Part VI.

WHAT TO BELIEVE WITH REFERENCE TO THE SABBATH.

FOR

OR the sake of greater variety in the contents of this book, we present our thoughts upon the Sabbath in the form of questions

and answers.

Question. What is the meaning of the word "Sabbath?"

Answer. A season or day of rest. The Sabbath as an institution signifies rest or repose, not simply a space of time. We do well to bear this fact in mind. The Sabbath is not a day; it is not Sunday, or Saturday, or any other day; it is holy rest unto the Lord. The day is simply a space of time set apart for observing the thing itself, viz. holy rest. To a man who disregards the commandment to keep God's Sabbath, there is no such thing as a Sabbath. The day called Sunday is no Sabbath to the Sabbath-violator; it is simply a day like all other days. Nature brings the day, but grace furnishes the "rest." To only a comparative few in this so-called Christian land is there any real Sabbath on the legal Sabbath-day. The law can make a Sabbathday, but it is difficult for the law to make a Sabbath. The Sabbath is a rest which remains for the people of God. Thus we are told that, "He rested on the seventh day from all his work. . And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work." (Gen. ii.) "Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thine handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed." (Ex. xxiii, 12.)

Q. Does man need this period of rest and repose?

A. He certainly does. After six days of labor he requires a seventh for rest. The creational idea of working six days and resting the seventh is grounded in true reason. The Christian idea of making their rest-day fall on the first day of the week is grounded in

patriarchal customs as well as New Testament teachings. As Abel brought the firstlings of his flock to God, so Christians bring the first of their time. "He that remembers not to keep the Christian Sabbath at the beginning of the week," said Sir E. Turner, speaker in the House of Commons in 1663, "will be in danger of forgetting before the end of the week that he is a Christian at all." By rest we do not mean inactivity, but a cessation from all labor put forth to secure our own gratification or reward. The farmer should cease to plow and sow. The merchant should close his store and sell no goods. The student should cease his investigations. All men should stop their regular week-day toil, and devote the day to spiritual culture. This is the primary object of the Sabbath. It has been so employed from time immemorial. It is the day of "holy convocation," when devout hearts should be "with one accord in one place," and that place a place of worship. "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.” (Isa. lviii, 13.) “If a spiritual rest, a holy rest, one day in seven, is to the Christian a weariness; if he must go to the world for rest on that day, how can he endure an endless Sabbath, of which the earthly is the type? If the shadow is a burden, how can he sustain the substance?" (Passaic.)

Q. Have any great statesmen and scholars ever commended the Sabbath rest?

A. They have. Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield, once said: "Of all. Divine institutions, the most divine is that which secures a day of rest for man. I hold it to be the most valuable blessing ever conceded to man. It is the corner-stone of civilization, and its removal might even affect the health of the people." Lord Shaftesbury also declared: "Sunday is a day so sacred, so important, so indispensable to man, that it ought to be hedged round by every form of reverence." Hon. Wm. E. Gladstone testifies: "Sunday is a necessity for the retention of man's mind and of a man's frame in a condition to discharge his duties; and it is desirable, as much as possible, to restrain the exercise of labor upon Sunday, and to secure to the people the enjoyment of the day of rest." Louis Blanc, Paris, France, utters the following: "The weekly rest has been consecrated by all religions, and nowhere is it more strictly observed than among Protestant people, who are pre-eminently laboring peopie.

Diminution of the hours of labor does not involve any diminution of production. In England a workingman produces as much in fifty-six hours as a French workman in seventy-two hours, because his forces are better husbanded." The testimony is almost universal, that one begins the week with better spirits, with more elasticity, clearness of brain, and vitality of body, if he makes Sunday a day apart, than if he keeps in the ordinary ruts of thought and reading and action.

Q. Must Sabbath rest be absolute?

A. So far as servile toil is concerned it should. But religious worship is appropriate to the day, and in the intervals of worship, works of mercy are allowable. To feed the hungry, comfort the sick, console the dying, and relieve the suffering, are deeds becoming this holy day. Property, also, may rightfully be saved from destruction by fire or other disaster. (Matt. xii, 10-12; Luke xiii, 14, 15.) Man may eat his food, and engage in healthful bodily exercise. Jesus walked with his disciples through the corn-field, and plucked and ate. The eating was, of course, incidental. He did not go to the corn-field to eat, but was walking through the corn-fields. Christ sanctioned walking abroad on the Christian Sabbath. "And, behold, two of them went that same day [the first Christian Sabbath] to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And Jesus himself drew near and went with them." But the Sabbath should be a day of gladness, of religious delight. "I have no sympathy," says Thomas Guthrie, "with those who would make the Sabbath a day of gloom. I would have the sun to shine brighter, and the flowers to smell sweeter, and nature to look fairer on that day than on any other. I would have the very earth to put on her holiday attire on the blest morning on which our Savior rose from the dead." But joyousness and revelry are very different things. There are those who would make of the Sabbath a day of general lawlessness and carousal. For these, Sabbath laws are in order. They are worse than those who continue in regular work-day life. Let the law be enforced against both.

