Sunday, the true Sabbath of God; or, Saturday proven to be neither the Sabbath of the Old Testament, nor the Sabbath of the ancients, who lived before the Christian era

Front matter

1 m H H warn m WBBBSm

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Introduction

r I ^HIS book discusses a truth essential to the veryexistence of Christianity. Without the Christian Sabbath, it would be impossible long to perpetuate the Christian religion. To handle so vital a truth requires a master's hand. So far as the substance of truth is concerned, we do not hesitate so to classify our author. Peculiarly qualified for the work of sifting the facts and deducing the proper conclusions, Mr. Gamble justifies the expectation that he will lead the reader to -final results.

The exhaustive study of the Scriptures, and the wide familiarity with the literature on the Sabbath, and the extended historical research, give to this work a value not surpassed by any other treatise in this field. Other works are rich in other departments of the subject; but on the controverted point raised by Saturdarians, this argument moves with all the quietness and certainty of a mathematical demonstration. It is this or nothing.

6 Introduction.

In view of the mischief wrought by the enemies of the Christian Sabbath, in loosening the public conviction on this subject, in giving reign to the natural waywardness of the unregenerate heart, in robbing the laboring man of two-fifths of his natural expectation of life by taking away his Divinely-appointed day of rest, in increasing the power of temptation to the use of alcoholic stimulants to make up for lost rest, and in emphasizing a narrow and formal and mechanical view of God's Revelation, and in many other incidental ways, in view of the mischief thus wrought, there can re^ main no doubt of the duty of every Christian teacher to familiarize himself with the unanswerable arguments of this little book.

We bespeak for it an ever-widening influence, an influence that must widen till the heresy of Saturdarianism is extirpated, and becomes only a thing of history. c# H> FOWLER.

Cheyenne, Wyoming, 1900.

Preface

V\7"IIY this little book on the Sabbath question? During the last twenty-five years I have learned that a little sect called the Seventh-day Adventists are doing a work at home and abroad, the evils of which are hard to reckon up. They teach that the "Beast" of the "Revelation" is the Pope of Rome; that the Pope of Pome changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, thus making Sunday-keeping the "mark of the Beast."

Then they urge upon all who follow after their teachings the idea that "Whosoever worships the beast or has his mark [keeps Sunday as the Sabbath] shall be cast out, and the wrath of God shall be poured out upon him:" and that, " Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point [keeps Sunday as the Sabbath], he is guilty of all;" and hence can not be saved. These people have. either been ignorantly opposed, in a way to build them up, or ignored until they have become one of the greatest curses to the progress of true Christianity.

They bluff the masses into acquiescence to their teachings by challenging any person to meet them in debate, or by scattering thousands and sometimes millions of copies of pretended "rewards of $1,000 for Bible authority for Sunday being the Sabbath/' and others.

They are responsible for the defeat of the Blair "Sunday Rest Bill," which was prepared in re<- sponse to the petition of seven millions of American citizens. They were encouraged by that "victory, 7 ' and about seven years ago began an active battle against the enforcement of existing Sabbath laws, by raising over twelve thousand dollars a year to encourage the defiance of Sabbath law, and to defend violators of the laws against just punishment for said deliberate violations.

About four years ago they began another battle with more vigor, and requiring much larger sums of money to accomplish it; i. e., the repeal of all Sabbath laws, both in State and Nation. For this purpose they are bending their greatest energies.

Two large publishing establishments exist chiefly for the accomplishment of this dark plot. One of these plants, they claim, has a capacity of ten thousand copies of a large sixteen-page paper in an hour. . Said house employs one hundred and fifty hands, who receive a monthly salary of over five thousand dollars. They grind out their dangerous literature by the ton; yes, by the carload, and are pushing it under various unfair methods upon an innocent public.

