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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 49

Part I. — Scripture Evidence — In Regard to the Obligation of Sabbatical Observance. — Scripture Evidence in Regard to the Obligation of Sabbatical Observance

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Part I.

Scripture Evidence

In Regard to the Obligation of Sabbatical Observance.

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Scripture Evidence in Regard to the Obligation of Sabbatical Observance.

Of the theological assumptions made by professional teachers of the popular forms of Protestantism, many are found, on examination, to have no sufficient evidence; but the group of assumptions implied in one of the stock phrases of those teachers, namely, "The Christian Sabbath," is specially noteworthy as being contradicted by the very documents quoted by those teachers in support of it. The book appealed to by Sabbatarians as the "inspired, sufficient, and infallible rule of life for Christians," not only gives no warrant for their claim of the scriptural appointment of a Sunday Sabbath, but proves that claim to be fraudulent as well as unfounded, it being in direct opposition to both parts of the Bible. This will plainly appear from an unprejudiced examination of the book in question.

There is a well-known institution called the Jewish Sabbath. The Hebrew people hold themselves religiously bound to observe it; and the Hebrew Scriptures not only distinctly set forth the law requiring such observance, and accurately describe in what it consists, but give us also its origin and history.

If you ask a Jew why he observes the Sabbath, he will probably refer you to the fourth of the "Ten Commandments" formerly enjoined upon his nation by Moses, at Mount Sinai, and now recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus. It is as follows :— page 4

"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all they work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work; thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." (Ex. xx. 8—II.)

The word "remember," above used in regard to Sabbatical observance of the seventh day, indicates that the Hebrews had already some acquaintance with it; and, tracing back the narrative in Exodus, we find the institution of such observance recorded in the sixteenth chapter. In verse 22d of that chapter, speaking to the Hebrews "on the sixth day," Moses said to them, "Tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord."

On the morrow, the seventh day, Moses said (speaking of the manna which they had previously gathered), "Eat that to-day; for to-day is a Sabbath unto the Lord; to-day ye shall not find it in the field; six days ye shall gather it; but on the Seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall be none."

But the people, having evidently known nothing of Sabbath observance before, did not put perfect confidence in this statement; and the narrative proceeds:—

"And it came to pass that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days. Abide ye every man in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day."

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Observe that the rest of the Sabbath was here expressly fixed for a definite day. On that day travel and one kind of labor were expressly forbidden. The Hebrews were not to gather manna, and were not to go out of their place on a certain fixed day, the seventh. And the record proceeds to say that they did rest on that day.

Now when, four chapters after (about one month after; compare Exodus xvi. 1-29, and xix. 1; xx. 8), the solemn command is given to these same people, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," (that is, to keep it separate from other days in the manner prescribed), is it not in the highest degree probable that the Sabbath here spoken of is the same that they had been observing for a month past? And does not this probability become certainty when it is immediately added, "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath"?

The day is here proved to be not merely a seventh part of time, to be chosen by each according to his pleasure, but a particular day of the week, which the Hebrews were already getting accustomed to observe. That day they still observe; and the name of that day is Saturday, alike by their usage and ours. There is no more doubt that the "seventh day" of the fourth commandment Sabbath is Saturday, than that "the first day of the week," spoken of in the New Testament, is Sunday.

The fourth commandment has a wider scope than the direction given a month earlier, and recorded in the sixteenth chapter. That one, the earlier (addressed to the Hebrews and to them only, since no other nation depended on manna for food), forbade them to gather manna, and also to leave their appointed places on Saturday, the seventh day of the week. This one, the later, addressed to the same people, required them to "remember" that same Saturday Sabbath, and to observe it by "not doing any work."

