Quotes on the Lord's Day
- There is no hope of destroying the Christian religion while the Christian Sabbath is acknowledged and kept by men as a sacred day. ~ Voltair
- The Streams of all religion runs either deep or shallow according as the banks of the Sabbath are kept up or neglected. ~ Matthew Henry
- If the Lord’s day is abolished, the church would be in imminent danger of convulsion and ruin. ~ John Calvin
- And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the LORD. And from one Sabbath to another. . . . {Compare the notes at Isa 58:13,14} "There can be no permanent worship of God, and no permanent religion on earth, without a Sabbath; and hence it was, that while the observance of the feasts of tabernacles, and of the Passover, and of the new moons, made a part of the ceremonial law, the law respecting the sabbaths was incorporated with the ten commandments as of moral and perpetual obligation; and it will be literally true that all the race shall yet be brought to worship God on the return of that holy day. It was instituted in paradise; and as one design of the plan of redemption is to bring man back to the state in which he was in paradise, so one effect of the true religion everywhere will be, and is, to make people reverence the Sabbath of the Lord. No man becomes truly pious who does not love the holy Sabbath. No nation ever has been, or ever can be converted which will not, and which does not, love and observe that day. Every successful effort to propagate the true religion is a successful effort to extend the practice of observing it; and just as certain as it is that Christianity will be spread around the world, so certain will it be that the Sabbath will be observed in all lands. The period is, therefore, yet to arrive when the delightful spectacle will be presented of all the nations of the earth bowing on the return of that day before the living God. The plans of this life will be suspended; toil and care will be laid aside; and the sun, as he rolls around the world, will rouse nation after nation to the worship of the true God; and the peace and order and loveliness of the Christian Sabbath will spread over all the hills and vales of the world. Who that loves the race will not desire that such a period may soon come? Who can wonder that Isaiah should have fixed his eye in the close of his prophetic labors on a scene so full of loveliness, and so replete with honor to God, and with goodwill to people? ~ Albert Barnes
- We gather together on the first rather than the seventh day of the week because redemption is even a greater work than creation and more worthy of commemoration and because the rest which followed creation is far outdone by the rest which ensues upon the completion of redemption. Like the Apostles, we meet on the first day of the week and hope that Jesus may stand in our midst and say, “Peace be unto you.” Our Lord has lifted the Sabbath from the old and rusty hinges where on the law had placed it long before and set it on the new golden hinges which His love has fashioned. He has placed our rest day not at the end of a week of toil but at the beginning of the rest which remains for the people of God. Every first day of the week we should meditate on the rising of our Lord and seek to enter into the fellowship with Him in His risen life. ~ Charles Spurgeon
- I honestly believe that this commandment is just as binding today as it ever was. I have talked with men who have said that it has been abrogated, but they have never been able to point to any place in the Bible where God repealed it. When Christ was on earth, He did nothing to set it aside; He freed it from the traces under which the scribes and Pharisees had put it, and gave it its true place. 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.' It is just as practicable and as necessary for men today as it ever was-in fact, more than ever, because we live in such an intense age.
- The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever since. The fourth commandment begins with the word remember, showing that the Sabbath already existed when God wrote this law on the tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done away with when they will admit that the other nine are still binding?
- I believe that the Sabbath question today is a vital one for the whole country. It is the burning question of the present time. If you give up the Sabbath the church goes; if you give up the church the home goes; and if the home goes the nation goes. That is the direction in which we are traveling.
