The Typology of Scripture

By Patrick Fairbairn
Published by Smith & English, 1854

BOOK THIRD.

CHAPTER II, SECTION III.

THE LAW CONTINUED—FURTHER EXCEPTIONS—THE WEEKLY SABBATH.

Objections have been raised against the decalogue as a complete and permanent summary of duty, from the nature of its requirements, as well as from the incidental considerations by which it is enforced. It is only, however, in reference to the fourth commandment, the law of the Sabbath, that any objection in this respect is made. The character of universal and permanent obligation, it is argued, which we would ascribe to the decalogue, cannot properly belong to it, since one of its precepts enjoins the observance of a merely ceremonial institution —an institution strictly and rigorously binding on the Jews, but, like other ceremonial and shadowy institutions, done away in Christ. It would be impossible to enumerate the authors, ancient and modern, who in one form or another have adopted this view. There can be no question that they embrace a very large proportion of the more learned and eminent divines of the Christian Church, from the fathers to the present time. Much diversity of opinion, however, prevails among those who agree in the same general view, as to the extent to which the law of the Sabbath was ceremonial, and in what sense the obligation to observe it lies upon the followers of Jesus. In the judgment of some, the distinction of days is entirely abolished as a divine arrangement, and is no further obligatory upon the conscience, than as it may be sanctioned by competent ecclesiastical authority for the purposes of social order and religious improvement. By others, the obligation is held to involve the duty of setting apart an adequate portion of time for the due celebration of divine worship,—the greater part leaving that portion of time quite indefinite, while some would insist upon its being at least equal to what was appointed under the law, or possibly even more. Finally, there are still others, who consider the ceremonial and shadowy part of the institution to have more peculiarly stood in the observance of precisely the seventh day of the week as a day of sacred rest, and who conceive the obligation to be yet in force, as requiring another whole day to be consecrated to religious exercises.

It would require a separate treatise, rather than a single chapter, to take up separately such manifold subdivisions of opinion, and investigate the grounds of each. We must for the present view the subject in its general bearings, and endeavour to have some leading principles ascertained and fixed. In doing this, we might press at the outset the consideration of this law being one of those engraved upon tables of stone, as a proof that it, equally with the rest, possessed a peculiarly important and durable character. For the argument is by no means disposed of, as we formerly remarked, by the supposition of Bahr and others, that the ceremonial as well as the other precepts of the law were represented in the ten commandments; and still less by the assertion of Paley, that little regard was practically paid in the Books of Moses to the distinction between matters of a ceremonial and moral, of a temporary and perpetual kind. It is easy to multiply assertions and suppositions of such a nature; but the fact is still to be accounted for, why the law of the Sabbath should have been deemed of such paramount importance, as to have found a place among those which were 'written as with a pen in the rock for ever?' Or why, if in reality nothing more than a ceremonial and shadowy institute, this, in particular, should have been chosen to represent all of a like kind? Why not rather, as the whole genius of the economy might have led us in such a case to expect, should the precept have been one respecting the observance of the great annual feasts, or a faithful compliance with the sacrificial services? [1] It is impossible to answer these questions satisfactorily, or to show any valid reason for the introduction of the Sabbath into the law of the two tables, on the supposition of its possessing only a ceremonial character. But we shall not press this argument more fully, or endeavour to explain the futility of the reasons by which it is met, as in itself it is rather a strong presumption than a conclusive evidence of the permanent obligation of the fourth command.

It deserves more notice, however, than it usually receives in this point of view, and should alone be almost held conclusive, that the ground on which the obligation to keep the Sabbath is based in the command, is the most universal in its bearing that could possibly be conceived. 'Thou shalt remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.' There is manifestly nothing Jewish here; nothing connected with individual interests or even national history. The grand fact out of which the precept is made to grow, is of equal significance to the whole world; and why should not the precept be the same, of which it forms the basis? God's method of procedure in creating the visible heavens and earth, produced as the formal reason for instituting a distinctive, temporary Jewish ordinance! Could it be possible to conceive a more 'lame and impotent conclusion?' And this, too, in the most compact piece of legislation in existence! It seems, indeed, as if God, in the appointment of this law, had taken special precautions against the attempts which He foresaw would be made to get rid of the institution, and that on this account He laid its foundations first in the original framework and constitution of nature. The law as a whole, and certain also of its precepts, He was pleased to enforce by considerations drawn from His dealings toward Israel, and the peculiar relations which He now held to them. But when He comes to impose the obligation of the Sabbath, He rises far beyond any consideration of a special kind, or any passing event of history. He ascends to primeval time, and, standing as on the platform of the newly created world, dates from thence the commencement and the ordination of a perpetually recurring day of rest. Since the Lord has thus honoured the fourth commandment above the others, by laying for it a foundation so singularly broad and deep, is it yet to be held in its obligation and import the narrowest of them all? Shall this, strange to think, be the only one which did not utter a voice for all times and all generations? How much more reasonable is the conclusion of Calvin, who in this expressed substantially the opinion of all the more eminent reformers: 'Unquestionably God assumed to Himself the seventh day, and consecrated it when He finished the creation of the world, that He might keep His worshippers entirely free from all other cares, while they were employed in meditating on the beauty, excellence, and splendour of His works. It is not proper, indeed, to allow any period to elapse, without our attentively considering the wisdom, power, justice, and goodness of God, as displayed in the admirable workmanship and government of the world. But because our minds are unstable, and are thence liable to wander and be distracted, God in His own mercy, consulting our infirmities, sets apart one day from the rest, and commands it to be kept free from all earthly cares and employments, lest anything should interrupt that holy exercise. ... In this respect the necessity of a Sabbath is common to us with the people of old, that we may be free on one day (of the week), and so may be better prepared both for learning and for giving testimony to our faith.' [2]

But then it is argued, that whatever may have been the reason for admitting the law of the Sabbath into the ten commandments, and engraving it on the tables of stone, it still is in its own nature different from all the rest. They are moral, and because moral, of universal force and obligation; while this is ceremonial, owing its existence to positive enactment, and therefore binding only so far as the enactment itself might be extended. The duties enjoined in the former are founded in the nature of things, and the essential relations in which men stand to God or to their fellow-men : hence they do not depend on any positive enactment, but are co-extensive in their obligation with reason and conscience. But the law of the Sabbath, prescribing one day in seven to be a day of sacred rest, has its foundation simply in the authoritative appointment of God, and hence, unlike the rest, is not fixed and universal, but special and mutable.

