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THE LORD'S DAY. 
 
THE LORD'S DAY. 
 
 E. W. HENGSTENBEiiG, 
 
 DOCTOR AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AT BERLIN. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 JAMES MARTIN, B.A., 
 
 i)F LYMINGTON. 
 
 LONDON : 
 WILLIAM FREEMAN, 60, FLEET-STREET. 
 
 1853. 
 
LONDON I 
 COC'RSHAW AND ROGKKSON, PRINTERS, HORSF.-SHOK COUKT, LUDGATE HILL. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 No Preface can be required for the purpose of introducing Heng- 
 stenberg to English readers. He is already sufficiently known and 
 appreciated, for his name alone to be all that is necessary, to secure 
 for any work of his their thoughtful perusal. But there are, perhaps, 
 few subjects on which a work from the continent would be looked 
 upon with greater suspicion than that of the present volume. Our 
 general horror of a " continental Sunday," and the prevalent idea 
 that laxity both of views and practice are universally characteristic of 
 foreigners, are enough to excite the instantaneous inquiry, Can any 
 good thing come out of Germany ? 
 
 These feelings do not exist without just cause. Our aversion to a 
 continental Sunday is certainly a right one. And, though the effect 
 upon foreigners is, perhaps, not so injurious as it would be upon us, 
 every true friend of his country, who has ever spent a Sunday abroad, 
 must have felt, as he marked the contrast between their Sundays and 
 ours, the earnest wish that we may for ever be preserved from the 
 temptation to spend our Sundays in the same way. 
 
 But the opinion is incorrect, that there are none in those countries 
 who deplore the evil. German tourists, who have visited England, 
 have often carried back a favourable impression of the English Sunday; 
 and, though unable to come to any other conclusion than that, out- 
 wardly, it is maintained with a rigour, and enforced by means, which 
 are characteristic of the Old Testament rather than the New, they 
 have yet returned, prepared to aid in any movement for promoting a 
 
IV TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 voluntary, spiritual, and, therefore, truly Christian observance of the 
 Sunday. With these feelings Hengstenberg strongly sympathises. 
 His professed and evident object is to encourage them ; and though, 
 in some respects, he objects to movements recently made, and endea- 
 vours to point out and correct certain evils connected with them, 
 his candour is but the proof of his sympathy; the only difference 
 being, that, whereas the over-zealous are for promoting a good object 
 in any way, seeking in the end the justification of the means, he is 
 desirous of promoting the same object in the best way. He is, there- 
 fore, not sparing in his condemnation of the use of arguments which 
 cannot be substantiated, as tending to do permanent injury to the 
 cause ; and is earnest in his warnings against any course which ignores 
 the peculiar spirit and precepts of the gospel, and which tends to fetter 
 the liberty, and cramp the energies, of the Church of the New Testa- 
 ment, by the attempt to force upon it the outward forms and letter of 
 the Old. 
 
 His free criticism of the English rigour and scrupulosity, and, espe- 
 cially, his reply to the arguments of Dwight, whom he takes as the 
 exponent of English as well as of American views, may, perhaps, pre- 
 vent a hearty welcome in some quarters. The possibility of settled 
 opinions being thereby disturbed, and the fears lest some should abuse 
 the Author's arguments to purposes the most remote from those which 
 he intended, may lead some to question the advisability of introducing 
 from Germany a work, which may unsettle here what it is intended to 
 establish there. To this it is sufficient to reply, by pointing to the 
 fact, that the disturbance of settled opinions has already taken place. 
 Recent events have brought to light, more clearly than ever, the extent 
 to which multitudes of our countrymen have not only broken away 
 from the authority, but have lost sight of the true worth and import- 
 ance of the " Lord's day." To stay the evil in time, and to bring 
 back those who are alienated, is a work, in which all earnest Chris- 
 tian men, with truly loving hearts, will be glad to engage. 
 
 But it is very certain, that this will never be accomplished by 
 making enemies of those whom we wish to gain, by appealing to the 
 
TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. V 
 
 law, to make our consciences the rule for others, or to thwart their 
 wishes, and prohibit their pleasures. And it is very doubtful whether 
 it will ever be of any use to trust to the arguments, which, till now, 
 have been found sufficient to defend what most men loved, and none 
 opposed. If this be the case, nothing can be more important than that 
 he who regards it as one of his greatest pleasures and advantages, 
 that he can spend the Sunday in purely spiritual engagements, and 
 in the worship of God, should, by a thorough investigation of the 
 whole question, and, by looking at it from all sides, ascertain on what 
 grounds he can most safely and forcibly impress on others (we do not 
 say the obligation), but the immense advantage of spending it in the 
 same way. In this task, he cannot fail to derive assistance from such 
 a work as the present. 
 
 There are some, no doubt, who think that if we have the right thing, 
 it matters little by what path we have reached it, or on what grounds 
 we maintain it. It would not be difficult to show that such an opinion 
 is utterly subversive of the teachings of the gospel, inasmuch as it has 
 been the chief characteristic of Pharisaism, both in and out of the 
 Church. The worth of the outward, for its own sake, even when not 
 the free utterance of the heart, but a form imposed, has been the 
 favourite doctrine of the Pharisee, the " whited sepulchre" in every age. 
 And there is always danger lest, after having secured the immense 
 boon, the one day free, we should not be content till we have canonized 
 the day, and thus made the words of Paul applicable to ourselves, " I 
 am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. Ye 
 observe days." It is hard to say which extreme is most dangerous, 
 laxity or legality ; and, therefore, it is always important to examine our 
 position well ; lest, whilst rejoicing over our escape from the one, we 
 should unwittingly have fallen into the other. The whirlpool of 
 Charybdis is but too likely to draw in those who have only thought of 
 escaping the jaws of Scylla. We cannot watch too carefully that 
 " liberty be not used for an occasion to the flesh ;" nor can we be too 
 cautious that, in preventing the latter, we do not restrict the liberty 
 also. 
 
VI TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 
 
 It would not, perhaps, be difficult to point out in this work weak 
 points, as well as strong — inferences which appear far fetched, and 
 applications which seem strained. But these do not affect the main 
 argument. A preface, however, is not the place for criticism. All 
 that a Translator has to do is to let the Author speak for himself, and 
 present the book to the English reader with all its merits and defects. 
 This is done, in the present case, with the hope, not only that it may 
 not lead any to value the " Lord's day" less, as a day of rest and 
 Christian worship, but that it may help to the discovery of the best 
 means of bringing back those who are estranged, to a right appreciation 
 of the worth of that worship, and those spiritual employments for 
 which a day of leisure affords so favourable an opportunity. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 Things old and new are offered here. The Second and Third Parts 
 have both appeared before. But it is twenty years since the former 
 was first published ; and it has undergone many alterations before its 
 incorporation in the present work. The Author would have cause to 
 be ashamed, if, during this time, he had neither learnt nor forgotten 
 anything. But the alterations only relate to details. The fundamental 
 principle remains the same ; and further investigation has fully esta- 
 blished the Author's belief in its correctness. 
 
 It is hoped, that the incorporation into one work of the productions 
 of different times will be rather advantageous than otherwise. In the 
 study of a subject, which ought to be looked at from different points of 
 view, it is difficult to avoid one-sidedness, if we only write under the 
 impressions and influences of one particular time. The Author has, 
 doubtless, not altogether avoided this danger. It was under the 
 influence of dissatisfaction, arising from the course adopted by the 
 English in Germany, that the Third Part was written ; and that 
 influence is probably too apparent, though he cannot erase anything 
 which he has said there. The First Part was written with reference 
 to the opposition which his published opinions had called forth. The 
 reader will, however, discover throughout the attempt to do equal 
 justice to all sides, and to bring clearly out, in one Part, whatever 
 points the others may have left in the shade. If any wish for more 
 than this, it is not in the Writer's power to satisfy them. The tendency 
 of the times, in most things, is to one-sidedness, extreme views, and 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 the splitting of hairs. Even amongst religious men the same tendency 
 frequently appears. In this, as in other questions, the Author cannot 
 accompany them. He is no lover of a dull, heartless "Juste milieu;" 
 but he is anxious to have a good conscience with regard to all the 
 expressions of the Holy Scriptures, and neither to do violence to any, 
 nor, in his heart, wish any away ; but to occupy the same position, 
 with regard to all of them, in which the natural philosopher stands, 
 who looks at his objects again and again, places them under the 
 microscope, and then describes truly what he has seen. 
 
 Many persons will think they can discover contradictions in this 
 work. The Author does not believe that it contains any. Whoever is 
 anxious to do justice to every side of a question, which is not of the 
 simplest kind, will always come to the verge of contradiction, and 
 therefore be exposed to the appearance of it. 
 
 " For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy word is a 
 lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Thy testimonies are my 
 delight and my counsellors. Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy 
 statutes ; and I shall keep it unto the end." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT : ITS LETTER AND SPIRIT. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The rest of God on the seventh clay 1 
 
 II . The fall of manna suspended on the seventh day . . . » -• . 5 
 
 III. The fourth commandment ........ i) 
 
 IV. The Sabbath a sign between God and the people .... 20 
 V. The Sabbath not to be suspended in harvest 22 
 
 VI. No tire to be kindled on the Sabbath 23 
 
 VII. The shew-bread renewed on the Sabbath . . . . . .24 
 
 VIII. The Sabbatic year 30 
 
 IX. A man stoned for gathering wood . . . . . . .31 
 
 X. The Sabbath a day of pleasure ....... 32 
 
 XI. Blessing pronounced upon a proper observance of the Sabbath . 35 
 XII. Characteristics of a right observance of the Sabbath . . .36 
 
 XIII. A psalm for the Sabbath day ib. 
 
 XIV. Neglect of the Sabbath by the Jews 37 
 
 XV. The disciples charged with a breach of the Sabbath . . .38 
 
 XVI. Pharisaic scruples met by Christ 41 
 
 XVII. Healing, the proper work of the Sabbath 42 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGE 
 
 XVIII. Paul's choice of the Sabbath for his missionary work ... 43 
 XIX. Paul's warning against a distinction of days . . . . .44 
 XX. The Lord's day 46 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE SABBATH OF THE JEWS, AND THE SUNDAY OF 
 CHRISTIANS. 
 
 I. History of opinions on the connexion between the Sabbath and Sunday. 52 
 
 II. Investigation of the connexion between the Sabbath and Sunday . 76 
 
 PART III. 
 
 REMEDIAL EFFORTS EXAMINED. 
 
 (Page 100). 
 
PAET I. 
 lire m Sotant 9aUntt(: its fetter Kirtr Sprat. 
 