Through these efforts they claim to liave drawn five thousand members out of the Protestant Churches during 1S99, and confounded about one hundred thousand honest, God-loving, earnest Christians, and thereby caused them to doubt the ministers and members of the Churches to which they belong, and to disregard tbe Sabbath, and to think that they have not been keeping the true Sabbath. This slackening of conviction about Sabbath observance on the one hand, coupled with their persistent effort everywhere to have all sorts of work and amusements upon the Sabbath, in order to bring the day into disrepute, has resulted in doubling the amount of compulsory Sabbath labor in the last seven years, until now it is estimated that over four million American laboring men are compelled to labor every day alike, or risk being thrown out of employment if they refuse to labor on the Sabbath. More than one-fifth of all the laboring people are now robbed of a Sabbath. At the present rate of growth in Sabbath labor, how long will it be until we will have no Sabbath in this Nation?

The man who is robbed of the Sabbath and the services of the house of God, is robbed of one of the greatest blessings that every American citizen has a right to enjoy. It is impossible rightly to weigh the worth of religious environment. The man who is driven to labor every day alike, is not only robbed of the greater blessing of American citizenship, but is forced into associations that tend to drag him down.

Statistics prove that the man who is robbed of his Sabbath rest, and who is compelled to labor every day alike, only lives on the average twelve years.

To make a mathematical problem of the existing conditions, I shall cast off whatever is meant by the "over" four millions; and to be on the safe side of the facts, I will cast off one million ; and take the army of three million laboring men who have no Sabbath, and make some calculations.

One-twelfth of these men must die prematurely every year — at least eight years before Grod intended them to die. Two hundred and fifty thousand a year thus go into premature graves in this Christian Nation. What does that mean? It means that now five thousand men a week go down under the strain of laboring seven days in the week, and five thousand families a week are robbed of the one who earns their living — are robbed of their earnings for eight years. Nor is this all. In the breaking-down process that is causing these thousands to die eight years too soon, they are driven into drink, in order to try and do the impossible — work on perpetually without a rest-day. Thus three thousand' men a week take to drink, and at least fifteen hundred men a week die drunkards. Fifteen hundred families a week are humiliated by being made relatives of one who fills a drunkard's grave.

Are you surprised at the lack of revival in the Churches now?

"What relation do these things have to revivals?" The laboring people are rapidly attaching more and more blame on the Churches on account of their Sabbathless condition. They have a right to feel hard toward the Churches.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is gladly leading all the forces that are at work to rob the laboring people of a Sabbath. The other Churches, who represent a membership six hundred and ninety-eight times as large as Adventism, are quietly permitting this curse to grow, and are not sufficiently trying to retard or hinder the growth of this sin.

]STor is this all. Multitudes of Church members help to rob the laboring men of their Sabbath. To illustrate: I go to the barbers in some large town, and solicit their attendance upon a revival-meeting, or solicit them to attend the regular preaching services. They look at me as though I lacked in judgment, or else was ignorant of existing conditions. I urge my case. I say: We are directed to preach the gospel to every creature. I recognize that you are a creature. I recognize you are an intelligent, well-raised, influential man; that you are a very successful man. I 'd' like very much to have you attend my Church, that I may have a chance to preach to you. "To me? Why, Reverend sir, there are enough members belonging to your Church who, if I should close up my shop and go to Church on Sabbath, would withhold their patronage from me to drive me into bankruptcy. It is not possible for me to come to Church." I turn now and whisper a word of advice to my members who get shaved before going to Church on Sabbath morning; now that you are to blame for preventing the barber from attending Church, and through the Church's services of becoming a Christian, — in the name of Christ, I ask you never to talk to that barber about becoming a Christian. That barber thinks you have none of the Spirit of Christ in you. He has not the slightest idea that you are a Christian, and you can do him no greater injury than to add insult to injury by thus addressing him. Let some man talk to barbers in whom they have confidence, and for whom they have respect. If you buy meats on Sunday, don't talk to the butcher about his soul. Go all around the circle of the classes who are robbed of their Sabbath in any degree by Church members, and put yourself in their places, and ask yourself how you would feel under like circumstances. The first requisite you must have as a means of leading a man to Christ, is to be able to live in such a way as to convince him that you are really what you profess to be. To be of any assistance to any man (in leading him to Christ), that man must think that you are yourself a Christian. Are you assisting to rob barbers, butchers, bakers, restaurant men, liverymen, hotel men, postal clerks, railroad men, and other classes of men, of their rest-day? Or are you living in a way to command their respect as a consistent Christian man? Again, are you doing anything to better these Sabbathless laborers?

