But some will say, "the day has been changed, while all the principles belonging to it remain the same." I do not believe that scripture furnishes any foundation for such an idea. Where is the divine warrant for such a statement? Surely if there is scripture authority, nothing can be easier than to produce it. But the fact is, there is none; on the contrary, the distinction is most fully maintained in the New Testament. Take one remarkable passage, in proof: "In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week." (Matt. xxviii. 1.) There is, evidently, no mention here of the seventh day being changed to the first day; nor yet of any transfer of the Sabbath from the one to the other. The first day of the week is not the Sabbath changed, but altogether a new day. It is the first day of a new period, and not the last day of an old. The seventh day stands connected with earth and earthly rest: the first day of the week, on the contrary, introduces us to heaven and heavenly rest.
This makes a vast difference in the principle; and when we look at the matter in a practical point of view, the difference is most material. If I celebrate the seventh day, it marks me as an earthly man, inasmuch as that day is, clearly, the rest of earth--creation-rest; but if I am taught by the Word and Spirit of God to understand the meaning of the first day of the week, I shall at once apprehend its immediate connection with that new and heavenly order of things, of which the death and resurrection of Christ form the everlasting foundation. The seventh day appertained to Israel and to earth. The first day of the week appertains to the Church and to heaven. Further, Israel was _commanded_ to observe the sabbath day; the Church is _privileged_ to enjoy the first day of the week. The former was the _test_ of Israel's moral condition; the latter is the significant _proof_ of the Church's eternal acceptance. That made manifest what Israel _could do_ for God; this perfectly declares what God _has done_ for us.
It is quite impossible to over-estimate the value and importance of the Lord's day, ([Greek: he kyriake hemera,]) as the first day of the week is termed, in the first chapter of the Apocalypse. Being the day on which Christ rose from the dead, it sets forth not the completion of creation, but the full and glorious triumph of redemption. Nor should we regard the celebration of the first day of the week as a matter of bondage, or as a yoke put on the neck of a Christian. It is his delight to celebrate that happy day. Hence we find that the first day of the week was pre-eminently the day on which the early Christians came together to break bread; and at that period of the Church's history, the distinction between the sabbath and the first day of the week was fully maintained. The Jews celebrated the former, by assembling in their synagogues to read "the law and the prophets;" the Christians celebrated the latter, by assembling to break bread. There is not so much as a single passage of scripture in which the first day of the week is called the sabbath day; whereas there is the most abundant proof of their entire distinctness.
Why, therefore, contend for that which has no foundation in the Word? Love, honor, and celebrate the Lord's day as much as possible; seek, like the apostle, to be "in the Spirit" thereon; let your retirement from secular matters be as profound as ever you can make it; but while you do all this, call it by its proper name; give it its proper place; understand its proper principles; attach to it its proper characteristics; and, above all, do not bind down the Christian, as with an iron rule, to observe the seventh day, when it is his high and holy privilege to observe the first. Do not bring him down from heaven, where he can rest, to a cursed and bloodstained earth, where he cannot. Do not ask him to keep a day which his Master spent in the tomb, instead of that blessed day on which he left it. (See, carefully, Matt. xxviii. 1-6; Mark xvi. 1-2; Luke xxiv. 1; John xx. 1, 19, 26; Acts xx. 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 2; Rev. i. 10; Acts xiii. 14; xvii. 2; Col. ii. 16.)