Q. Did not the Jewish Sabbath law enjoin absolute rest?

A. It did. And the Jewish regulation was peculiar in several respects. The Jews observed their Sabbath on Saturday. They allowed no works of mercy or even deeds of necessity on that day. Our Lord himself rebuked such inconsistency, and the Jews called him a Sabbath-breaker, and sought how they might destroy him. (Matt. xii. 1-21.) But Jesus was greater than the Sabbath, and fixed it so as to be a blessing instead of a burden to the race. It is not designed

to deprive man of any real good, but to favor him with rest and the privileges of religious worship.

Q. What other peculiarities attached to Jewish Sabbath-keeping? A. 1. The Jews enforced the observance of absolute Sabbath rest by national authority, defining specifically the time of it-from sunset to sunset-and making the slightest violation, even incidentally, punishable with death. The people were not even allowed to kindle a fire on the Sabbath day. (See Ex. xxxv, 2, 3.)

erance.

2. The Sabbath was to the Jews commemorative of national delivThe Jew was to remember his deliverance from Egyptian bondage as often as his Sabbath day returned. "Wherefore remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence, through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day." (Deut. v, 15.) "Very probably," says Canon Cooke," the special day of the seven, which became the Jewish Sabbath, was the very day on which the Lord brought them from the land of bondage, and gave them rest from the slavery of Egypt. If this reasoning be true, all mankind are interested in the sanctification of the Sabbath, though Jews only are required to keep that Sabbath on Saturday." (Read Ex. xii, 14-18; xiii, 3, 4; Num. xxviii, 17.)

3. The Jews instituted several sabbaths, such as the Sabbath of weeks, the Sabbath of months, the Sabbath of years, the Sabbath of Sabbatic years, etc., a system which, if perpetuated in Christianity, would have proved an intolerable burden. And yet, to be consistent, the keeper of the Jewish Sabbath of days should keep the entire round of Jewish sabbaths. Some of the early converts to Christianity attempted this, and Paul rebuked them, saying: "But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain." (Gal. iv, 9-11.) The Christian who turns back to the Jewish Sabbath-day turns to "a weak and beggarly element," and it is to be feared that New Testament instruction has been bestowed on him in vain.

4. With the Jews the day itself, rather than the Sabbath rest, became the important thing. The civil and ceremonial observances were more than the spiritual rest or worship. This was the trouble with the Jews. They rested every thing upon the outward observance, and when our Lord came he had to cut right through many of their tra

In no

ditions and customs, and revolutionize the whole inner life. particular did he do this more thoroughly and strikingly than in respect to the Jewish Sabbath. Many Jewish peculiarities, like the passover, the feast of the weeks, the feast of the tabernacles, the Aaronic high priesthood, the annual atonement, the various offerings and oblations, the shew-bread, the ceremonial purifications, the special penalties by which certain laws were enforced, were all utterly abolished by Christianity; they were mere shadows of good things to come; but the Sabbath, like marriage and the principle of the ministry, was not abolished, though it was changed to suit the Christian system. The corrupt glosses of Jewish tradition were stripped off from it, and only the holy principle remained.

Says the apostle Paul: "For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people." (Heb. viii, 7-10.) The first covenant, then, was that made to Moses on Sinai, consisting of circumcision, Sabbath days (not. the Sabbath rest itself, for that was a permanency in religion before Moses was born), priesthood, sacrifices, and offerings for sin. The second covenant was a spiritual covenant, which had its fulfillment, or the beginning of its fulfillment, in the advent and ministry of Christ.

Q. Are we to understand, then, that the Sabbath law is still in force?

A. Most certainly. A Sabbath rest is of universal obligation. It is as binding as the moral law. The fourth commandment reads: "Keep the Sabbath-day to sanctify it." The "day" may be different under different dispensations, as we shall show, but that does not alter the Sabbath itself. Whether the Sabbath occur on the first day or seventh day, the law of God requires its observance.

St. Paul says: "The law was our school-master to bring us to Christ." This is especially true of the Sabbath law. The Jewish Sabbath law was designed to lead directly to the better Christian Sabbath