PLAIN QUESTIONS.
Reader! be pleased to give a plain answer to each of these plain questions, without equivocation or mental reservation.
1. Did God, after he had finished the work of creation, "bless and sanctify" the seventh day of the week; or simply the seventh part of time, without reference to any particular day of the seven?
2. Did He not sanctify the very day in which he rested from his work? Was not that the last day of the seven? Did He sanctify any other?
3. WHY did He "bless and sanctify" the seventh day? Was it not because he rested on that day? Will this reason apply to any other day of the seven? Did he not work on EVERY other day? (See Gen. 2:2, 3.)
4. Is not God's example of resting on the seventh day enjoined upon us for imitation? (Ex. 20:8-11.) Do we imitate him, when we rest upon some other day than the one in which He rested?
5. Is it the special appointment of God which renders a day holy, or is it our own act? Is the day holy because we count it so, or because God has made it so?
6. When God enjoins us to count the Sabbath, "the holy of the Lord," (Isa. 58:13,) is it not equivalent to telling us that He himself has previously constituted it a holy day by blessing and sanctifying it? Is it any thing more than requiring us to reckon the day to possess that dignity which He has already conferred upon it?
7. If God's blessing does not rest upon one particularly specified day, to the exclusion of all others, and we are nevertheless required to keep a day holy, are we not required to do what is impossible? For how can we count a day to be holy, which God has not previously made so? (Compare Quest. 5.)
8. If God's blessing did not rest upon one particularly specified day, could he challenge to himself any propriety in one day more than in another? Yet in the Sabbath day he claims a special propriety; "My holy day." (Isa. 58:13.)
9. Are we not commanded to refrain from labor in that very day which God once "blessed and sanctified," and thereby made holy time? "In IT thou shalt not do any work," &c. Do we obey this command when we work all of that day, and make it the busiest day of all the seven?
10. If it be downright disobedience to set about our work on the seventh day, when God says, "in it thou shalt NOT do any work," can we think to make amends for this act of disobedience by ceasing from work on another day? Even the performance of a required duty will not make amends for another one neglected. How much less, then, the performance of something which is not required! "Who hath required this at your hand?"
11. Has God ever taken away the blessing which he once put upon the seventh day, and made that day a common or secular day?
12. Does not the reason of the blessing (See Quest. 3,) possess all the cogency now that it ever did? Has it lost force by the lapse of time? And while the reason of an institution remains, does not the institution itself remain?
13. Was the reason of the blessing which God originally put upon the seventh day, founded upon any need that men then had of a Redeemer? Was it therefore to receive its accomplishment and fulfillment by the actual coming of the Redeemer? In what possible sense can it be said, that Jesus Christ fulfilled and made an end of this reason?
14. Has God ever said of the first day of the week, In it thou shalt not do any work? Has Christ ever said so? Have the apostles?
15. Is there any scriptural proof that Christ, or his apostles, or the Christian churches in the days of the apostles, refrained from labor on the first day of the week?
16. As there is no transgression where there is no law, (Rom. 4:15; John 3:4,) what sin is committed by working on the first day of the week?
17. Does not the Sabbatic Institution RESULT from the blessing and sanctifying of a particular day? Is not this the very thing in which it consists? How then is the institution separable from the day thus "blessed and sanctified"? How can it be separated from that upon which its very existence depends?
18. If the very life and soul of the institution consist in the blessing which was once put upon a particular day, is it not idle to talk of the transfer of the institution to another day? If another day has been sanctified and blessed, then it is an entirely new institution, and not a transfer of the old.
19. Does not the law of the Sabbath require the weekly commemoration of that rest which God entered into after he had finished the work of creation? By what principle of law or logic, then, can that law be made to require the commemoration of the work of redemption?
20. If it be necessary that the work of redemption be commemorated weekly by a positive institution, must not the obligation so to commemorate it arise from some law which directly and specifically requires it? But when, instead of this, the attempt is made to derive the obligation from the Sabbath law, is it not a tacit acknowledgment that there is no law requiring the weekly commemoration of the work of redemption?
21. Does the Scripture ever apply the name, Sabbath, to the first day of the week? Even in the New Testament, where the term is used, is not the reference always to the seventh day?
22. If Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles ful thirty years after the death of Christ, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, still calls the seventh day of the week the Sabbath, can it be wrong in us to do so? (See Acts 13:14, 42, 44; 16:1, 3; 17:1, 2; 18:4.) If this be the inspired application of the term so many years after all the ceremonial institutions were nailed to the cross, is it not our duty to make the same use of the term now?