 Ouk subject has been treated of late in a variety of ways; but the 
 conviction is still very general that it is not yet exhausted, and that 
 much of importance remains to be done. We intend in the present 
 article to examine chronologically the most important passages, pf the 
 holy Scriptures relating to the Lord's day, that we may ascertain to 
 what result we are brought in this way. This, method appears to be 
 the simplest and most natural, and if it cannot claim to be the only 
 one, it is yet indispensable to every other. The little room which it 
 leaves to doctrinal prejudice, which it rather serves to correct, is in 
 itself a reason that it should not be neglected. In every other method 
 we move too much according to inclination, and become one-sided, and 
 are too prone to select, even from the Bible, that which suits the direction 
 already taken by our own thoughts. The more closely we adhere to 
 the words of Scripture, the deeper will be the impression made upon 
 the heart by the truth we gain. The writer stands with his readers 
 before the Lord, and listens to his holy word. 
 
 I. The Rest of God on the Seventh Day. 
 
 " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 
 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he 
 rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God 
 blessed the seventh day and sanctified it ; because that in it he had rested from 
 all his work which God created and made." — (Gen. ii. 1 — 3.) 
 
 The first section of the Bible, in which the different events pass 
 before us with great rapidity, suddenly ends here. The description 
 
 B 
 
follows the action. Arrived at the rest of God, it also assumes a quiet 
 character of repose. 
 
 Particular notice must be taken here of the great importance, which 
 the Sabbath acquires from the fact, that God had it in view at the crea- 
 tion of the world, and that reference is made to it at the very com- 
 mencement of the Scriptures. This importance attaches chiefly to 
 the Sabbath of the Old Testament. But there is contained in this, at 
 the same time, the germ of the day of rest under the New. And, 
 moreover, in the Sabbath of the Old Testament the chief thing is not 
 that it is exactly the seventh day, but that it is the weekly returning 
 day of rest of the people of God, and, therefore, this early reference 
 is of great importance even for us. 
 
 In the opinion of many, no distinction is to be made between the 
 blessing, and sanctifying of "the seventh day. Thus Bonaventura : 
 " He blessed it, not only in that he praised it or approved it, or gave to 
 it a peculiarly productive power, but, as immediately follows, by sanc- 
 tifying it, i. e., separating it from worldly or profane works, and setting 
 it apart for works of holiness." But blessing is, on the contrary, 
 quite distinct from sanctifying. As Isa. lviii. 13, " If thou turn away 
 thy foot from the Sabbath," &c, explains what is meant by, " God 
 sanctified the seventh day," and, " Remember the seventh day, that thou 
 sanctifiest* it;" so the following verse explains the expression, " God 
 blessed the seventh day." " 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." To delight ourselves 
 in the Lord is to know him to be gracious. A similar exposition we 
 find in Jer. xvii. 24, &c. " And if ye diligently hearken to me, 
 to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the Sabbath 
 day, but sanctify the Sabbath day, to do no work therein ; then shall 
 there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon 
 the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, and this city 
 shall remain for ever. But if ye will not hearken unto me, then will 
 I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of 
 Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." He who sanctifies the 
 seventh day after the pattern which God has given him, is blessed by 
 him, according to the words, " Godliness is profitable unto all things, 
 
 * The -words are the same in the original. This is only one of numerous pas- 
 sages in -which our translators have, without reason, rendered the same word in 
 different ways, and thus prevented the Bible from being its own interpreter. — Te. 
 
having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come ;" 
 and, " Seek first the kingdom of God, and all other things shall be 
 added unto you." The blessing which, according to the letter, is 
 promised to the day, belongs in reality to the observance of it, and to 
 those who sanctify it. It is the reward of their faithfulness. The 
 blessing precedes the sanctifying, to preclude from the first all idea 
 that the interests of men have been overlooked. God, who is rich in 
 love, only asks of us that he may give more abundantly to us. His 
 fountain of blessing is opened by every offering that we bring to him. 
 It is not indeed any one of the seven days which is blessed and 
 sanctified, but specially the seventh day, the Sabbath. We stand thus 
 already not on ground which is common to humanity, but on that 
 which belongs specifically to the Israelites. And therefore, here, not 
 less than in the ten commandments, it is the work of theological inter- 
 pretation to trace any applicability to the Church of the New Testa- 
 ment. This is not difficult ; the stress is not to be laid upon the 
 separation of this particular day, so much as of one clay in general. 
 Here, and in all the Old Testament, the essence of the institution is 
 evidently the gift to the Church of God of a day for rest and meeting 
 amidst the work and distraction of this earthly life, as a corrective for 
 inevitable ills. " It is, indeed," says Calvin, " a meditation befitting 
 the whole life, the duty of every day, to contemplate the infinite 
 goodness of God, his justice and wisdom, displayed in this splendid 
 theatre of the heavens and the earth. But because men would most 
 probably engage in this with less zeal than they should, the seventh 
 day was especially chosen to make up for the want of constant medi- 
 tation." The seventh day, the Sabbath, is only positively, not exclu- 
 sively, appointed in the Old Testament. Even the Old Testament 
 recognises no holiness as existing in any day in itself. For instance, 
 circumcision was to be performed on the eighth day, but that it was 
 not unalterably confined to that day is evident from the account in 
 Joshua v., where the whole mass of the people, who had omitted it 
 during the journey, are said to have been circumcised on the same 
 day. The passover was to be eaten on the evening of the fourteenth 
 day of the first month. But if any were unclean at the time, it was 
 eaten by them a month later, with the same blessing (Num. ix. l,&c). 
 If, then, the chief festival of the Old Testament was not inseparably 
 attached to the day, this certainly applies to the weekly festival also. 
 The change might not, it is true, be made at pleasure, even in the case 
 of the passover. Such an alteration was only justifiable under such 
 
 b 2 
 
circumstances, as evidently contained in themselves a Divine com- 
 mand. 
 
 The rest of God is mentioned as the reason for that of man. " God 
 blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, for on it he rested ; " " in six 
 days God made the heaven and the earth, . . therefore the Lord 
 blessed the seventh day and sanctified it." But in the rest of man we 
 see the reason for that of God. That the object of his rest was to instruct 
 by symbol, is apparent from the words, " On the seventh day he rested, 
 and refreshed himself" (Exod. xxxi. 17). If this be admitted, the 
 rest of the Sabbath is freed from its evidently forced isolation, and 
 placed on equal footing with that of all the festivals, from which 
 Lev. xxiii. prohibits its separation. And if the rest of the other 
 festivals was only designed to furnish the opportunity and means of 
 improvement, the same must be true of the Sabbath also. This idea, 
 too, coincides exactly with the whole character of the creation. " All 
 is yours " is true also of it. " God," says Calvin, " devoted six days 
 to the creation of the world ; not that he needed the succession of time, 
 for to him a moment is as a thousand years, but to detain us in the con- 
 templation of his works." It was for our good that the creation of the 
 world was spread over six days, in order that his creative power might 
 more deeply impress us ; that our gaze might be directed longer to this 
 grand display, and our hearts be filled with warmer love to the Creator; 
 and that, as we studied this universe, and learned what place we filled 
 within it, we might, in the words of the 8th Psalm, exclaim, " What is 
 man, that thou art mindful of him? " " How excellent is thy name in 
 all the earth." The symbolical and prefigurative character of the rest 
 of God was perceived by Calvin. " Because," he says, " men are so 
 slow to praise the justice, and wisdom, and power of God, and to con- 
 sider his benefits, that, although constantly reminded of them, they 
 remain unaffected, a powerful impulse is given in this example of God, 
 and the command is shown to be one of love. Nothing can allure 
 more kindly, or draw more powerfully, than an invitation to be imitators 
 of him." 
 
 The rest, to which, with adorable condescension, God invites us by 
 his own example, ]^»'estipposes work, hard, oppressive work, which tends 
 to draw away from God. Rest is the remedy for the ills which are 
 inseparable from this toil. If anything is clear, the connexion be- 
 tween the Sabbath and the Fall undoubtedly is. The work, which 
 needs intermission lest it should endanger the divine life, is not the 
 cheerful and pleasant occupation of which we read in Gen. ii. 15, but 
 
the oppressive and degrading toil spoken of in the following chapter, 
 work in the sweat of the brow, upon the earth which brings forth 
 thorns and thistles. Liebetrut's assertion, that " the account of the 
 keeping of the Sabbath by God, at the termination of the week of 
 creation, proves indisputably that the occasion is not to be found in 
 the Fall and its consequences, but the idea of the festival is en- 
 tirely independent of human sin and weakness," could only be 
 correct, if here before the Fall we found the command, "Remember the 
 Sabbath day to keep it holy," attached to the announcement, " God 
 sanctified the seventh day." But since this is delayed till Exod. xx., 
 and all that is said of the rest of God is contained in a book written 
 for men who lived long after the Fall, what hinders our concluding 
 that God rested, blessed, and sanctified, with reference to the mournful 
 fall already foreseen by him, that the eternal pity for the fallen cared 
 for them, even before they fell ? And if it be so, there is no ground for 
 believing, with the same writer, that the "just made perfect" will 
 celebrate the Sabbath " in a manner suited to the new Paradise." If 
 we deny in this way all connexion between the festivals, especially the 
 Sabbath, and human weakness, we must necessarily believe that they 
 are kept by angels also. But what employment, peculiar to such a 
 day, remains for those who " rest not day nor night, saying, Holy, 
 holy, holy?" Sabbaths for the just made perfect are opposed to 
 Rev. vii. 9 — 17, and especially ver. 15, they " serve him day and night 
 in his temple." The Christian's hope of eternal life would be dimi- 
 nished by the thought. Eternal life must set us free from the day of 
 rest also, delightful as it is on earth, for then we " rest from our 
 labours." 
 
 II. The Fall of Manna suspended on the Seventh Day. 
 
 Exod. xvi. In ver. 5, the Lord says to Moses, after telling him he 
 will send the manna, " And it shall come to pass that on the sixth day, 
 when they prepare what they bring in, it shall be twice as much as 
 they gather daily." 
 
 From ver. 22, it reads thus : " And it came to pass, that on the 
 sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for each. 
 And all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses. And he 
 said unto them, This is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is 
 the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord. Bake what ye will bake, 
 and boil what ye will boil ; and that which remaineth over, lay up for 
 you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morn- 
 
ing, as Moses bade ; and it did not stink, neither was there any worm 
 therein. And Moses said, Eat that to-day ; for to-day is a Sabbath 
 untn the Lord : to-day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye 
 shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it 
 there shall be none. And it came to pass, that there went out some 
 of the people on the seventh day, for to gather, and they found none. 
 And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my com- 
 mandments and my laws ? See, for that the Lord hath given you the 
 Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two 
 days : abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place 
 on the seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh day." 
 
