THE SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH OR THE FIRST by O. Dickinson

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, May 20, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 21

THE SEVENTH-DAY SABBATH OR THE FIRST.

By O. Dickinson

BY O. DICKINSON.

Becoming convinced, a short time ago, of the fact that the word of God teaches us to keep the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath, I wrote an article which appeared in the leading paper of our State, indicating the change which had taken place in my own mind and practice. In answer to that article, many friends who had known me as a Congregational minister in Oregon, wrote to me to correct what they believed to be a wrong understanding of the Scriptures, and, if possible, dissuade me from my purpose to keep the seventh day as the Sabbath instead of the first day. One of these letters gives so clearly and fully the substance of all I received, that I quote its propositions in the exact words of the writer, so that all may see what is the tendency of the present age in regard to the law of God. And it will also show what views of the Scriptures are entertained by one of the largest Christian denominations of our land.

“There is,” the writer says, “a fallacy in the conclusion of your argument, in the assumption that the law of God as given on Sinai is not abrogated. If, then, I shall prove to you by competent Scriptural testimony and logical reasoning that the law given on Sinai is no longer in force, that it has no place under the Christian dispensation, and that we are free from it, your conclusion will fail, and you will find the way out of your trial. Christ preached that he came to fulfill the law. I think you do not construe this text aright, when you indicate that to fulfill means to obey. I take it that Christ, in fulfilling the law, became the end of the law. The law thus having accomplished its purpose, is done away with. Its limit is attained, and it is a thing of the past.” And further on in his letter he says: “Christians of our day usually assemble themselves together on Sunday; but it is erroneous to suppose that we are commanded to do so on that day any more than on any other. This practice is founded on custom, not on commandment. It has grown up from immemorial usage.”

I quote thus at length in order to give, in his own words, the proposition which he seeks to establish, and the conclusion to which he comes in reference to the Sabbath. In answer to all this, and everything else which might be written indicating that there is now no law requiring the keeping of the Sabbath, either the seventh day or the first—“that all law referring to it is done away with,” “has attained its limit, “is a thing of the past,” I wish to lay down the following proposition, to which I will devote this article; viz., The moral law of God, that written upon tables of stone by the finger of God, is primary in its nature,—primary in the sense that it is of first rank, and that it never can be done away so long as God and intelligent moral beings exist, and have relations to each other. Even love, which is the “fulfilling of the law,” bows to it, and carries out its precepts in its highest and holiest meanings. It is in this last sense—in the sense of its truest meaning—that Christ came to fulfill the law. Before Christ, each of the ten commandments was a kind of skeleton of moral precepts; the law was the first draft, the first outline of that beautiful moral picture which he filled out in his own life, by his character, his way of obeying the law, what he was in spirit and feeling, in love to his Father, in sympathy, kindness, and good will toward men. Into whichever one of these laws we place this filling, the tints and shades of his interpretation, we see it in a new light, and to have a meaning which it never had before. The Greek word translated to “fulfill,” expresses what I have here given. It means to fill up; to supply; to furnish; to perfect. The above are Pickering’s definitions of the word πληρωσαι, plerosai. And now let me ask, Does this imply that Christ became the end of the law? that the law, having accomplished its purpose, is done away with? that its limit is attained, and it is a thing of the past? Does the artist fill out a picture to throw it away? Are all those beautiful touches which Christ put into his Father’s law in his sermon on the mount intended to finish it out, so that it can be laid aside, and be used no more? We know that this cannot be, although the text in question is one of the passages most frequently quoted to show that the law of God completed its work when Christ came, and that it is no longer binding upon the Christian heart and life.

I have said that the law of God, as given upon the tables of stone, is primary,—that it never can be done away so long as God and intelligent moral beings exist. I do not mean by this that the pure-hearted Christian, whose life is the image of his Master, must always think of God’s law before he acts. I do not mean that there is any chain that binds and galls and is felt as a burden. No part of the law of God is a burden to the Christian. The true man does not think of the law, “Thou shalt not steal.” He does not wish to steal. Stealing has no place in his heart. He is not bound. No hard restraint is put upon him by that law. It is only when he begins to think of stealing, and wants to steal, that the law becomes a chain. And so it is with the law of God; the loyal heart is as free under it as if there were no law.

“Thou shalt not kill.” “Thou shalt not steal.” “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” “Thou shalt not covet.” These are precepts which no more restrain the freedom of the Christian than does the air he breathes. The air enters his lungs and gives him life and vigor, and yet he may not think of breathing. But is there no need of the air, because he breathes it freely? Is there no need of the law, because he does not feel it, because he does not chafe and fret under it?

