Whence Sunday-keeping?
A probe into the origin of first-day observance
By William H. Branson
—§F—~ HE Sabbath has never been changed from
Saturday the seventh day to Sunday the
first day upon divine authority. God would
not thus alter His laws.
Solomon declares: ‘I know that, what-
soever God doeth, it shall be for ever:
nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it:
and God doeth it, that men should fear before Him.”
Ecclesiastes 3: 14.
And David, speaking for God concerning Christ
says: “Also I will make Him My firstborn, higher
than the kings of the earth. If His children forsake
My law, and walk not in My judgments; if they break
My statutes, and keep not My commandments;
then will I visit their transgression with the rod,
and their iniquity with stripes. . . . My covenant
will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out
of My lips.” Psalm 8g: 27, 30-34.
Then Christ declares: ‘““ And it is easier for heaven
and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.”
Luke 16: 17.
LAw ESTABLISHES THE GOSPEL
AUIL corroborates these statements by saying
that the law is not made void by the gospel,
but rather established. (Romans 3:31.) A careful
search of the entire Bible reveals no hint that God
has ever altered any one of the Ten Commandments.
Men, without Bible authority, have tampered with
the law of the Most High God by substituting
Sunday for Saturday. History states that the change
began to be made by some during the early cen-
turies after Christ. But the first law for Sunday
was made by Constantine in the year A. D. 321.
The Bible contains no law enforcing Sunday, the
first day. Neither Christ nor the apostles ever
observed it, and it must therefore forever rest upon
a human ordinance only.
That the Sabbath was not changed by Christ,
or His apostles, many eminent Protestants agree.
Thus Luther Lee, D. D., says: ‘There is no express
commandment for observing the first day.”
Lyman Abbott said: ‘The current notion that
Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted
the first day for the seventh is absolutely without
any authority.” — Editorial in the Christian Union,
June 20, 1890.
Dr. Edward T. Hiscock, author of the ‘‘ Baptist
Church Manual,” asserts: ‘There is no scriptural
evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution
from the seventh to the first day of the week.”
Section 10, of the ‘‘Augsburg Confession of
Faith,” a Lutheran document, as quoted in Cox’s
PAGE TWENTY-FOUR
“Sabbath Manual,” reads as follows: “The observ-
ance of the Lord’s day (Sunday) is founded not on
any command of God, but on the authority of the
Church.”
In Rose’s Translation of Augustus Neander’s
“History of the Christian Religion and Church,”
on page 186, is this statement: “The festival of
Sunday was always only a human ordinance, and
it was far from the intentions of the apostles to
establish a divine command in this respect; far
from them, and from the early apostolic church, to
transfer the law of the Sabbath to Sunday.”
Even after the observance of Sunday began, the
Sabbath was still kept as before. Listen to the
historian Coleman: “The last day of the week was
strictly kept in connection with that of the first
day for a long time after the overthrow of the
temple and its worship. Down even to the fifth
century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was
continued in the Christian church.”— “Ancient
Christianity Exemplified,” chapter 26, section 2.
In the same chapter, he also says: ‘‘During the
early ages of the church, it [Sunday] was never
entitled ‘the Sabbath,” this word being confined to
the seventh day of the week.”
From “A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,”
we read: “The notion of a formal substitution by
apostolic authority of the Lord’s day for the Jewish
Sabbath, and the transference to it, perhaps in a
spiritualized form, of the Sabbatical obligation
established by the promulgation of the fourth com-
mandment, has no basis whatever, either in Holy
Scripture, or in Christian antiquity.”—*“A Dictionary
of Christian Antiquities,” Smith and Cheetham, art.
“Sabbath,” p. 1823. London: John Murray, 1880.
Dr. Peter Heylyn, remarks: “Take which you
will, either the Fathers or the moderns, and we
shall find no Lord’s day instituted by any apostolical
mandate; no Sabbath set on foot by them upon
the first day of the week.”—*‘ History of the Sabbath,”
Dr. Peter Heylyn (Church of England), part 2,
chapter I.
A CLouD OF WITNESSES
HE Rev. Dr. Dale says: “It is quite clear
that, however rigidly or devotedly we may
spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath. . . .
The Sabbath was founded on a specific, divine com-
mand. We can plead no such command for the
observance of Sunday. . . . There is not a single
sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we
incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity
of Sunday.”—*“The Ten Commandments,” R. W.
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