 As we found in Gen. ii. the heavenly, so here we have the earthly 
 prelude to the institution of the Sabbath. But as it was not yet fully 
 established, the rulers and people could not perfectly understand what 
 Moses did. The exposition appeared later. Now it might have been 
 said, " What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know here- 
 after." 
 
 It shows the great importance of the Sabbath, that God here 
 first sanctifies it by an act, before the command is given on Sinai to 
 the people to sanctify it. This sanctification in act is shown in three 
 things. First, that God, because of the rest of the Sabbath, gave a 
 double portion on the day before. Secondly, that he kept in perfect 
 freshness, to the astonishment of the rulers and the people, a part of 
 that portion. And thirdly, that on the seventh day he rained no 
 manna, and in this way separated the seventh day from the other six. 
 
 This actual sanctification of the Sabbath is a sufficient reply to the 
 chief argument, which natural reason can bring against the keeping 
 of it. We may find in the fact, that on the sixth day the double 
 portion fell, on the seventh none, the lesson for all ages, that the 
 blessing of God, on which all depends, can indemnify those who offer 
 part of their time to him, and that they may labour in vain, who will 
 use for their own advantage the day which he selected for himself. 
 
 We are not to suppose, that by this act the Sabbath was fully intro- 
 duced amongst the Israelites. The keeping of the Sabbath is certainly 
 mentioned, but, as the connexion shows, only so far as the collection 
 and preparation of the manna were concerned. The instructions as to 
 the complete sanctification of the Sabbath were first given at Sinai. It 
 was not intended to enjoin this here, but, as Calvin has well and briefly 
 said, " by the act itself the seventh day was hallowed before the pro- 
 mulgation of the law. - ' 
 
The Sabbath could only exert its beneficent power in combination 
 with a complete system of divine arrangements ; as now all efforts 
 to promote the observance of the Lord's day, amongst those who sub- 
 mit to no other restraints, will be thrown away. It has no meaning 
 except as a link in a perfect chain. By itself it has as little life as a 
 single amputated limb of the human body. 
 
 The context offers a triple proof that the Sabbath tuas till then en- 
 tirely unknown to the Israelites. 1. When a double portion fell on the 
 sixth day (for which God had prepared Moses, though the latter had 
 certainly not mentioned it to the people), the rulers came and told it to 
 Moses. " They are astonished at the providence of God, that they had 
 found a double quantity of manna, and ask what they are to do with 
 it." The reply which Moses makes them, shows us the reason of 
 their bringing him the information. This, to them inexplicable, oc- 
 currence is first explained in his reply. Then follow directions how to 
 dispose of the surplus. Now, neither of these, the astonishment nor 
 the perplexity, could have arisen if the Sabbath had been already 
 known and observed. 2. We are led to the same conclusion, when 
 we find that, notwithstanding the instructions of Moses, some of the 
 people went out on the Sabbath to gather, showing how new a thing it 
 was to the people, and how difficult it was at first to conform. And, 
 3, we infer it also from the total absence in the words of Moses of a 
 reference to an already existing Sabbath ordinance. Liebetrut, indeed, 
 thinks that the words of Moses, " This is that which the Lord hath 
 said," &c, show that the Sabbath was already known, since no such 
 declaration is made in vers. 4, 5. But Moses is not referring here to an 
 earlier revelation of the Lord, but to something actually said by the 
 Lord when pouring out the double portion of manna on the sixth day ; 
 this is that which the Lord says (by this occurrence), " To-morrow 
 is the rest of the holy Sabbath to the Lord." 
 
 Let us add, to the arguments deduced from our narrative against a 
 pre-Mosaic Sabbath, that the second chapter of Genesis does not con- 
 tain the slightest trace of the promulgation of a Sabbath command, 
 but, on the contrary, in striking contrast to Exodus xx., simply men- 
 tions the Divine intention that the seventh day shall be sanctified, and 
 further, that there is not in the history the least reference to a Sabbath 
 before the time of Moses ; and no doubt will remain that the Sabbath 
 was first instituted in connexion with the whole of the Mosaic 
 economy. 
 
 The name Sabbath first appears in this narration. It is not men- 
 
8 
 
 tioned in Gen. ii. There, only the seventh day is spoken of. We 
 may, indeed, discover a slight hint at the name, but this is left to grow 
 out of the institution itself, which is at first independent of it. The 
 meaning of the name cannot be doubtful. The form denotes perfect 
 rest, in contrast with the six days of work, rOW, resting, rQtt> } the 
 perfectly tranquil (sc. day). 
 
 There are other days of rest in the Old Testament besides the 
 weekly one. As a rule, its festivals are holidays. But the name Sab- 
 bath is set apart and sacred to the seventh day of the week. There 
 are only two exceptions to this. In Lev. xxiii. 11 — 15, the first day 
 of the passover, which was distinguished from the others as a day of 
 rest, is called a Sabbath. There can be no doubt that the first day of 
 the passover is here referred to, not only from the context, but from the 
 testimony of the Septuagint, Philo, Josephus, and the Rabbinical 
 writers, without exception. The great day of atonement is also called 
 a Sabbath in Lev. xxiii. 32. This bears a greater resemblance to the 
 weekly Sabbath than the other days of rest, because on it no food was 
 prepared, which was permitted on the other festivals. But the excep- 
 tion is only partial in this case. For in the same verse with the words, 
 " Ye shall (on the day of atonement) keep your Sabbath," we find these 
 also, " a Sabbath of rest it shall be to you;" so that it is expressly 
 pointed out that, on account of the rest, the name of the Sabbath is 
 transferred to this day. " Ye shall keep your Sabbath," is therefore 
 the same as, " Ye shall rest on it as on the Sabbath." In the same 
 way we may regard the name as only transferred to the first day of the 
 passover, distinguishing it from the other festivals on which work was 
 allowed. This transference of the name, however, to the first day of 
 the passover and the day of atonement, is of importance, inasmuch as 
 it shows that we are not to regard the rest of the Sabbath as different 
 from that of other festivals, as they do who look upon the rest of God 
 on the seventh day as the precise reason for the rest of. man on the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 " The Lord gives you the Sabbath," were the words used by Moses. 
 Thus early the Sabbath appears not as a burden, but a pleasure (Isa. 
 lviii. 13), a costly privilege which the Lord gives to his people. To be 
 able to rest, without being full of care, to rest to the Lord and in the 
 Lord, how great a comfort amidst our toil and work on the earth which 
 God has cursed ! But just because the day of rest is a gift of the 
 merciful God, so much more grievous will be the consequence of 
 despising it. 
 
III. The Fourth Commandment. 
 
 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour 
 and do all thy work : but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God : 
 in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man 
 servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within 
 thy gates : for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that 
 in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath 
 day and hallowed it." — (Exod. xx. 8 — 11.) 
 
 We shall first compare this form of the commandment with that 
 which we find in the fifth chapter of Deuteronomy. In general the dif- 
 ference between the ten commandments as given in Exodus and in 
 Deuteronomy is this, that in the former we have the original con- 
 densed form ; in the latter a repetition, with exhortations. The latter 
 are always expansions, never abridgments ; less the demonstrative 
 speech of law, than the free utterance of the heart. The ten com- 
 mandments in Exodus are self-supported ; those in Deuteronomy refer 
 expressly to an earlier form. Instead of, " Remember the Sabbath day, 
 to sanctify it," we read, "Keep* the Sabbath day, to sanctify it, as the 
 Lord thy God hath commanded thee." 
 
 The words, " remember the Sabbath day," contain a slight allusion 
 to the fact that the Sabbath was not altogether unknown to the 
 Israelites. Not that so much stress can be laid upon the word remem- 
 ber in itself (for one might commence a new command with the exhor- 
 tation to remember it, after it is once received), as upon the abrupt 
 manner in which the Sabbath day is mentioned in the Decalogue, 
 whereas, in the account of the creation, the name Sabbath does not 
 previously occur. But Moses had undoubtedly instructed the people 
 in this history of the creation ; at any rate the occurrence related in 
 Exod. xvi. had already happened, and to this he probably appended that 
 instruction. It will, however, be clearly seen, that the allusion to a 
 previous acquaintance with the Sabbath is very slight, and that it does 
 not involve sufficient knowledge of the* proper mode of sane^fying it, 
 to indicate an earlier command and observance (as the advocates of a 
 pre-Mosaic Sabbath imagine), if we notice the full instructions given 
 after the "remember" as to the manner in which this remembrance shall 
 be carried out. The " keep," on the other hand, shows expressly, 
 . that all that is required is, to hold fast what is already possessed. We 
 
 * That the word keep here means preserve, is evident from Isa. lvi. 2, " he 
 that keepeth the Sabbath, so as not to pollute it, and keepeth his hand from 
 doing any evil." 
 
10 
 
 find, too, in Deuteronomy, by the side of this, the words, " As the 
 Lord thy God has commanded thee," which decidedly refer to Exod. 
 xx. 8. 
 
 Instead of, " for in six days," &c, we find in Deut. v. 14, 15, " that 
 thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou. And 
 remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt : and that 
 the Lord thy God brought thee out thence with a strong hand and a 
 stretched out arm. Therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to 
 keep the Sabbath day." 
 
 We have here an appeal to the hearts of masters in favour of their 
 servants, in the words, " that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant 
 may rest as well as thou." They are a digression from the immediate 
 question, and could not have occurred in the first strictly systematic 
 form. That which is contained there of the rest of servants, and 
 strangers, and cattle, does not rest on the ground of humanity, but is 
 intended to secure " that wherever the eyes of the Israelites turned, 
 they should be attracted to the keeping of the Sabbath, that nothing 
 which disturbed the Sabbath should come in their way." But here, on 
 the contrary, the heart of the Lawgiver, which is ever full of tender 
 love to the miserable, pours itself more freely out. Calvin regards it 
 from the right point of view when he says, " Because this belongs to 
 the rule of love, it could find no place for itself in the first table, and 
 is thus added by Moses only as an accidental advantage." 
 
