law. Christ, who proclaimed himself as "Lord of the Sabbath," kept the Jewish Sabbath until he had instituted the Sabbath of grace. This he did during the close of his earthly ministry. With the ushering in of the Christian dispensation, the commandments contained in ordinances were taken out of the way-removed with the Levitical priesthood.

But it must be distinctly understood that the moral law was not thereby abrogated. The moral law is not a thing to be affected by changing dispensations. Itself a transcript of the Divine Mind, it is written upon the consciences of all men, whether revealed religion has appeared to them or not. (Rom. ii, 15.) Our Lord says he did not come to destroy the law. (Matt. v, 17.) Paul says he does not make void the law through faith, but that he establishes the law. (Rom. iii, 31.) John says that he that sins transgresseth also the law, for sin is the transgression of the law. (1 John iii, 4.) James warns Christians to live so as to be judged by the gospel, and not by the law (James ii, 8-13), but he does not intimate that the law is void. Paul says: "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." (Rom. x, 4.) Therefore he says to Christians: "Ye are not under the law, but under grace." (Rom. vi, 14.)

Q. Is there any difference between the moral law as existing under the Mosaic dispensation, and under the Christian?

A. Yes, and no. The law under the Mosaic dispensation was formulated into nine moral precepts, with a Sabbath commandment added, making ten in all. This same law under the Christian dispensation is summarized under two grand heads-love to God, and love to man. Yet not one jot or one tittle of the essence of the moral law is abated. When Paul, referring to the abolishment of the law dispensation, said, "For if that which was done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious," he indicated the correct status of the law. The essence of the moral law "remaineth." It was ratified by our Lord in his reply to the young man who questioned him as to the condition of his soul's salvation: "Thou knowest the commandments, Do not kill," etc. Though he did not here quote the Sabbath commandment, he quoted enough to show that he sanctioned the substance of that immortal code. And when, as we believe, he afterwards designated a different day for Sabbath observance, he placed the seal of confirmation upon that commandment also.

Q. Do Christians respect the Sabbath commandment when they observe their Sabbath on the first day of the week instead of the seventh?

A. They do. The whole Christian world maintains the use and obligation of Sunday on the ground of the law in the Decalogue, and the satisfactory evidence in the New Testament that the day was changed to the first day of the week. Throughout Christendom the weekly day of rest and worship as a matter of divine and perpetual obligation is solemnly recognized. We emphasize this point because Sabbatarians sometimes insinuate that Christians allow the Sabbath commandment to sit lightly upon them. Nothing could be farther from the truth. And it is mere delusion to suppose that by going back to the Jewish seventh day a better Sabbath observance would be secured. In no way could the obligation be made more sacred than it is.

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Christians keep the commandments of God without exception. They keep the Sabbath commandment with especially conscientious Nowhere in the Bible are we required to observe the seventh day of the week, as the week is now reckoned. The words, "seventh day," are every time directly connected with six work days. So the Sabbath law is, Work six days, and rest the seventh. One seventh of our time is to be sacred unto God. This is all the commandment requires.

Q. How came the Jews to fix upon Saturday as their Sabbathday?

A. We have already shown that upon that day the Lord brought them out of Egypt, and it was to be to them a memorial of their deliverance. It was also intended to be a sign to the Israelites "throughout their generations" that God had separated them from the idolatrous nations by which they were surrounded. (See Ex. xxxi, 13, 14; Ezek. xx, 12.)

It is probable that great confusion existed immediately prior to the giving of the law as to the day on which the Sabbath should be observed. The idolatry and general wickedness which characterized the centuries from Adam to Moses had involved mankind in a condition of religious apathy and ignorance.

For a period of two thousand years preceding the giving of the law on Sinai there is no evidence of regular Sabbath keeping, though the race was under Divine obligation to keep holy one-seventh of the time. The people forgot God, neglected duty, and lost sight and thought of spiritual worship, and served other gods.

Moses sought to restore the worship of the true God, and to restore it in such a way as would be most impressive and helpful to God's chosen people. That in selecting the Jewish Sabbath-day he

selected the regular successive seventh day of human time from Adam down can not be proved by any authority, human or divine.

Q. But is it not evident that in designating the seventh day of the week as the Jewish Sabbath, Moses had in mind the example of God's rest in the creation?

A. It is. We read: "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day, and hallowed it." (Ex. xx, 11.)

It must not be assumed that these words are exactly parallel to those in Genesis ii, 2, 3, which read: "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." The best scholars generally hold that this particular seventh day which God sanctified is a vast period of time, reaching from the close of creation down to our own day, and on into the future. It is God's Sabbath, not man's, though no doubt. the former is the good reason for the latter. The idea is, that as God rested on the seventh day of the creative week, so he blessed the seventh day of the human week as the particular Sabbath of the Jews.

Q. But suppose the "days" of the creative week to have been literal solar days, as many simple folk believe, what then becomes of the notion that the Sabbath may be rightfully observed on the first day of the week?