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It would seem plain, even from the first aspect of the case, that the two injunctions for sabbatical observance, one given to the Hebrew people while wandering in the wilderness, and the other to the same persons assembled before Mount Sinai, were appointed and intended for that people only. But there is positive additional evidence to that effect. In many of the sabbatical commands subsequently recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures, the limitation of them to the Hebrews is distinctly expressed, declaring Sabbath observance to have been given them as a mark of distinction between them and other nations. Here is some of the evidence :—

"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily, my Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is A Sign Between Me and You throughout your generations."' (Ex. xxxi. 12, 13.)

"Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever." (Ex. xxxi. 16, 17.)

"And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm : Therefore, the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day." (Deut. v. 15.)

"I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them." (Ezek. xx. 12.)

Thus it appears by the Old Testament Scriptures that the Sabbath was not only an important part, but a peculiar and distinctive part, of the Jewish system. Nobody supposes that the Philistines and Amalekites were required to observe the Sabbath. That observance was devised expressly as a mark of distinction between Jews and Gentiles. But the term Gentiles includes all who are not Jews; and thus Christians, unless Sabbatism is commanded page 7 in the Christian Scriptures, have no more to do with that observance than the Philistines or the Amalekites had. It was never intended for any but Jews, according to the Old Testament. To discover whether there is any such thing as a Christian Sabbath, we must go to the Christian Scriptures, the New Testament.

Looking first at the Negative evidence supplied by the New Testament, we find that neither Jesus nor any apostle enjoins Sabbath-keeping. Not a single writer in the New Testament commands or recommends the observance either of Saturday or of any other day as a Sabbath. We find there no requisition for the observance of any day as peculiar or sacred, or as to be specially devoted to rest or worship. The Christian law being silent on this subject, the times of rest and worship are left free to be decided by Christians, and by all other Gentiles, for themselves. Those who wish to set aside a particular day for their own religious observance, have an undoubted right to do so; but they have no right to impose such observance as a duty on other people, and no ground for declaring that God requires such observance.

The second item of negative evidence in the New Testament is that neither Jesus nor any apostle forbids Sabbath-breaking. There is need of making the statement in this form, since so many persons who call and think themselves "followers of Jesus" cry out against what they call "Sabbath-breaking." But in fact, it necessarily follows from the statement next before this—the fact that neither Jesus nor any apostle, nor any New Testament writer, enjoins Sabbath keeping,—that in the Christian system there is no such thing as Sabbath-breaking. Where no Sabbath is commanded there is no Sabbath to be violated. Of course, then, to Christians, there is no such thing as Sabbath-breaking. If an Episcopal clergyman should stigmatize dissenters as Lent-breakers, or Christ page 8 masbreakers, he would be no more absurd than those who, claiming to be Christians, cry out against Sabbath-breaking. The Christian system, judged by the New Testament, gives no injunction respecting either Lent or Christmas, or a weekly Sabbath. The extra-Christian rules of particular sects or churches bind only the members of those bodies, and bind even them only while they choose to remain members.

It is proper to insist here upon the fact that extra-Christian rules and customs exist in all the great sects, Catholic and Protestant. They all call themselves Christian, and all claim to adopt the New Testament as their authority in religion and their rule of life; but, as each sect differs from the others in its apprehension of the meaning and the relative importance of some parts of that book, and as each naturally emphasizes the particulars wherein it seems to itself to follow the acknowledged rule more closely than others, customs and regulations peculiar to itself are gradually formed in each, which, being supposed by its members illustrations of the eminent faithfulness of their own body, are assumed by them to be undoubtedly Christian. Their Church being, in their view, the best representative of Christianity, its rules are taken for granted to be Christian rules; and thus Mariolatry and penance are reckoned Christian by the Roman Catholic, observance of Lent and Christmas by the Episcopalian, and infant baptism and Sunday Sabbatism by the Presbyterian and the Orthodox Congregationalist, though not one of these observances finds any warrant in the New Testament. Nevertheless, if all the churches in the world should unite for that purpose, they could not manufacture a Christian duty beyond the warranty of that book.

