was in this light that the Lord presented it both through Moses and the later prophets. In Ex. 31:17 the Lord himself said of the seventh-day Sabbath:—

"It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed."

And in Eze. 20:20 the Lord said:—

"Hallow my Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God." See also verse 12.

The clergy of the present time, by placing Sabbath obligation upon the basis of our need of rest, are secularizing the institution and obliterating it as a Bible institution—as the holy of the Lord. This is the direct and unavoidable result of turning away from the Sabbath of the decalogue, and of choosing a day in its stead which God never enjoined in his word, for the observance of which no Scriptural reason can be given. In the absence of any divine requirement, a reason is invented which is most likely to meet with popular favor. And this is the surest method possible to make the religion of the day a popular worldly religion. It is fast descending to that.

This article of the Mail contains many truths, to one of which we wish to call particular attention, namely: "So long as the church was kept free from the State, no attempt was made to legislate in favor of Sunday." One of the most prominent steps in the work of secularizing the church, or in uniting church and State, was the enforcing, as a church festival, the heathen "day of the sun." The American people might learn a lesson from this, but they will not. Too many of the religious of the present day love the praise of man more than the praise of God. Too many professed Christians would rather follow in the easy wake of popular error than to bear the cross of an unpopular truth, even though that truth is plainly written in God's word.

"It is time for thee, Lord, to work; for they have made void thy law." [EDITOR SIGNS.