 And the following words, " remember that thou wast a servant," &c, 
 are intended especially to induce them to allow cheerfully to men- and 
 maid-servants the Sabbath rest. The parallel passages are proofs of 
 this. Thus Deut. xv. 15 : "And thou shalt remember that thou wast 
 a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed 
 thee ; therefore I command thee this thing to-day." In ch. xvi. 12, after 
 an injunction to be benevolent to all who are in distress, there follows, 
 " and thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt." 
 (Compare xxiv. 12 — 18; Exod. xxii. 20 ; Lev. xix. 34.) But we must 
 not stop here. It is not, " remember the Sabbath to have it kept," 
 but " to keep it." The words evidently correspond with the preamble 
 to the ten commandments, " I am the Lord thy God, who brought 
 thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." From 
 the position in which these words stand, we infer that they apply to 
 the whole commandment, and not merely to a subordinate part. We 
 must, therefore, supply in thought, " and let others keep the Sabbath," 
 which indeed is included in the command to keep it. The conscious- 
 
11 
 
 ness of deliverance leads to both : first, he who is delivered will prove 
 his gratitude to the deliverer by serving him, a duty implied in the 
 preamble to the commandments, which speaks of the redemption as 
 the universal ground of obligation, saying, as it were, " This did I for 
 thee, what dost thou for me ? " and then he will cherish affection for 
 all who are in distress. For ye know from experience Avhat they 
 endure ; " ye know the heart of a stranger," and so, too, ye know 
 from experience that the miserable are God's clients ; and the heart, 
 which is thankful for its own deliverance, will be cheerfully occupied 
 in reducing to practice the knowledge it has obtained. 
 
 Many have concluded from, this passage, that the Old Testament 
 Sabbath was a festival commemorative of the deliverance from Egypt. 
 This opinion is as far from correct as the other, that it is established in 
 Gen. ii. with specific reference to the creation. The deliverance from 
 Egypt appears here, not as the reason of the festival, but as the ground 
 of obligation to observe it, as also to keep the other commandments. 
 This deliverance would not have been thus introduced, had it not been 
 that at that time it held the first place amongst the works of God for 
 his people. This being the case, it was necessarily one of the chief 
 subjects of meditation on the Sabbath, whose work it was to contem- 
 plate the works of God, and praise him for his manifestations. But 
 this did not constitute the essence of the institution, which would have 
 been the case if the Sabbath had been designated here as strictly a 
 memorial of the deliverance from Egypt. This belongs to its local, 
 temporary character alone. It can and must, therefore, change with 
 the circumstances. 
 
 It is very evident that the Sabbath commandment in this shape 
 could not be applied to the New Testament. But we must bear in 
 mind that the redemption by Christ occupies in the New Testament 
 the position held by the redemption from Egypt in the Old. Not as 
 though the latter possessed no interest for the Church now ; but it has 
 lost its central importance, and appears only as a prelude to the redemp- 
 tion by Christ. 
 
 We shall now confine ourselves entirely to the commandment in its 
 original form. The first and second commandments relate to the 
 heart, the third to the tongue, the fourth to the hand and foot. (Comp. 
 Isa. lviii. 13, "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from 
 doing thy pleasure.") The first and second command us to fear God, 
 the third to swear by his name, and the fourth to serve him. Service 
 embraces all the acts of life. In Josh. xxiv. 14, " Now, therefore, 
 
12 
 
 fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth," the service is 
 co-extensive with the fear, the practical proof of its existence. In 
 Job xxi. 14, 15, it is said of the wicked, " They say unto God, Depart 
 from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. What is the 
 Almighty, that we should serve him ? and what profit should we have 
 if we pray unto him ? " In this passage, whilst the latter verse shows 
 that service involves worship in its stricter sense, the former proves 
 that it denotes the whole conduct so far as it is pleasing to God. 
 Service in this sense, which makes the whole life a worship, is used in 
 Job xxxvi. 11, and Luke i. 75, " that we might serve him in holiness 
 and righteousness before him all our days." But though this " pure 
 and undefiled service," of which James speaks, must be included in 
 the works of the Sabbath, yet it is evident that worship, in its stricter 
 sense, distinguished the service of the Sabbath, since the other duties 
 relating to superiors and neighbours are specially and fully prescribed 
 afterwards. 
 
 From the whole character of the ten commandments there can be 
 no doubt that the Sabbath formed only a part of the worship of God; 
 that it is to be regarded only as a specimen ; and that, in reality, the 
 worship here required is one which runs through the whole life. This 
 commandment was perfectly obeyed by Anna, " who departed not from 
 the temple, but served with fastings and prayers day and night." And 
 not less so by " the women who assembled at the door of the congre- 
 gation" (Exod. xxxviii. 8), who withdrew from the world that they 
 might give themselves up entirely to spiritual exercises. Only the 
 pharisaic lovers of a mechanical religion could ever think that the 
 letter of the command expresses all that it requires. On the other 
 hand, however, we may learn, from the fact that only the Sabbath is 
 named in the ten commandments, whilst no mention is made of the 
 whole system of sacrifices, of festivals, &c, this alone being worthy to 
 represent the whole, how important a position the Sabbath held, how 
 all the rest settle in a group around it, and, therefore, to what inevit- 
 able ruin the Church is exposed when this is not preserved. 
 
 It is a question of importance, in what relation the command to rest 
 stands to the preceding one, " to keep it holy ;" whether this enjoins 
 the consecration of the day to God in every respect, of which the rest- 
 ing is but one prominent feature ; or whether the latter half of the 
 command explains the former, and the keeping holy involves nothing 
 more than resting. If the latter were correct, the bridge, which con- 
 nects the Sabbath of the Old Testament with the Sunday of the New, 
 
13 
 
 would be completely destroyed. If Riicker is right in saying, " The 
 essence of the Jewish Sabbath consists in this — 1. That the creation 
 of the world was the object of contemplation ; 2. That it was kept on 
 the seventh day ; and 3. That it was a day of perfect rest," we must 
 grant that he is also right in denying that there is any connexion 
 between the Sabbath and the Sunday. But more than this, if the 
 keeping holy of the Sabbath meant only resting, the divine character 
 of this institution, and indeed of the whole Mosaic law, would vanish. 
 A religion that could only celebrate its sacred days by slothful inacti- 
 vity, would not bear on its forehead the seal of divine origin. 
 
 If there were no other ground for disputing the position, that the 
 sanctifying of the Sabbath involved only rest, we should find one in 
 its late and doubtful origin. Josephus and Philo know nothing of it. 
 To them the Sabbath is the day of devotion, of holy contemplation, 
 of meditation on the law of the Lord, and rest is but the means to 
 this end. Josephus says,* " He commanded, not that they should 
 hear it once or twice, or frequently, but that every week they should 
 leave their work and assemble to hear the law, and learn it accurately." 
 Philo,f in words more conformed to the taste and style of the -Gen- 
 tiles, says, " For it was always the custom to engage in philosophical 
 pursuits ((pi\ocro(pEiv) whenever an opportunity could be found, espe- 
 cially on the seventh days ; in these the teacher led the way and 
 taught what ought to be said and done, and the people applied them- 
 selves by purity and goodness to amend their manners and lives. 
 Hence, even now, on the seventh day the Jews study the philosophy 
 of their fathers, setting apart that time for the pursuit of knowledge 
 and the contemplation of the objects of Nature. For the houses of 
 prayer in different cities, what are they but schools of learning?" 
 
 The originator of the opposite opinion was Spencer. In his work 
 on the ritual law of the Hebrews, which appeared in England towards 
 the end of the seventeenth century, at the time when Deism was gain- 
 ing strength, he opposes those who maintain that the Sabbath was 
 appointed for purposes of worship and devotion, and endeavours to 
 prove that the festival of the Sabbath consisted only in the ces- 
 sation of work. It was not extraordinary that Spencer should express 
 this opinion. But it was strange that the pious and acute Vitringa 
 was so incautious as to fall in with, and even to refer to, him. Thus 
 he says, " The lawgiver commences with the summary of the com- 
 
 * Cont. Ap. b. ii. § 17. t De Vita Mosis, p. 530. 
 
14 
 
 mandment, ' Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy,' and then 
 explains, in the latter part, what keeping holy implies. This con- 
 tinuation contains directions to cease from work, and to extend this 
 rest to others. And wherever this command of God is repeated, we 
 find only the injunction to abstain entirely from work, which proves in 
 our opinion that the keeping holy of the seventh day consisted merely, 
 as the words of the commandment read, in entire abstinence from 
 work."— (Obss. Sacr., b. i. p. 292-3.) 
 
 The safest mode of deciding this question, whether the keeping holy 
 consisted only in resting, or included something besides, will be to 
 examine whether in general the other books of Moses speak only of the 
 resting as that which distinguished the Sabbath, or whether they men- 
 tion other modes of sanctifying it, and lay stress on other things as 
 distinguishing this day from the rest of the week. We shall, if we do 
 this, find it impossible to reconcile what occurs in other passages with 
 the original command, unless we admit that even in the latter the 
 " keeping ]ioly" implied something more than rest. 
 
 The peculiar sacrifice offered on the Sabbath is at once a proof, that 
 the rest was not the only mark of the Sabbath. And even Vitringa 
 remarks on this, " God commanded that the offerings on that day 
 should be increased. But since the offerings were outward signs of 
 the worship of God, the Israelites were, as it seems, reminded by this, 
 that God required from them on this day more worship than on any 
 other." 
 
 Moreover, great stress is laid in this law upon the study of the laic 
 of the Lord, which contains not only his commandments, but, in close 
 connexion with these, all his past acts, in order that, in this exercise, 
 motives might be found to keep the commandments, and their hearts 
 warmed and made willing to obey. In Deut. vi. 6, 7, we read, " And 
 these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart ; 
 and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk 
 of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by 
 the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." 
 Compare with this Deut. xvii. 19, in which the book of the law is to 
 be always by the side of their future king, and he is to read therein all 
 the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God ; and 
 Josh. i. 8, " This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, 
 but thou shalt meditate therein day and night." With this view of 
 the importance of the law, how is it possible to suppose that it was 
 not the intention of the lawgiver that the spare time, caused by the 
 
15 
 
 leisure of the seventh day, should be employed in the study of this law ? 
 This followed so inevitably, that it did not require to be expressly said. 
 If the law really possesses the importance attached to it here, the 
 seventh day could not be perfectly and truly sanctified without giving 
 it a prominent place. And again, the duty of the Levites was to 
 " teach Jacob thy judgments and Israel thy law" (Deut. xxxiii. 10) ; 
 and the work of the priests to " teach the children of Israel all the 
 statutes which the Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses " 
 (Lev. x. 11). Now if this was the task of the priests and Levites, 
 who were scattered through all Israel, that it might be the more easily 
 discharged, how could the intention of the lawgiver have been any 
 other, than that they should especially employ in their calling, that 
 one day, which alone offered them a perfectly free scope for the 
 discharge of its duties ? This is especially confirmed by the analogous 
 arrangement made for the public reading of the law during the 
 Sabbatic year. From 2 Kings iv. 23, we learn that the free mode of 
 assembling adopted in the synagogues was very ancient. The pious 
 Jews of the ten tribes, as we may infer from this passage, were accus- 
 tomed to meet on the Sabbaths, with the prophets, who had taken the 
 place, in this kingdom, of the banished priests. Compare also Acts 
 xv. 21, according to which " Moses has of old time in every city them 
 that preach him." 
 