There is unquestionably an element of truth in this, but the application made of it in the present instance is unwarranted and fallacious. It is true that the Sabbath is a positive institution, though intimately connected with God's work in creation; and apart from His high command, it could not have been ascertained by the light of reason, that one entire day should at regular intervals be consecrated for bodily and spiritual rest, and especially that one in seven was the proper period to be fixed upon. In this respect we can easily recognise a distinction between the law of the Sabbath, and the laws which prohibit such crimes as lying, theft, or murder. But it does not therefore follow that the Sabbath is in such a sense a positive, as to be a merely partial, temporary, ceremonial institution, and, like others of this description, done away in Christ. For a law may be positive in its origin, and yet neither local nor transitory in its destination; it may be positive in its origin, and yet equally needed and designed for all nations and ages of the world.

For of what nature, we ask, is the institution of marriage? The seventh commandment bears respect to that institution, and is thrown as a sacred fence around its sanctity. But is not marriage in its origin a positive institution ? Has it any other foundation than the original act of God in making one man and one woman, and positively ordaining that the man should cleave to the woman, and the two be one flesh? [3] Wherever this is not recognised, as it is not, in part at least, in Mahommedan and heathen lands, and by certain infidels of the baser sort in Christendom, there also the moral and binding obligation of the ordinance is disowned. But can any humble Christian disown it? Would he not indignantly reject the thought of its being only a temporary ordinance, because standing, as to its immediate origin, in God's method of creation, and the natural obligations growing out of it? Or does he feel himself warranted to assume, that because, after Christ's appearing, the marriage-union was treated as an emblem of Christ's union to the Church, the literal ordinance is thereby changed or impaired? Assuredly not. And why should he think otherwise respecting the Sabbath ? This, too, in its origin, is a positive institution, and was also, it may be, from the first designed to serve as an emblem of spiritual things,— an emblem of the blessed rest which man was called to enjoy in God. But in both respects it stands most nearly on a footing with the ordinance of marriage: both alike owed their institution to the original act and appointment of God ; both also took their commencement at the birth of time—in a world unfallen, when, as there was no need for the antitypes of redemption, so no ceremonial types or shadows of these could properly have a place; and both are destined to last till the songs of the redeemed shall have ushered in the glories of a world restored.

The distinction, we apprehend, is often too broadly drawn, in discussions on this subject, between the positive and the moral; as if the two belonged to entirely different regions, and but incidentally touched upon each other; as if also the strictly moral part of the world's machinery were in itself so complete and independent, that its movements might proceed of themselves, in a course of lofty isolation from all positive enactments and institutions. This was not the case even in paradise, and much less could it be so afterwards. A certain amount of what is positive in appointment, is absolutely necessary to settle the  relations in connection with which the moral sentiments are to work and develop themselves. The banks which confine and regulate the current of a river are not less essential to its existence than the waters that flow within them; for the one define and fix the channel which keeps the other in their course. And, in like manner, the moral feelings and affections of our nature must have something outward and positive, determining the kind of landmarks which they are to observe, and the channels through which they are to flow. There may, no doubt, be many things of this nature at different times appointed by God that are variable and temporary, to suit the present condition of His Church and the immediate ends He has in view. But there may also be some coeval with the existence of the world, founded in the very nature and constitution of things, so essential and necessary, that the love which is the fulfilment of all obligation cannot operate stedfastly or beneficially without them.

The real question, then, in regard to the Sabbath, is, whether such love can exist in the heart, without disposing it to observe the rest there enjoined? Is not the present constitution of nature such as to render this necessary for securing the purposes which God contemplated in creation? Could mankind, as one great family, properly thrive and prosper even in their lower interests, as we may suppose their beneficent Creator intended, without such a day of rest perpetually coming round to refresh their wearied natures? Could they otherwise command sufficient time, amid the busy cares and occupations of life, to mind the higher interests of themselves and their households? Without such a salutary monitor ever and anon returning, and bringing with it time and opportunity for all to attend to its admonitions, would not the spiritual and eternal be lost sight of amid the seen and temporal? Or, to mount higher still, how, without this ordinance, could any proper and adequate testimony be kept up throughout the world in honour of the God that made it? Must not reason herself own it to be a suitable and becoming homage rendered to His sole and supreme lordship of creation, for men on every returning seventh day to cease from their own works, and take a breathing-time to realize their dependence upon Him, and give a more special application to the things which concern His glory? In short, abolish this wise and blessed institution, and must not love both to God and man be deprived of one of its best safeguards and most appropriate methods of working? Must not God Himself become practically dishonoured and forgotten, and His creature be worn down with deadening and oppressive toil?

Experience has but one answer to give to these questions. Hence, where the true religion has been unknown, it has always been found necessary to appoint, by some constituted authority, a certain number of holidays, which have often, even in heathen countries, exceeded, rarely anywhere have fallen short of, the number of God's instituted Sabbaths. The animal and mental, the bodily and spiritual nature of man, alike demand them. Even Plato deemed the appointment of such days of so benign and gracious a tendency, that he ascribed them to that pity which 'the gods have for mankind, born to painful labour, that they might have an ease and cessation from their toils.'[4] And what is this but an experimental testimony to the wisdom and goodness of God's having ordered His work of creation with a view to the appointment of such an institution in providence? It is manifest, besides, that while men may of themselves provide substitutes to a certain extent for the Sabbath, yet these never can secure more than a portion of the ends for which it has been appointed, nor could anything short of the clear sanction and authority of the living God command for it general respect and attention. The inferior benefits which it carries in its train are not sufficient, as experience has also too amply testified, to maintain its observance, if it loses its hold upon men's minds in a religious point of view. So that there can scarcely be a plainer departure from the duty of love we owe alike to God and man, than to attempt to weaken the foundations of such an ordinance, or to encourage its habitual neglect.

If the broad and general view of the subject which has now been given were fairly entertained, the other and minuter objections which are commonly urged in support of the strictly Jewish character of the Sabbatical institution would be easily disposed of. Even taken apart, there is none of them which, if due account is mnde of special circumstances, may not be satisfactorily removed.