Looking, now, at positive New Testament evidence in regard to Sabbatism, the attitude of Jesus towards it is page 9 the first thing to be considered. The ground taken by him upon this subject was such that he was stigmatized by devout Jews as a Sabbath-breaker. This man they said, "cannot be of God, because he keepeth not the Sabbath day." He accepted an invitation to a feast on that day. He justified his disciples in traveling and laboring on that day. And, in the controversy which he had with the Pharisees on that occasion, while they were maintaining the binding force of their fourth commandment upon him and his disciples, and he was denying it, he unhesitatingly made the claim that he was "Lord of the Sabbath;" a phrase which, in that connection, could have no other meaning than that he was Lord of it to reject it; that he and his disciples were authorized to disregard their Sabbath, were freed from the obligation of their fourth commandment, and might decide (as he said in another place), "even of themselves," what they should do, or not do, on the seventh day of the week. Jesus also commanded, in one case, the bearing of a burden on the Sabbath day, in direct opposition, not only to the fourth commandment, but to the express and emphatic injunctions of the Hebrew prophets, Nehemiah and Jeremiah. And, when accused in regard to this last act, he not only defended himself, but denied the statement in Genesis (which they seem to have quoted to him as pertinent and authoritative), about God having "rested" after the work of creation. Jesus said plainly, "My Father worketh hitherto." He never needed rest, and never did rest.

The point of positive New Testament evidence next in importance on this subject is the teaching of "the Apostle to the Gentiles" in regard to it. Paul, born and educated a Jew, and taught from his youth to consider Sabbath observance as a duty, would of course have continued to teach and practice it under the new religion, if such page 10 observance had formed a part of the new religion. It is a highly significant fact, considering Paul's antecedents, that no word of injunction to keep either the Sabbath or a Sabbath ever dropped from his lips after he became a Christian. But we are not left to this negative evidence. He plainly teaches, in strong, varied, and multiplied forms of expression, that Christian proselytes from Judaism are delivered from the Sabbatical obligation, as from all other distinctively Jewish obligations. Observance of days, to the Jew who became a Christian, was utterly abolished. To all such, as soon as they received the doctrine taught by Jesus, Paul proclaimed their entire freedom from all Sabbatical ordinances. Hear him:—

"And you, being dead in your sins, and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; Blotting Out the Hand-Writing of Ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; Let No Man Therefore Judge You in meat or in drink, Or In Respect of a Holy Day, Or of The Sabbath Days; which are A Shadow of things to come; but the BODY is of Christ." (Col. ii. 13-17.)

There were at that time many Judaizing Christians, persons disposed to incorporate the old faith with the new, instead of turning decisively to the latter as preferable. To such, Paul speaks of their disposition to sabbatize as a suspicious circumstance; as showing a remainder of subjection to the obsolete ordinances ("beggarly elements" he calls them, Gal. iv. 9), of the Jewish system. To such he says, "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." (Gal. iv. 10, 11.) Still, Paul claims for every man, under the Christian system, the right to make peculiar use of a special day, if he shall think it desirable. "One man esteemeth one day above page 11 another; another esteemeth every day alike; let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." (Rom. xiv. 5.) This passage is eminently noteworthy, for two reasons: first, it expressly allows to Christians the observance or non-observance of a Sabbath, according to the preference of each person; next, the fact of such allowance proves that Christianity, as Paul understood it, does not require nor include Sabbath-keeping.

In view of the evidence above cited, the ground taken by Jesus and by Paul may be properly called, I think, anti-Sabbatical.

It is instructive to notice that the persons in controversy with them were devout conservatives, pious Jews, who were really shocked at the denial, by the new reformers, of points so vital in the old system as the sanctity of the Sabbath and the infallible inspiration of the Scriptures. Nevertheless, when, at a later period, the distinguished success of Paul and his associates in converting Gentiles had made it needful for the Judaizing Christians to compromise for the sake of union, and to yield some points in favor of the new doctrine, the fact is specially noteworthy that Sabbatical observance went, with circumcision, among the points to be yielded. The fifteenth chapter of the book of Acts gives us the proceedings of the first Christian Council, which was convened, by the authorities of the Church at Jerusalem, to consider this very matter. After full and free debate as to how many points of Judaic observance were "necessary" for Gentile Christians, "it pleased the apostles and elders, with the whole Church," to select and prescribe four only, among which Sabbath-keeping was not mentioned.

