What Religions Around the World Say About the Sabbath Day
"The seventh day IS the Sabbath of the Lord thy God" Exodus 20:10

Religions listed in alphabetical order.
 

Anglican Church

“And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the Seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day. The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the Seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things,—not because the Bible, but because the church, has enjoined [commanded] it.” Issac Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, Vol. 1, pp. 334-335.

Baptist Church

"There was and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day was not Sunday... It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week... Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament - absolutely not. There is no scriptural evidence of the change of the Sabbath institution from the seventh to the first day of the week...’To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during three years intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the Sabbath question, never alluded to any transference of the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was intimated...’Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, when adopted and sanctioned by papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism." Dr. Edward T. Hiscox, author of the Baptist Manual, in a paper read before a New York minister’s conference held Nov.13, 1893  

"The Scriptures nowhere call the first day of the week the Sabbath. There is no Scriptural authority for so doing, nor of course, any Scriptural obligation." The Watchman.  

"The first four commandments set forth man's obligations directly toward God.... But when we keep the first four commandments, we are likely to keep the other six....The fourth commandment sets forth God's claim on man's time and thought....The six days of labor and the rest on the Sabbath are to be maintained as a witness to God's toil and rest in the creation.... No one of the ten words is of merely racial significance....The Sabbath was established originally (long before Moses) in no special connection with the Hebrews, but as an institution for all of mankind, in commemoration of God's rest after the six days of creation. It was designed for all the descendants of Adam."  Adult Quarterly, Southern Baptist Convention series, Aug. 15, 1937.

Catholic Church

“Q.—Have you any other way of proving that the [Catholic] Church has power to institute festivals of precept?"
“A.—Had she not such power she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week for Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no scriptural authority.” Doctrinal Catechism, p. 174.

“Prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone.  The Bible says ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.’ The Catholic Church says, No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day of the week. And lo! The entire civilized world bows down in reverent obedience to the command of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.” Priest Thomas Enright, CSSR, President, Redemptorist College, Kansas City, Missouri, February 18, 1884. AND Printed in the American Sentinel, a New York Roman Catholic journal in June 1893, p. 173.

“Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change [Sabbath to Sunday] was her act and the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power.” From the office of Cardinal Gibbons, through Chancellor H.F. Thomas, November 11, 1895.

“We Catholics, then, have precisely the same authority for keeping Sunday holy instead of Saturday as we have for every other article of our creed, namely, the authority of ‘the Church of the living God, and ground of truth’ (1 Timothy 3:15); whereas you who are Protestants have really no authority for it whatever; for there is no authority for it in the Bible, and you will not allow that there can be authority for it anywhere else. Both you and we do, in fact, follow [Catholic] tradition in this matter; but we follow it, believing it to be a part of God’s Word, and the [Catholic] Church to be its divinely appointed guardian and interpreter. You follow it, denouncing it all the time as a fallible and treacherous guide which often ‘makes the commandment of God of none effect’ (Matthew 15:6). “Why Don’t You Keep Holy the Sabbath Day?” pages 3-15, in The Clifton Tracts, Volume 4, published by the Roman Catholic Church in 1869. Originally released in North America through the T.W. Strong Publishing Company of New York City.

Christian Church

"It has reversed the fourth commandment by doing away with the Sabbath of God's Word, and instituting Sunday as a holiday." DR. N. SUMMERBELL, "History of the Christian Church," Third Edition, page 415.

Church Of Christ

NOTE: The current official position of the Church of Christ is that the Sabbath was abolished entirely and Christians need not keep either Saturday or Sunday as a day of worship.

 "There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day the Lord's day." DR. D. H. LUCAS, Christian Oracle, Jan. 23, 1890. 

"The first day of the week is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error to talk about the change of the Sabbath. There never was any change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change." First-Day Observance, pages 17, 19.  

"To command ... men ... to observe ... the Lord's day ... is contrary to the gospel."  Memoirs of Alexander Campbell," Vol. I, page 528.  

