THE word “sabbath” means rest. After employing six days in creating the heavens and the earth, God rested on the seventh day, and was refreshed. Exodus 31:17. The rest and refreshment which pertain to the Sabbath do not arise from cessation from wearisome toil, for “the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isaiah 40:28); and as the Sabbath was when it afforded Him rest and refreshment, so he has given it to man. Moreover it was instituted for man in Eden before the fall, before man was obliged to earn bread by the sweat of his brow; and it will be observed in the new earth, where toil and weariness will not be known. While it affords a welcome relief from toil in this life, it has also a rest and refreshment of a difficult and higher sort. It has a rest and a delight which are spiritual. Isaiah 58:13, 14.
Yet this institution, given to mankind in order that they might enjoy complete and perfect rest, is being made the occasion of great unrest among men at the present time. It is being made the basis of an agitation which affects all classes of people; which disturbs political parties, causes trouble and labor to legislators and judges, and in various ways disturbs the public peace. All this is plainly a gross perversion of the God-ordained purpose of the Sabbath day.
The trouble is that men are not taking the Sabbath as God has given it to them; but they have made a sabbath of their own—the first day of the week—the purpose and “law” of which are also of their own manufacture; and they are endeavoring to make this sabbath take the place of the Sabbath of the Lord. But their sabbath does not promote peace among men, but rather confusion and strife. The whole religious world is in confusion concerning its basis and proper observance. It is the center of a ceaseless agitation, which gives no satisfaction to either the Church or the State.
The remedy is to turn from the man-made institution based upon tradition and popular custom, to the Sabbath of the Lord, based upon his divine word. Whoever will observe [134] this divine Sabbath, will find rest and refreshment which the world knows not of. The Sabbath of the Lord—the seventh day, blessed and this divine Sabbath, will find rest and refreshment which the world knows not of. The Sabbath of the Lord—the seventh day, blessed and hallowed by the Creator—gives perfect rest, as it was designed to do by its Author. The confusion, unrest, and strife, which pertain to the question of Sabbath observance in the world to-day, would cease at once if men would but observe the Sabbath God has given. But nothing else can come from the effort to establish the man-made sabbath in the place of that which is divine.