The Seventh Day Sabbath | Page 4

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the sacred institution then took the form of a statute, with explicit prohibitions and requirements, and has never been repealed or altered since; that it can never expire of itself, because it has no limitation."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 of Jerusalem that their city should remain forever if they would hallow the Sabbath day. Now suppose the inhabitants of Jerusalem had entered into this agreement, and entailed it upon their posterity