IN last month’s Magazine reference was made in a note to the rejection by the League of Nations of the Calendar Reform Scheme. As some readers of the Magazine may not be aware of the issues involved it is deemed advisable to give a more extended account of the movement than could be given in a short note. Since several years there have been, from various quarters, requests for a simplification of the Calendar, and a co-ordination of the Calendars in use in the various countries. Being approached by the Calendar Reformists, the League of Nations took the matter in hand two years ago. During the October sessions of the League Council at Geneva, last year, the new Calendar, supported by powerful interests in many countries, was submitted for approval.
This new Calendar proposed to divide the year into one of thirteen months of 28 days each, making 364 days. But as there are 365 days in the year there was an extra day. This extra day, which, according to the Reformists’ Scheme, was to be reckoned as a holiday, and was to be included in the last week of the year making an eight-day “week,” and in leap years a nine-day “week.” This proposal introduces a “floating Sunday,” as it has been called, and would, on the second year after the introduction of the Calendar, make the “floating Sunday” fall, not on “the first day of the (scriptural) week,” the true Lord’s Day, the fixed memorial of our Lord’s resurrection, but on the second day of the Biblical week; on the third year, a day later still, and so on. This proposal, no faithful Christian can consent to, for God has stamped the number seven on creation. He has measured the week’s duration unalterably for all time—six days for work, one for rest—”And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made” (Gen. II. 2-3). This law is written in man’s physical frame, in his mind, and above all in his soul’s spiritual need. Further God has enshrined it in the heart of the Decalogue, positively commanding men to “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” and negatively forbidding him to turn it into a day of toil or pleasure-seeking, hedging it round about more particularly than any of the other commandments.
Again, Christ, in His resurrection, changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week—the Lord’s Day—but He did not change the duration of the week. The Lord’s Day recurs perpetually at the end of the septenary period. This is Heaven’s legislation. It is unalterable. The proposed “floating Sunday,” the concomitant of the eight-day and nine-day “week,” springs from the same infidel source as the ten-day “week” of the French revolutionaries, and the five-day “week” of the Russian Bolsheviks.
The Lord’s Day Observance Society, London, sent their Secretary, Mr. H. H. Martin, as a deputy to Geneva, in October last, when he appeared before the League Council and read his Society’s objections to the proposal—a clear, strong and emphatic denunciation of the proposed “floating Sunday,” branding it as being on a level with the action of the French revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks. Another Representative from Britain also appeared before the League Council to oppose the proposal. So, too, did several Representatives from Continental religious bodies.
But the strongest action of all seems to have been taken by the Jews. For them the new Calendar has proposed a “floating Saturday” (O.T. Sabbath); for Mohammedans a “floating Friday,” and so on—all are to be reduced to one level—the promoters trusting that their Calendar will be universally adopted. But the Jews maintain, and rightly so, that a “floating Saturday” would mean that they must forsake the seven-day Biblical week and the law of Moses including the O.T. Sabbath, and that, they say, would mean the cutting adrift of young Jewry from religion which has hitherto bound them together and preserved them as a people, and this the Jews will not tolerate. Accordingly, they hinted that should the “floating Saturday” (and “Sunday”) be adopted the League need not count on them for financial support for its schemes. Religion to them was as life, and the Biblical week was fundamental to their religion. How much more so ought it to be to the Christians! This financial pressure seems to have decided the matter. The League is in debt. The League Council accordingly decided that “the present time was inopportune for adopting this proposal owing to financial and economic stress.” The League Council, be it observed, expressed no regard for Scripture authority, or Heaven’s legislation, or for Christian sentiment—only financial and economic stress has made the time inopportune. The proposal, backed as it is by powerful interests, is apparently abandoned only temporarily.
As defenders of the Lord’s Day we take nothing to do with the reform of the Calendar. Men are at liberty to reform it as they might see fit, so long as they give the Lord’s Day its true place, coming round one day in seven and that the first day of the week. Our Lord, as Law-giver, has legislated for the week. Incidentally the subtle thrust at the Sabbath contained in the new Calendar, indicating the hand of the Arch Enemy of the Divine glory, may be pointed out. The Calendar makes the “floating Sunday” the first day of each month (1, 8, 15, 22)—fixed in the month but a wanderer in the week. The Lord did not so. He fixed His day forever as the seventh day. But we are not concerned with the Calendar as such. What we desire and demand is a Biblical seven-day week, in perpetuity, with the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath, now and to the end of time, “the first day of the week,” expecting, according to Scripture requirement, that it be sanctified. The “floating Sunday” proposal overthrows the Sabbath in its entirety, doctrinally and practically, puts the Christian religion on a level with false religions, for no Sabbath, then no Christian religion, no godliness—and would land us in a state of things resembling that which obtained under the Pagan Roman Empire; its cry is, “Raze it, raze it, to the foundation thereof.” Here we get a glimpse of the formidable enemies with which the Sabbath has to contend, and the subtle, powerful and persistent efforts by which they seek to compass its overthrow.
But what a commentary this is upon the wisdom—or lack of it—of the Representatives of the nations, assembled, professedly, to bring peace to a world distracted by man’s folly, man’s sin. “They have rejected the word of the Lord; and what wisdom is in them?” Denying His rightful place to Him who is Governor among the nations, the Prince of Peace, yea, ignoring His very existence, they would with His day, bury His Cross, by the blood of which He has made peace, and banish hope from the earth. “But the Lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever.” “All His works are truth, and His ways judgment; and those that walk in pride He is able to abase.”—F. Beaton.