1. No notice is taken of the institution during the antediluvian and earlier patriarchal periods of sacred history; the profanation of it is not mentioned among the crimes for which the flood was sent, or fire and brimstone rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah; it never rises distinctly into view as a divine institution till the time of Moses; whence, it is inferred, it only then took its commencement. But how many duties of undoubtedly perpetual and universal obligation might be cut off on similar grounds! And how few comparatively of the sins which we may infer with the utmost certainty to have been practised, are noticed in those brief records of the world's history ! It is rather, as we might have expected, the general principles that were acted upon; or, in regard to heinous transgressors, the more flagrant misdeeds into which their extreme depravity ran out, that find a place in the earliest portions of sacred history. Besides, even in the later and fuller accounts, it is usual, through very long periods of time, to omit any reference to institutions which were known to have been statedly observed. There is no notice, for example, of circumcision from the time of Joshua to the Babylonish exile; but how fallacious would be the conclusion from such silence that the rite itself had fallen into desuetude! Even the Sabbath, notwithstanding the prominent place it holds in the decalogue and the institutions of Moses, is never mentioned again till the days of Elisha (nearly seven hundred years later), when we meet with an incidental and passing allusion to it. [5] Need we wonder, then, that in such peculiarly brief compends of history as are given of antediluvian and patriarchal times, there should be a similar silence?

And yet it can by no means be affirmed that they are without manifest indications of the existence of a seventh day of sacred rest. The record of its appointment at the close of the creation period, as we have already noticed, is of the most explicit kind, and is afterwards confirmed by the not less explicit reference in the fourth commandment, of its origin and commencement to the same period. Nor can any reason be assigned one-half so natural and probable as this, for the saeredness attached from the earliest times to the number seven, and for the division of time into weeks of seven days, which meets us in the history of Noah and the later patriarchal times, and of which also very early traces occur in profane history.[6] Then, finally, the manner in which it first presents itself on the field of Israelitish history as an existing ordinance which God Himself respected, in the giving of the manna, before the law had been promulgated, is a clear proof of its prior institution. True, indeed, the Israelites themselves seem then to have been in a great measure ignorant of such an institution; not perhaps altogether ignorant, as is too commonly taken for granted, but ignorant of its proper observance, so far as to wonder that God should have bestowed a double provision on the sixth day, to relieve them from any labour in gathering and preparing it on the seventh. Habituated as they had become to the manners, and bowed down by the oppression, of Egypt, it had been strange indeed if any other result should have occurred. Hence it is mentioned by Moses and by Nehemiah, as a distinguishing token of the Lord's goodness to them, that in consequence of bringing them out of Egypt, He made them to know or gave them His Sabbaths. [7]

2. But the institution of the Sabbath was declared to be a sign between God and the Israelites, that they might know that He was the Lord who sanctified them. [8] And if a sign or token of God's covenant with Israel, then it must have been a new and positive institution, and one which they alone were bound to observe, since it must separate between them and others. So Warburton, [9] and many besides. We say nothing against its having been, as to its formal institution, of a positive nature; for there, we think, many defenders of the Sabbath have lost themselves. [10] But its being constituted a sign between God and Israel, neither inferred its entire novelty, nor its special and exclusive obligation upon them. Warburton himself has contended that the bow in the cloud was not rendered less fit for being a sign of the covenant with Noah, that it had existed in the antediluvian period. And still less might the Sabbath's being a primeval institution have rendered it unfit to stand as a sign of the Israelitish covenant, as this had respect not so much to its appointment on the part of God, as to its observance on the part of the people. He wished them simply to regard it as one of the chosen means by which He intended them to become, not only a well-conditioned and blessed, but also an holy nation. Nor could its being destined for such a use among them in the least interfere with its obligation or its observance among others. Circumcision was thus also made the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, although it had been observed from time immemorial by various surrounding tribes and nations, from whom still the members of the covenant were to keep themselves separate. For it was not the merely external rite or custom which God regarded, but its spiritual meaning and design. When connected with His covenant, or embodied in His law, it was stamped as a religious institution ; it acquired a strictly religious use; and only in so far as it was observed with a reference to this, could it fitly serve as a sign of God's covenant.

Indeed, a conclusion exactly the reverse of the one just referred to, should rather be drawn from the circumstance of the Sabbath having been taken for a sign that God sanctified Israel. There can be no question that holiness in heart and conduct was the grand sign of their being His chosen people. In so far as they fulfilled the exhortation, 'Be ye holy, for I am holy,' they possessed the mark of His children. And the proper observance of the Sabbatical rest being so specially designated a sign in this respect, was a proof of its singular importance to the interests of religion and morality. These, it was virtually said, would thrive and flourish if the Sabbath was duly observed, but would languish and die if it fell into desuetude. Hence, at the close of a long expostulation with the people regarding their sins, and such especially as indicated only a hypocritical love to God, and a palpable hatred or indifference to their fellow-men, the prophet Isaiah presses the due observance of the Sabbath as in itself a sufficient remedy for the evil: '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, honourable; and shalt honour Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.' [11]

This passage may fitly be regarded as an explanation of the sense in which the Lord meant them to regard the Sabbath as a sign between them and Him. And it is clear, on a moment's reflection, that the prophet could never have attached the importance he did to the Sabbath, nor so peculiarly connected it with the blessing of the covenant, if the mere outward rest had been all that the institution contemplated. This is what the objectors we now argue with seem uniformly to take for granted; as if the people were really sanctified when they simply rested every Sabbath-day from their labours. The command had a far deeper import, and much more was involved in such a compliance with it, as should prove a sign between them and God. It was designed at once to carry the heart up in holy affection to its Creator, and outwards in acts of goodwill and kindness to men on earth. Hence its proper observance is so often put, both in the law and the prophets, for the sum of religion. This is frankly admitted by some who urge the objection (for example, Barrow), while they still hold it to have been a ceremonial institution. But we would ask if any other ceremonial institution can be pointed to as having been thus honoured? Are they not often rather comparatively dishonoured, by being placed in a relation of inferiority to the weightier matters of the law? And we might also ask, if precisely the same practical value is not attached to the strict religious observance of the Lord's day now, by all writers of piety, and even by those who, with strange perversion or inconsistency, labour to establish the freedom of Christians from the obligation of the Sabbath? It is one of the burdens, says Barrow, which the law of liberty has taken off from us; and yet he has no sooner said it, than he tells us, in regard to the very highest and most spiritual duties of this law, that we are much more obliged to discharge them than the Jews could be. [12] Paley, too, presently after he has endeavoured to relax the binding obligation of the Sabbath, proceeds to show the necessity of dedicating the Sunday to religious exercises, to the exclusion of all ordinary works and recreations; and still more expressly in his first sermon, written at a more advanced stage of life, when he knew more personally of the power of religion, he speaks of ' keeping holy the Lord's day regularly and most particularly,' as an essential mark of a Christian. [13] The leading Reformers were unanimous on this point, holding it to be the duty of all sound Christians to use the Lord's dav as one of holy rest to Him, and that by withdrawing themselves not only from sin and vanity, but also from those worldly employments and recreations which belong only to a present life, and by yielding themselves wholly to the public exercises of God's worship, and to the private duties of devotion, excepting only in cases of necessity or mercy. The learned Rivet, also, who unhappily argued (in his work on the decalogue) against the obligation of keeping the Sabbath as imposed in the fourth commandment, yet deplored the prevailing disregard of the Lord's day as one of the crying evils of the times; and Vitringa raised the same lamentation in his day (on Isa. lviii. 13).

