Des Moines, Iowa, March 2, 1899.
Dear brother N—:
Brother G. has sent me this article on the Sabbath, asking me to look over it and return it to you, with my judgment of it; so I enclose you the clipping in this.
I consider this paper a complete blunder throughout... He makes statement after statement without a shadow of support from Scripture. I don’t know what his object is, but whatever it may be, he has no Scripture to warrant his statements or reasonings.
As I understand the Scripture, the weekly Sabbath was invariably the seventh day of the week, coming after six days on which, in general, it was lawful to work. The weeks never vary, and the Sabbath never varies. It is our Saturday.
But there were various other days that had a Sabbath character — certain feast days, as the Passover, Pentecost, the Day of Atonement, etc. These were Sabbaths, but not the Sabbath. And the weekly Sabbath never counted from one of these Sabbaths, unless the two coincided, as for example, the day when our Lord was in the sepulcher, which was the Sabbath, and also one of the feast Sabbaths, on account of which, it seems to me, it was called in John 19 “an high day.” The 15th of Abib, I suppose, was always a Sabbath, but not always the Sabbath. When it was both it was “a high day.”
The feast day Sabbaths, as I understand it, might fall on different days of the week, because the months varied, and shifted a little, but the Sabbath was always the seventh day of the week, without variation.
The idea that the day of Pentecost fixed the weekly Sabbath for a year, or until the next 15th of Abib, is a pure assumption, without a word of proof, and with Scripture in the face of it. Where do “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John call the Sunday of the resurrection ‘Sabbath’ in the Gospel”? The statement is worse than silly....
Your affectionate brother in the Lord,