Page images
PDF
EPUB

long as one day is sanctified out of every seven, the purport of the institution is accomplished. Still it is necessary to explain the manner in which the alteration took place. For as the seventh day in order was fixed by the Almighty himself after the work of the creation, and as the Jew observed the same, or at least considered his six days' work to precede, and not follow his Sabbath, it is important to show the authority which retarded its celebration under the gospel, and fixed it one day later than the Jewish usage. Any change in a divine command, though in a point of itself subordinate, requires a sufficient reason, or we are guilty of altering, of our own minds, an authoritative rule of Almighty God.

We shall show, then, in the present discourse, that our day of religious rest, under the gospel, is not the Jewish Sabbath, but the Lord's day. We shall show that the change from the seventh to the first day of the week, was made on the authority of Christ and his apostles. We shall show that the transfer took place naturally, and almost necessarily, from the events attending the accomplishment of redemption. These points will of necessity occupy time --perhaps more than any preceding topic. But they will deserve all our care; as the alteration in question, nonessential as it is in itself, has perhaps more disturbed the minds of uninformed Christians, and more aided the cause of those who oppose the divine authority of the Christian Sabbath, than all the other objections together.

To proceed, then, in order, we shall first direct your attention to several PREPARATORY CIRCUMSTANCES in the history of the law of the Sabbath, which lay a probable ground for the change of the day: and then, secondly, the manner in which THE CHANGE ITSELF WAS GRADUALLY INTRODUCED.

I. The preparatory circumstances are numerous.

For, first, the PROPORTION OF TIME, which we have more than once alluded to, is not only an obvious part of the first institution in Paradise, but is so prominent in the wording of the fourth commandment, and in its different republications, as to lay a probable ground for the change of the day of celebration, if any paramount reasons should occur. If out of seven days, one be sanctified to holy rest, the spirit as well as the terms of the law are satisfied. In

the general course of nature, indeed, labor precedes repose; and in the primitive institution, the day of the Sabbath fell, from the order of creation and the example of the Almighty, upon the seventh, or last of the week. But even here the proportion of time between the working days and the day of rest, is laid as a foundation for the whole. The distribution of the work of creation over six days, marks the reason why the seventh was given to repose; and shows that the essence of the institution would be preserved, if after six days of labor, one of rest should succeed. Accordingly, in the revival of the Sabbath at the period of the fall of manna, not one word is said of the last day or the first day. All you can collect is, that they were to gather manna six days, and make a Sabbath of the seventh. Again, the fourth commandment, as we have said, is so worded as to admit of the change of the day of rest, without at all violating the institution. And this the divine lawgiver doubtless so arranged, with a view to the alteration which the gospel would introduce. The Jew could never have determined from this command on what day his first Sabbath was to be kept. It enjoins no more than that the interval of time between rest and rest should be six days. The proportion of the days is the essential point. The Christian Sabbath, in the sense of the fourth commandment, is as much the seventh day, as the Jewish Sabbath was the seventh day. It is kept after six days labor, as that was. It is the seventh day, reckoning from the beginning of our first working day, as well as their Sabbath was the seventh day, reckoning from the beginning of their first working day. So, in all the recapitulations of the fourth commandment, the substance is the proportion of time which we dedicate to God-a seventh portion with respect to six days' labor-and therefore the six days' labor are always noted when the seventh is spoken of. The

*

"The fourth commandment does not determine which day of the week we should keep as a Sabbath; but only that we should keep every seventh day, or one day after six. It says, 'Six days shalt thou labor, and the seventh thou shalt rest;' which implies no more than that after six days of labor, we should upon the next to the sixth rest. The words no way determine where these six days should begin, nor where the rest of the Sabbath should fall: that is supposed to be determined elsewhere. The precept in the fourth commandment is to be taken generally of such a seventh day as God should appoint, or had appointed.”—J. Edwards, -and so Dean Milner.

day when we begin to compute is, abstractedly speaking, of very little consequence. Our Lord's day may be called the seventh in relation to the six days' work, as well as the first in reference to the Jewish Sabbath, which preceded it. This single circumstance clears the whole question.

