Editorial September 23, 1916 Issue

The Sabbath Understood

Annie M. Knott

CHRISTIAN people in general, as well as other religionists, are supposed to understand the reason for the institution of the Sabbath, even though they may hold widely differing views as to its observance. There can, however, be no question that the nations which have most strictly observed the Sabbath have produced the best type of manhood and womanhood as well as the most stable and progressive form of government. This is not of course due to the mere fact of physical rest on one day out of seven, but because those who have observed the Sabbath have seen that the Decalogue must be taken as a whole, and that one is not ready to grasp the deeper meaning of the stern prohibitions, "Thou shalt not kill," or, "Thou shalt not steal," unless he sees that obedience thereto is reached by obedience to the command: "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy."

Here it should be understood that the Decalogue is not so much prohibitive as protective. Strictly speaking, it is altogether protective. Even if one has no desire to violate the moral law he should gratefully remember that on the human plane he owes the security of his life and property to its enforcement by common consent. Furthermore, it cannot be denied that if all men were to keep holy the Sabbath day, were to devote it to the study of moral and spiritual law and to the unfoldment of man's spiritual and intellectual capacities, crime would be unknown. The Christian Scientist would go even farther and declare that sickness, sorrow, and poverty would be unknown, and this would also mean the overcoming of death itself. If the Sabbath is not intended to aid us in laying hold upon immortality, with all that this word includes, it means little for us; but if it means this, it is surely a vital thing for us to understand the Sabbath.

Too long have men believed that a vengeful God punished those who disobeyed His laws, but in Christian Science we learn that all suffering is the result of ignorance or sin. In the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviticus we are told that those who failed to keep the Sabbath would find themselves in exile among strangers, while their own land would "enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate;" in other words, the disobedient carnal mind would no longer be lording it over the earth which "is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof." We all need the rest of the Sabbath, and it is a rare attainment to know enough of truth to be able to dismiss the haunting cares of mortal experience, and to respond to this loving invitation given by the Master to his disciples, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." This he said out of his deep compassion for human need, and unless he had taught them many things which they did not know, they would have had no rest; nor can we, on any day, until we come to the ever-present Christ to find it.

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