"It is clearly proved that the pastors of the churches have struck out one of God's ten words, which, not only in the Old Testament, but in all revelation, are the most emphatically regarded as the synopsis of all religion and morality."   ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, "Debate With Purcell," page 214.  

"I do not believe that the Lord's day came in the room of the Jewish Sabbath, or that the Sabbath was changed from the seventh to the first day, for this plain reason, where there is no testimony, there can be no faith. Now there is no testimony in all the oracles of heaven that the Sabbath was changed, or that the Lord's day came in the room of it." ALEXANDER CAMPBELL, Washington Reporter, Oct.8, 1821.

Church Of England

"Not any ecclesiastical writer of the first three centuries attributed the origin of Sunday observance either to Christ or to His apostles." Sir WILLIAM DOMVILLE, Examination of the Six Texts," pages 6, 7. (Supplement).

"There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. . . into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters. . . The observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday."  CANON EYTON, "The Ten Commandments," pages 52, 63, 65  

"Is there any command in the New Testament to change the day of weekly rest from Saturday to Sunday? None." Manual of Christian Doctrine," page 127  

"The Lord's day did not succeed in the place of the Sabbath ... The Lord's day was merely an ecclesiastical institution It was not introduced by virtue of the fourth commandment, because for almost three hundred years together they kept that day which was in that commandment.... The primitive Christians did all manner of works upon the Lord's day even in times of persecution when they are the strictest observers of all the divine commandments; but in this they knew there was none." BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR, "Ductor Dubitantium," Part 1, Book II, Chap. 2, Rule 6 Sec.51,59.  

"Sunday being the day on which the Gentiles solemnly adore that planet and called it Sunday, partly from its influence on that day especially, and partly in respect to its divine body (as they conceived it), the Christians thought fit to keep the same day and the same name of it, that they might not appear causelessly peevish, and by that means hinder the conversion of the Gentiles, and bring a greater prejudice than might be otherwise taken against the gospel." T. M. MORER, "Dialogues on the Lord's Day," pages 22,23.  

"Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day.... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it."  ISAAC WILLIAMS, B.D., "Plain Sermons on the Catechism," Vol. 1, pages 334-336.  

"Dear Madam:
"In reply to your letter of May 7th, I am asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury to say that from the first century onward the Christian church has observed the first day of the week as the weekly commemoration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of the early Christians . . . deliberately substituted the first day of the week for the seventh on the ground that it was on the first day that our Lord rose from the dead. [Italics ours.]
"Yours faithfully,
"ALAN C. DON."

"The Puritan idea was historically unhappy. It made Sunday into the Sabbath day. Even educated people call Sunday the Sabbath. Even clergymen do.

"But, unless my reckoning is all wrong, the Sabbath day lasts twenty-four hours from six o'clock on Friday evening. It gives over, therefore, before we come to Sunday. If you suggest to a Sabbatarian that he ought to observe the Sabbath on the proper day, you arouse no enthusiasm. He at once replies that the day, not the principle, has been changed. But changed by whom? There is no injunction in the whole of the New Testament to Christians to change the Sabbath into Sunday." --D. MORSE- BOYCOTT, Davy Herald, London, Feb. 26, 1931.

"The Christian church made no formal, but a gradual and almost unconscious transference of the one day to the other."  F. W. FARRAR, D.D., "The Voice From Sinai," page 167. 

"Take which you will, either of the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord's day instituted by any apostolical mandate; no Sabbath set on foot by them upon the first day of the week."  PETER HEYLYN, History of the Sabbath, page 410.  

"Merely to denounce the tendency to secularize Sunday is as futile as it is easy. What we want is to find some principle, to which as Christians we can appeal, and on which we can base both our conduct and our advice. We turn to the New Testament, and we look in vain for any authoritative rule. There is no recorded word of Christ, there is no word of any of the apostles, which tells how we should keep Sunday, or indeed that we should keep it at all. It is disappointing, for it would make our task much easier if we could point to a definite rule, which left us no option but simple obedience or disobedience.... There is no rule for Sunday observance, either in Scripture or history."  DR. STEPHEN, Bishop of Newcastle, N.S.W., in an address reported in the Newcastle Morning Herald, May 14, 1924.