2. But there is, in the next place, the highest probability that the exact computation of time from the creation was LOST DURING THE BONDAGE OF EGYPT, and that the Jewish Sabbath was reckoned from some other daythe day of the redemption, for example—and not from the day when the Almighty rested after the creation. If this be the case, we are thrown yet more completely upon the proportion of time. Two thousand five hundred years of an unwritten law, closed with centuries of oppression in the Egyptian captivity, had in all probability disturbed the exact reckoning of weeks. An irregular observation of the sacred day had crept in previously-the impossibility of generally celebrating it at all, was doubtless one consequence of their task-masters' exactions;* and thus, though the institution was by no means effaced from their memory, the order of weeks was most likely interrupted. Nothing is more difficult than to preserve, in an early state of science and civilization, the accurate calculation of festivals, especially when recurring frequently, and admitting of an insensible removal from their relative position, by changes in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. The alteration is in such a case slight, and the order of things is tolerably well kept up. Many learned men, therefore, agree in thinking that it is highly improbable, that the day observed as the first Sabbath after the deliverance from Egypt, was precisely the same as the day on which the Almighty rested after the creation of man. They think it more likely that the redemption from bondage was the period whence the new reckoning dated.† Certain it is that the ten commandments are prefaced with a reason drawn from this great benefit-"I am the Lord thy God which brought thee

*

Cogitavi Egypto ubi serviebas, etiam ipso sabbato per vim te esse coactum ad labores.-Manasseh Ben Israel, on Deut. v. 15.

J. Mede, Grotius, Abp. Bramhall, J. Edwards, Dean Milner, Scott, all think the reckoning was lost, and was re-commenced at the fall of manna, Exodus xvi. And most of them conceive the new computation began from the day of Egyptian redemption.

out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."* And, what is more important, at the recapitulation of the law forty years afterwards, the same preface to the decalogue is retained, but the motive enforcing the fourth commandment is no longer drawn from the work of creation, but from that of redemption, as if that were the reason and date of the particular day on which the celebration was renewed. "And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and 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. Not a word is here said about the creation, as when the institution in paradise was cited in the first promulgation on Mount Sinai; but the Sabbath is expressly appointed to commemorate the mighty deliverance from Egypt. It is probable, therefore, that this was the day whence the new computation started! When the divine Savior, then, appeared and wrought out an eternal redemption, it was natural, it was almost necessary, that the day should be changed from the commemoration of the type to the commemoration of the antitype. The Sabbath then follows the mightiest benefit in each dispensation. In the patriarchal, creation; in the Mosaical, the redemption from Egypt; in the Christian, the spiritual redemption in the death and resurrection of Messiah. The essential point, the proportion of time, is untouched throughout. But let us proceed to observe,

3. That these things being so, the VERY FREEDOM AND UNIVERSALITY OF THE GOSPEL DISPENSATION would lead us to think that the same principle would be carried on, that the precise day of the week on which the Sabbath should be kept, would be less insisted on, and that a rule would be laid down applicable to all nations, in all ages, and in all parts of the world. While men were few, and lived nearly in the same quarter, as before the dispersion of Babel, and during the Mosaical economy, it would be easy to keep a pretty exact computation of the succession of time, as soon as the date from which the reckoning was to begin was given-or if the date was lost, as it probably was during the bondage of Egypt, as soon as the new

* Exod. xx. 11.

† Deut. v. 15.

æra was once determined on. But consider how different is the nature of the case under the gospel. Here you have not a distinct line of patriarchs, or a favored nation under a theocracy, but a dispensation designed for the whole race of mankind, whose disciples are multiplied in every quarter of the globe, and live under all meridians, and with every variety of civil government and scientific improvement. An appointed season dependent on a succession of days, and losing its validity if the day be miscalculated, seems, therefore, not very likely to be established under such a dispensation. Of two navigators sailing round the world in opposite directions, one would lose and the other gain a day in his computation-there would be a variation of two days. Now, which would be the seventh day of the week to each of the navigators? When Pitcairn's Island in the South Seas was visited a few years since by an English ship, our voyagers, on the day when they arrived, which was Saturday, found the islanders observing Sunday; the English ship and the islanders having arrived at the island by sailing from England in opposite directions. Under the gospel, then, we might expect that our duty would be fixed upon a plain and easy computation; that after six days of labor there should succeed one day of rest, without troubling men in all the regions of the earth, and under all circumstances, with reckoning up the course of weeks or the order of days from the beginning, which it would be utterly impossible for them to settle, if it were material.

How admirably the wisdom of God has provided for this in the arrangement and wording of the law of the Sabbath. from the first, I need not observe. Nor is it necessary to remark how naturally the change of the Jewish day of observance, to the Christian, would fall in with this design, and expedite the practical execution of it.

I think one would allow these remarks to be almost enough for the point in hand. Suppose any should say, the day of celebrating the sacred rest of religion has been changed under the gospel to honor our Lord's accomplishment of redemption, and has been so kept, as nearly as possible, by the whole church of Christ from the very age of the apostles; the essential law of the Sabbath, the proportion of time, being always preserved inviolate; I should conceive such a statement would be satisfactory. Nor do

« PreviousContinue »