- The church of God is losing its power on account of so many people giving up the Sabbath, and using it to promote selfishness. ~ D. L. Moody
- As I am a woman, so I am also mistress of a large family. and though the superior charge of the souls contained in it lies upon you; yet, in your absence, I cannot but look upon every soul you leave under my care as a talent committed to me under a trust by the great Lord of all the families both of heaven and earth. And if I am unfaithful to Him or you in neglecting to improve these talents, how shall I answer unto Him, when He shall command me to render an account of my stewardship? ~ Susannah Wesley
- Oh, what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through Jordan! There is nothing in which I would advise you to be more strictly conscientious than in Keeping the Sabbath Day holy. ~ William Wilberforce
- Let us never forget that our feelings about Sundays are sure tests of the state of our souls. The person who can find no pleasure in giving God one day in the week, is manifestly unfit for heaven. Heaven itself is nothing but an eternal Sabbath. If we cannot enjoy a few hours in God’s service once a week in this world, it is plain that we could not enjoy an eternity in His service in the world to come. . . . They shall find Christ and a blessing while they live, and Christ and glory when they die. ~ J.C. Ryle
- The keeping of one day in seven holy, as a time of relaxation and refreshment as well as public worship is of inestimable benefit to a state, considered merely as a civil institution. ~ Sir William Blackstone
- A corruption of morals usually follows a profanation of the Sabbath. ~ Sir William Blackstone
- We doctors, in the treatment of nervous disease, are now constantly compelled to prescribe periods of rest. Some periods are, I think, only Sundays in arrears. ~ Sir James Crichton-Browne, British physician
- O what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through the sea. ~ Samuel Wilberforce, son of William Wilberforce, and Anglican bishop
- Give the world one-half of Sunday and you will soon find that religion has no strong hold on the other half. ~ Sir Walter Scott
- As we keep or break the Sabbath, we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises. ~ Abraham Lincoln
- Where there is no Christian Sabbath, there is no Christian morality, and without these our free institutions cannot long be sustained.~ John McLean, U.S. Supreme Court justice and dissenter in Dred Scott decision
- Sunday is nature’s law as well as God’s. No individual or nation habitually disregarding it has failed to fall upon disaster and grief. ~ Daniel Webster
- He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor. ~ James Russell Lowell, founding editor of the Atlantic Monthly
- Show me a nation that has given up the Sabbath, and I will show you a nation that has got the seed of decay. ~ Dwight L. Moody
- The Church as a visible force and power could not exist without the Sabbath. ~ Donald McLeod, Presbyterian pastor
- It would be as difficult to take an inventory of the benefits the world receives from the sunshine as to enumerate the blessings we derive from the Christian Sabbath.~ Henry Doddridge Ganse, American Dutch Reformed pastor
- But if Lord’s Days are lost or frittered away, there may be no way to regain the benefits they would have given us. ~ Glen Knecht, modern-day American Presbyterian pastor
- I believe that the Sabbath question today is a vital one for the whole country. It is the burning question of the present time. If you give up the Sabbath the church goes; if you give up the church the home goes; and if the home goes the nation goes. That is the direction in which we are traveling. ~ Dwight L. Moody
- Let a man lay the foundation of having no Sabbath and I am never surprised if he finished with the top-stone of no God. ~ J. C. Ryle, Anglican bishop of Liverpool
- I have found by a strict and diligent observation, that a due observance of the duties of the Lord's day hath ever had joined to it a blessing upon the rest of my time, and the week that hath been so begun hath been blessed and prosperous to me; and on the other side, when I have been negligent of the duties of this day, the rest of the week hath been unsuccessful and unhappy to my own secular employments the week following. This I write, not lightly or inconsiderately, but upon long and sound observation and experience. ~ Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale
- I feel as if God had, by giving the Sabbath, given fifty-two springs in every year. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- The happiness of heaven is the constant keeping of the Sabbath. Heaven is called a Sabbath, to make those who have Sabbaths long for heaven, and those who long for heaven love Sabbaths. ~ Philip Henry
- On Sunday heaven's gates stand open. ~ George Herbert
- The longer I live the more highly so I estimate the Christian Sabbath, and the more grateful do I feel towards those who impress its importance on the community. ~ Daniel Webster
- Make the Sabbath the Market-Day for thy Soul: Lose not one Hour, but be either praying, conferring, or meditating: Think not thy own Thoughts: Let every Day have its Duties: Turn the Sermon heard into Matter of Prayer, Instruction into Petition, Reproof into Confession, Consolation into Thanksgiving: Think much of the Sermon heard, and make something of it all the Week long. ~ John Dod
- Neither is there any ordinary means of gaining strength and grace in the inward man like this, of due observing the Sabbath. For this is God's great mart or fair-day for the soul, on which you may buy of Christ wine, milk, bread, marrow and fatness, gold, white raiment, eye salve, -- even all things which are necessary, and which will satisfy, and cause the soul to live. It is the special day of proclaiming and sealing of pardons to penitent sinners. It is God's special day of publishing and sealing your patent of eternal life. It is a blessed day, sanctified for all these blessed purposes. ~ Henry Scudder
- Of all time Sabbath-time is the most precious and valuable; it being the time God has allotted and set apart for himself, and upon the improvement whereof the glory of God and salvation of our souls depend in a most peculiar manner; it being the day of special access to God, and of free commerce and correspondence between heaven and earth. It is heaven's weekly market day, or God's deal-day to the poor and needy; the day of access to God's presence-chamber. ~ John Willison
- Hail thou that art highly favoured of God, thou map of heaven, thou golden spot of the week, thou market-day of souls, thou daybreak of eternal brightness, thou queen of days, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among days, Luke 1:28. I may say to thee what the angel said to Daniel, Oh day greatly beloved! Dan 9:23. Thou art fairer than all the children of time, grace is poured into thy lips; God, even thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows, Ps 45. ~ George Swinnock
- What fitter day to ascend to heaven, than that on which He arose from earth, and fully triumphed over death and hell. Use your Sabbaths as steps to glory, till you have passed them all, and are there arrived. ~ Richard Baxter