Congregational Church (American Congregationalist)

"It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath.. The Sabbath was founded on a specific, divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday.. There is not a single line in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday." Dr R.W. Dale, "The Ten Commandments," pg. 106-107.

" The current notion that Christ and His apostles authoritatively substituted the first day for the seventh, is absolutely without any authority in the New Testament." Dr Lyman Abbot, in the "Christian Union," June 26, 1890.

"There is no command in the Bible requiring us to observe the first day of the week as the Christian Sabbath."  Orin Fowler, A.M., Mode and Subjects of Baptism

"The Christian Sabbath (Sunday) is not in the Scriptures, and was not by the Primitive Church called the Sabbath." Dwight's Theology, Vol. 4, pg. 401.

Disciples of Christ Church

"There is no direct Scriptural authority for designating the first day 'the Lord's Day." Dr. D.H. Lucas, in the "Christian Oracle," January 23, 1890.

“If it [the Ten Commandments] yet exist, let us observe it . . And if it does not exist, let us abandon a mock observance of another day for it. ‘But,’ say some, ‘it was changed from the Seventh to the first day.’ Where? when? and by whom?—No, it never was changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again: for the reason assigned [in Genesis 2:1-3], it must be changed before the observance or respect to the reason can be changed. It is all old wives’ fables to talk of the ‘change of the Sabbath’ from the Seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was that august personage who changes times and laws ex officio.—I think his name is ‘Doctor Antichrist.’ ” Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, February2, 1824, Vol. 1, No. 7.

Episcopal (Episcopalian) Church

“We have made the change from the Seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy, catholic, apostolic church of Christ.” Episcopalian Bishop Symour, Why We Keep Sunday.

"The Bible commandment says on the seventh day thou shalt rest. That is Saturday. Nowhere in the Bible is it laid down that worship should be done on Sunday." Phillip Carrington, quoted in Toronto Daily Star, October 26, 1949. Carrington was Anglican archbishop of Quebec.

"Where are we told in Scripture that we are to keep the first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere commanded to keep the first day...... The reason why we keep the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it."  Isaac Williams, D. D., Plain Sermons on the Catechism, Vol. 1, pp. 334-336.

"Sunday (Dies Solis, of the Roman calendar, ‘day of the sun,’ because dedicated to the sun), the first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship. The ‘sun’ of Latin adoration they interpreted as the ‘Sun of Righteousness.. No regulations for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined." Schaff Herzog, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol.4, art: 'Sunday’

"The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far from them and from the early apostolic church to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday." Neander, History of the Christian Religion and Church, p.186

Jehovah's Witness Kingdom Hall

"Therefore God gave his law through Moses to the Israelites and which applies to all who want to do right, and the first in order and first in importance of his commandments or fundamental law is this, to wit.' Exodus 20:1-6,".."which is the first part of the Ten Commandment law...'The law of God never changes, because God never changes. (Malachi 3:6). His law points out the way to everlasting life. No creature will ever be given life everlasting who willfully, that is, intentionally, violates God's law....For a man to violate the fundamental law of God means that that man puts himself on the side of the devil, who therefore leads him to destruction." Enemies, Watchtower publications, 1937, pg. 94.

Lutheran Church

"The observance of the Lord's day [Sunday] is founded not on any command of God, but on the authority of the church." Augsburg Confession of Faith, quoted in the Catholic Sabbath Manual, Part 2, Chap. 1, Sec.10.

"They [the Catholics] allege the Sabbath changed into Sunday, the Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it appears, neither is there any example more boasted of than the changing of the Sabbath day. Great, say they, is the power and the authority of the church, since it dispensed with one of the Ten Commandments." Martin Luther, Augsburg Confession of Faith, Art. 28, Par.9.