What, then, should induce such men to contend against the strict and literal obligation of the fourth command ? They must be influenced by one of two reasons : either they dislike the spirit of holiness that breathes in it, or, relishing this, they somehow mistake the real nature of the obligation there imposed. There can be no doubt that the former is the cause which prompts those who are mere formalists in religion to decry this obligation ; and as little doubt, we think, in regard to the Reformers and pious divines of later times, that the latter consideration was what influenced them. This we shall find occasion to explain under the next form of objection.

3. It is alleged that the Sabbath, as imposed on the Jews, had a rigour and severity in it quite incompatible with the genius of the Gospel: the person who violated its sacredness, by doing ordinary work on that day, was to be punished with death; and so far was the cessation from work carried, that even the kindling of a fire or going out of one's place was interdicted. [ ] It looks as if men were determined to get rid of the Sabbath by any means, when the capital punishment inflicted on the violators of it in the Jewish state is held up as a proof of its transitory and merely national character. For there is nothing of this in the fourth commandment itself; and it was afterwards added to this, in common with many other statutes, as a check on the presumptuous violation of what God wished them to regard as the fundamental laws of the kingdom. A similar violation of the first, the second, the third, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh commandments, had the same punishment annexed to it; but who would thence argue that the obligation to practise the duties they required was binding only during the Old Testament dispensation?

The other part of the objection demands a longer answer; in which we must first distinctly mark what is the exact point to be determined. The real question is, Did the fourth commandment oblige the Jews to anything which the people of God are under no obligation now to perform ? Did it simply enjoin a rigid cessation from all ordinary labour, every seventh day, and did such cessation constitute the kind of sanctification it required 1 Such unquestionably was the opinion entertained by Calvin and most of the Reformers ; who consequently held the Sabbath exacted of the Israelites under this precept to be chiefly of a ceremonial nature, foreshadowing through its outward repose the state of peaceful and blessed rest which believers were to enjoy in Christ, and, like other shadows, vanishing when He appeared. There is certainly a measure of truth in this idea, as we shall have occasion to notice under the next objection, but not in the sense understood by such persons. Their opinion of what the Jewish Sabbath should have been, almost entirely coincided with what it actually teas, after a cold and dead formalism had taken the place of a living piety. But so far from being justified by the law itself, it is the very notion which our Lord sought repeatedly to expose, by showing the practical impossibility of carrying it out under the former dispensation itself. Parents performed on the Sabbath the operation of circumcising their children; priests did the work connected with the temple service; persons of all sorts went through the labours necessary to preserve or sustain life in themselves or their cattle; and yet they were blameless—the command stood unimpaired, notwithstanding the performance of such works on the seventh day, for they were not inconsistent with its real design. In regard to all such cases, Christ announced the maxim, 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,'—meaning, of course, the Sabbath in its original purport and existing obligation—not under any change or modification now to be introduced; for had there been any intention of that sort, it would manifestly have been out of place then to speak of it—but the Sabbath as imposed in the fourth commandment upon the Israelites:—this Sabbath was made for man, as a means to promote his real interests and wellbeing, and not as a remorseless idol, to which these were to be sacrificed. ' To work in the way of doing good to a fellow-creature (such was the import of Christ's declaration), or entering into the employments of God's worship, is not now, nor ever was, any interference with the proper duties of the Sabbath, but rather a fulfilment of them. "Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath,"—He who is Lord of man must needs also be Lord of that which was made for man's good—but its Lord, not to turn it to any other purpose than that for which it was originally given—no, merely to use it myself, and teach you how to use it for the same. You do therefore grievously err in supposing it possible for me to do anything inconsistent with the design of this institution; for though, as the Father worketh hitherto, I also must work on this day,[14] so far as the ends of the divine government may require, yet nothing is or can be done by me, which is not in the strictest sense a divine work, and as such suitable to the day of God.' [15]

It is to wrest our Lord's words quite beside the purpose for which they were spoken, to represent Him in those declarations He made respecting the Sabbath, as intending to relax the existing law, and bring in some new modification of it. His discourse was clearly aimed at convincing the Jews that this law did not, as they erroneously conceived, absolutely prohibit all work, but work only in so far as the higher ends of God's glory and man's best interests might render needful. Precisely as in the second commandment, the prohibition regarding the making of any graven image or similitude was not intended simply to denounce all pictures and statues,—both, in fact, had a place in the temple itself,—but to interdict their employment in the worship of God, so that His worshippers might be free to serve Him in spirit and in truth. And as men might have abstained from using these, while still far from yielding the spiritual worship which the second command really required, so they might equally have ceased from ordinary labour on the seventh day, and yet been far from sanctifying it according to the fourth commandment.

This was distinctly enough perceived by some of the more thinking portion of the Jews themselves. Hence, not only does Pliilo speak of 'the custom of philosophizing,' as he calls it, on the seventh day, but we find Abenezra expressly stating that 'the Sabbath was given to man, that he might consider the works of God, and meditate in His law.' To the same effect Abarbanel: ' The seventh day has been sequestered for learning the divine law, and for remembering well the explanations and inquiries regarding it. As is taught in Gemara Hierosol.: " Sabbaths and holidays were only appointed for meditating on the law of God; and therefore it is said, in Med rash Schamoth Iiabba, that the Sabbath is to be prized as the whole law."' Another of their leading authorities, R. Menasse Ben Isr., even characterizes it as ' a notable error to imagine the Sabbath to have been instituted for idleness; for as idleness is the mother of all vice, it would then have been the occasion of more evil than good.' [17]

