A CORRESPONDENT living in Brooklyn inquires of the SENTINEL how people living in “Fiji, Tonga Isles, and the extreme east of Siberia,” can know which day is the Sabbath, “or in fact any other day of the week.”
We know of no reason why people living in the regions designated should be obliged to determine the days of the week in any different way from those living in New York City or London or Pekin. And as a matter of fact the inhabitants of those regions have the week and mark the days of the week the same as is done elsewhere, and we have never heard that they experienced any difficulty or were involved in any uncertainty in the matter. Doubtless they would be much surprised to meet with anyone who would express a doubt upon this point.
Adventurous travelers have explored nearly every square mile of the earth’s surface, but none of them have had any difficulty, even in the Artic realms where there is a “day” of six months’ length, in keeping track of the days of the week or in knowing the beginning and end of each day.
God made the week and gave it to Adam and his posterity; and this primordial division of time has been maintained uninterruptedly from Adam’s day to the present, being marked at its close by the Sabbath, which has always had some observers in every age of the world. The nation of the Jews has observed the Sabbath from the time of the falling of the manna, shortly after their exodus from Egypt, to the present time; and neither Jews, Christian Sabbath-keepers, Roman Catholics, Protestants or heathen, were ever in any disagreement concerning the identity of the days of the week. So all anybody has to do who wants to keep the Sabbath is to take the week as he finds it in the community in which he lives, and observe the Sabbath as commanded when it comes to him. The Creator knew all this when He made the Sabbath, and knew that in commanding its observance He would not be requiring anything difficult or unreasonable.