THE SABBATH VINDICATED.

CHAPTER I.

THEORIES TRIED BY THE PRINCIPLES OF THE DIVINE

GOVERNMENT.

It is intended to apply in some following chapters certain tests derived from both Reason and Revelation, to the leading opinions that have been entertained on the subject of the Sabbath, with the view, if possible, of adjudicating on their conflicting claims. Most of the opinions in question have been occasionally noticed already in this volume. But it may not be unnecessary to present them here in a compendious form, so far as this can be done in a case in which so many writers, more or less agreed in sentiment, have each some notion of his own. The general points in dispute relative to the institution have been its necessity and importance, its authority, its date and duration, the proportion and distribution of its time, with the manner and rule of its observance. A weekly holy day is repudiated by some, because they hold all days to be alike common; by others, because they regard all days as alike sacred. The Sabbatarian affirms that the seventh day of the week is the divinely-authorized, immutable Sabbath of all time, while the great majority of Christians maintain that "the obligation of that day ceased, together with the abrogation of the other Jewish rites and ceremonies, at the death of Christ.' The Lord's day is approved by various classes on different grounds: as a merely salutary and necessary arrangement, or as a state enactment, or as an

"1

1 Tridentine Catechism on the Third (Fourth) Commandment.

ecclesiastical ordinance, or as recommended by the examples of a Mosaic institution and of Apostolic practice, or as the appointment of Christ. Of those who believe in the Divine authority of the Lord's day there are several classes. One class consider it as having no connexion with a Sabbath in Eden, the existence of which they deny, or with the Sabbath of Sinai, which, they assert, has been abrogated; but while they agree in these points, they differ widely as to the duties of the day, some conceiving that it ought to be sacredly observed throughout, others that its demands of service are satisfied by two or three hours spent in public worship. A second class admit the primitive institution of a Sabbath, but view neither that nor the Sinaitic Sabbath, both, they say, having passed away with their respective economies, as constituting any formal reason for hallowing the Christian Sabbath, the authority and sanctity of which, however, they strenuously maintain. And a third class contend that the Lord's day has, by authority of Christ, succeeded to the seventh-day Sabbath, not as this was a part of the judicial and ceremonial law of the Jews, but as it was appointed for mankind in Paradise, embodied in the Decalogue, and regulated by the fourth of its precepts. Christians, too, have held different opinions respecting the nature and proper observance of the Sabbath-law, some viewing it as natural and moral even as respects its particular day of the week; others, as positive; a third class, as natural, moral and positive or moral-positive; while some have pleaded for strictness, others for a latitude of observance. To this enumeration of theories may be added that which interprets the days of God's working and rest at the creation as denoting, 'not common days, but periods of long duration, the dogma being by some employed to annihilate, by others explained to favour, a primal day of rest. We must add also the views of those who plead for a distribution of the weekly day of rest amongst the duties of religion, secular studies, and amusement. By bringing the various doctrines that have been recounted to the tests of reason and experience, and of Scripture, in its discovery of the principles of the Divine government, in its predictions and promises, as well as in its plain statements and general scope, it may not be difficult to determine where, amidst so many contending creeds, the truth lies.

FIRST TEST OF OPINIONS.

This is supplied in certain principles of the Divine government, which are discovered in its history, and more plainly in the inspired volume.

1. One of such principles is unity of plan. In proving "the unity" of God from "the uniformity " observable in the physical universe, Dr. Paley has truly and beautifully said, “We never get amongst such original or totally different modes of existence as to indicate that we are come into the province of a different Creator, or under the direction of a different will."1 In confirmation of this statement, he refers, among various facts, to the one law of attraction carrying all the planets about the sun, one atmosphere investing and connecting all parts of the globe, one moon influencing all tides, and one kind of blood circulating in all animals. What is true of the material is no less true of the moral world in all its known provinces and eras. In physical nature we observe an endless variety of bodies and phenomena under the uniform regulation of great common principles, and in like manner, amidst a diversity of circumstances and forms, we discover a pervading unity in the laws of the moral government of God. We find the same benevolence, sovereignty, and love of righteousness reigning in the Divine procedure; one Saviour for Jew and Gentile, one method of justification, and one indispensable requisite of regeneration, in all ages; one kind of worship substantially offered, and one moral code obeyed, by Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and Paul; and one Church, which, in obedience to the Divine call—" Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations" (Isa. liv. 2)—has passed from a circumscribed into an extended economy. In holding that the great Master has ever regulated the time of his servants— that the King of kings has never been without his appointed seasons for receiving the petitions and homage of his subjects, the theories that maintain a permanent and universal Sabbath preserve the consistency of the Divine administration. But the other

theories violate this harmony when they suppose that for many centuries there was no Sabbath at all, and then, for many more, a