These comments, wonderfully good to come from such a quarter, are in perfect accordance with the import of the fourth commandment; that is, if this commandment is to be subjected to the same mode of interpretation which is made to rule the meaning of the rest—if it is to be regarded simply as prohibiting one kind of works, that those of an opposite kind may be performed. Yet, in strange oversight of this, perhaps also unwittingly influenced by the mistaken views and absurd practices of the Jews, such men even as Calvin and Vitringa held, that in the Jewish law of the Sabbath there was only inculcated a cessation from bodily labour, and that the observance of this cessation formed the substance of Sabbatical duty.[18] Their holding this, however, did not, we must remember, lead them to deny the fact of God's having set apart, and men's being in all ages bound to observe, one day in every seven to be specially devoted to the worship and service of God. This with one voice they held; but they conceived the primeval and lasting institution of the Sabbath to have been so far accommodated to the ceremonial character of the Jewish religion, as to demand almost nothing from the Jews but a day of bodily rest. And this rest they further conceived to have been required, not as valuable in itself, but as the legal shadow of better things to come in Christ: so that they might at once affirm the Jewish Sabbath to be abolished, and yet hold the obligation binding upon Christians to keep, by another mode of observance, one day in seven sacred to the Lord. This is simply what they did. And therefore Gualter, in his summary of the views of the divines of the Reformation upon this subject, has brought distinctly out these two features in their opinions,—what they parted with, and what they retained: 'The Sabbath properly signifies rest and leisure from servile work, and at the same time is used to denote the seventh day, which God at the beginning of the world consecrated to holy rest, and afterwards in the law confirmed by a special precept. And although the primitive Church abrogated the Sabbath, in so far as it was a legal shadow, lest it should savour of Judaism; yet it did not abolish that sacred rest and repose, but transferred the keeping of it to the following day, which was called the Lord's day, because on it Christ rose from the dead. The use of this day, therefore, is the same with what the Sabbath formerly was among the true worshippers of God.' Only, the particular way, or kind of service, in which it is now to be turned to this sacred use, is different from what it was in Judaism; and he goes on to describe how the Reformers thought the day should be spent, viz. in a total withdrawing from worldly cares and pleasures, as far as practicable, and employing the time in the public and private exercises of worship. [19]

It presents no real contrariety to the interpretation we have given of the fourth commandment, as affecting the Jews, that Moses on one occasion enjoined the people not to go out of their place or tents on the Sabbath-day. For that manifestly had respect to the gathering of manna, and was simply a prohibition against their going out, as on other days, to obtain food. Neither is the order against kindling a fire on the Sabbath any argument for an opposite view; for it was not less evidently a temporary appointment, suitable to their condition in a wilderness of burning sand—necessary there, perhaps, to ensure even a decent conformity to the rest of the Sabbath, but palpably unsuitable to the general condition of the people, when settled in a land which is subject to great vicissitudes, and much diversity as to heat and cold. It was, in fact, plainly impracticable as a national regulation; and was not considered by the people at large binding on them in their settled state, as may be inferred from Josephus noticing it as a peculiarity of the Essenes, that they would not kindle a fire on the Sabbath. [20] Indeed it is no part of the fourth commandment, fairly interpreted, to prohibit ordinary labour, excepting in so far as it tends to interfere with the proper sanctification of the time to God; and this in most cases would rather be promoted than hindered by the kindling of a fire for purposes of comfort and refreshment. So we judge, for example, in regard to the sixth commandment, which, being intended to guard and protect the sacredness of man's life, does not absolutely prevent all manner of killing, nay, may sometimes rather be said to require this, that life may be preserved. In like manner, it was not work in the abstract that was forbidden in the fourth commandment, but work only in so far as it interfered with the sanctified use of the day, as was already indicated in the Sabbath of the Passover, which, while prohibiting ordinary work from being done, expressly excepted what was necessary for the preparation of food. [21] And the endless restrictions and limitations of the Jews, in our Lord's time and since, about the Sabbath-day's journey, and the particular acts that were or were not lawful on that day, are only to be regarded as the wretched puerilities of men in whose hands the spirit of the precept had already evaporated, and for whom  nothing more remained than to dispute about the bounds and lineaments of its dead body.

4. But then there is an express abolition of Sabbath-days in the Gospel, as the mere shadows of higher realities ; and the apostle expressly discharges believers from judging one another regarding their observance, and even mourns over the Galatians, as bringing their Christian condition into doubt by observing days and months and years. We shall not waste time by considering the unsatisfactory attempts which have frequently been made to account for such statements, by many who hold the still abiding obligation of the fourth commandment. But supposing this commandment simply to require, as we have endeavoured to show it does, the withdrawal of men's minds from worldly cares and occupations, that they might be free to give themselves to the spiritual service of God, is it conceivable, from all we know of the apostle's feelings, that he would have warned the disciples against such a practice as a dangerous snare to their souls, or raised a note of lamentation over those who had adopted it, as if all were nearly gone with them? Is there a single unbiassed reader of his epistles, who would not rather have expected him to rejoice in the thought of such a practical ascendency being won for spiritual and eternal things over the temporal and earthly ? It is the less possible for any one to doubt this, when it is so manifest from his history, that he did make a distinction of days in this sense, by everywhere establishing the practice of religious meetings on the first day of the week, and exhorting the disciples to observe them aright. When he, therefore, writes against the observing of days, it must plainly be something of a different kind he has in view. And what could that be but the mere outward and ritualistic observance of them, which the Jews had now come to regard as composing much of the very substance of religion, and by which they largely fed their self-righteous pride? Sabbathdays in this sense it is certainly no part of the Gospel to enforce; but neither was it any part of the law to do so: Moses, had he been alive, would have denounced them, as well as the ambassador of Christ.

But this, it may perhaps be thought, scarcely reaches the point at issue; for the apostle discharges Christians from the observance of Sabbath-days, not in a false and improper sense, but in that very sense in which they were shadows of good things to come, placing them on a footing in this respect with distinctions of meat and drink. It is needless to say here, that certain feast-days of the Jews, being withdrawn from a common to a sacred use, were called Sabbaths, and that the apostle alludes exclusively to these. [22] There can be no doubt, indeed, that they were so called, and are also included here; but not to the exclusion of the seventh-day Sabbath, which, from the very nature of the case, was the one most likely to be thought of by the Colossians. Unless it had been expressly excepted, we must in fairness suppose it to have been at least equally intended with the others. But the truth is simply this: What the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath was not necessarily, or in itself, it came to acquire in the general apprehension, from the connection it had so long held with the symbolical services of Judaism. In its original institution there was nothing in it properly shadowy or typical of redemption ; for it commenced before sin had entered, and while yet there was no need for a Redeemer. Nor was there anything properly typical in the observance of it imposed in the fourth commandment; for this was a substantial re-enforcement of the primary institution, only with a reference in the letter of the precept to the circumstances of Israel, as the destined possessors of Canaan. But, becoming then associated with a symbolical religion, in which spiritual and divine things were constantly represented and taught by means of outward and bodily transactions, the bodily rest enjoined in it came to partake of the common typical character of all their symbolical services. The same thing happened here as with circumcision, which was the sign and seal of the Abrahamic covenant of grace, and had no immediate connection with the law of Moses; while yet it became so identified with this law, that it required to be supplanted by another ordinance of nearly similar import, when the seed of blessing arrived, which the Abrahamic covenant chiefly respected. So great was the necessity for the abolition of the one ordinance and the introduction of the other, that the apostle virtually declares it to have been indispensable, when he affirms those who would still be circumcised to be debtors to do the whole law. At the same time, the original design and spiritual import of circumcision he testifies to have been one and the same with baptism—speaks of baptized believers, indeed, as the circumcision of Christ [23]—and consequently, apart from the peculiar circumstances arising out of the general character of the Jewish religion, the one ordinance might have served the purpose contemplated as well as the other.

