Our Sabbath
^*JIe who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor.*
Holmes.
“The day that God has blessed Comes tranquilly on with its welcome rest. It speaks of creation’’ s early blootn; It speaks of the Pritice who burst the tomb. Then siunjnoji the Spirifs exalted powers And devote to heave)i the hallowed hours
Ware.
*■’■ Bright shadows of true rest! some shoots of bliss. Heaven once a week;
The next world’’ s gladness prepossessed in this.’’^
Vaughafi.
‘■’■ Remember the Sabbath day, to
keep it holyT Exodus 20: 8.
It is plain that the Sabbath existed before the law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai. “God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work.” It came in as one of the laws of nature, and is founded primarily on the necessities of man. The Jews observed the Sabbath before they came to Sinai, because we are told they gathered a double portion of manna on the previous day. And it seems that they were delivered from Egyptian bondage on the Sabbath day, for we read in Deuteronomy 5:15: “Remember that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.”
There is thenceforth to be a twofold reason for observing the Sabbath. First, God hallowed it after the six days of creation; and,
85 second, because he delivered them from Egyptian bondage. And in Exodus 31: 12-17 there is added still another significance to the day. “The children of Israel shall observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever.” This trinity of hallowed meaning runs through the Old Testament. It is the day of rest, the day of deliverance, and the day which is to call to mind the covenant between God and his people.
We are, therefore, not surprised to find in Isaiah 58: 13, 14, that God promises a great blessing to those who observe the Sabbath, and threatens a curse upon those who desecrate his holy day. ‘’If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath,” that is, if thou refuse to trample upon the Sabbath, “from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor 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.” Here is the promise to the Sabbath observer of personal joy and national prosperity. If we give up our own pleasure-seeking on that day, God will give us his pleasure, filling us with his joy. If we call the Sabbath a delight, he will delight in us. If we honor the Sabbath, he will honor us. But if we bring down our uplifted foot in contempt upon God’s day, he will leave us exposed to the working of the inexorable laws which will carry ruin to our entire being
The Sabbath is a physical necessity. Dr. William D. Love, in his excellent book entitled “Sabbath and Sunday,” gives a great fundamental fact when he says: “Laws for rest are stationed all along the physical nature. The lungs rest after each breath we take. The blood-vessels rest between the heart beatings. The nerves and brain will have rest and will revenge themselves upon us if we cut short the supply. The ordaining of day and night to follow each other in quick succession through all ages of the world was a merciful appointment of God; without it the human species would probably have become extinct at a very early period of time. But experience and observation have shown that the rest of night, and all forms of daily and nightly rest put together are insufficient for the highest end of man’s physical well-being. There must be days as well as nights of rest.”
Horses demand it. A man who used many horses in street-car travel stated to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1857, that his company, by not working the horses on Sunday, made a saving of 12 per cent. Even Plato the pagan had a glimpse of this law of nature when he said: “Out of pity for the wretched life of mortals the Deity has arranged days of festal recreation and refreshment.” In the settlement of the great West it was found that parties who did not travel on Sunday reached their destination sooner, and in better condition, than those who traveled seven days in the week.
Several years ago the French Minister of Marine gave orders that no workmen be employed in the dock-yards on the Sabbath, and gave as his reason that man can do more by resting one day in seven than by working seven days in the week. It is a well-known fact that there are more suicides in Sabbath-breaking than in Sabbath-keeping countries. Mr. Wilkie the painter declares that the artists of his acquaintance who worked on Sunday were soon disqualified for working at all. France, in her hatred for the church and the Bible, decided to observe every tenth day rather than the seventh, but it would not work. Many people observed the seventh day as an extra holiday. The law of our being evidently demands the seventh rather than the fifth or the tenth day.
Lord Macaulay does not speak too strongly when he says: “While industry is suspended, while the plow lies in the furrow, while the exchange is silent,while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of the nation as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labor on Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporal vigor.” And Coleridge was not extravagant when he exclaimed: “I feel as if God by giving the Sabbath had given fifty-two springs in the year.”
