The Seventh Day Sabbath | Page 4

not likely that we ever shall. God does not require of us any more
than what we know; by that we shall be judged. Luke xxiii: 55, 56.
Once more: think you that the spirit of God ever directed Moses when
he was giving the history of the creation of the world, to write that he
(God) "blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he
had rested from all his work," unless he meant it to be dated from that
very day? Why, this is as clear to the unbiassed mind as it is that God
created man the sixth day. Would it not be the height of absurdity to

attempt to prove that God only intended Adam should be created at
some future period, or that the creation of the heavens and earth was
not in the beginning, but some twenty-five hundred years afterward?
All this would be as cogent reasoning as it would be to argue that God
did not intend this day of rest should commence until about twenty-five
hundred years afterwards. (The word Sabbath signifies rest.)
It follows then irresistibly, that the weekly Sabbath was not made for
the Jews only, (but as Jesus says, for 'man') for the Jews had no
existence until more than two thousand years after it was established.
President Humphrey in his essays on the Sabbath says, "That he (God)
instituted it when he rested from all his work, on the seventh day of the
first week, and gave it primarily to our first parents, and through them
to all their posterity; that the observance of it was enjoined upon the
children of Israel soon after they left Egypt, not in the form of a new
enactment, but as an ancient institution which was far from being
forgotten, though it had doubtless been greatly neglected under the
cruel domination of their heathen masters; that it was reenacted with
great pomp and solemnity, and written in stone by the finger of God at
Sinai; that the sacred institution then took the form of a statute, with
explicit prohibitions and requirements, and has never been repealed or
altered since; that it can never expire of itself, because it has no
limitation."
In Deut. vii: 6-8, God gives his reasons for selecting the Jews to keep
his covenant in preference to any other nation; only seventy at first--x:
22. God calls it his [8]"Sabbath," and refers us right back to the
creation for proof. "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and
sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh," &c. Here then
we stand fixed by the immutable law of God, and the word of Jesus,
that "the Sabbath was made for man!" Paul says, "there is no respect of
persons with God." Rom. ii: 11. Isaiah shows us plainly that the Jew is
not the only one to be blessed for keeping the Sabbath. He says
"Blessed is the man (are not the Gentiles men) that keepeth the Sabbath
from polluting it." "Also the sons of the stranger, (who are these if they
are not Gentiles?) every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it,
(does he mean me? yes, every Gentile in the universe, or else he

respects persons) even them will I bring to my holy mountain and make
them joyful in my house of prayer; for my house shall be called an
house of prayer for all people." Isa. lvi: 2, 6, 7. If this promise is not to
the Gentile as well as the Jew, then "the house of prayer for all people"
is no promise to the Gentile.
Now we ask, if God has ever abrogated the law of the Sabbath? If he
has it can easily be found. We undertake to say without fear of
contradiction, he has not made any such record in the bible; but to the
contrary, he calls it a perpetual covenant, a "sign between me and the
children of Israel forever," for the reason that he rested on the seventh
day. Exo. xxxi: 16, 17. Says one, has not the ceremonial law been
annulled and nailed to the cross? Yes, but what of that? Why then the
Sabbath must be abolished, for Paul says so! Where? Why in Cols. 2d
chapter, and xiv. Romans. How can you think that God ever inspired
Paul to say that the seventh day Sabbath was made void or nailed to the
cross at the crucifixion, when he never intended any such change; if he
did, he certainly would have deceived the inhabitants of Jerusalem, in
the promise which he made them about two thousand four hundred and
forty-six years ago! Turn now to Jer. xvii: 25, and tell me if he did not
promise the inhabitants