So with the Sabbath. Having been engrafted into a religion so peculiarly symbolical as the Mosaic, it was unavoidable that the bodily rest enjoined in it should acquire, like all the other outward things belonging to the religion, a symbolical and typical value. For that rest, though by no means the whole duty required, was yet the substratum and groundwork of the whole; the heart, when properly imbued with the religious spirit, feeling in this very rest a call to go forth and employ itself on God. To aid it in doing so, suitable exercises of various kinds would doubtless be commonly resorted to; [24] but not as a matter of distinct obligation, rather as a supplementary help to that quiet rest in God, and imitation of His doings, to which the day itself invited. This end is the same also which the Gospel has in view, but which it seeks to accomplish by means of more active services and direct instruction. The end under both dispensations was substantially the same, with a characteristic difference as to the manner of attaining it, corresponding to the genius of the respective dispensations—the one making more of the outward, the other addressing itself directly to the inward man ; the one also having more of a natural, the other more of a spiritual, redemptive basis. Hence the mere outward bodily rest of the Sabbath came, by a kind of unavoidable necessity, to acquire of itself a sacred character, although ultimately carried to an improper and unjustifiable excess by the carnality of the Jewish mind. And hence, too, when another state of things was introduced, it became necessary to assign to such Sabbaths—the Jewish seventh day of rest—a place among the things that were done away, and so far to change the ordinance itself as to transfer it to a different day, and even call it by a new name. But as baptism in the Spirit is Christ's circumcision, so the Lord's day is His Sabbath ; and to be in the Spirit on that day, worshipping and serving Him in the truth of His Gospel, is to take up the yoke of the fourth commandment.

5. This touches on, and partly answers, another objection— the only one of any moment that still remains to be adverted to —that derived from the change of day, from the last to the first day of the week. This was necessary, not merely, as Horsely states, [25] to distinguish Christian from Jew, but also to distinguish Sabbath from Sabbath,—a Sabbath growing up amid symbolical institutions, which insensibly imparted to it a spirit of outward ritualism, and a Sabbath not less marked, indeed, by a withdrawal from the cares and occupations of worldly business, but much more distinguished by spiritual employment and active energy, both in doing and receiving good. Such a change in its character was clearly indicated by our Lord in those miracles of healing which He purposely performed on the Sabbath, that His followers might now see their calling, to use the opportunities presented to them on the day of bodily rest, to minister to the temporal or the spiritual necessities of those around them. And in fitting correspondence with this, the day chosen for the Christian Sabbath was the first day of the week, the day on which Christ rose from the dead, that He might enter into the rest of God, after having finished the glorious work of redemption. But that rest, how to be employed ? Not in vacant repose, but in an incessant, holy activity, in directing the affairs of His mediatorial kingdom, and diffusing the inestimable blessings He had purchased for men. A new era then dawned upon the world, which was to give an impulse hitherto unknown to all the springs of benevolent and holy working; and it was meet that this should communicate its impress to the day through which the Gospel was specially to develop its peculiar genius and proper tendency. But pre-eminent as this Gospel stands above all earlier revelations of God, for the ascendency it gives to the unseen and eternal over the seen and temporal, it would surely be a palpable contrariety to the whole spirit it breathes, and the ends it has in view, if now, on the Lord's day, the things of the world were to have more, and the things of God less, of men's regard than formerly on the Jewish Sabbath. Least of all could any change have been intended in this direction; and the only variation in the manner of its observance, which the Gospel itself warrants us to think of, is the greater amount of spiritual activity to be put forth on it, flowing out in suitable exercises of love to God, and acts of kindness and blessing towards our fellow-men.

What though the Gospel does not expressly enact this change of day, and in so many words enjoin the disciples to hallow the ordinance after the manner now described? It affords ample materials to all for discovering the mind of God in this respect, who are really anxious to learn it; and what more is done in regard to the ordinances of worship generally, or to anything in God's service connected with external arrangements? It is the characteristic of the Gospel to unfold great truths and principles, and only briefly to indicate the proper manner of their development and exercise in the world. But can any one in reality have imbibed these, without cordially embracing, and to the utmost of his power improving, the advantages of such a wise and beneficent institution? Or does the Christian world now not need its help, as much as the Jewish did of old? Even Tholuck, though he still does not see how to give the Christian Sabbath the right hold upon the conscience, yet deplores the prevailing neglect of it as destructive to the life of piety, and proclaims the necessity of a stricter observance. ' Spirit, spirit! we cry out: but should the prophets of God come again, as they came of old, and should they look upon our works, Flesh, flesh! they would cry out in response. Of a truth the most spiritual among us cannot dispense with a rule, a prescribed form, in his morality and piety, without allowing the flesh to resume its predominance. The sway of the Spirit of God in your minds is weak; carry, then, holy ordinances into your life.' [26]