 All doubt, however, is removed by the fact, that in Lev. xxiii. 3, 
 assemblies for the worship of God are expressly enjoined on the Sabbath. 
 " Six days shall work be done : but the seventh day is the Sabbath of 
 rest, a holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein." How com- 
 pletely this fact overthrows the more contracted notion of the sanctifica- 
 tion of the Sabbath, is evident from the forced interpretation which 
 Vitringa and those who adopt this opinion are driven to employ, in 
 order to set it aside.*' 
 
 The most important duty of the " holy assemblies " at Jerusalem 
 was no doubt the offering of the sacrifices, which had to be pre- 
 sented as part of the worship of the Sabbath. The natural accompani- 
 
 * The word here translated a holy convocation, Vitringa tries to deprive of 
 its force by rendering it " a proclamation of holiness ; '* "it was announced by 
 the herald or by the trumpet that these days were holy." But the parallel 
 passages show that the word exactly corresponds with our word congregation, 
 e.g., Isa. iv. 5: "And the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of 
 Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies," &c. Num. x. 2 : " Make two trumpets — 
 for the calling of the assembly." 
 
1G 
 
 ment of sacrifice is prayer. As early as the time of the patriarchs the 
 sacrifice was connected with " calling upon the Lord." That singing 
 also formed a part, is evident from the fact that one of the psalms is 
 headed " for the Sabbath day," for which its contents are specially 
 adapted. From the importance attached in the law itself to the public 
 reading of the law, this could scarcely have been omitted, and with the 
 reading, explanation and application would soon be connected. But 
 the bringing of offerings was confined to the national temple. In other 
 places the worship was free from all such restrictions. 
 
 We have thus clearly shown from passages occurring in the law of 
 Moses itself in reference to the sanctification of the Sabbath, that this 
 was never to be restricted to rest. We are led to the same result by 
 that which we read in the other books of the Old Testament. Every- 
 where we see that so contracted a sanctification was never thought of. 
 
 That all trade and commerce rested on the Sabbath, as well as on 
 the other festivals, even the least important, such as the new moon, 
 appear from Amos viii. 5, 6, where the wicked say, " When will the 
 new moon be gone, that we may sell corn, and the Sabbath, that we 
 may set forth wheat ?" &c. In Nehem. x. 32, it is ordered that if the 
 people of the land bring anything into the town on the Sabbath, even 
 though it could be taken in without interfering with the rest, and 
 without that work which was forbidden on the Sabbath, it was not to 
 be bought. Now in the Mosaic law the cessation of trade is not ex- 
 pressly commanded, so that here we have a proof that no one thought 
 of restricting the observance to rest. The sanctification of the Sab- 
 bath, and also of the festivals, the setting apart, and dedication of them 
 to God, precluded that trade, in which a man pursues his own interests, 
 seeks his own advantage, and which tends therefore to foster selfish- 
 ness and a worldly mind. 
 
 If the law of God had appointed rest alone as that which constituted 
 the sanctification of the Sabbath, Isaiah would be chargeable with pre- 
 sumption for including so much more, in his directions as to the mode 
 of keeping it. (Ch. lviii. 13.) All that devolved on him was to explain 
 the law. But there we read, " 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." Here the proper observance of the Sabbath is said 
 to comprise the unconditional and entire renunciation and denial of all 
 their natural desires, and complete self-consecration to God. We see 
 
17 
 
 therefore, that a man might be guilty of Sabbath-breaking, who pre- 
 served the outward rest most scrupulously ; that the command was not 
 limited to the external action, but that it applied to the tongue, which 
 was not to speak vain words on this day, but only such as promoted 
 the glory of God, and the improvement of one's neighbour and one's 
 self ; and the heart, which was not to feel the day to be a burden, but 
 to rejoice in it as a gracious invitation of God ; that, in fact, it was to 
 be a day of rest from the distractions, the cares, the labours and sins of 
 this miserable world. And when Ezekiel (xx. 13) condemns the 
 whole sinful life of the Israelites as a pollution of the Sabbath, it 
 is evident that he looks upon it as something more than a day of 
 rest. 
 
 There is yet another point of view which establishes the correctness 
 of our conclusion. By excluding everything but rest from the keeping 
 of the Sabbath holy, ice make a difference between the rest of the Sabbath, 
 and that of the other festivals, in direct opposition to Lev. xxiii., where 
 they are all classed together. In this chapter the " rest" is clearly 
 pointed out, as only the means to the more important end of devotion. 
 This is shown particularly in ver. 28, " Ye shall do no work in that same 
 day : for it is a day of atonement, to make atonement for you before 
 the Lord your God." Again, in ver. 32, the rest is brought into imme- 
 diate connexion with the " afflicting of their souls." And lastly, as in 
 this chapter, the cessation of all employment goes hand in hand with 
 the holy meeting and the sacrifice, and is evidently the means and con- 
 dition of a holy state of mind ;* so also in Exod. xii. 16, the connexion is 
 indicated between a day of rest and a holy meeting. " And on the first 
 day (sc. of the passover) there is a holy convocation, and on the 
 seventh day there shall be a holy convocation to you ; no manner of 
 work shall be done on them ; save that which every man must eat, 
 that only may be done of you." 
 
 If, then, we have allotted to the rest of the Sabbath its proper place 
 and design, it follows that these words of Thomas Aquinas are quite 
 in accordance with the spirit of the divine law : — " Corporeal labours 
 are opposed to the keeping of a Sabbath, so far as they interfere with 
 a man's attention to divine things. And because sin interferes with 
 this far more than corporeal labour, he who sins on the day breaks the 
 commandment more than he who works." 
 
 And, again, if the rest is neither the only keeping, nor in fact in 
 
 * Comp. vers. 3, 7, 21, 24, 25, 35, 36, 37. 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 itself the " keeping holy" of the Sabbath at all ; if its only intention 
 is that it should furnish the means of devotion; the root of all 
 pharisaic scruples, and straining at gnats, is destroyed, for these spring 
 entirely from attributing importance to the rest itself, and looking upon 
 this as the essence of the ordinance. As far as the general arrange- 
 ments are concerned, it belongs to the Church, and as far as regards 
 particular ones, it must be left to the individual, to decide to what ex- 
 tent rest is required, for the purpose it is intended to serve. There are 
 circumstances under which it is not only allowable, but a duty to dis- 
 turb our rest, which is only the means to an end, even for the 
 sake of the end, which the rest is intended to subserve. The priests, 
 in the words of Christ, profane the Sabbath and are blameless ; and 
 what is true of the priests must, in a certain sense, apply to all 
 believers, who are a royal priesthood, a holy people. The Sabbath 
 commandment never seems to forbid works of love, and care for the 
 eternal good of our neighbours, except when a factitious value is set 
 upon the rest which it enjoins. 
 
 On the other hand, it cannot be without an important reason, that, after 
 the general command " to keep the Sabbath holy " is given, of all the 
 elements which enter into the keeping, only this one, of rest, is promi- 
 nently brought forward and fully developed. It proves to us that 
 rest is of supreme importance, not only to the celebration of the 
 Lord's day, but in general to our life in God, and to the continued exist- 
 ence of the Church. With this, observation and experience fully agree. 
 They show us that incessant work, by making men dull and sad, is a 
 most dangerous foe to religion and devotion ; that no one, professor or 
 working man, can withstand its destructive influence ; that worldly 
 amusements, if kept within certain bounds, and not leading to. sin, do 
 not produce by any means so injurious an effect, or so thoroughly 
 harden the heart; that, therefore, any attempt to improve the obser- 
 vance of the Lord's day must begin precisely here. 
 
 If we consider the great importance attached to rest in the law, even 
 the minister of the word will feel impelled to avoid breaking in upon 
 the rest of the Lord's day, as far as he possibly can. He will be far 
 from inverting the commandment for himself, so as to read, " Six days 
 shalt thou, in whole or part, rest, and on the seventh shalt thou labour ;" 
 he will endeavour, as far as possible, to perform in the week those 
 labours " by the sweat of his brow," which are necessary to prepare for 
 the duties of the Sunday. So, also, the efforts of others for the promo- 
 tion of religion, should be regulated in accordance with the necessity 
 
19 
 
 for a day of rest. It cannot be beneficial, that after six days' hard and 
 wearing exertion in business, a seventh should follow of the same 
 character, except that the work is devoted to the good of others. If 
 this were carried to the same extent here, as we believe it to be in 
 England and America, of which, however, there is no immediate pro- 
 bability, the advantage to the kingdom of God would be only an appa- 
 rent one. Apart from the fact that such workers are injuring their 
 own souls, they are injuring their usefulness also, for only a mind which 
 is cheerful, strong, and invigorated by rest, is in a proper state for 
 exerting a truly holy influence upon others. Such a mind accomplishes 
 more, by its mere existence, than others with all their running hither 
 and thither ever can. The progress of the Church has' always been best 
 promoted by those whose chief care it was to keep their own lamps 
 bright. To them others were sure to come, and light their lamps at 
 theirs. 
 
 Lastly, if we rightly understand the meaning of the rest enjoined on 
 the Sabbath, the close connexion between the Sabbath and Sunday will 
 at once appear, and all must draw back ashamed, who will acknow- 
 ledge no thought, in the appointment of the Sabbath, of any but the 
 Jews. The meaning of the words of the Lord, that " no jot or tittle 
 of the law should pass," becomes strikingly clear. " This," says 
 Calvin, " we have in common with the people of the Old Testament, 
 that we require one day free, that we may thus be in a better condition, 
 both for learning and for attesting our faith." 
 
 Some have thought, that the Sabbath of the Old Testament no 
 more affects the Church of the New, than the other festivals. But 
 the express mention of the former in the ten commandments, without 
 the other, indicates a difference between them. The Sabbath has less 
 of a temporary, Old Testament, character than the others. The decision, 
 that every seventh day shall be devoted to God, is founded on a constant 
 and universal necessity of human nature, on the fact that men will surely 
 become ungodly, unless there is some arrangement for a. regular inter- 
 mission of the labours and cares of this earthly life. The festivals, on 
 the contrary, have either a natural origin, and were adopted, as it were, 
 by the Mosaic legislation, or else a specifically Jewish origin. 
 