A. The "notion" is still well founded. If we allow that the days of creation were literal solar days, it would still follow that God's seventh day would not be man's seventh day. "The seventh day which God blessed in Eden was the first day of human life, and not the seventh day; and it is certain that God did not rest from his labors on man's seventh day, but on man's first. We feel inclined, then, to hold with Luther that in Genesis ii, 2, 3, Moses says nothing about man's day, and that the seventh day, which received the Divine benediction, was God's own great æonian period of sabbatic rest.” (Whitelaw.)

Q. Did mankind observe a Sabbath prior to the giving of the law on Sinai?

A. We think so, though not, perhaps, with perfect regularity. There are indications of a Sabbath among the patriarchs (Gen. xxix, 27, 28), among the antediluvians (Gen. viii, 6-12), and back even to Cain and Abel (Gen. iv, 3). Profane history shows that among the

ancient Persians, Indians, and Germans the number seven was esteemed as sacred. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, and other nations of antiquity were acquainted with the hebdomadal division of time. The true genesis of this, we think, is to be found in the primitive observance of a day of rest in accordance with Divine appointment.

Q. Allowing, then, that Adam rested with his Maker in paradise, and adopted that rest as his own on each succeeding seventh day of human time, on what day of the human week would that rest fall?

A. Geology agrees with Genesis that on the sixth day occurred the creation of beast, cattle, and creeping things, ending in the formation of man in the image of God. Man is the last of the geological series, such as fish, reptiles, and mammalia, and is the crown and consummation of God's creative work. His existence, then, began at or near the close of the sixth creative day, so that God's Sabbath rest was man's first full day. If he began the calculation of the week from that time, then the first day of the week, and not the seventh, was the primitive and patriarchal Sabbath. "The holy rest day was the seventh from the first, in the count of God's works for man; but it was the first day in his created history. He appeared before his Maker on that day, in possession of all good, and in the probationary prospect of a confirmation of it forever. The day was therefore blessed and sanctified to man, as containing in its present and promised good his everlasting inheritance. No bloody rites and typical shadows had conducted him to the enjoyment of that glorious day; it arose to him as the rest of God. All was very good, and all was very satisfactory, both to God and man. But from this lofty probation he fell by transgression under the curse of the whole law. All good was lost, and all threatened evil was incurred, and we must now keep our eye fixed upon this day of the Lord, till its lost blessing shall be recovered through his mediation." (Biblical Chronology: President Akers, p. iii.)

Q. Is there any indication in the Scriptures that a change of the Sabbath day occurred with the Jews?

A. There is, and the record is worth reading in this connection. "See," said Moses, "for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day." (Ex. xvi, 29, 30.) Now, what was this particular "seventh day?" In the opening verse of the chapter we are told that the children of Israel

came unto the wilderness of Sin "on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure out of the land of Egypt." The people were hungry, and murmured against God. Manna was immediately sent to them. It fell on the morning of the 16th, and continued to fall regularly for six consecutive nights, but on the morning of the 22d there was none. This was the Jewish Sabbath. Yet the 15th day (just one week previous) was not a Sabbath, but a secular day, for the people had traveled on that day, which they would not have done had the day been sacred. It is evident, therefore, that here we find a change of the patriarchal Sabbath. But it was not designed to be a permanent change. It was for the Jews, "throughout their generations.

Referring to this historical record in Exodus, Dr. H. C. Benson says: "It is so explicit that we are not left in doubt as to the fact that the Sabbath, as observed in the wilderness of Sin, had not been a day hallowed by the Lord previous to that time. There had been, we doubt not, a patriarchal Sabbath, but on another day of the week."

Q. Can you quote any other authorities in support of this view? A. Plenty of them. Joseph Sutcliffe, the English commentator, says that the Sabbath was changed on leaving Egypt in accordance with the declaration of Deut. v, 3: "The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day." Commenting on Ezek. xx, 12-20, he says: "That holy day, though sanctified from the creation, had been almost lost in Egypt. It was restored by Moses as a sign of the covenant, in the increase of corn on the year preceding the Sabbatic year, and the year preceding the jubilee. And it is thought, from Deut. v, that the Sabbath was anticipated one day on leaving Egypt, the Egyptians having been drowned in the morning watch of the fifteenth day. If otherwise, they must have marched on the Sabbath day. In that view our Savior has restored the Sabbath by his resurrection to the very day of rest after the creation."

Rev. W. H. Rogers says that "the only change of the Sabbath by God's authority is for the Jews between the giving of manna and the resurrection of Christ. The first day of the week, but always the seventh day after the six working days, was the day of the holy rest from Adam to Moses. Then Sabbatism was separated from idolatry by changing it from Sunday to Saturday among the chosen people 'throughout their generations,' fifteen hundred years. At Christ's resurrection expired by statute limitation this Jewish peculiarity or exceptional change, leaving the Divine rule for all mankind, requiring first