"The first day of the week" is a phrase several times met with in the New Testament; and the use of this phrase is so insisted on by Sabbatarians that one would naturally expect to find, in connection with it, some page 12 authority for the pretence that the Sabbath has been "changed" from the seventh day of the week to the first. It is on the assumption of some authority connected with this phrase that labor or recreation on Sunday is stigmatized as "Sabbath-breaking." Let us look at the record, and see what ground there is for such assumption.

We may clear the way for this examination by noticing that the first day of the week is never, in the New Testament, called the Sabbath. There, as in the Old Testament, the word Sabbath always means the Saturday-Sabbath of the decalogue. The fact that "Sabbath" in the New Testament means a different day from "the first day of the week," is clearly shown in Matt, xxviii. i, which says, "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene," &c.

The cases in the New Testament where "the first day of the week" is mentioned in connection with an assembly of people, a coming together of numbers (whether for food, worship, preaching, or anything else), are just two; two, and no more. They are the following:—

"Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus," &c. (John xx. 19.)

"And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them (ready to depart on the morrow), and continued his speech until midnight." (Acts xx. 7.)

Here are two historical facts : 1. The disciples of Jesus met together as quietly and secretly as possible on a Sunday evening in Jerusalem, two days after their dispersion in consequence of the crucifixion of their Master. 2. A considerable time after this, the Christians in Troas, in Asia Minor, came together on a Sunday evening to break page 13 bread, and to hear an exhortation from Paul, who was going away the next morning.

From just these two little facts, the mention in the Christian records of Sunday evening as the time when two meetings were held, the following unauthorized assumptions are made:—

That all Christians, everywhere, are to hold meetings every Sunday.

That they are not merely to copy these incidental instances of what the early disciples did, by meeting on Sunday evening, but to devote the whole of every Sunday to rest and worship.

That these things are God's command, instead of merely somebody's hasty inference from insufficient premises.

And that God intended, by the mention that these two meetings of early disciples, in different cities and at different times, took place on Sunday evening, to have it understood that a Sunday Sabbath was thenceforth to be binding upon all Christians, in place of the obsolete Saturday-Sabbath of the Jews.

Is it not absurd to attempt to manufacture a "Christian Sabbath" out of these two evenings of the "first day of the week "? But they do it because there is nothing else in the New Testament to make a Sabbath of, while yet a Sabbath seems essential to the successful working of their theological system.

Let it be further noted, that, even on the unproved sup-position that these two evening meetings were held for worship, there is not the slightest reason to doubt that the disciples went to them after spending the daylight hours in their ordinary bread-earning occupations. The pretence of a Sabbatical day preceding these evening assemblages is destitute alike of evidence and probability.

The phrase "the Lord's day "—often applied to Sunday, the first day of the week, by people who wish to have page 14 it thought that God requires some special observance of that day—occurs just once, and no more, in the New Testament. The author of the book of "Revelation" says (i. 10), "I was in the spirit on the Lord's day." What time, or what day of the week, he meant to designate by that, no one can possibly know, though any one may guess as he pleases. What is certain is, that you cannot get out of this passage an injunction for all Christians to observe one day of the week as a Sabbath.

The failure of the fourth commandment argument in this matter is so thorough,—it is so self-evident that an injunction to Jews to abstain from labor on Saturday cannot also require, by those same words, that Christians everywhere shall hold meetings for worship on Sunday,—and there is such an utter lack of evidence in all that can be scraped together from the New Testament in support of Sunday-Sabbatism, that the advocates of that theory resort, in despair, to a text in Genesis to help them. This is it: "On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all 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."