 Some have thought (amongst others Neander), that the annual 
 Christian festivals stand in the same relation as the Sunday to the 
 Christian life. In both cases we must, in their opinion, recognise the 
 guidance of the Holy Spirit in their historical development, and a 
 divine purpose in the historical necessity which led under certain con- 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 ditions to these results, and, therefore, should feel bound to follow 
 this guidance of the Spirit, and arrangement of God. 
 
 We fully acknowledge this common ground of obligation to cele- 
 brate both the Sunday and the other festivals. And had we no other 
 ground for retaining the Sunday, it would be still wrong to give it up. 
 In sentences such as this of Kraussold, "Jesus has set us free from the 
 ordinances of men. The Church has no right to make laws," we see 
 only homage to historical rationalism, whose true successor is rational- 
 ism commonly so called. Still, on account of the great importance of 
 a weekly returning Lord's day, God in his love has set his seal on this 
 more clearly than on the rest, has sanctified it more expressly, and he, 
 who opposes so evident an expression of the will of God, commits a 
 greater sin. 
 
 IV. The Sabbath a Sign between God and the People. 
 
 •' And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children 
 of Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep ; for it is a sign between 
 me and you throughout your generations ; that men may know that I am the 
 Lord that doth sanctify you. Ye shall keep the Sabbath, therefore, for it is 
 holy unto you ; every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death. For 
 whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his 
 people. Six days may work be done ; but in the seventh is the Sabbath, the 
 holy rest of the Lord : whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he shall 
 surely be put to death. Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sab- 
 bath, to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual cove- 
 nant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever ; for in six 
 days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh he rested, and was 
 refreshed." — (Exod. xxxi. 13—17.) 
 
 The injunction to preserve the Sabbath, which is here repeated, as is 
 usual in the books of Moses, with greater fulness, concludes the in- 
 structions concerning the tabernacle, and the appointment, consecra- 
 tion, and clothing of the priests, and all that belongs to the service of 
 the sanctuary. We see again, in this combination, the close connexion 
 between the Sabbath and the sanctuary. Without the Sabbath the 
 sanctuary would have been instituted in vain, for worship would not 
 have been maintained. This confirms our view, that sacred meetings 
 were held on the Sabbath ; that the cessation of work was intended to 
 make room for the worship of God. Had it been kept only by rest, 
 there would have been no connexion between the Sabbath and the 
 sanctuary. The employment of the singular in ver. 14 proves that the 
 Sabbaths spoken of in ver. 13 denote the weekly day of rest, and not 
 the festivals in general. 
 
21 
 
 The Sabbath is to be a sign between God and his people : on the 
 part of God, who appointed it, a symbol of his choice (" that men 
 may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you ") ; on the side 
 of the chosen, a confession to God. The point to be regarded is not 
 exclusively, or even chiefly, this, that the seventh day particularly is 
 devoted to God, or even one in seven ; but the principal thing is the 
 manner in which it is to be kept. The whole essence of true religion 
 is brought to view on the Sabbath, the difference between the Church 
 and the world fully appears. In the wilderness of the world's indif- 
 ference to its Creator, where there is no recognition of God, there is 
 one oasis — a people serving God in spirit and in truth, and entrusted 
 by himself with his own beautiful service. In the manner in which 
 the day of the Lord is celebrated, there is seen in the clearest light 
 the attitude in which a people stands to its Lord, and the Lord to it. 
 The day of the Lord is the gauge of the religious life. It is a great 
 error for any to attempt to erase and annihilate the seal, which God 
 thus set upon his Church, that he might separate it from the world, 
 and make it visible, and approachable by the world ; an error that can 
 only have its deepest root in ungodliness. And it is a mark worthy of 
 the Church's and each individual's aim, to preserve this seal from becom- 
 ing obliterated. 
 
 And because the Sabbath is a sign, it is " a sanctuary." " By this," 
 says Calvin, " he urges his people to preserve this institution as a holy 
 and indestructible one, because with the neglect of it religion would 
 fall. It would show an inexcusable contempt wilfully to overthrow 
 that which God intended as a mark of distinction between his people 
 and the heathen nations." To wipe away the Sabbath would be to 
 make the Church unknown. And this, again, would be to dishonour 
 God, who can only be found in the Church, and to offend against one's 
 brethren. 
 
 " He who desecrates the Sabbath shall be put to death." The 
 Church of Christ has taken a right course, in never in any place visiting 
 upon those, who fail to observe the Sunday, the punishments with 
 which the Old Testament threatened those who broke the Sabbath 
 commandment, even where the strictest theory of the sanctity of the 
 Sunday has been adopted. The punishments appointed by the Mosaic 
 law are essentially distinct from its commandments. They presuppose, 
 for the moat part, the weakness and want of spirituality which charac- 
 terised the Old Testament times. As sin could not be successfully 
 attacked within and rooted out from the heart, the offender must be 
 
22 
 
 dealt with from without, by which he only received according to his 
 deserts. Under the New Testament all is changed. Since Christ has 
 appeared in the flesh, and especially since he has brought in eternal 
 redemption, and sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 
 since he has poured out his Spirit upon all flesh, the Church has been 
 happily delivered from the necessity of dealing with offenders in so 
 harsh a way. Still the punishments appointed by the law preserve 
 even yet their importance in reference to the Church of the New Tes- 
 tament, and the words of Christ, " no jot or tittle shall pass," apply 
 here. A sin which, by the law of God, under the Old Testament, was 
 visited with death, must be a great and grievous one, and one with 
 which we dare not trifle now. To bring this to our consciousness, 
 there is still importance in the words, " he shall be put to death." 
 
 The Sabbath is designated " a perpetual covenant," " a sign for 
 ever." Some . have found these words inconvenient, and wished to 
 weaken their force ; but it is clear that an abrogation, which puts a 
 smaller in its place, is not to be thought of; that the Sabbath, so far as 
 its substance is concerned, must belong to that which is the true con- 
 tinuation of the Old Testament Israel, the Church of the New Tes- 
 tament ; that only that, which is not essential, can pass away, and that 
 this could only die to rise again in a brighter and more glorious form. 
 
 V. The Sabbath not to be Suspended in Harvest. 
 
 " Six days shalt thou work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest, in earing 
 time and in harvest thou shalt rest." — (Exod. xxxiv. 21.) 
 
 The Sabbath is mentioned here in a review, which is rendered neces- 
 sary by the renewal of the covenant, after it had been broken by the 
 people. The whole section has the appearance of being thrown in as 
 an episode. 
 
 Clericus remarks here, " ' in earing time and harvest,' that is, at the 
 time when work is especially necessary, in order that this might not be 
 used as an excuse for breaking the Sabbath on other equally urgent 
 occasions." The weakness of the spiritual powers, Avhich should have 
 preserved the Sabbath amongst the people, rendered it necessary that 
 under the Old Testament it should be the more carefully hedged 
 about. Works of necessity could not be permitted, for caprice would 
 soon have made them a cloak. The Church of the New Testament, 
 which possesses the more powerful weapons of the word and the Spirit, 
 makes the works of necessity an exception. It is in a condition to 
 guard against abuse. But even for it, this " in earing time and 
 
23 
 
 harvest," has not been said in vain. It teaches it not to strain unduly 
 the notion of necessity. It imposes on masters the obligation to do all 
 in their power to diminish the necessity of their dependents. 
 
 VI. No Fire to be Kindled on the Sabbath. 
 
 " Six days shall work be clone, but on the seventh day there shall be to yon a 
 holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the Lord ; whosoever doeth work therein shall be 
 put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the 
 Sabbath day."— (Exod. xxxv. 2, 3.) 
 
 Moses begins here to communicate to the people the commands, 
 which the Lord gave to him after the conclusion of the covenant. 
 The covenant which was broken by the people is here renewed, and it 
 is therefore time to make this communication. As the instructions of 
 God to Moses end by inculcating the observance of the Sabbath, it is 
 with this that those of Moses to the people commenced. He then 
 turns immediately to the explanation of the arrangements for the 
 tabernacle. 
 
 Here, too, the close connexion is evident between the Sabbath and 
 the sanctuary, and hence its character as a day of worship. It is 
 separated from all the other times of worship, which are only acces- 
 sory ; and stands here as the representative of the whole. 
 
 We are not to regard ver. 3, as increasing the stringency of the law 
 by a new prohibition. The injunction, "Ye shall kindle no fire," is 
 simply an explanation of the commandment, " Ye shall do no work." 
 The law distinguishes between work and labour.* In Lev. xxiii., all 
 work is forbidden on the Sabbath and the day of atonement ; on the 
 other festivals, labour alone. This distinction is everywhere main- 
 tained. In Exod. xii. 16, in which all work is forbidden on the first 
 and seventh days of the passover, the lighting of fires and cooking are 
 expressly excepted, showing that these come under the denomination 
 of work. 
 
 However, since the term work is nowhere strictly defined, the 
 explanation given in this passage shows that it was necessary to guard 
 against making too many exceptions. Without imitating the Rab- 
 binical writers in their straining at gnats, it must still be admitted 
 that this injunction, "Ye shall kindle no fire," was intended only as 
 an example, showing that occupation on the Sabbath should be kept 
 
 * Rendered in our version " servile work ; " more properly labour, including 
 business.- — Th. 
 
24 
 
 within narrow bounds, so far as this was possible, without falling into 
 an anxious scrupulosity, which was foreign to the Sabbath, or an un- 
 sociable state, which would be decidedly opposed to it. This pro- 
 hibition, too, proves that the Sabbath commandment could not be 
 transferred without change to the Church of the New Testament. 
 Such a command is based upon the peculiarities of the climate, in 
 which the people lived. 
 
 The principal reason for the distinction made between the rest 
 enjoined on the Sabbath and that required on the other festivals 
 (though the difference is not great), was, evidently, because there is a 
 greater difficulty in steadfastly maintaining a weekly festival, and a 
 worldly mind is more strongly tempted to break away. With us * 
 there is far less work done on the yearly festivals than on the Sunday. 
 For this reason, the requirements were made more stringent for the 
 Sabbath amongst the Jews. The main design is undoubtedly to pro- 
 hibit labour, but in order to guard more surely against any approach to 
 this, the adjacent ground is surrounded by a sacred fence ; just as the 
 Nazarite, to keep him more surely from drinking wine, was forbidden 
 even to eat grapes. If it be admitted that the greater amount of rest 
 required on the Sabbath than on the other festivals, was only intended 
 as means to an end, it follows that the greatest importance belonged to 
 that which was common to them all. That which is simply intended 
 as means, may, under other circumstances, give place to other means. 
 It assumes the eharacter of instruction rather than of a command. 
 