O, that the eyes of American Christian citizens could see the wonderful field of opportunity and duty, that presents itself before us on almost every hand!

To state the case logically: I assert that the Churches can not reach and save the masses of the laboring people until it is possible for laboring men to quit work one day in the week, for no man can preach to another who works every day alike.

Therefore the one great need of the American laboring man is to have a rest-day guaranteed to him by national law. This can not be done until the Christian people unite with the laboring people in bringing this desired condition about. The Christian people will not do really efficient work in this struggle unless they do it from a conviction of duty. They will never have lasting convictions of duty until they have a correct knowledge of the general outlines of Sabbath truth. Hence it logically follows that there must t>e an honest, thorough study of the doctrines of the Sabbath. In other words : the mass of the Christian people must know what day is the Bible Sabbath. Is it Sunday, or is it Saturday? This ISTation will not have adequate Sabbath laws until the day of the Sabbath is made sufficiently clear to create genuine Biblical conviction of duty in regard to our individual and collective duties about Sabbath observance.

I am forced, after twenty-five years of Sabbath research, to believe that there is a dearth of correct Sabbath literature. In fact, I do not know of a book on the Sabbath question that correctly sets forth even the Bible teaching of the Sabbath, much less that gives a correct general survey of the field. On account of my knowledge of the existing conditions, I felt led of God to give up the work of the pastorate, and enter the lecture field, for the purpose of arousing Christian people to action and into the re-study of the Sabbath question.

I have addressed many thousand Christians and several hundred ministers within the last two years, and everywhere I have gone there has arisen a demand for a better Sabbath literature. Scores of ministers have urged me to publish my Sabbath teachings in book form. The matter which I have collected in the last twenty-five years is sufficient to make a large volume. But with the knowledge of the evils resulting from compulsory Sabbath labor, I can not feel free to quit lecturing, and go home and put my matter into an elaborate book on the fifteen systems of Sabbath countings which have existed during the last four thousand years. But so many preachers have said, "Can't you give us at least the data which you use in your public lectures?" So, recognizing my obligations of service to my fellow-men, I hasten to help arm as many as possible, and as quickly as possible, with sufficient arguments and facts to save their Churches and neighborhoods from the evils of Saturdarianism.

Therefore, I send out this summary of my Sabbath teachings- So I write a page or a chapter whenever and wherever I get the time, expecting that at some future time I may write a more exhaustive treatise on the question. However, I have the firm conviction that I give enough truth, stated with sufficient clearness, that those who read these pages will receive proper ideas of the Bible teachings on Sabbath counting.

I am indebted to a host of men, living and dead, for what I know on this very important subject. First of all, I am indebted to God for his guidance and help. So far as men are concerned, I stand first in debt to the Rev. James H. Yaughan, a superannuated minister of the St. Louis Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who more than twenty-five years ago said: "You will find when you study Leviticus and the parallel Scriptures that there are many fixed-date Sabbaths, which, of course, could not fall on Saturdays every year."

I owe much to all the leading writers of commentaries, Bible and other dictionaries, cyclopedias, and lexicons, for the truths obtained from them, although I have given those truths a setting and an application seemingly unseen to the writers.

I am under some obligation to the management of the Christian Endeavorer, for bringing me face to face with the great scholars of Chicago to be interviewed about my Sabbath convictions, and to the men appointed by the great educational institutions of that city, who reviewed me and my theories so thoroughly and patiently, and who loaned their influence to bring my investigations before the public.

I acknowledge among these men particularly the esteemed Rabbi Emil Gr. Hirsch, of Chicago, for the encouragement received from him in his own home.