The Sabbath is also a mental necessity. Mr. Love informs us that a man of twenty-five years’ observation in New York city said that those merchants of his acquaintance who kept their counting rooms open on Sunday failed without exception. William Wilberforce declared that many public men who began life with him found an early grave, some being maniacs and others suicides, and he attributed the cause of their premature and untimely end to their disregard of the Sabbath. A professor of hygiene in Leipzig University said: “If religion calls the seventh day the day of the Lord, the hygienists will call Sunday the day of man.” The unbending of the mental bow one day in seven gives strength for the work of the six days that follow.
The Sabbath is a moral necessity. More than 90 per cent, of all criminals were habitual Sabbath-breakers before they became criminals. An English chaplain of prisons declares that during twenty-eight years of service he had made it a point to see in private those who were charged with capital offenses, and that he did not remember a single case among them all where the party had not been a Sabbath-breaker, and many of them assured him that Sabbath-breaking was the first step in their course of crime. Of 1,633 criminals who were in the New York State (Auburn) prison previous to 1840, only 29 had any regard for the Sabbath. So conservative a writer as William Blackstone, the commentator on law, says a “corruption of morals usually follows a profanation of the Sabbath.” A man who had to do with street railways in Boston gave as his opinion that the dishonesty of conductors was promoted by running the cars on Sunday. If men are taught to violate one of the ten commandments, why may they not violate another? The cashier of a bank who was some time ago sentenced to the penitentiary for stealing, accused the president of being largely responsible for his crime, because the president had compelled him to work in the bank on Sunday. If you require your employees to desecrate the Sabbath, do not blame them too severely if they steal from your purse. If you have a right to rob God of his day, why have they not a right to rob you of your money?
I read some time ago of a company of rough men in the far west who had assembled in front of a country church awaiting the time of service. One of them asked another why he did not bring with him his gun, that he might kill some game on his return home. The other replied: “Suppose I should come up here with seven fine horses, and should say, ‘Boys, I would like to give you six of these horses to be yours, you can use them as you will. I only want one.’ You take my six horses and then follow me down the road to rob me of the horse which I have kept. Now, fellows, ain’t that mean?” And yet that is just what the man does who robs God of the Sabbath by doing his own pleasure and working for himself on that day. God has given him the six days, and it is simple robbery for him to take the seventh.
The Sabbath is certainly a spiritual necessity. There is no such thing as Christianity without it. Without it the church cannot exist, and there is no such thing as growth in grace to those who desecrate the Lord’s day. I have little hope of developing any member of this church into a spiritual worker who reads the Sunday newspaper before he comes to church, or who rides his bicycle for a pleasure-trip into the country.
It follows, therefore, that the Sabbath is a national necessity. Whatever is for the physical, mental, moral and spiritual good of the people is for the good of the nation. “Righteousness exalteth a nation,” and without obedience to the laws of our nature, which are the laws of God, there can be no national righteousness. Laws for the protection of the Sabbath are therefore for the protection of the nation. The men who, before the French Revolution, ceased to regard the Sabbath began to amuse themselves by cutting off each other’s heads, and the result was anarchy.
As animals, as thinkers, as moral agents, as Christians, as patriots, we should observe the Sabbath. Surely this fivefold necessity is a chord that ought not to be easily broken.
But the question arises. What is the Sabbath? The Jews observed the seventh day. Christians observe the first day. Which is right? Well, you will notice that in the Decalogue we are not told to remember the seventh day, but remember the Sabbath, so that even in the ten commandments there is room for the observance of another day provided it be one day in seven. It is of course impossible for everybody on the globe to observe the same point of time, for the seventh day in one place may be the sixth day in another. Ships sailing in one direction lose, and in another gain, a day. The principle is evidently observed when we hallow one day in seven. Jesus, in his teaching, rescued the seventh day from the superstitions which had gathered around it. The Pharisees even discussed the question as to whether it was right to eat an egg laid on the Sabbath day.