 VII. The Shewbeead renewed on the Sabbath. 
 
 11 And thou shalt take fine flour, and take twelve cakes thereof : two tenth 
 deals shall be in one cake. And thou shalt set them in two rows, six on a row, 
 upon the pure table before the Lord. And thou shalt put pure frankincense 
 upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, even an offering 
 made by fire unto the Lord. Every Sabbath he shall set it in order before the 
 Lord continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting 
 covenant. And it shall be Aaron's and his sons' ; and they shall eat it in the 
 holy place : for it is most holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord made by 
 fire by a perpetual statute.'' — (Lev. xxiv. 5 — 9.) 
 
 In this passage instructions are given, that every Sabbath fresh 
 shew-bread shall be set before the Lord. 
 
 With regard to the meaning of the table with the shew-bread, the 
 
 * In Germanv. 
 
25 
 
 following points may be regarded as indisputable, and help to a correct 
 interpretation of the institution: — 1. This symbol is not to be regarded 
 as a promise, but as a precept ; it cannot, that is, denote what God 
 will give to the Church, but what the Church ought to present to God. 
 The name shew-bread indicates this. It was so called because it was 
 set by the people before God continually (Exod. xxv. 30). It is ex- 
 pressly mentioned (Lev. xxiv. 8) as a gift of the children of Israel to 
 God (not of God to them) : " Every^Sabbath he shall set it in order be- 
 fore the Lord continually, an everlasting covenant on the part of the 
 children of Israel." Lastly, the loaves were dedicated and offered to 
 God by prayer, in its Old Testament form of incense : " And thou shalt 
 put pure frankincense upon the row, that it may be on the bread for a 
 memorial, an offering made by fire unto the Lord." Thus the loaves 
 themselves were regarded as offerings. It is evident that they were 
 considered as consumed in a spiritual sense, together with the incense, 
 from the words, " an offering made by fire." 2. In addition to the 
 bread, wine ivas placed upon the table. This is indeed nowhere ex- 
 pressly stated, but both in Exod. xxv. 29 and Num. iv. 7, the bowls 
 " with which the wine is poured out," or of the drink-offering, are 
 mentioned, as forming part of the furniture of the table of shew-bread. 
 It follows from this that only that explanation can be the correct one, 
 which gives to the bread such a meaning, as makes the wine its 
 natural, and, indeed, inseparable accompaniment. 3. Every explanation 
 is to be rejected, which does not connect the table, on which stood the 
 bread and wine, with the provision made by subjects for their king ; 
 which denies the correctness of the view entertained by Dr. Paulus, 
 that it was " the natural provision for the national king," and does not 
 recognise an analogy between the bread and wine, set by the Israelites 
 before their invisible King, and the supplies provided for his visible re- 
 presentative. 4. Itioouldbe absurd to suppose, that the bread and wine in 
 their material form are offered as gifts acceptable to God ; that they are 
 placed there for their own sakes, and not for the sake of that which they 
 denote. The name, Jehovah, alone is sufficient to show the folly of such 
 an opinion ; for in this name so thoroughly are the depths of the Deity 
 explored, that he appears as pure absolute Being ; for that is the mean- 
 ing of this name. Before this such frivolities fall away. Whoever 
 can for a moment entertain them, has not the least conception of the 
 nature of the Old Testament religion. But apart from this, and the 
 consideration adduced by Bahr, that " only bread and wine were 
 offered, provisions found on the tables of the poor, instead of the im- 
 
26 
 
 posing banquets of a king," it cannot be right, where all else is 
 symbolical, enclosing a deep spiritual meaning in the outward form, to 
 come down in this case alone into the sphere of rude literality. How- 
 can we tear away the table of shew-bread from its connexion with the 
 candlestick and altar of incense ? 
 
 According to this, the following view appears to be the correct one. 
 The loaves, whose number, like the twelve stones in the breast-plate 
 of the high priest, refer to the twelve tribes, and the wine, are truly 
 the supplies which Israel offers to its King ; but this King is a spiritual, 
 heavenly one ; the supplies, therefore, though here presented in a 
 material form, must really be spiritual too. The bread and the wine 
 are spiritless unless they are representatives of good works. The 
 prayer to God, " Give us this day our daily bread," and the promise 
 on the strength of which it is offered, are accompanied by the demand 
 of God, my daily bread give me to-day; for as God never requires 
 without giving, so he never gives without requiring. And this demand 
 is complied with when the Church, by its diligence in good works, 
 presents to God those offerings for which he has given strength, and 
 blessing, and success. 
 
 This opinion is confirmed by comparison with the bloodless offering, 
 the so-called meat offering, which is indisputably related to the shew- 
 bread. The shew-bread was the perpetual meat offering of the whole 
 community ; it was in this fact, that it was continually before the Lord, 
 that it differed from the other meat offerings, which were only pre- 
 sented at certain times, on special occasions, and generally with refer- 
 ence to the circumstances of individuals. In other respects, both as to 
 the nature and the purport, they were exactly alike. The meat offer r 
 ings also were to be combined with wine, a proof that they too were 
 symbols of the provisions to be presented to God. Bread and wine, 
 both in the Old and New Testaments, are the usual representatives and 
 symbols of nourishment. It is evident that the spiritual provisions, de- 
 noted by them, are good works ; since this is the only view which 
 brings out the meaning of the rite and all its particulars. The meat 
 offerings were always to be accompanied by a bloody sacrifice. They 
 were not allowed, however, to accompany every sacrifice. They might 
 be brought with burnt offerings, and thank offerings ; but never with 
 sin offerings or trespass offerings. Expiation and reconciliation must 
 precede the ability to perform good works ; the unreconciled heart does 
 not possess this ability ; good works do not accompany reconciliation, 
 they follow as a necessary consequence. He who has been reconciled 
 
27 
 
 by the sin offering, first devotes himself, his whole being, to the Lord, 
 under the symbol of the burnt offering ; he then, under that of the thank 
 offering, presents his thanksgiving and prayer ; and, lastly, consecrates 
 his works under the symbol of the meat offering. The last was to be 
 without leaven and honey. Leaven is in the Scriptures the symbol of 
 corruption. The name of the unleavened loaves, mazzoth, meaning 
 pure loaves, indicates the spiritual counterparts pointed out by Paul, 
 sincerity and truth. Thus the prohibition to mix leaven with the meat 
 offering taught them, that good works were not to be spoiled by any 
 admixture of unholy corruption, which would make them unfit to be 
 spiritual food for the holy God. The prohibition to use honey, which 
 resembles the grape cakes-- 1 mentioned in Hos. iii. 1, signifies, that he 
 who will perform good works must not give himself up to sensuality, 
 but practise self-discipline. By the side of the prohibition to use 
 leaven and honey, stands the command to mix salt and oil. Salt indi- 
 cates that which is sound, preserved from moral corruption. Oil is 
 here, as always, a symbol of the Spirit of God. It signifies that good 
 works, as they rest upon reconciliation, can never be performed with- 
 out the grace of the Spirit of God. 
 
 It has been objected by Kurz to this exposition that " it is harsh, 
 unsuitable, and repulsive, inasmuch as it regards the food, the bread, 
 as that which is necessary, indispensable to life, which cannot apply to 
 Jehovah, whose life is not dependent on Israel's performing its cove- 
 nant duties." 
 
 But the whole system of sacred symbols, including the Lord's parables, 
 would fall, if subjected to such a test as this. They have necessarily 
 a one-sided character. All that we have to do is to find out the sides, 
 in which the natural corresponds with the spiritual, and can, therefore, 
 be used as its representative. The point to be regarded here is not so 
 much the necessity of the Lord, though in a certain sense even this is 
 included, as the duty of his people. And there is the less reason for 
 objecting to this representation of the duties owed to the Lord, under 
 the figure of nourishment to be brought to him, since the same figure is 
 frequently met with in the Scriptures. 
 
 Abraham said to the heavenly guests, " I will fetch a morsel of 
 bread, and comfort ye your hearts ! And they said, So do as thou hast 
 said." Abraham did it and they ate. The Lord would certainly not 
 have accepted Abraham's offer if spiritual food had not been hidden in 
 
 * llendered in our translation, "flagons of wine." 
 
28 
 
 the material ; if Abraham, that is, had not offered therewith a loving 
 heart. We have either a fable before us, or the transaction has a 
 symbolical character. 
 
 In Solomon's Song, iv. 16, the bride says to the bridegroom, "Let 
 my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits." And 
 the bridegroom answers, " I am come into my garden, my sister, my 
 spouse; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my 
 honeycomb with my honey ; I have drunk my wine with my milk." 
 The exclamation of the sacred poet, which concludes the section, 
 shows us in what the meal consisted. " Eat, friends ; drink, yea, 
 drink and be drunken with love." It is love, then, to the enjoyment of 
 which the bride invites the bridegroom. 
 
 Isaiah says, in the parable of the vineyard, ch. v. 2, " And he made 
 a winepress therein, and looked that it should bring forth grapes, and 
 it brought forth wild grapes." The grapes which the vineyard should 
 have brought forth to its Lord, are, as ver. 7 shows, justice and right- 
 eousness ; the wild grapes, which it really produces, oppression and a 
 cry. The expression, " he looked," shows with what certainty the 
 Lord had reckoned upon the fruit, as it is in the very nature of the 
 Church to provide food for the Lord. 
 
 Matthew narrates (ch. xxi. 18, 19) of the Lord, " Now in the morn- 
 ing as he returned into the city he hungered. And seeing a fig-tree 
 in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon but leaves only ; 
 and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. 
 And presently the fig-tree withered away." The fig-tree is the Jewish 
 people. The words, " he hungered," should be particularly noticed. 
 It shows that, with reference to the good works of the members of 
 the Church, neither indifference, nor an absolute sense of need exists 
 on the part of the Lord. The latter could only exist if the laws of 
 his Being were not executed in their punishment of the unfaithful. 
 The Lord found only leaves, the decorations of their heartless hypo- 
 crisy. Mark adds, " for the time of figs was not yet." For the spi- 
 ritual fig-tree it should always be the time of figs ; it is its own fault 
 if it is not so, and this fault infallibly brings its own judgment. 
 
 In Rev. iii. 20 we read, " If any man hear my voice, and open the 
 door, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me." 
 
 We have in these passages enough to prove that the objections 
 brought against our explanation have not force enough to shake it, 
 especially as it rests on such firm positive grounds. 
 
 We would just notice in passing the explanation given by Meier. 
 
29 
 
 " By it," says he, " they express their consciousness that they are 
 dependent on a higher power, and owe entirely to it their enjoyment 
 of the gifts of nature. They offer the bread to God, that they may 
 receive it again, not as procured by themselves, but as a gift 
 from the hands of God, and that as such it may be eaten by the priests, 
 the representatives of the twelve tribes." The shew-bread, then, is 
 the expression of thanks for the daily bread. In thanksgiving, in 
 Meier's opinion, prayer is also included. 
 