23. Is it not a manifest perversion of the scriptural use of terms, to take away the sacred name from the seventh day of the week, and give it to the first day?
24. When the first day of the week is so generally called the Sabbath, are not the common people thereby led to suppose that the Bible calls it so? Are they not thus grossly deceived?
25. If the name Sabbath were no longer applied to this day, and it should simply be called first day of the week, as in the Bible, is it not probable that it would soon lose its sacredness in the eyes of the people?
26. Is it possible, then, that God has not given the day a name sufficiently sacred to secure for it a religious regard, nor even guarded it with a law sufficient to prevent its desecration?
27. What then? HAS GOD LEFT HIS WORK FOR MAN TO MEND! IS IT NOT SAFE TO LEAVE THE DAY AS GOD HAS LEFT IT! "Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him?" (Isa. 11:13.)
28. Are you very sure that by the Lord's day, (Rev. 1:10,) is meant the first day of the week? Have you any Scripture proof of it? Have you any other proof of it than the testimony of those who are called the early Fathers?
29. If the testimony of the early Fathers is to be relied on, that the Lord's day means the first day of the week, ought not their testimony to be just as much relied on, as to the manner in which the primitive Christians observed the day?
30. If it were even certain that by the Lord's day the writer of the book of Revelations meant to designate the first day of the week, would it thence follow that it is a day sacred by divine appointment, any more than that the "Sabbath day's journey" (Acts 1:12,) was a distance limited and prescribed by divine authority? If Luke could select the latter expression from the vocabulary of human tradition, without intending to sanction it as being of divine origin, could not John do the same with regard to the former expression?
31. Do the Fathers, or any one of them, inform us that the Lord's day was observed by abstinence from labor?—that it was observed as the Sabbath? Mark the question. It is not, was the day observed, simply; but, was it observed as the Sabbath?
32. Is there not an important distinction between the Sabbath and a religious festival? Does not the word Sabbath mean rest? Can any day, therefore, be called a Sabbath day, which is not a day of rest from ordinary labor?
33. Does a religious festival require any thing more than the commemoration of some important event, allowing the time not occupied in the public celebration of it to be spent in labor or amusement? Is not this precisely the manner in which the first day of the week was observed, according to the testimony of the ancient Fathers?
34. Though the observance of the first day of the week as a religious festival be in itself innocent, (Rom. 14:5,) so long as it is not made a pretext for dispensing with an express law of God, (Matt. 15:6,) yet do you find it any where in the word of God commanded as a duty?
35. Do you believe that a Sabbath, in the true and proper sense of the term; namely, a day of rest from all ordinary labor, is necessary and indispensable to the well-being of mankind? If so, do you honestly suppose that God would set it aside, and have its place supplied by nothing more than a religious festival?
36. Is it not wicked to uphold a course which makes the commandment of God of none effect? (Matt. 15:1-9; Mark 7:1-13.)
Reader! carefully ponder the foregoing questions, together with the Scripture references. Answer them as you would if you stood at the gates of death. Do not trifle with the Holy Spirit of God, by forcibly wresting his word from its obvious meaning. Let conscience be unfettered; and act, as fully realizing that "THOU, GOD, SEEST ME."
Published by the American Sabbath Tract Society,
No. 9 Spruce Street, N. Y.
DIALOGUE,
Between a Minister of the Gospel and a Sabbatarian
Sabbatarian. Did Jehovah ever sanctify one day above another?
Minister. He did.
S. And what day was that?
M. The seventh.
S. When?
M. When he finished his creative work.
S. Where?
M. In Eden.
S. On whom was it obligatory?
M. On our first parents, and all their posterity.
S. Did he ever unsanctify that day?
M. No.
S. Did he ever sanctify the first, or any other day than the seventh, as a day of rest?
M. Not that I know of.
S. Then do not those who neglect the seventh day, take away something from the word of God? And do not those who keep the first day add to that word? Read the threatnings of the Lord against such:—"If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."
COUNTERFEIT COIN.
Being the substance of a recent Conversation between an eminent Counsellor at Law and a Sabbatarian.
The Lawyer contended that although the first day of the week had no divine authority for its sanctity or observance as a Sabbath, yet if it be kept as scrupulously and conscientiously as the seventh day demanded, it could not but be as acceptable to God.