“They [the Catholics] allege the change of the Sabbath into the Lord’s day, as it seemeth, to the Decalogue [the Ten Commandments]; and they have no example more in their mouths than the change of the Sabbath. They will needs have the Church’s power to be very great, because it hath dispensed with a precept of the Decalogue.” The Augsburg Confession, 1530 A.D. (Lutheran), part 2, art. 7, in Phillip Schaff, the Creeds of Christendom, fourth edition, Vol. 3, p. 64.

"But they err in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the children of Israel. In other words, they insist that Sunday is the divinely appointed New Testament Sabbath, and so they endeavor to enforce the Sabbatical observance of Sunday by so called blue laws...These churches err in their teaching, for the Scripture has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect." John Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pp. 15,16

Methodist Church

"It is true that there is no positive command for infant baptism. Nor is there any for keeping holy the first day of the week. Many believe that Christ changed the Sabbath. But, from his own words, we see that He came for no such purpose. Those who believe that Jesus changed the Sabbath base it only on a supposition."  Amos Binney, Theological compendium, 1902 edition, pp. 180-181, 171. [Binney (1802-1878), Methodist minister and presiding elder, whose Compendium was published for forty years in many languages, also wrote a Methodist New Testament Commentary].

"No Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral." "The Sabbath was made for MAN; not for the Hebrews, but for all men." Methodist Church Discipline (1904), p.23

"But the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments, and enforced by the prophets, He [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of his coming to revoke any part of this. This is a law which can never be broken.... Every part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind and in all ages; as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each other." John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions, Vol. 1, Sermon XXV.

Moody Bible Institute (D.L. Moody)

“I honestly believe that this commandment is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated [abolished], but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath’ ” [Mark 2:27]. It is just as practical and as necessary for men today as it ever was—in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.

The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote the law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?"....."I honestly believe that this commandment [the fourth, or Sabbath commandment] is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated (canceled), but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the Scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. `The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.' It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was - in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age." D.L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting, 1898, pp. 46-47 [D. L. Moody (1837-1899) was the most famous evangelist of his time, and founder of the Moody Bible Institute].

Mormon Church \Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

"In this, a new dispensation, and verily the last - the dispensation of the fullness of times - the law of the Sabbath has been reaffirmed unto the church... We believe that a weekly day of rest is no less truly a necessity for the physical well-being of man than his spiritual growth; but primarily and essentially, we regard the Sabbath as divinely established, and its observance a commandment of Him who was and is and ever shall be, Lord of the Sabbath." James E. Talmage, Articles of Faith, 25th Edition, Art. 13, Chap. 24, pp. 449, 451, 452.   

"The acceptance by the Latter-day Saints of what is usually called the 'Christian Sabbath,' or 'Lord's Day,' as the proper day of special service and worship of the Lord is sometimes challenged. Such acceptance is challenged as being in violation of one of the Ten Commandments- the fourth- which directed ancient Israel to keep holy the Sabbath day- the Seventh day of the week; and which, it is held, was designed to be a perpetual law unto all who accept God as Creator and Law-giver." Brigham H. Roberts, The Lord's Day (13 page pamphlet), p. 3.

Nation of Islam

The leader of the Nation of Islam Minister Farrakahn, in addressing White America said "You have not obeyed Divine Law, you have set yourself up as a law beside God, so whatever God says thou shall not do, you said 'it's all right, hang in there, go on and do it."........"God says you should keep the Sabbath. You didn't do it, so we (Black people) don't do it. See, we were your slaves, we came up under you, you were our teacher, you taught us and wanted us to call you master." Quoted from Minister Louis Farrakahn's speech at the Jacob Javit Center, in New York City, December 18, 1993,

Presbyterian Church

"There is no word, no hint in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday. The observance of Ash Wednesday, or Lent, stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of Sunday. Into the rest of Sunday no Divine Law enters."  Canon Eyton, in "The Ten Commandments"

"We must not imagine that the coming of Christ has freed us from the authority of the law; for it is the eternal rule of a devout and holy life, and must therefore be as unchangeable as the justice of God, which it embraced, is constant and uniform."  John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Gospels, Vol. 1, pg. 277.

