of a commandment together! In cutting off the seventh
day from the fourth commandment, we cut off the term "Sabbath of the Lord," for
that term is expressly applied to the Rest-day of the Creator, the seventh day.
And when this has been severed from the commandment, no man can show that
the requirement to keep any day remains behind. Here is the fourth
commandment with the "positive" and changeable parts taken out:-
"Remember to . . . keep . . holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work:
but . . . of the Lord thy God: . . . thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor
thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy
stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
the sea and all that in them is, and rested . . . wherefore the Lord blessed . . . and
hallowed."
Like a building with its frame taken out, the fourth commandment is now only
a mass of ruins. And even could we allow men to repair the commandment, by
inserting the words, "first day of the week" where they have taken out the
seventh day, it would only turn the truth of God into a lie, as the commandment
would then require us to keep holy the first day of the week, because God rested
upon that day from his work of Creation. Nor would there be any way to mend the
matter, except to strike out the reason on which the fourth commandment is
based; viz., "for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that
in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbathday,
and hallowed it," and to insert instead, these words: "Jesus arose from the
dead on the first day of the week; wherefore the first day of the week is the
Christian Sabbath." The fourth commandment would then read thus:-
5
"Remember the first day of the week to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor
and do all thy work: but the first day of the week is the Sabbath of the Lord thy
God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy
man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within
thy gates; for Jesus arose from the dead on the first day of the week; wherefore
the first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath."
Here is the commandment as multitudes desire to have it read. As it requires
the observance of a different day from the original commandment, and for a
different reason from that which is there assigned, it leaves no part of the original
Sabbatic institution in existence and thus this matter ends in the total destruction
of the fourth commandment.
2. Let us now examine the second objection. In this it is asserted that the first
day of the week will answer the purpose of rest, worship and commemoration,
equally as well as the seventh. We reply that so far as rest from toil is concerned,
men may doubtless obtain this on the first day of the week; though the idea of a
day of rest at the commencement of the week in