In answer to such sophistry, the Sabbatarian submitted the following legal case to him:—
"I am told that I can purchase, in the State of Connecticut, one hundred copper cents, bearing the impress and superscription of the United States Mint, and equal in every respect in value to the mint coin, for sixty-five cents, payable in gold or silver. But I admit them to be counterfeit. I admit, also, that I circulate this spurious coin. Now, will you undertake, for a fee of $10,000, to defend my cause against a prosecution for passing such false coin, and exonerate me from conviction in the United States' Courts."
The honest lawyer's answer unhesitatingly was, "I cannot argue your cause in the very teeth of so unquestionable a law as appears to exist on the Statute Books."[9]
The Sabbatarian replied:—"Then, as you admit your first day Sabbath a counterfeit, allow me to answer you as the celebrated Mr. Whiston did Chancellor King of England upon a similar question: 'If God Almighty should be as consistent, as just, and as jealous of his laws in the Court of Heaven, as my Lord Chancellor is in his, where are we then?'"
The Inference.—If, then, I cannot obtain an advocate on earth, (for no one of repute would undertake it,) to plead my cause with the offer of a fee of $10,000, for the violation of a law of man's making, what ground have I to expect that the only advocate to be obtained in the Court of Heaven, i. e. the Lord Jesus Christ, will defend my cause against a breach of that law which his father ever made punishable with death, temporal and eternal?—and who himself, when on earth, in his comment on that law, averred that not one jot or tittle could in any wise pass from it? (Matt. 5:18, 19.)
[9] If any person shall falsely make or counterfeit any copper coin of the United States, or pass or publish the same, he shall be subjected to a fine of $1000, and suffer imprisonment to hard labor for a term not exceeding three years.—Gordon's Digest, p. 922.
Published by the American Sabbath Tract Society,
No. 9 Spruce Street, N. Y.
SABBATH CONTROVERSY.
THE TRUE ISSUE.
One of the greatest difficulties which we who observe the seventh day have ever found in the Sabbath controversy, is to make our opponents understand what is the real question at issue. So long have their thoughts, feelings and habits, been moulded under one particular view of the subject, that it seems almost a miracle if one is found who can disregard all foreign matter, and look at the precise point in debate long enough to come to any certain and intelligent conclusion about it. But it is evident, that if an opponent is suffered to raise false issues, or to be continually striking off into the discussion of some point which does not affect the final question, we may prolong the controversy ad infinitum.
Let us then endeavor to state distinctly what is, and what is not, the issue between us and the observers of the first day of the week.
1. The issue is not whether the first day of the week was observed at a very early period by Christians. We admit that it was. We admit that its observance may be traced up to very near the borders of the apostolic age. What more can a generous, conscientious opponent, who scorns any other aid than what the truth will give him, ask? He knows in his own soul that this is the very utmost that can be produced from any of his histories. Let him ransack his old musty volumes all the way backward, till he fancies he can almost talk to the "beloved disciple" face to face, and what more can he find? Verily, nothing.
But when you have got this admission from us, then we have another question to ask. How—don't dodge the question—HOW was the day observed by the early Christians? We admit the observance of it; but that is not the issue. The issue respects the manner of observing it. You, if you are consistent, will say that the early Christians observed it not only by public worship, but by abstaining from labor. We, on the other hand, deny that they abstained from labor. We admit that they held public worship; but—we repeat it—we deny that they abstained from labor. We deny that they regarded it as a Sabbath, "resting according to the commandment." Now with the issue thus fairly stated, we put the laboring oar into your hands, and challenge you to prove your position. Bring proof, if you can, that the early Christians regarded the first day of the week as any thing else than a religious festival; between which and a Sabbath there is a very important difference, the latter requiring abstinence from labor, the former merely requiring public worship in honor of the event commemorated, and allowing the remainder of the day to be spent in labor or amusement.
