CHAPTER VI.

THEORIES AND ARGUMENTS TRIED BY THE DOCTRINE AND LAW OF REVELATION-continued.

LET us now apply the rule which Dr. Paley has overlooked, and we shall find that there are references in various parts of Scripture to a primitive Sabbath which not only confirm the common view of the narrative in Genesis ii. 1-3, but, by the incidental way in which they are made, show how unnecessary the sacred writers deemed it to unfold and fortify the obvious meaning of the historian.

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1. One of the references is to be found in the account of the giving of the manna. The children of Israel had, in their journeying from Egypt, reached the wilderness of Sin, when they charged Moses and Aaron with bringing them into so inhospitable a region for the purpose of "killing them with hunger." informed Moses that He was to "rain bread from heaven," that the people should gather a certain rate every day, that on the sixth day they should prepare what they brought in, and that it should be twice as much as they gathered daily. The rulers having reported to Moses this double quantity as "an accomplished fact," he replied, "This is that which the Lord hath said, Tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath to the Lord." It is impossible that this last expression could have been employed if there had been no preceding institution of the Sabbath, for in this case there would have been no idea in the minds of the rulers that corresponded with the word "Sabbath," and no fact in their memories of any such observance as is intimated in the phrase, "the rest of the holy Sabbath." The rulers, however, ask no explanation, and Moses gives none either then or next day, when says, "To-day is a Sabbath unto the Lord." The ordinance,

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therefore, existed before this time, and its name must have been a household word. Let us now look at the arrangement of this and the preceding history as it appears to readers in all subsequent time. They have seen, in the beginning of the second chapter of Genesis, a notice of the seventh day as sanctified and blessed, and also the next express mention of such a day in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus. They have found the latter pointing to a pre-existent institution, and have turned to the former as the only account of such a thing in the previous history. They have identified the two. If this be a mistake, they have of necessity fallen into it, not only from the want of any words to guard them against the error, but from the manner in which the historian has arranged his materials and expressed his ideas. The mistake, accordingly, is general, only a few learned men, who had a purpose to serve, having escaped it. If we would not impute to a sacred writer literary inability or intentional deception, we have no alternative but to believe that the Sabbath was instituted at the creation.

2. Within a few weeks after the transactions in the wilderness of Sin, for the weekly reckoning of time had not been lost in Egypt, -the following words were uttered from Sinai : "Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." The language reduplicates on the earliest notice of the seventh day's rest, and in two distinct forms establishes the antiquity of the institution. It refers to a previously appointed and understood holy day, the only account of the origin and object of which is given in Genesis ii. ; and it determines the duty of observing it to have been binding from the beginning, for it is not said, as it would if the obligation had been new, "Wherefore the Lord blesseth the Sabbath-day and halloweth it," but "Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day and hallowed it." It is the Sabbath-day, therefore, not merely as observed and confirmed at the giving of the manna, and mentioned abruptly, and without explanation or reasons in Exodus xvi., but as originated at the creation and described in Genesis, that is commanded to be kept in sacred remembrance.

3. We arrive at the same conclusion respecting the original of the Sabbath by comparing the words of Genesis with a passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews. The writer of that Epistle has

been warning the Christian converts from Judaism against the unbelief which excluded their fathers from the rest in the promised land, and which would make them fall short of another rest promised to themselves. This could not be the rest of Canaan, which was now past. Nor could it, he says, be the rest of the seventh day, because this rest immediately followed the creation, and could not therefore remain to be entered into: "For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works." "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his." Without recurring to the service otherwise rendered to the cause of the Christian Sabbath by the argument and language of the apostle which has already been considered, let it suffice in this place to say, that they could have no bearing or meaning, if the rest of the seventh day had not subsisted and been enjoyed from the beginning of time.

4. The self-evident sense of the history in Gen. ii. 1-3 is confirmed by our Lord, when he says, "The Sabbath was made for man."