1 Works, Nat. Theol. ch. XXV.

We may

Sabbath rigidly ruled, and when they countenance either the entire abolition of the sacred day, or the new appointment of a partial one, a dies intercisus, or the opinion that the arrangement of resting and holy time has been left entirely to human discretion. We confidently ask whether, in passing from the Patriarchal to the Jewish, and then to the Christian manner of religion and life as represented by these theories, we do not find ourselves amongst so original and totally different modes of existence as to indicate that we are come under the direction of a different will? 2. It is at the same time a character of the Divine government that its plans are progressive in their development; that, while the great outlines are in all ages the same, there is a gradual filling up of the scheme. Paley and others imagine a transition from no Sabbath to one whose rules were of the most stringent description, a view implying not only a violent change utterly unlike the usual method of the Divine procedure, but the introduction of an entirely new principle, of which we have no parallel case in the history of the moral government of God. indeed be reminded of the Incarnation as an unprecedented fact, peculiar to the latest dispensation of religion, but this fact did not burst on an unprepared world; it was intimated in the first promise, it was more clearly made known in the prophecies that followed, it was shadowed by frequent appearances of the Divinity in human form, and its benefit was really enjoyed by all believers in ancient times. It is like the Atonement, which, though not actually made till thousands of years had elapsed, was from the beginning a declared principle and felt blessing of religion. The objection from the Incarnation would be in point, if the Sabbath had been anticipated and its good realized long before it came into existence. This, however, could not be. Advantage may and does spring from a future moral fact, but not from a prospective institute. Nor is the theory which restricts the Sabbath of Christianity to the old day less opposed to the principle of progress. While Paley introduces an element so new in its nature, and so abrupt in its entrance, as to disturb the orderly and equable march of the Divine government, this altogether arrests it, and stays progress and improvement. It stereotypes a moral precept on a mere accident. It is an attempt, however undesigned, to

perpetuate Judaism.

It reverses the command to forget the things which are behind, and to reach forth to those which are before. How much more consonant than any of these theories, to an identical and yet advancing scheme, is that of a Sabbath, which, as the same holy and benignant institution in all time, presents a history, not of unnatural stagnation or of violent transitions, but of harmony with the unfolding plans of its Author, subserving the piety and bliss of paradise; then sustaining the hope of a coming Saviour, as well as faith in the Creator; now commemorating, along with the ever-to-be-remembered fact of a finished creation, the more glorious fact of a perfected redemption, and offering a more immediate and satisfying foretaste of heavenly joy; and, finally, receiving its highest and most lasting honour at the consummation of all things, when, entirely transferred to the world above, it will be the sole measure of the eternal life.

3. A regard to order is a manifest feature of the Divine rule. "God is not the author of confusion." He who requires that all things should be "done decently and in order," is himself the perfection and pattern of his own law. The Great Master "gives authority to his servants, and to every man his work." In correspondence with this principle of order which pervades the Divine administration, and which prevails in every well-regulated society among men, is the theory which affirms a perpetual Sabbath ; which affirms, in other words, that the Ruler of the world has never failed to legislate on one of the most important affairs of his Court and Kingdom-the days when he will confer favours on his people, and receive their homage. But how strange and anomalous are the views supposed by other theories that, while mankind in general have had their distribution of time for secular work and sacred service, the only possessors of a true religion should for many generations have been without such arrangement; that while "gods many and lords many" "which are yet no gods,' have received the tribute of periodical holy days, the only living and true God should have been without this order and honour, and should have introduced the custom only after it had been practised by idolaters and outcasts from his favour; that He who regulates the time for all other things, for daily labour and nightly repose, for sowing and reaping, for the migrations of the swallow

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