Their ritualistic observances had made the day a burden rather than a refreshment and a joy. Jesus taught by precept and practice that it was right to do well on the Sabbath day. The sick might be healed, the hungry might be fed, the distressed might be relieved. The ox should be taken out of the ditch, the ass should be led to water; there was no harm in plucking the ears of corn, that the necessary meal might be prepared. In Luke 14: i we are even told that he dined with a Pharisee on the Sabbath day, and improved the occasion by profitable discussion. It was certainly no feast, but rather a simple meal.
The Jews would not fight on the Sabbath day even in defense of their sacred city. Ptolemy, while besieging Jerusalem, learned this fact, and by making the attack on the Sabbath day easily captured the city and put thousands of them to the sword. The hallowed day had thus been so wrested from its original intent that Jesus spared no pains to rescue it and give it its proper setting. In the estimation of the superstitious Jew the Sabbath must be observed at the expense of health and life, so that it became a day not of rest but of ruin. And it was this day to which Paul referred when he wrote in Colossians 2:16: “Let no man judge you in meat or drink or in respect of a feast day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days.” The apostle had not thought of doing away with the day which is founded in physical, mental, moral, spiritual and national necessities. He was simply urging the Colossians not to be brought into bondage to the superstitious observances of the Jews with regard to that day.
But we are told that Jesus did not reaffirm the fourth commandment in his conversation with the rich young man. True, but he did not reaffirm the first commandment. He tested this young man only by the second tabic of the law, which gives our relations to each other, not our relations to God. The Sabbath is God’s day, and the command to observe it is in the first table of the law. On the same ground we might practice idolatry because Jesus did not reaffirm the command against worshiping idols. But in the Sermon on the Mount the Lord did reaffirm the whole moral law. “One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.” While there are bodies, minds, hearts and souls on earth or in heaven the law of the Sabbath cannot pass away. The moral law will be as good for heaven as for earth, and is eternal in its binding force. To set it aside would be to throw the world into moral chaos. Jesus gives us the great principle when he says: “The Sabbath was made for man,” and therefore no one has a right to take the Sabbath from him. It is for his good, and if he destroys it by denying its obligations or by desecrating it, he is really destroying himself.
“The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,” and has, therefore, a right to change the day from the seventh to the first, and this he did by a series of providences that hallowed the first day as truly as God hallowed the seventh at the end of the creative week. It was on the first day of the week that Jesus rose from the dead. He hallowed that day by appearing five times to his disciples, and he does not appear again for six days afterwards. His next appearance is on the first day of the week, when he confirms the faith of doubting Thomas. There was a seventh day intervening, but he paid no attention to it. It was on the first day of the week when the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost in the tongues of fire and as a rushing, mighty wind. This was the birthday of the New Testament church. Paul preached at
Troas, and broke bread on the first day of the week, and he wrote to the Corinthian Christians to lay aside of their substance on the first day of the week as the Lord had prospered them. This act of giving was a sacred act of worship and harmonized with the sacredness of the day. On the Isle of Patmos John was in the spirit of the Lord on the Lord’s day.
The early church certainly observed the first day of the week as its Sabbath. The fact that the Christian Sabbath is not the seventh day, but the first, is one of the strongest proofs that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. As we have seen, the Jews regarded the seventh day with superstitious reverence, and yet within a generation converted Jews ceased to regard the seventh day, and hallowed the first. No one can explain this change except on the ground that Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week, and the fact of his resurrection caused the change.
I am glad that our Lord gave no specific command setting apart the seventh day. His resurrection is command enough. By its power the first day was sanctified, and by the incarnation of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost it was made doubly hallowed. On the Lord’s day we think now of the new creation rather than the old, of the deliverance from sin rather than from Egypt, and the covenant of blood rather than the covenant of works, of the power and presence of the living Christ rather than the form of dying Judaism.
By faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus we may have the Sabbath in our hearts. “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” As the Sabbath day comes in the midst of busy days surrounded by turmoil and confusion, so the heart rest may be ours in the midst of business and even cares that press. This Sabbath within harmonizes sweetly with the spirit of the Sabbath without, and is a foretaste of the eternal Sabbath which remains to the people of God. 7