It is not unimportant to state further, in regard to the change of day from the last to the first day of the week, that while strong reasons existed for it in the mighty change that had been introduced by the perfected redemption of Christ, no special stress appears, even in the Old Testament Scripture, to have been laid on the precise day. Manifestly the succession of six days of worldly occupation, and one of sacred rest, is the point chiefly contemplated there. So little depended upon the exact day, that on the occasion of renewing the Sabbatical institution in the wilderness, the Lord seems to have made the weekly series run from the first giving of the manna. His example, therefore, in the work of creation, was intended merely to fix the relative proportion between the days of ordinary labour and those of sacred rest,—and with that view is appealed to in the law. Nay, even there the correspondence is closer than is generally considered between the Old and the New; for while the original Sabbath was the seventh day in regard to God's work of creation, it was man's first. He began his course of weekly service upon earth by holding Sabbath with his Creator; much as the Church was called to begin her service to Christ on His finishing the work of the new creation. Nor, since redemption is to man a still more important work than creation, can it seem otherwise than befitting to a sanctified mind, that some slight alteration should have taken place in the relative position of the days, as might serve for a perpetual memorial that this work also was now finished. By the resurrection of Christ, as the apostle shows, in 1 Cor. xv. 20 sq., a far higher dignity has been won for humanity than was given to it by the creation of Adam ; and one hence feels, as Sartorius has remarked, [27] that it would be alike unnatural and untrue, if the Church now should keep the creation-Sabbath of the Old, and not the resurrection-Sabbath of the New—if she should honour, as her holy-day, that day on which Christ was buried, and not rather the one on which He rose again from the dead. It was on the eve of the resurrection-day that He appeared to the company of the disciples, announced to them the completion of His work, gave them His peace, and authorized and commissioned them to preach salvation and dispense forgiveness to all nations in His name. [28] So that, if Adam's Sabbath was great by the divine blessing and sanctification, Christ's Sabbath was still greater through the divine blessing of peace, grace, and salvation, which He sheds forth upon a lost world, in order to re-establish the divine image in men's souls, in a higher even than its original form, and bring in a better paradise than that which has been lost.

In conclusion, we deem the law of the Sabbath, as interpreted in this section, to have been fully entitled to a place in the standing revelation of God's will concerning man's duty, and to have formed no exception to the perfection and completeness of the law:—

(1.) Because, first, there is in such an institution, when properly observed, a sublime act of holiness. The whole rational creation standing still, as it were, on every seventh day as it returns, and looking up to its God—what could more strikingly proclaim in all men's ears, that they have a common Lord and Master in heaven? It reminds the rich that what they have is not properly their own—that they hold all of a Superior —a Superior who demands that on this day the meanest slave shall be as his master—nay, that the very beast of the field shall be released from its yoke of service, and stand free to its Creator. No wonder that proud man, who loves to do what he will with his own, and that the busy world, which is bent on prosecuting with restless activity the concerns of time, would fain break asunder the bands of this holy institution; for it speaks aloud of the overruling dominion and rightful supremacy of God, which they would willingly cast behind their backs. But the heart that is really imbued with the principles of the Gospel, how can it fail to call such a day the holy of the Lord, and honourable? Loving God, it cannot but love what gives it the opportunity of holding undisturbed communion with Him.

(2.) Secondly, because it is an institution of mercy. In perfect harmony with the Gospel, it breathes goodwill and kindness to men. It brings, as Coleridge well expressed it, fifty-two spring days every year to this toilsome world; and may justly be regarded as a sweet remnant of paradise, mitigating the now inevitable burdens of life, and connecting the region of bliss that has been lost with the still brighter glory that is to come. As in the former aspect there is love to God, so here there is love to man.

(3.) Lastly, we uphold its title to a place in the permanent revelation of God's will to man, because of its eminent use and absolute necessity to promote men's higher interests. Religion cannot properly exist without it, and is always found to thrive as the spiritual duties of the day of God are attended to and discharged. It is, when duly improved, the parent and the guardian of every virtue. In this practical aspect of it, all men of serious piety substantially concur; and as a specimen of thousands which might be produced, we conclude with simply giving the impressive testimony of Owen: ' For my part, I must not only say, but plead, whilst I live in this world, and leave this testimony to the present and future ages, that if ever I have seen anything of the ways and worship of God, wherein the power of religion or godliness hath been expressed—anything that hath represented the holiness of the Gospel and the Author of it—anything that looked like a prelude to the everlasting Sabbath and rest with God, which we aim, through grace, to corne unto,—it hath been there, and with them, where, and among whom, the Lord's day hath been held in highest esteem, and a strict observation of it attended to, as an ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ. The remembrance of their ministry, their walk and conversation, their faith and love, who in this nation have most zealously pleaded for, and have been in their persons, families, parishes or churches, the most strict observers of this day, will be precious to them that fear the Lord, whilst the sun and moon endure. Let these things be despised by those who are otherwise minded; to me they are of great weight and importance.' [29]

Notes

1. The Roman Catholics have felt the force of this in reference to their own Church, which, like the Jewish, deals so much in ceremonies, and therefore have sometimes in their catechism presented the fourth commandment thus: Remember the festivals, to keep them holy.

2. Coram, on Ex. xx. 11. The same view is taken in his notes on Gen. ii. 3: ' God, therefore, first rested, then He blessed that rest, that it might be sacred among men through all coming ages. He consecrated each seventh day to rest, that His own example might continually serve as a rule,' etc. To the same effect, Luther on that passage, who holds, that' if Adam had continued in innocence, he would yet have kept the seventh day sacred;' and concludes, 'Therefore the Sabbath was, from the beginning of the world, appointed to the worship of God.' We have already treated of this branch of the subject in vol. L, and need not go farther into it at present. It is proper to state, however, that the leading divines of the Reformation, and the immediately subsequent period, were of one mind regarding the appointment of a primeval Sabbath. The idea that the Sabbath was first given to the Israelites in the wilderness, and that the words in Gen. ii. only proleptically refer to that future circumstance, is an after-thought, originating in the fond conceit of some Jewish Rabbins, who sought thereby to magnify their nation, and was adopted only by such Christian divines as had already made up their minds on the temporary obligation of the Sabbath.

3. Gen. ii. 23, 24. This has a great deal more the look of a proleptical statement than what is written at the beginning of the chapter about the Sabbath, for it speaks of leaving father and mother, while still Adam and Eve alone existed. Yet our Lord regards it as a statement fairly and naturally drawn from the facts of creation, and as applicable to the earlier as to the later periods of the world's history.—(Matt xix. 4, 5.)

4. De Leg, ii. p. 787.

5. 2 Kings iv. 23.

6. Gen. vin. 10, 12, xxix. 27. A large portion of the Jewish writers hold that the Sabbath was instituted at the creation, and was observed by the patriarchs, although some thought differently. References to various of their more eminent writers are given in Meyer, De Temporibus Sacra et Festis Diebut Hebrieorum, P. ii. c. 9. Selden (De Jure Nat. et Gent. lib. iii. 12) has endeavoured to prove that the elder Jewish writers all held the first institution of the Sabbath to have been in the wilderness, though by special revelation made known previously to Abraham, and that the notice taken of the subject at the creation is by prolepsis. This, however, does not appear to have been the general opinion among them—certainly not that of some of their leading writers; and, as Meyer remarks, it by no means follows from their having sometimes held the proleptical reference in Genesis to the institution of the Sabbath in the wilderness, that they therefore denied its prior institution in paradise. See in Imperial Bible Dictionary, art. ' Week,' for a correct account of the references to the septenary division among heathen nations. As to those nations not observing the Sabbath, or not being specially charged with neglecting it, the same may be said in reference to the third commandment, the fifth, many of the sins of the seventh, eighth, and ninth. Besides, when they forsook God Himself, of how little importance was it how they spent His Sabbaths!

