The Typology of Scripture

The Typology of Scripture

By Patrick Fairbairn
Published by Smith & English, 1854

VOLUME II.

p. 265-271

CHAPTER FIFTH.

THE SABBATICAL INSTITUTION.

The only remaining fact belonging to primeval history, which might present materials for the construction of a symbolical religion, is that of the day of sacred rest held by God at the close of creation: "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 act of God was done in such immediate connection with the work of creation, that the bearing it was intended to have on man must primarily have had respect to his original condition; and if designed to lay the foundation of a stated ordinance, the ordinance must have been one perfectly suited to the region of paradise itself. Yet, a slight reflection could scarcely fail to satisfy a reflective mind, that whatever significance the divine act might possess, and whatever obligation it might carry for man in his primeval state, he should still have found in it, and found increased rather than impaired, when he became involved in the troubles and calamities resulting from the fall.

Now, in the procedure of God, as recorded in the passage cited above, there may be noted a threefold stage, each carrying a separate and important meaning. First, the rest itself; "he rested on the seventh day from all his work;" and in Ex. xxxi. 17, the yet stronger expression is used of God refreshing himself on that day. Such expressions do not necessarily imply weariness or fatigue on account of the previous exertion, which, as regards God, is excluded by the infinitude of his perfections. "The Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary" (Isa. xl. 28). They rather imply, that God's working in creation is of a reasonable kind; not an aimless activity, beginning and terminating in itself, but is acting toward a specific end, which on seeing accomplished, he withholds the outgoings of his creative energy, that he may rest in what he has done, and rejoice over the work of his hands. The end in this case was more particularly the creation of man with a living soul, bearing the rational and holy image of his Maker, and settled in a condition every way suited to his physical and moral nature. Throughout the whole of its stages the work was perceived to be good; but it was only when it reached this consummation---when the Creator saw his own image reflected in an intelligent and happy offspring, that he could regard the work as finished and could rest in his love. With the introduction of man into the world creation received its proper crown; arid the Creator at length found among the works of his hands a spirit capable of discerning the manifestations of his glory, and returning love for love. It might be to give some intimation of this, of God's having found it then, and desiring to find it always, that the original seventh day is distinguished from the rest, not merely by the cessation of creative work, but also by the absence of any mention of a morning and an evening, at the beginning and the close; for the divine Sabbath, as has been remarked by Delitzsch, "has no close; it stretches over the entire future history of the world; and is ever seeking to raise this into a participation of the same character with itself." God's rest, no more than his work, is of an exclusive character. It looks benignly and graciously on the creatures, especially on man, who alone of earthly creatures can rise into the conscious apprehension of his Maker. And as God in him, so he again, in God, must find his satisfying and refreshing rest. Thus, even the first stage of this divine act has respect to man, and still more the second, which points directly and exclusively to him; "And God blessed the seventh day." This blessing of the day is not to be confounded with the sanctifying of it, which immediately follows, as if the meaning were, God blessed it by sanctifying it. The blessing is distinct from the sanctification, and is, so to speak, the settling of a special dowry on it for every one, who should give due heed to its proper end and object. Let man--the divine act of blessing virtually said--only enter into God's mind, and tread in his footsteps, by resting every seventh day from his works, and he shall undoubtedly find it to his profit; the blessing, which is life for evermore, shall descend on him. What he may lose for the moment in productive employment, shall be amply compensated by the refreshment it will bring to his frame--by the enlargement and elevation of his soul--above all, by the spiritual fellowship and interest in God, which becomes the abiding portion of those who follow Him in their ways, and perpetually return to Him as the supreme rest of their souls.