The sufficient answer to any sabbatical claim founded on this passage is, that a statement which neither directs any man to do, or not to do, anything whatever, cannot possibly be admitted as a command for a specific duty binding on all men in all ages. No priestly imposture in the world was ever greater than the citation of this passage as requiring that our Sunday be sacredly observed as a Sabbath.

The doctrine of complete identification of the Sabbath with Sunday seems to have been first formally set forth by Rev. Dr. Bound (A. D. 1595), a divine of great authority among the Puritans in England. From him it was page 15 adopted into the Confession and Catechism of the famous Westminster Assembly of Divines, thus becoming a recognized tenet of the English and Scotch Presbyterians. From them it came to this country with the Boston Puritans and the Plymouth Pilgrims, and strict regulations for its enforcement were incorporated with the first laws of Massachusetts. Portions of these Sunday laws (laws founded on the utterly mistaken notion that they enforce a rule of Scripture) are still on our statute books, and still exercise considerable control over the community. False as their basis is, their operation is in part salutary, since it interferes with the disposition of some persons to carry on the ordinary course of labor and business seven days in the week without intermission. On the other hand, these laws have always obstructed measures highly useful to the whole community, such as the opening of public libraries, reading-rooms, museums, and galleries of art, and the running of street-cars and railroad trains on Sunday; and they have been successfully appealed to, not only to prevent public benefits of this sort, but to punish a quiet citizen for training a vine against his own door-post on Sunday morning.

Sunday-Sabbatism, even to this extent, is inculcated by the great Protestant sects which call themselves "evangelical" all through this country, and the ministers of most of them not only assume a divine ordination of it as unquestionable, but seriously present, as scriptural, proof of that doctrine, such statements as have been-, answered in this paper. The English Church, however, does not inculcate this view of sabbatical observance among her authorized formularies, and no such doctrine or practice is known on the continent of Europe.

To sum up: I have tried briefly to show—

That the sabbatical observance enjoined in the fourth commandment of the decalogue and in many subsequent page 16 portions of the Old Testament was intended for Jews, and for no other nation or people, and that its requisition was rest on Saturday and labor on Sunday:

That, if any Christians think this fourth commandment binding on them, they also should rest from labor and business on Saturday, and should work on Sunday and the remaining days of the week, since that commandment cannot possibly be obeyed in any other manner:

That, since the Christian Scriptures neither enjoin Sabbath-keeping nor forbid Sabbath-breaking, nor specify any day for particular observance of any sort; and since Paul by elaborate argument, and Jesus both by word and deed, claimed immunity for Christians from fourth commandment Sabbatism; and since the phrases which have been quoted from the New Testament as establishing a "change of the day" are found, on examination, to have no such force or meaning, the phrase "Christian Sabbath" must be held unjustifiable, and the thing intended by it non-existent; and, finally:

That, since the view of sabbatical obligation brought to this country by the Boston Puritans and the Plymouth Pilgrims, and now taught by various sectarian bodies here and in Great Britain, can be clearly traced to its origin in the sixteenth century in a work by Dr. Nicholas Bound, and to the Westminster Assembly of Divines as the chief instruments of its propagation, we need feel no hesitation in treating it like other exploded errors, and in holding the very different ground maintained by Jesus and Paul in the New Testament.

Let it be noted that the view taken in this paper by no means impugns, or is designed to interfere with, that excellent custom and consent of civilized peoples by which the ordinary course of bread-earning labor and business is discontinued one day in seven. Rest and recreation to that extent are clearly beneficial to men's bodies, minds, page 17 and souls; and since Sunday is already used for those purposes, as well as for assemblages for religious instruction and worship, it is far better to retain, than to change, our habit of devoting that day to them. Only let the true grounds of such observance be understood, and let not sectarians impose their church rules upon the community under the pretence that they are laws of God.

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