Editorial July 23, 1921 Issue

The Seventh Day

Frederick Dixon

The world has altered since Moses imposed the ordinances of the law on the people at Sinai. The old ceremonial observances prove less satisfying every day. Christianity makes different demands on the world than did Judaism. "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath," Christ Jesus said to the Pharisees: "therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath." Nevertheless, the old idea of the Jewish sabbath lingers on in the Christian Sunday. "It is sad," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 40 of Science and Health, "that the phrase divine service has come so generally to mean public worship instead of daily deeds."

Jesus himself made it extremely clear that man's duty to Principle was not a peculiarity of one day in seven, but that his self-denial must extend to every day of the week, and that, in every day of the week the cross had to be taken up. The Third Commandment, in reality, imposes this requirement most thoroughly. If a man is never to take the name of the Lord in vain, he will be obliged to exchange the idea of divine service on Sunday for service to Principle every day and all day. This does not mean that Sunday should not be observed in the churches, but it does mean there should be no change whatever in man's mental attitude between Sunday and Sunday. The work he does on week days should be done in exactly the same spirit in which he rests on Sunday. After all, as Mrs. Eddy writes, on pages 519-520 of Science and Health, "God rests in action. Imparting has not impoverished, can never impoverish, the divine Mind. No exhaustion follows the action of this Mind, according to the apprehension of divine Science. The highest and sweetest rest, even from a human standpoint, is in holy work."

The truth is that if the individual is obeying the First Commandment to have no other gods, he may cease from his daily labor to devote Sunday to a more unbroken realization of Principle, but throughout the week the only change will be one of outward expression, for he will continue to guard his own thought all through the seven days, throwing down his idols as much on Monday as on Sunday, and remembering that what he should not do on Sunday he should certainly not have done on Saturday. The writer of the story of creation in Genesis certainly never meant that the work of Principle on six days made these less holy than the seventh, any more than the inscriber of the Commandments dreamed that the keeping of the sabbath would imply any license for any other day. The distinctions which the carnal mind makes between one day and another are in reality a perfect travesty of what Moses understood by the sabbath.

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