OBSERVING THE SABBATH.
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WHATis there in teaching that Christians must keep the seventh, or Sabbath day, to impart or perpetuate spiritual life? The very seed of ruin is in such teaching. There is no Christ in it. It did not originate with Christ, but is anti-christian. The Lord never taught his disciples to keep the seventh or Sabbath day, nor did his apostles ever teach this. The first Christians did not meet on the seventh day “to break bread,” but on thefirst day. When they met on the first day they did not observe it as the Sabbath. It was a different day from the Sabbath, took its rise from a different event, and had a different object and entirely different associations. The Sabbath originated in God’srestingon the seventh day. It pointed to this rest and originated in it. It had no Christ in it, did not originate with Christ, nor point to him. It had nothing in it to bring him, or anything he ever did to view, and nothing can be done more directly calculated to draw the mind entirely off from Christ than to fill the mind of the christian with the Sabbath, and get the first day of the week and all its hallowed associations and memories out of his mind. The first day of the week derives its entire religious significance from the resurrection of our Lord, and the commemoration of the Savior’s sufferings keeps his death continually before us, pointing back to his death for our sins, and forward to his second coming.
Are Christians to be perverted and their minds and hearts carried away from the death of Jesus, his resurrection and his coming, and all the sublime associations and memories connected with the first day of the week; turned back and put to the meditations of a Jew, commemorating the rest of God on the seventh day, after he had completed the work of creation? Nothing can be more anti-christian than this. This is Judaism in the most deadly type. It is literally turning away from Christ to Judaism; from the day that brings the great event to view, that lies at the foundation of the faith and the entire kingdom of God; the resurrection of our Lord from the dead, and the death of Jesus for our sins. If purposely designed to lead us away from the Savior and ruin us, nothing could be more completely suited to the purpose than this Judaizing, Sadducean, no-spirit, no-angel and no-resurrection theory. The theory, on its face, carries its own condemnation; but, in the numerous cases of ruin wrought by it, we have the demonstration of its destructive character.