I would not forget the help received from the enemies of the Sabbath in the two wings of Christian Saturdarianism, the "Seventh-day Baptist" and the "Seventh-day Adventist" Churches. Among these are A. H. Lewis, D. D., and James Bailey, D. D., in the former; and Bevs. J. "N. Andrews, Uriah Smith, Alonzo T. Jones, A. O. Tait, and others, and to their chief Jesuitical allies, "Senex" and Enright.

I have enjoyed the friendship and help of Rev. D. M. Canright, who for twenty-eight years was the great leader of Saturdarianism, but who, upon discovering the groundlessness of the teaching, left it, and joined the Baptist Church, of which he is still a very efficient minister. I also owe much to the Sabbath writings of Peter Akers, Bessey, Beardsley, Briggs, Love, Elliott, Waufle, Wilson, Bauser, Crafts, and a host of others, from whom I have received much help. Neither would I forget Dean Alfred A. Wright, of Boston, and Dr. Steele, of Denver, and others, for encouragement, confirms tion, or criticisms.

Yet in this little volume, so hastily written as I ride or rest, I shall be obliged to use the thoughts of these friends, and possibly often without giving them proper credit, and often without being able to give book or page.

I send out these hastily-written pages, with an earnest prayer to the Father that he will use the truths herein set forth to the accomplishment of much and lasting good. THE AUTHOR.

SUNDAY THE TRUE SABBATH.

Chapter I. BKIEF STATEMENT OF SABBATH DOC- TKINE

TN the past most writers believed and taught that

from the time Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to the crucifixion of Christ, Saturclav was the Sabbath.

Some taught th?t Sunday was the creation Sabbath, and that a temporary Sabbath was given to the Jews — a Saturday Sabbath — to last until the resurrection, and that then the creation Sunday Sabbath was reinstated, and made of universal application.

Others have taught that there was no Sabbath until the Exodus, or until the falling of the manna a month later; that a Saturday Sabbath was given then, which was kept to the Christian Era.

The more common theory, though, has been that 21 the Saturday Sabbath was instituted in Eden, and has come down through all time to the Christian Era in an unbroken history or practice, and that Christ at his own resurrection changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, to commemorate his resurrection on that day.

Saturdarianism has taken this last and most common teaching, and repudiated the last thought, and hence teaches that: The Saturday Sabbath was given to Adam in Eden for an everlasting, unchangeable covenant; and that it has come to us in an unbroken history to the present, and that it will continue to the end, and become the universal Sabbath.

I shall assert and prove, I think, —

1. That a Sabbath was given to Adam in Eden, but that it was Sunday and not Saturday, and that it was kept for probably about eighteen centuries, and was lost,

2. That after the confusion of tongues a great variety of Sabbath countings was instituted, which changed the day of the Sabbath from twelve to thirty-six times a year from one day of the week to another.

Brief Statement. 23

3. That God led the Egyptians into the nearest approach to the Edenic Sabbath, by enabling them to establish a fixed week of seven days, commencing with the day of Saturn, and ending with a seventh-day Sabbath — Friday.

4. That God, through Moses, gave the children of Israel a system of fixed date Sabbaths, which changed once every year between the Exodus and the Crucifixion to a different day of the week, and hence that Saturday never was a Jewish Sabbath for over a year at any one time until after the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus.

5. That the Roman week from before the birth of Christ to near the close of the fourth century, A. D., was eight days long, and hence that their Sabbaths changed forty-five times every year to a different day of the week.

6. That Christ, in fulfillment of prophecy, made the Sunday of his resurrection the Sabbath, which "remaineth to the people of God" as the one and only Sabbath — "the day the Lord hath made" — and that it shall last to the end of time, and become the Sabbath of all nations, in which "we shall rejoice and be glad."

7. I shall show that modern Saturdananism originated in the second century A. 13., and hence is no Bible Sabbath, and therefore that it is a misnomer to call Saturday keepers "Sabbatarians."