Let us try each one of these precepts of the Supreme Ruler, and see if they can be done away with. Suppose the written command, “Thou shalt not kill,” were lost from the decalogue, and from all written books and records, and no one believed that God had ever given any such command. Would it be less a duty to refrain from injury to our neighbor, and from taking his life? Independent of any prohibition from a Supreme Power, every one knows that the duty of treating his fellow-men with respect and kindness has its root in and grows out of the very nature of human beings. Can a man covet his neighbor’s house or his neighbor’s wife, and not be injured by it? If he opens his heart to covetousness, he takes into it a brood of stinging vipers. That man and woman in Connecticut who planned, a short time ago, the one to poison his wife and the other to poison her husband, to open the way to their own embrace, are but samples of the terrible state to which coveting what belongs to another opens the way.

But it is needless to pursue this matter further. It is admitted by all our best thinkers that every one of these commandments of God, as found in the decalogue, and as explained by the words and life of Jesus Christ, is binding, and that too, as nearly as possible, according to the letter of the law. There may be, and are, exceptions—circumstances in which the just Judge will not hold the man guilty who breaks his laws. A man may be compelled to kill. He may be compelled to steal. Necessity may lay it upon him, against his will, to work upon the Sabbath. The necessities of others, sickness, the hunger of brute beasts, may make it his duty to work. All these, and every other compulsion by which men are necessitated to do different from what the command of God directs, is provided for in the teachings of Christ. These teachings, however,—these necessities,—give no permission to men to do as they please, nor do they open the door, at any time, to constant transgression. As soon as these compulsions cease, the duty to rest upon God’s identical day, to spend the hours in his worship, returns upon the soul, and is as binding as it was before necessity loosed them from the guilt of transgression.

When the law says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” it means what it says, in letter and spirit, every jot and tittle of it. When it says, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” as explained by the latter part of that same precept, viz., to bow down to it, and serve it, it means just that, reaching

to the very soul, as Christ and his apostles filled it out. Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, says that covetousness is idolatry. In writing to the Ephesians he classes it among the lowest and most debasing passions. When a man so loves gold that he neglects his soul, his intellect, his heart, and lets it secure his affections, and dethrone God, that man is an idolater. This further meaning, which does not at once, and on the outside, appear in the original law, may be regarded as the filling out which Christ gave to that law. It reveals to man the heart-poison which that law forbids him to touch. But because the New Testament opens out the law, and shows hidden depths and larger thoughts, that does not destroy the letter of the law, nor make that letter (it being the framework which compasses the whole) less important.

As the letter of all these laws named is important (and all the others might be shown in the same light), why is it that we drop out the law of the Sabbath from this list, and say it is only to be kept as custom directs, and that any other day will answer as well, and be equally right to those who keep it? Did any one ever notice that the Supreme Giver of that law has put his own name in it, as the Creator of the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and all that in them is? Is it nothing that an earthly father has honor from his children? Is it nothing that the Creator of the heavens and the earth has honor in that which he has made? Is it nothing that the architect has the honor of inventing, drafting, and working out the grandest and most perfect machinery that ever was turned to intelligent use? and does not He who is higher than the highest heavens; “who hangeth the earth upon nothing,” and “stretcheth out the north over the empty place;” who “bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them;” who “holdeth back the face of his throne, and spreadeth his cloud upon it;”—is it nothing that he does not have his works remembered, and that he is the maker of them all? Can it be that any one will say, “No; he is not to be remembered in these things”? There is a Fourth of July for the fathers of our republic, a birthday for Washington, a day for Andrew Jackson, but no day of remembrance for our Father in Heaven. There is to be henceforth no direct calling to mind the mighty works of God; man has changed the day. The one which God appointed is left out, and another day is brought in to give us the rest we need. “Christians usually assemble themselves on Sunday, but it is erroneous to suppose that we are commanded to do so on that day, any more than on any other. The practice is founded on custom, not on commandment. It has grown from immemorial usage.” And so the law is abolished. The Sabbath of God is no longer; man has another day for rest,—another day that has all of the “spirit” of the Sabbath in it. It is just as well. And here the following words of the apostle, which refer entirely to Jewish civil and ceremonial laws, are quoted as if they were sufficient testimony to the rightfulness of our choice: “One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.”

With the above, I leave the question sought to be established by these letters of my friends; and I believe every thinking man will say that the ten commandments of God go to the bottom of all intelligent relations, in God’s universe, and that they must stand unchanged forever.