Editorial April 21, 1923 Issue

The Holy Sabbath

Ella W. Hoag

When Moses received the Ten Commandments from God on mount Sinai, he may not have seen that in them was later to be found the basis for all true human law. He may not have known they were to stand unchanged through all time, and were to become the very foundation of all religious and moral ethics. When the people of Jesus' time accused him of overthrowing Moses' law, he insisted that he came not to destroy but to fulfill it. In direct line with this, Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 174), "The thunder of Sinai and the Sermon on the Mount are pursuing and will overtake the ages, rebuking in their course all error and proclaiming the kingdom of heaven on earth." And in "Rudimental Divine Science" (pp. 11, 12) in speaking of one "who is indeed a Christian Scientist," she writes, "Above all, he keeps unbroken the Ten Commandments." No Christian Scientist, therefore, doubts the absolute necessity of his learning to understand and obey them.

Each of the Ten Commandments is of great value in working out all human problems; after the first, perhaps none is more so than the fourth. When God gave the command, "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy," He presented to all men not only a duty, but a marvelous privilege and protection. In recent centuries great thinkers have almost with one accord agreed that the nations which have regarded the Sabbath most have prospered best. Daniel Webster once said: "The longer I live the more highly do I estimate the Christian Sabbath and the more grateful do I feel to those who impress its importance on the community;" while Montalembert declared, "Without a Sabbath, no worship; without worship, no religion; without religion, no permanent freedom."

In these days when error is doing its suppositional utmost to overthrow all that is true and right, how grateful the Christian Scientist is to know that in God's perfect, demonstrable Science he has the way pointed out whereby he may maintain the mental attitude which divine Principle demands on every question. In his endeavor to keep "unbroken the Ten Commandments," he counts the privilege of keeping the Sabbath holy as something very precious. In doing this he starts with the purpose to fulfill this commandment, not to destroy it; to keep it, not to break it. In other words, he is concerned with learning how he may give the priceless hours of the Sabbath day to winning and demonstrating a higher spiritual understanding, that thereby he may spend the rest of the week more surely under God's all-wise control.

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