2. When it is once settled, that in a very early period of the church the first day was observed as a festival; when our opponents have fairly jaded themselves to a "weariness of the flesh," in their "much study" of the old fathers, to find proof of it;—though we never called it in question;—then the issue is, whether this festival was ordained by Christ?—whether the New Testament furnishes inspired example of such festival? Our opponents affirm; we deny. We maintain that in every passage of the New Testament, where the first day of the week is mentioned, the context furnishes a sufficient reason why it is mentioned, without the least necessity of supposing it to have been a festival season. No exception can be made to this, unless in regard to 1 Cor. 16:2. The reason why the Apostle in this place specifies the first, rather than any other day of the week, does not so clearly appear from the context; but the peculiar phraseology employed, "let each one of you lay by him," [himself,] is against the idea of any public meeting; and if no public meeting, of course no festival season. As every allusion to the first day of the week is sufficiently explained by other circumstances noticed in the context, the inferential proof of its festival character is thereby destroyed. As for clear, positive proof of it, such as express precept or command, no person of modesty pretends it. Still less is there any proof of its Sabbatic character.
3. Another point wherein we are necessarily at issue with great numbers of Christians, is whether the institution of the Sabbath is separable from the particular day to be observed. They affirm; we deny. We maintain that God's blessing and sanctifying a particular day is the very thing in which the institution consists. To render this plain matter yet more plain, we invite close attention to the wording of the fourth commandment; premising, however, that the word Sabbath is not translated from a Hebrew word, but is the Hebrew word itself anglicized, just as baptism is an anglicized Greek word. The proper translation of the word is Rest. Now let the word Rest be substituted for Sabbath, and how clear it becomes—
"Remember the Rest day to keep it holy." [Surely some particular day is denoted; for it is the Rest day, not a Rest day.] Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Rest of the Lord thy God. [Is it any where historically recorded as a fact that God rested on the seventh day? It is Gen. 2:2. 'On the seventh day God rested from, all his work which he had made.' Who does not see that that day on which God rested, was the last of the seven which constituted the first week of time?] In it—[in what? why, in the seventh day, the last day of the week; for the pronoun it can have no other antecedent]—thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. [Why must no work be done on that particular day, the seventh or last day of the week? The reason follows.] For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and RESTED on the seventh day, [as the record in Gen. 2:2 proves. See also Heb. 4:4.] Wherefore the Lord blessed the Rest day and sanctified it.
The conclusion is irresistible, that the Rest day spoken of is the particular day on which God rested from his work, which, as before shown, was the last day of the week. That very day, and no other, God blessed and sanctified. The only reason assigned why he sanctified it, is "because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." Gen. 2:3. The Rest day, then, which we are required to observe, is "the Rest of the Lord thy God:" which does not mean the rest which the Lord thy God has appointed, though it is true that he has appointed it; nor does it mean a rest which becomes the Lord's by reason of our appropriating it to him; but "the rest of the Lord thy God" means the rest which the Lord thy God observed.
Now from all this we think it must be evident, that whoever observes any other Rest day than the seventh day of the week, does not observe the Rest—Sabbath—"of the Lord thy God." He may, it is true, appropriate it to the Lord his God, and in that sense call it the Lord's; he may ignorantly suppose that Christ in the Gospel has appointed it, and in that sense also call it the Lord's; but it can by no means be called "the Rest of the Lord thy God" in the sense of that expression in the fourth commandment. Hence, irresistible is our conviction, that he does not obey the commandment. O brother Christian, why will you persist in maintaining that your Sunday keeping is an act of obedience to the law of the Sabbath?
Published by the American Sabbath Tract Society,
No. 9 Spruce Street, N. Y.
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.
FALSE EXPOSITION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
The Fourth Commandment has been variously expounded by its professed friends. Among these expositions, none has been more injurious than that which represents it as requiring the observance, not of the Sabbath, and the seventh day, but of a Sabbath, and a seventh day—not of a certain and well-known time, but of an uncertain and varying time. Yet this is the exposition of it which is given both by commentators and writers on the subject of the Sabbath. It will be found, however, that this view is generally presented in order to prepare the way to introduce the first day of the week, under the specious name of Lord's Day, into the place of the Sabbath. Thus some are made to think, that the name Sabbath may as well be applied to the first day of the week as to the seventh. But to such an exposition there are several serious objections:—
1. It is a perversion of the original text itself. In every place where the weekly Sabbath and the seventh day are spoken of, the Hebrew article is uniformly used. This article is often used like our demonstrative this—but more commonly like our definite article the—never as our indefinite article a or an; and Gesenius, in answer to the question whether it may be used indefinitely, says, "The definite article cannot be rightly said to stand indefinitely." To this opinion agree all our translators, both ancient and modern, who have rendered the terms, both in the fourth commandment and all other places of the Scripture, by the Sabbath and the seventh day.
