MY DEAR MR.—,
Your question is of such interest and importance, that I set aside various other matters to give it immediate attention. You say, "The commandment ordains that the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, is to be kept holy; why, then, do Christians keep Sunday, instead of Saturday as the Jews do?" The answer to your question is that the Sabbath was instituted to commemorate the perfect and completed work of God in creation; and for anyone to work on that day, when God was resting from His work, would be the same as declaring that His creation-work was not perfect and complete. Just in the same way, the work of redemption was finished by the Lord Jesus on the cross, and He arose from the dead on the first day of the week, making that day the commencement of the first week after His redemption-work had been completed. The work being all clone, it is written, "We which have believed do enter into rest," and we signalize that rest by beginning the Christian week with the day of rest. Not doing as the Jews do, who Work for six days, and then rest on the seventh, we begin our week by resting on each first day, which spews also that that rest is not the result of our work, but of His.
In view of this He said, "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." Before He died on the cross He confirmed this by saying, "It is finished," that all might know on the authority of His own words, that there was nothing more for anyone to do in order to secure his own salvation; but the sinner was to rest by faith in the work done thus, then, and by Him alone and completely. On the night of His betrayal, the Lord called His followers around Him, and instituted His memorial feast of breaking bread and drinking wine, to shew forth His death until His coming again to receive them to Himself. "This do in remembrance of me," were His gracious words. Then He passed forth to His death.
His wounded body rested in the grave until the Sabbath was past, and then He arose, and on the same day met His disciples, and made Himself known to them in the breaking of bread, according to His appointment; and again, later in the day, He met with another company of His followers; and after another week with the same company once more. These were the beginnings of the keeping of the Lord's Day— the first day of the week—in displacement of the Jewish Sabbath; and this practice had the sacred sanction of the Lord's own presence. The custom was continued until the day of Pentecost, when they gathered with one accord, viz., to break bread in compliance with His request, on yet another first day of the week.
This was a memorable day indeed, for on this clay, God the Holy Spirit came down from heaven, not only to mark divine approval on what they were doing then, but to dwell with them, and to abide in them as their glorious power for praise and work and patient endurance according to His will. Many years later we learn that it was the disciples' established practice to "come together on the first day of the week to break bread," that is, to keep the feast alluded to above.
The clay thus dignified by the Lord's own glad resurrection, and sanctified by His personal presence at the feast ordained by Himself; the day thus confirmed by the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, in all its sweet and simple, yet sacred solemnities, and all its hallowed associations, might well displace and nullify the day that was principally connected, not with the manifestation of the love of God in giving His only begotten Son to die that we might live; but with His mighty tower and marvelous wisdom as the great Creator.
All the shadows and symbols of the law found in His one perfect sacrifice, and in His glorious Being, their complete fulfillment. He is our rest. He is our true Sabbath, and on the day that the Lord made peculiarly His own, it is the Christian's joy to spew forth His most holy praise, and to hear His most holy word, in remembering His death of shame and suffering in blest anticipation of the fulfillment of His most tender and loving promise, "If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself.”