"The Sabbath is a part of the Decalogue - the Ten Commandments. This alone forever settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution... Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand... The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the Sabbath." T.C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp.474,475

Seventh-day Adventist Church

The beneficent Creator, after the six days of Creation, rested on the seventh day and instituted the Sabbath for all people as a memorial of Creation. The fourth commandment of God's unchangeable law requires the observance of this seventh-day Sabbath as the day of rest, worship, and ministry in harmony with the teaching and practice of Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a day of delightful communion with God and one another. It is a symbol of our redemption in Christ, a sign of our sanctification, a token of our allegiance, and a foretaste of our eternal future in God's kingdom. The Sabbath is God's perpetual sign of His eternal covenant between Him and His people. Joyful observance of this holy time from evening to evening, sunset to sunset, is a celebration of God's creative and redemptive acts. www.Adventist.org, Fundamental Beliefs, from the Adventist church official website.

Miscellaneous Historical Quotes

     "You will tell me that Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath, but that the Christian Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! But by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, 'Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day,' who shall dare to say, 'Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead'? This is a most important question, which I know, not how you will answer.
     "You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the Ten Commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered." --"The Library of Christian Doctrine" pages 3,4.

"The first precept in the Bible is that of sanctifying the seventh day: 'God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.' Genesis 2:3 This precept was confirmed by God in the Ten Commandments: 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. ... The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God 'Exodus 20: 8, 10. On the other hand, Christ declares that He is not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. (Matthew 5: 17.) He Himself observed the Sabbath: 'And, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day.' Luke 4: 16. His disciples likewise observed it after His death: 'They ... rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment.' Luke 23: 56. Yet with all this weight of Scripture authority for keeping the Sabbath or seventh day holy, Protestants of all denominations make this a profane day and transfer the obligation of it to the first day of the week, or the Sunday. Now what authority have they for doing this? None at all but the unwritten word, or tradition of the Catholic Church, which declares that the apostle made the change in honor of Christ's resurrection, and the descent of the Holy Ghost on that day of the week. " --JOHN MILNER, "The End of Religious Controversy, " page 71.

"Sabbath means, of course, Saturday, the seventh day of the week but the early Christians changed the observance to Sunday, to honor the day on which Christ arose from the dead " --FULTON DURSLER, Cosmopolitan, Sept 1951, pages 34,35.

"I do not pretend to be even an amateur scholar of the Scriptures. I read the Decalogue merely as an average man searching, for guidance, and in the immortal 'Ten Words' I find a blueprint for the good life. " --FULTON DURSLER, Cosmopolitan, Sept 1951, page 33.

"Most certainly the Commandments are needed today, perhaps more than ever before. Their divine message confronts us with a profound moral challenge in an epidemic of evil; a unifying message acceptable alike to Jew, Moslem, and Christian. Who, reading the Ten in the light of history and of current events, can doubt their identity with the eternal law of nature? "--Id , page 124.. "The Sabbath is commanded to be kept on the seventh day. It could not be kept on any other day. To observe the first day of the week or the fourth is not to observe the Sabbath.... It was the last day of the week, after six days of work, that was to be kept holy. The observance of no other day would fulfill the law. " --H. J FLOWERS, B.A., B D, "The Permanent value of the Ten Commandments, "page 131.

"The evaluation of Sunday, the traditionally accepted day of the resurrection of Christ, has varied greatly throughout the centuries of the Christian Era. From time to time it has been confused with the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath. English- speaking peoples have been the most consistent in perpetuating the erroneous assumption that the obligation of the fourth commandment has passed over to Sunday. In popular speech, Sunday is frequently, but erroneously, spoken of as the Sabbath. " --F. M. SETZLER, Head Curator, Department of Anthropology, .Smithsonian Institute, from a letter dated Sept.1, 1949.