2. It makes the Fourth Commandment to be indefinite and absurd. If that commandment only requires the observance of a Sabbath or rest, and that on a seventh day, then one man might keep the seventh day, another the third day, and another the fifth day, yet all obey the commandment. What confusion would thus result from carrying out this exposition to its legitimate results! But God's commandment is not yea and nay after this manner. It says, "the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." That man will not be held guiltless who misinterprets and misrepresents it, for however pious a purpose he may do so.
3. It is contrary to the teachings of the very men who give this exposition; for they affirm, that the fourth commandment required the keeping of the seventh day until Christ came. Now, if the Jews before Christ, were bound to keep a certain and definite day, and that the seventh day, then the commandment required a certain and definite day, and that the seventh day.
From these considerations it is evident, that those who represent the fourth commandment as requiring the observance of only a Sabbath, and that upon some one day of the seven indefinitely, are guilty of a false exposition of the commandment, and of handling the word of God deceitfully. They make a plain passage of Scripture to signify one thing for some thousands of years, and then ever afterwards to signify another thing. Thus do they make void the commandment of God, that they may keep their own traditions.
Now let us turn to a consideration of some of the consequences of this kind of exposition. Among these we will mention only three.
1. It overturns all certainty in explaining the Scriptures. If a man, in translating from a Latin or Greek author, should pervert his author's meaning in this manner, by using words in a different sense from that in which they were intended, he would be cast out and despised. But yet when a preacher represents the term the Sabbath as meaning simply a rest, that so he may call the first day of the week a rest, and therefore the Sabbath, he deals worse with the Scriptures than the translator just mentioned does with his profane author. Instead, however, of being cast out and despised, his speculations are allowed to go for truth. Thus unbelievers are encouraged in their infidelity; and occasion is given for them to say, that the Bible is interpreted by its friends to mean just what they please to have it. It is dangerous for men to use their wits thus to blind the eyes of their fellows.
2. It abolishes the Lord's Sabbath, and makes the Fourth Commandment to be a mere cipher. First, it abolishes the Lord's Sabbath, because it teaches that the observance of the seventh day, on which God rested and which he introduced into the commandment as one with the Sabbath, is not at all binding, but the day may be spent in any kind of labor. Is not this to abolish the Lord's Sabbath? Second, it makes the fourth commandment a cipher, because it takes away the time, which is the seventh day, and the event commemorated, which is God's resting from his creative work. Now read the commandment, as these expounders would have it, bereft of the time and the event commemorated. It then commands only a rest, without any precept or example as to its length or frequency. One person, therefore, may rest one hour in each day; another one day in a month; and a third one month in a year; and each may call this keeping the Sabbath. Does not this make the fourth commandment a mere cipher?
3. It abuses God's Word, and misleads his people. It abuses his word by representing that the Word teaches what it does not teach, and that it fails to teach what it attempts to teach. It misleads his people, on one side, by pressing the fourth commandment to sustain the first day of the week, which it says nothing about, thus laying a yoke upon the people, requiring them to observe a day, in regard to which they will finally be asked, Who hath required this at your hands? On the other side, it misleads the people, by encouraging them to neglect a day which God hath sanctified; and commanded them to keep holy.
Such are some of the consequences of this false exposition of the fourth commandment. They affect both the sabbatic institution itself, and those whose duty it is to remember it. It is true that the persons who countenance such expositions are called very zealous and godly men; but this, instead of bettering the case, makes it worse. If they were enemies to the commandment, such things might be expected, and would be comparatively unimportant; but that the wound should be inflicted by its friends, aggravates the evil. There is occasion to tremble for some religious teachers, who profess great interest in the Sabbath, but who yet refuse to hear the truth in regard to it. Some such there are, who, if the truth be presented to them, instead of inquiring if these things are so, imitate the Jews of old who, when they were cut to the heart, gnashed on their reprover with their teeth; and when they could endure it no longer, "stoppped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord." Such would do well to inquire if they are not in this thing teaching error for truth, and their own traditions for the commandments of God.
Published by the American Sabbath Tract Society,
No. 9 Spruce-street, New-York.
THE
TRUE SABBATH
EMBRACED AND OBSERVED.
By Eld. SAMUEL DAVISON,
Many years a regular Baptist Minister; now Pastor of the Seventh day Baptist Church in Shiloh, New Jersey.
NEW-YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMER. SABBATH TRACT SOCIETY