Then, the last stage in the procedure of God on this occasion, indicates how the two earlier ones were to be secured: "He sanctified it," made it a day of sacredness. Having appointed it to a distinctive end, he conferred on it a distinctive character, that his creature, man, might from time to time be doing in his line of things what the Creator had already done in his own--might, after six successive days of work, take one to re-invigorate his frame, to reflect calmly on the past, and view the part he has taken and the relations he occupies on the outward and visible theatre of the world, in the light of the spiritual and the eternal. It was to be his calling and his destiny on earth, not simply to work, but to work as a reasonable and moral being, after the example of his Maker, for specific ends. And for this he needed seasons of quiet repose and thoughtful consideration, not less than time and opportunity for active labour; as, otherwise, he could neither properly enjoy the work of his hands, nor obtain for the higher part of his nature that nobler good which is required to satisfy it. God, therefore, when he had finished the work of creation by making man, sanctified the seventh day--his own seventh, but man's first; for man had not first to work and then to reap, but as God's vicegerent, nature's king and high-priest, could at once enter into his Maker's heritage of blessing. And henceforth, in the career that lay before him, ever and anon returning from the field of active labour assigned him in cultivating and subduing the earth, he must on the hallowed day of rest gather in his thoughts and desires from the world, and, retiring into God as his sanctuary, hold with him a sabbatism of peaceful and blessed rest.

The divine procedure, then, in every one of its stages, plainly points to man, and aims at his participation in the likeness and enjoyment of God. "With the Sabbath," says Sartorius happily, and we rejoice and hail it as a token for good, that such thoughts on the Sabbath are finding utterance in the high places of Germany--"with the Sabbath begins the sacred history of man--the day on which he stood forth to bless God, and, in company with Eve, entered on his divine calling upon earth. The creation without the creation-festival, the world's unrest without rest in God, is altogether vain and transitory. The sacred day appointed, blessed, consecrated by God, is that from which the blessing and sanctification of the world and time, of human life and human society, proceed. Nor is anything more needed than the recognition of its original appointment and sacred destination, for our receiving the full impression of its sanctity. How was it possible for the first man ever to forget it? From the very beginning was it written upon his heart, Remember the Sabbath-day to sanctify it." [1] There is nothing new in such views. Substantially the same interpretation, that we have given, is put on the original notice in Genesis, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (ch. iv.), where the record of God's rest at the close of creation is referred to as the first form of the promise made to man of entering into God's rest. The record, then, of what God in that respect did, was a revelation. It embodied a promise to man of high fellowship with the Creator in his peculiar felicity, and, consequently, inferred an obligation on man's part both to seek the end proposed, and to seek it in the method of God's appointment. But did the obligation cease when man fell? or was the promise cancelled? Assuredly not--not, at least, after the time that the introduction of an economy of grace laid open for the fallen the prospect of a new inheritance in God. So far from having lost its significance or its value, the Creator's Sabbatism then acquired fresh meaning and importance, and became so peculiarly adapted to the altered condition of the world, that we cannot but regard it as having from the first contemplated the physical and moral evils that were to issue from the fall. In the language of Hengstenberg, with whom we gladly concur on this branch of the subject, though on too many others we shall be constrained to differ from him,--"It pre-supposes work, and such work as has a tendency to draw us away from God. It is the remedy for the injuries we are apt to incur through this work. If any thing is clear, it is the connection between the Sabbath and the fall. The work which needs intermission, lest the divine life should be imperilled by it, is not--[we would rather say, is not so much]--the cheerful and pleasant employment of which we read in Gen. ii. 15; it is [rather] the oppressive and degrading toil spoken of in Gen. iii. 19, work done in the sweat of the brow, upon a soil that brings forth thorns and thistles." [2] We would put the statement comparatively, rather than absolutely; for the rest of God being held on the first seventh day of the world's existence, and the day being immediately consecrated and blessed, it must have had respect to the place and occupation of man even in paradise. Why should work there be supposed to have differed in kind from work elsewhere and since? There could be room only for a difference in degree; and being work from its very nature that led the soul to aim at specific objects, and put forth continuous efforts ad extra, it required to be met by a stated periodical institution, that would recall the thoughts and feelings of the soul ad intra, Man's perfection in that original state was only a relative one. It needed certain correctives and stimulants to secure the continued enjoyment of the good belonging to it It needed, in particular, perpetual access to the tree of life for the preservation of the bodily, and an ever-returning Sabbatism for that of the spiritual life. But if such a Sabbatism was required even for man's wellbeing in paradise, where the work was so light, and the order so beautiful, how could it be imagined that the Sabbatical institution might be either safely or lawfully disregarded in a world of sorrow, temptation, and hardship?