"He that observes the Sabbath aright holds the history of that which it celebrates to be authentic, and therefore believes in the creation of the first man; ho the creation of a fair abode for man in the space of six days; in the primeval and absolute creation of the heavens and the earth, and as a  necessary antecedent to all this, in the Creator, who at the close of His latest creative effort, rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath thus becomes a sign by which the believers in a historical revelation are distinguished from those who have allowed these great facts to fade from their remembrance. " -- JAMES G MURPHY, "Commentary on the Book of Exodus, " comments on Exodus 20: 8-11.

"Probably very few Christians are aware of the fact that what they call the 'Christian Sabbath' (Sunday) is of pagan origin. "The first observance of Sunday that history records is in the fourth century, when Constantine issued an edict (not requiring its religious observance, but simply abstinence, from work) reading 'let all the judges and people of the town rest and all the various trades be suspended on the venerable day of the sun. At the time of the issue of this edict, Constantine was a sun-worshipper; therefore it could have had no relation whatever to Christianity. " -- HENRY M TABER, "Faith or Fact" (preface by Robert G. Ingersol) page. 112.

"I challenge any priest or minister of the Christian religion to show me the slightest authority, for the religious observance of Sunday. And, if such cannot be shown by them, why is it that they are constantly preaching about Sunday as a holy day? . . The claim that Sunday takes the place of Saturday, and that because the Jews were supposed to be commanded to keep the seventh day of the week holy, therefore the, first day of the week should be so kept by Christians, is so utterly absurd as to be hardly worth considering.... That Paul habitually observed and preached on the seventh day of the week, is ,shown in Acts 18:4-- 'And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath' (Saturday). " -- HENRY M TABER, "Faith or Fact" (preface by Robert G. Ingersol) pages 114, 116.

"During this indefinite time a considerable amount of a sort of theokrasia seems to have gone on between the Christian cult and the almost equally popular and widely diffused Mithraic cult, and the cult of Serapis-Isis-Horus. From the former it would seem the Christians adopted Sunday as their chief day of worship in- stead of the Jewish Sabbath." H. G. WELLS, "The Outline of History" (New and Revised), page 543.  

"The first who ever used it [the Sabbath to denote the Lord's day (the first that I have met with in all this search) is one Petrus Alfonsus-he lived about the time that Repurtus did (which was the beginning of the twelfth century)-who calls the Lord's day by the name of Christian Sabbath." PETER HEYLYN, "History of the Sabbath," Part 2, Chap. 2, Sec. 12.  

"Bear in mind that the substitution [of the first for the seventh day] was not a coerced happening; it could not be a sudden, but only a very slow development, probably never anticipated, never even designed or put into shape by those chiefly interested, but creeping almost unconsciously into being." WILLIAM B. DANA, "A Day of Rest and Worship," page 174.  

The first direct reference to Sunday as a day of rest from physical toil we find in Tertullian, in about A.D. 200 in his Liber de Oratione, chapter 23. "We, however ( just as we have received ), only on the day of the Lord's resurrection ought to guard not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude; deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil."  TERTULLIAN, "Ante-Nicene Fathers," Vol. 111, page 689. 

"The early Christians had at first adopted the Jewish seven- day week with its numbered week days, but by the close of the third century A.D. this began to give way to the planetary week; and in the fourth and fifth centuries the pagan designations became generally accepted in the western half of Christendom. The use of the planetary names by Christians attests the growing influence of astrological speculations introduced by converts from paganism. ... During these same centuries the spread of Oriental solar worships, especially that of Mithra (Persian sun worship) in the Roman world, had already led to the substitution by pagans of dies Solis for dies Saturni, as the first day of the planetary week.... Thus gradually a pagan institution was ingrafted on Christianity."  HUTTON WEBSTER, Ph.D., Rest Days, pages 220, 221.  

