The Unalterable Uniformity of
| the Week
(Continued from page 3)
England did not adopt the new calen-
dar until the year 1752. Sweden and
Denmark accepted it about the same
time as did the Protestant states of
Germany. Russia, Rumania, Greece,
and Turkey waited until after the be-
ginning of the first World War to make
the change.
During all this time, when some of the
countries were reckoning time under the
Julian calendar and some under the
Gregorian, the days of the week were
identically the same in all countries.
When it was Saturday in Spain and
Portugal and Italy, it was also Saturday
in England. When it was Monday in
Russia, it was Monday in Germany.
What the encyclopedias call the “un-
alterable uniformity’ of the week was not
affected by all the calendar changes.
The periods of time now in use among
men, the grouping of the days together
into months and years, with one signifi-
cant exception, are fixed by some move-
ment of the heavenly bodies, the sun,
the earth, the moon, and the stars.
The year is fixed by the time it takes
the earth to complete one circuit of the
sun. The month was originally measured
by the revolution of the moon about the
earth. The day is determined by the
rotation of the earth on its axis. But
there is no movement of heavenly bodies,
of the sun, or moon, or stars, or planets,
which determines the length of the week.
God ordained a special, particular ar-
rangement—a divine rule of exact
measurement, never broken or altered or
abolished, from that time to this—to fix
the length of the week.
There is nothing in nature suggesting a
grouping together of seven days. No
celestial body circles the earth, or sun,
or moon, or stars, or is circled by these, in
seven days. God grouped the seven days
together and fixed this grouping into an
unalterable system, which has not been
affected by all the transitory systems of
time measurements and calendars
adopted by men.
This period of the week was known in
the Bible from the very beginning.
(Genesis 1: 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31; 2: 2, 3;
Exodus 20: 11.) “At the end of days it
came to pass, that Cain brought of the
fruit of the ground an offering unto the
Lord.” Genesis 4: 3, Margin. This can
mean only at the end of the week, or in
other words, upon the Sabbath day.
The week was known to Noah at the
time of the Flood. “He stayed yet other
seven days; and again he sent forth the
dove out of the ark; and the dove came in
PAGE 14
to him in the evening; and, lo, in her
mouth was an olive leaf plucked off:
so Noah knew that the waters were abated
from off the earth. And he stayed yet
other seven days; and sent forth the dove;
which returned not again unto him any
more.”’ Genesis 8: 10-12,
Now, what is it that determines in such
an arbitrary manner, in the absence of
any movement of the celestial bodies, this
never-varying period of the week? There
is but one answer, and it is this: The
never-failing recurrence of the Sabbath
of the Lord every seven days.
When, therefore, men attempt to
banish a day from the week, or talk of an
eight-day week, they are doing some-
thing more than suggesting a new calen-
dar. They are destroying, or seeking to
destroy, a divine institution. And that
has never been, is not now, and never
will be, a profitable or wholesome under-
taking.
The architects of the World Calendar
now propose to set aside what God has
fixed. By the insertion of a blank day in
the yearly calendar they would break up
the continuity of the weekly cycle of
seven days. Thereby they strike a direct
blow at the religious convictions of all
people whose holy days are based on the
seven-day week. Notwithstanding all
that the calendar reformers say about
equalizing the various parts of the year,
they are compelled to admit, by the very
devices they use, that the solar year can-
not be evenly divided into halves,
quarters, or months, with a full day as the
unit, and therefore can never be equal-
ized. The most unthinking person can
see that a year of a fraction less than
36514 days cannot be so divided.
The calendar reformers recognize this,
of course. Their solution is to allow for
the extra day and one quarter by. con-
tinuing the leap-year intercalary day of
the Gregorian calendar and by adding
one of their own each year. This, how-
ever, does not remove the days from the
year. They are still days of the year in
which they occur. Indeed, these days
are not taken out of the months by the
calendar reformers, for they are called
June W and December W respectively, a
frank admission that they cannot be
eliminated.
The real objection to the World Calen-
dar is the fact that it aims to remove a
day from the weekly cycle. A day may
be called June W without outraging
religious convictions, but when a calen-
dar calls that same day an extra Saturday
instead of the Sunday which it really is,
the religious sensibilities of millions of
people are shocked. The days of the new
calendar parade under false colors, bear-
ing untrue names, for they are not the
days of the week they claim to be. They
borrow the names of the true week which
do not pertain to them, and masquerade
under titles that do not belong to them.
‘The week is a free-running cycle of seven
days not tied to any other calendrical
period. Indeed, there is no way to tie it
to any such period. It is not an aliquot
part of the yearly cycle.
The proposed World Calendar is not
honest. It asks that we lie to ourselves,
that we practice deception on ourselves,
that we declare to be true what is not
true. It would have us say of the last
day of 1944, for example, which is Sun-
day, “This is not Sunday, the first day of
the week. It is no day of the week at all.
It would have us call the next day there-
after Sunday, when it is not Sunday at
all, but Monday, January 1, 1945. It
would have that Monday called Sunday
and honored as a religious day. That is
just plain deception and downright dis-
honesty.
And that is the essential character of
the World Calendar, which should be
rejected by all Catholics, all Protestants,
all Jews, all men of honesty and good will.
First or Seventh--Which?
(Continued from page 77)
shows that the Sabbath is the Lord’s day,
and that Christ claimed the Sabbath, and
declared that it is made for man, thus in-
cluding it in the new covenant which He
soon would confirm by His death.
Whereas prior to His death He declared
Himself in behalf of the Sabbath, Christ
never said as much as one thing in favor of
Sunday observance before He ratified
the new covenant by shedding His blood
on the cross.
The antinomians also say: “The keep-
ing of the Sabbath was not a moral pre-
cept, was not incorporated into the new
covenant, and therefore is not binding on
us.” The foregoing remarks ought to be
enough to answer this statement.
Moreover, the fourth commandment
of the Decalogue was kept by Christians
after the death of Christ. “A testament
is of force after men are dead.” Hebrews
9: 17. After Christ’s death, His followers
“rested the Sabbath day according to the
commandment.” Luke 23: 56. “On the
Sabbath they rested in obedience to
God’s commandment.”—Moffatt’s trans-
lation. “On the Sabbath they rested in
obedience to the Commandment.”’—
Weymouth’s translation. Which com-
mandment? The fourth commandment
of the Decalogue, of course. (Exodus
20: 8-11.)
The allegation is made also that “there
is not the slightest evidence that Christ or
the apostles ever recognized the Sabbath
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