Let another of those expedients to which the opponents of a primæval Sabbath have been driven in support of their cause, be exhibited for a little in the concentrated light of Scripture. Some have maintained, that the appropriation by Jehovah of the seventh day to beneficent and sacred use contemplated His own good and His own observance, not a benefit to be enjoyed and a service to be performed by man. That He rested on the first seventh day, and was refreshed or satisfied with His work of creation, and that the work and the rest were designed for the ultimate and highest end of His own glory, we readily acknowledge. But the direct purpose of the whole was the good of human beings. For man was all this done, and "for our sakes, no doubt, this is written." This purpose of the Divine procedure neither excluded the benefit of other creatures as a subordinate design, nor interfered with the ultimate end of the Creator's glory, for which man himself and

all other beings were made, but was rather tributary to both. As to the Sabbath, the connexion of the words in the narrative of the creation ought to leave no one in doubt that the immediate design of its appointment was the happiness of mankind. When we consider that the work of the six days consisted in the providing of a residence for man, with everything in it to supply his wants, as well as bright luminaries hung over it to give him light, to be for signs and for seasons, for days and for years, and that to man was given dominion over every living thing that moved on the earth-a grant renewed in some respects to Noah and his sons, when, as the representatives of the race, they took possession of the renewed world-we cannot avoid the obvious conclusion, that the proceedings of the seventh day were in like manner designed for the direction and good of human beings. The sanctifying and the blessing of the day must have respected the same being, a being sentient as well as capable of having a time set apart for him; but Jehovah needed not a day for His own holy use, and could receive no blessing from such a day. And when we extend our induction beyond the words in Genesis-when we consider the great things recorded in other parts of Scripture as done by the Almighty for our race-in the donation to them of the earth-in the co-operation of all events "for good to them who love" Himin His preference before all temples, before that even of the whole material universe, of "the upright heart and pure”—in the preparation for every one who faithfully serves Him in this world, of a seat with Himself on the throne of heaven-in writing to us the great things of His law-above all, in His manifesting Himself in human nature for man's redemption,-it appears to be only like Himself, having occupied six days in a work which He could have performed in an instant of time, to rest on the seventh, as an example of order, activity, and repose to us, and to appoint a day of special blessing and sanctity for human happiness and guidance. To this meaning of the Creator's conduct, so transparent in itself, and so entirely in harmony with all His other procedure, the Redeemer has set His seal in the words of the Fourth Commandment, and in His memorable saying, "The Sabbath was made for man."

Our rule, in like manner, satisfactorily disposes of certain philo

logical objections which are advanced against the authority of the Lord's day. The friends of the seventh-day Sabbath, by dwelling so much on certain idiomatic expressions in the original text of Scripture, show how much they regard their explanations of these phrases as among the strongholds of their system. In order to get rid of the Lord's day, they endeavour to show that the expression uía σaßßárov, rendered in our Bibles "the first day of the week," cannot refer to this day, but signifies "one of the Sabbaths," or "one day of the week." But what Mark and the other evangelists call μία σαββάτων, the former designates πρώτη σaßßárov, thus determining the meaning of both expressions to be the same, the first day of the week. The females who designed to embalm the body of Jesus did not proceed to fulfil their intention till after the Sabbath, or seventh day, was over, for it is said, "They rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment,”1 and "in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came to see the sepulchre," when they found Jesus was not there. It was, therefore, on the day after the seventh day, or, in other words, on the first day of the week, that his resurrection occurred. "You say," observes the eminent mathematician, Dr. Wallis, in his controversy with Mr. Thomas Bampfield, "the Greek word uía signifies one, and eîs pa v is rendered (not the first, but) one, about an hundred times in our translation of the New Testament; and μía σaßßáτwv (which we translate the first day of the week) you render by one of the Sabbaths. Now, 'tis very true that μía in Greek doth signify one (and it may be so translated, for ought I know, as often as you say). But if you were so good a critic as to correct the translation, you might have known that pía σaßßárov cannot signify one of the Sabbaths, for then it should have been év σaßßáTov, because σaßßára is the neuter gender. Would you think una Sabbatorum to be good Latin for one of the Sabbaths? And you do not much mend it when you say, one of the week, meaning one day of the week; for if by one, you mean some one, it should then be ris nuépa, not μía μépa. And Matt. xxviii. 1, it dawned or drew near eis Tv píav to the one, not to some one day indefinitely, but to that certain day which was known by the name of

1 Luke xxiii. 56.

2 Matt. xxviii. 1.