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BAPTIST

"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 the 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 ministers' conference held Nov. 13, 1893.

"We believe that the law of God is the eternal and unchangeable rule of His moral government."-"Baptist Church Manual," Art. 12.

"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 labour 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 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.

"There was never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance." -WILLIAM OWEN CARVER, "The Lord's Day in Our Day," page 49.

"It may be that Jesus gave them an explicit command so to do [to change the Sabbath from the seventh day to the first ; but of this we have no revelation."-C. C. A. WALLACE. "What Baptists Believe," page 167.

 

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