THE only good law for Sunday that was ever made, was enacted by the Creator. It is the only good law of the kind that can ever be made.
Let it not be thought strange that the Creator enacted a law for the first day of the week. He has created all things, and he has law for everything that he has made; he set nothing adrift after he created it, to float about subject to no rule of guidance, no defined purpose of utility, amidst the rest of his creation. He has a law for the earth, a law for the tree and flower, a law for every operation of nature. “He sendeth forth his commandment upon earth; his word runneth very swiftly. He giveth snow like wool; he scattereth the hoar frost like ashes. He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold? He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow.” Psalm 147:15-18. He has law for the beings he has made, both man and beast. And he has law for the days of the week.
The fourth commandment not only states the law of the Sabbath, but of the other days of the week as well, so far as concerns man’s relation to them. That it makes so brief mention of them in comparison with the Sabbath is due to the preëminence of the latter. The commandment says: “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.” Every word of the Creator is law. The sentence, “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work,” is law, as much as is any other divine pronouncement; not, indeed, in the sense of prohibiting all rest or recreation upon any other day than the seventh, but as distinguishing between man’s relation to it and his relation to the Sabbath. It is the law of their character as related to mankind. They are the working days; the Sabbath is the rest day.
The Creator’s law for Sunday therefore is, that it is one of the six common days upon which man may labor and perform his work. That is the law as it stands in the divine code to-day.
Man, it is true, has enacted a different “law.” He has made a statute which sets forth the first day of the week, instead of the seventh, as the weekly rest day. But can man with his enactments set aside the decree of the Eternal? Can a man-made statute have any force, as opposed to the law of the Almighty?
Shall we observe the Creator’s law for Sunday, or man’s?