Eusebius, fourth-century bishop and friend of the wicked Emperor Constantine, whose Sunday law is the first on record, flatly says: "All things, whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord's day [as they had begun to call Sunday]." --"Commentary on the Psalms."

"Opposition to Judaism introduced the particular festival of Sunday very early, indeed, into the place of the Sabbath.... The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps, at the end of the second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday as a sin."  AUGUSTUS NEANDER, General history of the Christian Religion and Church" (Rose's translation), Vol. 1, page 186.

What Dictionaries Say

"As the Sabbath is of divine institution, so it is to be kept holy unto the Lord. Numerous have been the days appointed by men for religious services; but these are not binding, because of human institution. Not so the Sabbath. Hence the fourth commandment is ushered in with a peculiar emphasis-'Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day.' ... The abolition of it would be unreasonable."  CHARLES BUCK A Theological Dictionary," 1830 Edition, page 537.  

"But although it [Sunday] was in the primitive times indifferently called the Lord's day, or Sunday, yet it was never denominated the Sabbath; a name constantly appropriate to Saturday, or the seventh day, both by sacred and ecclesiastical writers." -Id., page 572.

"The notion of a formal substitution by apostolic authority of the Lord's day [meaning Sunday] for the Jewish Sabbath [or the first for the seventh day]... and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the fourth commandment, has no basis whatever, either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity." SIR WILLIAM SMITH AND SAMUEL CHEETHAM, A Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," Vol. II, page I82, Article "Sabbath."

What Encyclopedias Say

"Sunday was a name given by the heathens to the first day of the week, because it was the day on which they worshipped the sun, ... the seventh day was blessed and hallowed by God Himself, and ... He requires His creatures to keep it holy to Him. This commandment is of universal and perpetual obligation. ... The Creator 'blessed the seventh day' declared it to be a day above all days, a day on which His favor should assuredly rest. ... So long, then, as man exists, and the world around him endures, does the law of the early Sabbath remain. It cannot be set aside, so long as its foundations last.... It is not the Jewish Sabbath, properly so-called, which is ordained in the fourth commandment. In the whole of that injunction there is no Jewish element, any more than there is in the third commandment, or the sixth."  Eadie's Biblical Cyclopedia, 1872 Edition, page 561.  

"Thus we learn from Socrates (HE., vi.c.8) that in his time public worship was held in the churches of Constantinople on both days. The view that the Christian's Lord's day or Sunday is but the Christian Sabbath deliberately transferred, from the seventh to the first day of the week does not indeed, find categorical expression till a much later period.... The earliest recognition of the observance of Sunday as a legal duty is a constitution of Constantine in A.D. 32l, enacting that all courts of justice, inhabitants of towns, and workshops were to be at rest on. Sunday (venerabili die Solis), with an exception in favor of those engaged in agricultural labor.... The Council of Laodicea (363) ...,forbids Christians from Judaizing and resting on the Sabbath day. preferring the Lord's day, and so far as possible resting as Christians. " Encyclopedia Britannica l899 Edition, Vol. XXIII, page 654.  

"Unquestionably the first law, either ecclesiastical or civil, by which the sabbatical observance of Sunday is known to have been ordained is the sabbatical edict of Constantine" A.D. 321. Chambers' Encyclopedia, Article Sunday.

"It must be confessed that there is no law in the New Testament concerning the, first day. "  M'CLINTOCK AND STRONG Cyclopedia of Biblical, Thedogical, and Ecclesiastical literature, Vol. IX page 196.  

"Sunday (Dies Sotis, of the Roman calendar, 'day of the sun,' because dedicated to the sun), the, first day of the week, was adopted by the early Christians as a day of worship. The 'sun' of Latin adoration they interpreted as the 'Sun of Righteousness.'... No regulations, for its observance are laid down in the New Testament, nor, indeed, is its observance even enjoined. " SCHAFF HERZOG, Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, 1891 Edition, Vol. IV, Art. "Sunday."

 
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