7. Ex. xvi. 29; Deut. v. 15 ; Neh. ix. 14.

8. Ex. xxxi. 13.

9. Divine Leg. B. iv. Note R.R.R.R.

10. It has been called a moral-positive command, partly moral and partly positive ; in itself a positive enactment, but with moral grounds to recommend or enforce it. See, for example, Ridgeley's Body of Divinity, ii. p. 267, who expresses the view of almost all evangelical divines of the same period in this country. The distinction, however, is not happy, as the same substantially may be said of all the ceremonial institutions. Moral reasons were connected with them all, and yet they are abolished.

11. Isa. lviii. 13, 14.

12. Works, v. pp. 565, 568.

13. Moral and Polit. Philosophy, B. v. c. 7 and 8, comp. with 1st of the Sermons on several subjects.

14. Ex. xvi. 29, xxxv. 8.

15. John v. 17.

16. No texts have been more perverted from their obvious meaning, by the opponents of the Sabbath, than those referred to in Mark, oh. ii. 27, 28, about the Son of man being Lord of the Sabbath, and the Sabbath being made for man, as if the Lord had been there bringing in something new, instead of explaining what was old. The latter is also held ' as manifestly implying that the observance of the Sabbath was not a duty of an essential and unchangeable nature, such as those for which man is especially constituted and ordained.'—(Bib. Cyclop, art. 'Sabbath.') But the same may be said of marriage—it was made for man, and not man for it; and seeing, if there be no marriage, there can be no adultery, is therefore the seventh command only of temporary obligation ? Or, since where there is no property there can be no theft, and man was not made for property, is the eighth command also out of date ? The main point is, Were they not all alike coeval with man's introduction into his present state, and needful to abide with him till its close?

17. See Meyer, de Temp. Sacris et Festis Diebus Htb. pp. 197-199, where the authorities are given at length.

18. Calvin, Inst. ii. c. 8. Vitringa, Synayog. vet. ii. c 2, and Com. in ha. c. Ivi.

19. I have entered so fully into the views of the Reformers, because their sentiments on this subject are almost universally misunderstood, even by theologians, and their names have often been and still are abused, to support views which they would themselves have most strongly reprobated. The ground of the whole error lay in their not rightly understanding—what, indeed, is only now coming to be properly understood—the symbolical character of the Jewish worship. They viewed it too exclusively in a typical aspect, in its reference to Gospel things, and saw but very dimly and imperfectly its design and fitness to give a present expression to the faith and holiness of the worshipper. Hence, positive institutions were considered ae altogether the same with ceremonial, and the services connected with them as all of necessity bodily, typical, shadowy—therefore done away in Christ . In this way superficial readers, who glance only at occasional passages in then* writings, and do not take these in connection with the whole state of theological opinion then prevalent regarding the Old and New dispensations, find no difficulty in exhibiting the Reformers as against all Sabbatical observances ; while, if it suited their purpose to look a little further, another set of passages might be found which seem to establish the very reverse. Archbishop Whately says (Second Series of Essays, p. 206) that the English Reformers were almost unanimous in disconnecting the obligation regarding the keeping of the Lord's day among Christians from the fourth commandment, and resting it simply on the practice of the apostles and the early Church—thus making the Christian Lord's day an essentially different institution from the Jewish Sabbath. We don't need to investigate the subject separately as it affects them ; for their opinions, as the Archbishop Indeed asserts, agreed with those of the continental Reformers. But we affirm that the Reformers, as a body, did hold the divine authority and binding obligation of the fourth command, as requiring one day in seven to be employed in the worship and service of God, admitting only of works of necessity and of mercy to the poor and afflicted. The release from legal bondage, of which they speak, included simply the obligation to keep precisely the seventh day of the week, and the external rest, which they conceived to be so rigorously binding on the Jews, that even the doing of charitable works was a breach of it—the very mistake of the Pharisees. In its results, however, the doctrinal error regarding the fourth commandment has been very disastrous even in England, but still more so on the Continent. However strict the Reformers were personally, as to the practical observance of the Lord's day—eo strict, especially in Geneva, that they were charged by some with Judaizing—the separation they made here between the law and the Gospel soon wrought most injuriously upon the life of religion ; and the saying of Owen was lamentably verified: ' Take this day off from the basis whereon God hath fixed it, and all human substitutions of anything in the like kind will quickly discover their own vanity.'—See Appendix A.

20. Wars, ii. c. 8, § 9.

21. Ex. vii. 16.

22. This is Haldane's explanation in his Appendix to his Com. on Romany, as it had also been Ridgeley's and others' in former times. But if that explanation were right—if the apostle really intended to except what the world at large pre-eminently understood by Sabbath-days—it would be impossible to acquit him of using language almost sure to be misunderstood.

23. Col. ii. 11.

24. Kings iv. 23, where the Shunammite woman's husband expressed his wonder that she should go to the prophet when it was neither new moon nor Sabbath, implyiug that it was customary to meet for social exercises ou these days.

25. Works, vol. i. p. 356. The greater part of his three Sermons is excellent, though he does not altogether avoid, we think, some of the misapprehensions referred to above.

26. Sermons, Bib. Cab. vol. xxviii. p. 13. The absolute necessity of a strict observance of the Lord's day to the life of religion is well noted in a comparison between Scotland and Germany, by a shrewd and intelligent observer—Mr. Laing, in his Notes on the Pilgrimage to Treves, ch. x. He does not profess to state the theological view of the subject, and oven admits there may be some truth in what is sometimes pleaded for a looser observance of the day, especially in regard to those situated in large towns ; but still holds the necessity of a well-spent Sabbath to produce and maintain a due sense of religion, and attributes the low state of religion in Germany very much to their neglect of the Sabbath. He justly says, the strict observance of Sunday ' is the application of principle to practice by a whole people ; it is the working of their religious sense and knowledge upon their habits ; it is the sacrifice of pleasures, in themselves innocent—and these are the most difficult to be sacrificed—to a higher principle than self-indulgence. Such a population stands on a much higher moral and intellectual step than the population of the Continent,' etc.

27. Cultus, p. 154.

28. Luke xxiv.

29. Ex. xvi. 29; Deut. v. 15; Neh. ix. 14.