Was there really, however, any Sabbatical institution? There is no command respecting it in this portion of the inspired record. And may not the mention there made of God's keeping the Sabbath, and blessing and sanctifying the day, have been made simply with a prospective reference to the precept that was ultimately to be imposed on the Israelites? So it has been alleged with endless frequency by those who can find no revelation of the divine will, and no obligation of moral duty excepting what comes in the authoritative form of a command, and it is still substantially reiterated by Hengstenberg, who certainly cannot be charged with such a bluntness of spiritual discernment, We meet the allegation with the statement that has already been repeatedly urged--that it was not yet the time for the formal enactments of law, and that it was by other means man was to learn God's mind and his own duty. The ground of obligation lay in the divine act; the rule of duty was exhibited in the divine example; and these were disclosed to men from the first, not to gratify an idle curiosity, but for the express purpose of leading them to know and clo what is agreeable to the will of God. If such means were not sufficient to speak with clearness and authority to men's consciences, then it may be affirmed that the first race of mankind were free from all authoritative direction and control whatever. They were not imperatively bound either to fear God, or to regard man; for excepting in the manner now stated, no general obligations of service were laid on them. But to suppose this; to suppose even in regard to what is written of the original Sabbatism of God, that it did not bear directly upon the privileges and duties of the very first members of the human family, is in truth to make void that portion of revelation--to treat it, where it stands, as a superfluity or a blemish. We cannot so regard it. We hold by the truthfulness and natural import of the divine record. And doing this, we are shut up to the conclusion, that it was at first designed and appointed by God, that mankind should sanctify every returning seventh day, as a season of comparative rest from worldly labour, of spiritual contemplation and religious employment, that so they might cease from their own works and enter into the rest of God.

But we shall not pursue the subject farther at present. We even leave unnoticed some of the objections that have been raised against the existence of a primeval Sabbath, as the subject must again return, and in a more controversial aspect, when we come to consider the place assigned to the law of the Sabbath in the revelation from Sinai. It is enough, at this stage of our inquiry, to have exhibited the foundation laid for the perpetual celebration of a seventh-day Sabbath, in the original act of God at the close of his creation-work. In that we have a foundation broad and large as the theatre of creation itself and the general interests of humanity, free from all local restrictions and national peculiarities. That in the infancy of the world, and during the ages of a remote antiquity, there would be much simplicity in the mode of its observance, may readily be supposed. Indeed, where all was so simple, both in the state of society and the institutions of worship, the symbolical act itself of resting from ordinary work, and in connection with that, the habit of recognising the authority of God, and realising the divine call to a participation in the blessed rest of the Creator, must have constituted no inconsiderable part of the practical observance of the day. And that this also in process of time should have fallen into general desuetude, is only what might have been expected from the fearful depravity and lawlessness which overspread the earth as a desolation. When men daringly cast off the fear of God himself, they would naturally make light of the privilege and duty set before them of entering into his rest. And considering the disadvantages, both personal and social, which were necessarily connected with a primeval Sabbath, it is not to be wondered at that, besides the original record of its divine origin and authoritative obligation, traces of its early existence should be found only in some occasional notices of history, and in the wide-spread sacredness of the number seven, which has left its impress on the religion and literature of nearly every nation of antiquity. But however neglected or despised, the original fact remains for the light and instruction of the world in all ages; and there perpetually comes forth from it a call to every one who has ears to hear, to sanctify a weekly rest unto the Lord, and rise to the enjoyment of his blessing.

Notes

1. Sartorius liber den alt imcl Neu Test, cultus, p. 17.

2. Ueber den Tag cles Herrn, p. 12.