With the facts of history before us concerning sacred time for nearly three centuries after the resurrection of Christ—facts drawn from the inspired writers of the New Testament and their immediate successors, we are prepared to consider the different theories of the Christian Sabbath. These theories may be summed up in three. Of one or another of these, all the remaining theories are simply modifications.

The first of these three leading theories is as follows: “The Sabbath was a Jewish institution, and expired with the Jewish dispensation. The Lord’s day is not in any proper sense a Sabbath. It has an origin, a reason, and an obligation, not drawn from the fourth commandment, but peculiarly its own, as an institution belonging specially to the New-Testament dispensation.”

The second theory, in the order in which we notice these different views, maintains that the observance of the Sabbath, as required under the Old-Testament dispensation, knows no change in any particular. The observance of the seventh day of the week is essential to the proper observance of the Sabbath under the gospel dispensation. The observance of the first day of the week is without divine warrant—a departure from the law of God through the corruptions which crept into the church.

The third theory agrees with the second in maintaining that the Sabbath existed from the beginning, and that it has never been abolished or superseded. It disagrees with the second theory in maintaining that the essential idea of the law of the Sabbath is not the holiness of a portion of time, but the consecration of a specified proportion of time, one day in seven; that, in accordance with this, a change of day was admissible; that a change was actually made by divine warrant from the resurrection of Christ; and that the first day of the week, the Lord’s day, is the true Christian Sabbath, having its moral sanction in the fourth commandment.

By many of those who hold the first of these theories, the Lord’s day is made a purely ecclesiastical institution, without any other warrant for its observance than the action of the church, by whose authority and in whose wisdom, the day is set apart for divine service. By others who accept the same general theory, apostolic authority in the early church is admitted to afford a divine warrant for the observance of the day. In a complete treatise on the Lord’s day, a careful discussion of this theory would be required. Its want of any sufficient foundation could be satisfactorily shown by a presentation of the following points: (1.) The declaration of the Lord of the Sabbath is explicit—“The Sabbath was made for man.” It was not made for any portion of the human family, but for the race of mankind. (2.) Thus, from the design of its Lord, and the very nature of the institution, the Sabbath cannot be limited to any locality or dispensation. (3.) Accordingly, it was given to man at his creation. (Gen. 3:3.) (4.) For the same reason, the law of the Sabbath has its proper place, not among ceremonial, local, or positive enactments, but among the immutable moral precepts of the decalogue. (5.) This law is, therefore, of universal and perpetual obligation upon our race. These points would give room for many articles; but, inasmuch as on all of them there is entire agreement between our seventh-day Sabbatarian friends and ourselves, we pass to a consideration of the second theory, which they accept as correct.

To make good their case, the advocates of the second theory must show that the seventh day continued to be the Sabbath observed by the church after the resurrection of Christ, just as before; and that, in the observance of the first day, a great departure took place from the original practice of the Christian church. They must not make bare statements, but they must furnish proof. Instead of appealing to the letter of the law, and insisting that fact must conform to their interpretation of it, they must accept the facts of history, and put their interpretations to the test. It is more reasonable to conclude that an interpretation of law is wrong, than to reject the attested facts of history, when the interpretation and the facts do not harmonize.

Let us briefly sum up the facts already fully brought to view. Christ himself, after his resurrection, passed by the seventh day, and repeatedly put special honor on the first day of the week. This same day was honored by the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Spirit. Christian congregations met for regular weekly service, not on the seventh day, but on the first day of the week. The inspired apostle Paul pointedly condemned the Judaizing teachers who insisted on the observance by Christians of the seventh-day Sabbath. The early writers, companions of the apostles, and others of the succeeding generations, bear the clearest and most explicit testimony to the same facts—the non-observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, and the stated meetings of Christians for divine service on the first day of the week, the Lord’s day. Now, if their theory is correct, how will the seventh-day Sabbatarians explain the fact that Christ himself, the Holy Spirit, inspired apostles, and Christian congregations all through the early church, ignored the seventh day and honored the first? A general and vague statement to the effect that an unwarranted change was made from the original practice of the Christian church will not do here. Was not the practice of the apostles and first organized congregations of Christians the original practice of the Christian church? That practice was, as we have seen, to observe the first day of the week. We repeat what we have already proved at length, viz., that there is not an instance in the Scriptures of the observance of the seventh day by any Christian church, nor of any regard to that day, after Christ’s resurrection, by apostles or their fellow-laborers, except as they availed themselves, in their missionary work, of the meetings of Jewish assemblies in Jewish places of worship. “An unwarranted change!” Let those who take such language upon their lips consider that their charge lies at the door of Christ and his Spirit, and the inspired apostles.

But now, for the sake of the argument, let us leave all the testimony of the inspired writers of the New Testament to the first-day Sabbath out of view. Again we have the vague charge of unwarranted change. Perhaps the most definite form of this charge is that which makes the change the work of the little horn in Daniel’s prophecy, chapter seven. But will the expounder of Daniel be a little more explicit, and tell us who the historical personage is, and give us the dates and names of history? Does the little horn represent Antiochus Epiphanes? if so, then, of course, his change of the law of the Sabbath must have been before the Christian era. Will our expositor give us some facts just here? If the little horn means the papacy, then, according to the prophecy itself, it did not arise until the Roman Empire, represented by the fourth beast, was broken into ten fragments, represented by the ten horns. The little horn sprang up after these, and its change of the law of the Sabbath must date after the fall of the old empire of Rome. But for centuries before this event, we have the testimony of numerous writers that the Christian churches everywhere observed, not the seventh, but the first, day of the week, the Lord’s day. Again we ask for facts, not mere statements and theories.

Leaving this vague attempt to connect the assumed unwarranted change with Daniel’s prophesy, we come to what is, if possible, still more vague and indefinite. A change, it is asserted, was made by some particular officer or council of the church, as it became corrupt and began to depart from the practice of the original church of Christ. Who was this officer? or where did this council meet? But we will not make unreasonable demands for historical testimony. Let us grant that such an officer or such a council there was at some time or other. The question then arises, When did the change take place? In the days of Cyprian, A. D. 250? The answer is clear. The change most have been made before his day. Origen and Tertullian, fifty years earlier, knew only the first day of the week, the Lord’s day, as the Christian Sabbath. Was the change then made in their day? We might assume that it was, only for the clear testimony of Irenæus and Justin Martyr, carrying us back another half century, and the equally explicit testimony of still earlier writers, carrying us back to the apostles themselves.

Notwithstanding all this dearth of historical testimony as to the existence of the supposed ruler or council, let it be further granted that by some such corrupting authority, at some time a decree changing the day for Sabbath observance was issued. How did the supposed legislators establish their decree? How did they make it effectual over all the different parts of the church? Must we we suppose that a change like this was effected in the church, and not a scrap of a record left concerning it? The attempt made by the church to establish a common day for the anniversary of Christ’s resurrection gave rise to long and bitter controversy, and led to division. And yet, as Prof F. D. Maurice has well said, “It is supposed that this far more important change, affecting all the daily relations and circumstances of life, took effect by the decree of some apostle or some ecclesiastical synod, of which no record, no legend, even is preserved! Or, perhaps, a half-heathen, more than half-heathen, statute of Constantine,^[14] about the Dies Solis accomplished what the legislators of the church could not accomplish—succeeded not only in securing its adoption by Athanasians, Arians, Semi-Arians, whose controversies Constantine could never heal, but in securing the allegiance of all the barbarous tribes which accepted the gospel under such various conditions in later times. Can any suppositions make greater demands on our credulity than these?” A Procrustean bed indeed must be that interpretation of the law of the Sabbath which, to conform them to itself, must thus deal with the facts of history and the probabilities of historical evidence.

Just here is the difficulty in the theory of Seventh-day Sabbatarians. They have somehow got lodged in their mind the idea that the last one of the seven days of the week is the sacred day, the observance of which is absolutely essential to the proper keeping of the Sabbath. What has already been proved from history, inspired and uninspired, is sufficient to show that this theory is unworthy of men who, like Christ and his apostles, would grasp the true significance of the law of the Sabbath. But as so much stress is laid upon the question of time, we shall devote our next article to this crucial and very practical point.