 But from this explanation there results a want of harmony between 
 the table of shew-bread, and the other furniture of the tabernacle, 
 namely, the altar of incense, which pointed out the people of the cove- 
 nant as a people of prayer, and the candlestick, which indicated that 
 they were a people of light. By the side of these there is something 
 very tame in mere thanks for daily bread. 
 
 The one task of the people of God, as pointed out as early as 
 Gen. xviii. 19, was to do justice and righteousness, and to keep the 
 way of the Lord. " To love God with all the heart, and with all the 
 soul, and their neighbour as themselves," is set forth, in a whole series 
 of passages in the law, as the highest claim which God makes upon 
 his people, and this could not fail to be exhibited in the sanctuary, 
 whose furniture set forth in symbol the duties of the people of the 
 Lord. 
 
 If we have correctly explained the meaning of the shew-bread, there 
 will be no doubt as to the reason of its being renewed every Sabbath. 
 Diligence in good works ought to pervade the whole life, but it would 
 soon flag, if not invigorated by days of rest and meeting before the 
 Lord. Without the day of the Lord, the Church can never attain its 
 end, to do justice and righteousness. When the observance of this 
 day is neglected, in the same degree will the observance of righteous- 
 ness be neglected too. 
 
 Every Sabbath (according to the catalogue of offerings given in 
 Num. xxviii. 9), a special burnt offering, meat offering, and drink offer- 
 ing, were to be brought, " beside the continual burnt offering, and his 
 drink offering." This doubling of the offerings corresponds with the 
 fact, that, on the Sabbath, fresh shew-bread was laid on the table. If 
 the doubling of the offerings indicated that the Sabbath was the day 
 of increased devotion, it also pointed it out as the source of moral 
 vigour, as surely as good works are only performed in God ; and the 
 arrangement with regard to the shew-bread did nothing more than 
 unfold this intimation, and present it in a symbolical form. 
 
30 
 
 Let him who feels that he makes no progress, and must confess that 
 he is a barren tree, look first of all how he observes the Lord's day. 
 
 VIII. The Sabbatic Year. 
 
 " And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, Speak unto the 
 children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I 
 give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou 
 shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in 
 the fruit thereof; but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the 
 land, a sabbath for the Lord : thou shalt neither sow thy field nor prune thy 
 vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not 
 reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed : for it is a year of rest 
 unto the land. And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you ; for thee, 
 and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy 
 stranger that sojourneth with thee. And for thy cattle, and for the beasts that 
 are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat." — (Lev. xxv. 1 — 7.) 
 
 This passage contains the injunction that after the land is possessed 
 it shall be left untitled every seventh year. The year of rest is to be 
 also a year of communism, of suspension of ownership. All that 
 grows spontaneously is to belong, not to the possessor, but to the 
 public. It is, moreover, to be observed by the cancelling of all debts. 
 (Deut. xv.) 
 
 The close connexion between this year and the Sabbath is shown by 
 the transference of the name, " the seventh year shall be a sabbath of 
 rest to the land ;" " the land shall keep a sabbath to the Lord." A 
 promise of special blessing during the sixth year is also given in Lev. 
 xxv. 20 — 22, analogous to that given with regard to the sixth day in 
 Exod. xvi. 5. And, lastly, the positive elements are accompanied by 
 negative ones of rest and suspension. In Deut. xxxi. 10 — 13, it is 
 decreed that the law shall be publicly read to all the people this year ; 
 from which we conclude that it is to be a year of devotion, of meeting, 
 and religious meditation. 
 
 The Sabbath and the Sabbatic year both assume that work and pos- 
 session promote selfishness ; that they stifle the divine life, unless a 
 period of respite is given, in which they are laid aside, and a free 
 course opened for the soul's progress towards God. 
 
 The institution of the Sabbatic year is everywhere mentioned as only 
 intended for the people of the Old Testament. It is confined to 
 Canaan, and nowhere is the intimation given that it is to be extended 
 beyond it. And even with reference to the Jews, the same importance 
 is never attached to it as to the Sabbath. Whilst the one is not spoken 
 
31 
 
 of till a late period, and then only in a few passages, the Sabbath 
 stands out prominently from the very first in the law of God, and is 
 introduced at every turn. It is not altogether without reason that 
 Calvin regards this command as a means of enforcing more strongly 
 the observance of the Sabbath. It is given, he says, that the sanctity 
 of the Sabbath may shine forth on every hand, and thus the children of 
 Israel may be instigated to maintain it by contemplating the land. 
 
 Yet certain as it is that this command is based upon the peculiar 
 circumstances of the Jewish people, and, as to the letter, in no way 
 affects us, it is as certain, that it contains a germ restricted to no age. It 
 teaches the Church in every age, that if men are for ever working, 
 scheming, grasping without intermission; if there are no periods of 
 respite, in which the hindrances to the higher life are removed, and the 
 spirit is left free to seek its Author, it will never prosper. It urges us 
 conscientiously to secure this respite, as far as we have it in our power. 
 The Sabbatic year has ceased, but all that is said of it serves to 
 enliven our zeal in the maintenance of the weekly festival which we 
 still possess. The Sabbath year grew out of the Sabbath; it served 
 also to make the latter fruitful. 
 
 IX. A Man Stoned fob, Gathering Wood. 
 
 " And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man 
 that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. And they that found him gather- 
 ing sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. 
 And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to 
 him. And the Lord said unto Moses, The mm shall be surely put to death : 
 all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all 
 the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, 
 and he died ; as the Lord commanded Moses." — (Num. xv. 32 — 36.) 
 
 A man who had gathered wood on the Sabbath is brought forth at 
 the command of the Lord, and stoned by the whole congregation before 
 the camp. 
 
 Calvin says rightly, " the guilty man did not fall through error, but 
 through gross contempt of the law, so that he treated it as a light 
 matter to overturn and destroy all that is holy." It is evident from the 
 manner of its introduction that the account is not given with any regard 
 to its chronological position ; it reads, " and when the children of 
 Israel were in the wilderness they found a man gathering sticks upc n 
 the Sabbath." It stands simply as an example of the presumptuous 
 breach of the law, of which the preceding verses speak. He was one 
 
32 
 
 who " despised the word of the Lord, and broke his commandment," 
 (ver. 31) ; one who " with a high hand sinned and reproached the 
 Lord," (ver. 30). 
 
 Had he transgressed from want, even under the Old Testament, a 
 different sentence would have been passed. Under the New, even 
 transgressors of this kind are dealt with in a different way. The 
 Church of the New Testament happily does not make use of stones 
 against the sinner. But here, too, it is only the letter that has passed 
 away ; the Divine sentence, in the spirit of it, has importance still. A 
 sin which under the Old Testament was visited with stoning, is not 
 to be treated as a light matter, either by the individual or the Church. 
 By doing this, by substituting indifference for stones, whereas it is 
 its work, instead of stoning the body, to stone the conscience of the 
 sinner by means of the word of God, the Church of the New Testa- 
 ment would sink below the level of that of the Old. 
 
 X. The Sabbath a Day of Pleasure. 
 
 " And I will cause all her mirth to cease, her feasts, her new moons, and her 
 Sabbaths, and all her festive seasons." — (Hosea ii. 11.) 
 
 The festivals answered a double purpose — they were days of holy 
 consecration, and days of pleasure. (Num. x. 10.) Israel had neg- 
 lected the first, and as a merited punishment God had deprived it of 
 the second. In proof of that he announces the cessation of the festi- 
 vals, as in itself the end of the days of pleasure ; he places in the fore- 
 ground all her mirth, and then passes from the general to particulars. 
 
 The prophet can only have referred here to the festivals which had 
 been instituted by God ; otherwise the notion of recompense would be 
 inapplicable. God only takes from the Israelites what they have first 
 taken from him. The festivals are mentioned in the same order as 
 in Col. ii. 16. The feasts are the three yearly festivals ; next in 
 order is the monthly festival of the new moon ; and lastly the weekly 
 one, the Sabbath. The phrase, " all her festive seasons," connects all 
 together under one general term. 
 
 The first thing which strikes us in this passage is the finger of God 
 raised to threaten, if his command, " Thou shalt keep the festival," is 
 not better observed. The year 1848 gave to us a taste of the import 
 of these words, " I make all your mirth cease." But this was but the 
 beginning of sorrows. 
 
 The Sabbatic years, which the people of the Old Testament had so 
 
33 
 
 wickedly neglected to observe, had to be observed afterwards. During 
 the period of the Babylonian captivity Judea lay waste, " until the 
 land had enjoyed her Sabbaths" (2 Chron. xxxvi. 21). Nor has the 
 righteousness of God lost its energy under the New Testament. Even 
 with us a reckoning will have to come, when we may have to say, 
 " The joy of our heart is ceased ; our dance is turned into mourning." 
 We may have to celebrate mournful Sundays and festivals then. 
 
 But the passage is of importance in another respect. The festivals, 
 and especially the Sabbath, appear here as days of mirth. This is 
 not indeed the principal feature, which, on the contrary, is said empha- 
 tically to consist in their being days of consecration, whilst it is de- 
 nounced as a sin that they should be changed entirely into days of 
 pleasure. But as a subordinate object, this is made very apparent, 
 and it is only as a punishment for the neglect of the other that the 
 pleasure is taken away. This design is indicated in the Mosaic law, 
 though it is placed far behind the more important object. In Num. 
 x. 10, the festivals in general are termed "days of gladness;" and in 
 Exod. xxiii. 12, the Sabbath is especially pointed out as a day of natural 
 refreshment and recreation to those who through the week have borne 
 the burden and heat of the day. With these expressions before~us, 
 we must acknowledge that Rothe is correct in saying, " the festivals 
 were essentially days of joy, and that not exclusively of a religious 
 character;" and with reference to the weekly festival, " this was to be 
 essentially a day of rest and refreshment, a breathing time amidst the 
 toil and trouble of the present state of being ; a day of joy, in which 
 a higher clement of life should both invigorate and exalt." It is not 
 for us to be more oppressive and severe than God, who knows our 
 labour and distress upon the earth, which he has cursed ; it is not for 
 us to deprive the poor and oppressed of the people of that recreation 
 and refreshment which his merciful love allowed in former times. We 
 must not expect to promote the chief end by opposing or ignoring the 
 minor object which was authorized by God himself. A melancholy, 
 dull, oppressed spirit may indeed be brought to a certain pietistic level, 
 but will never be able to soar with gladness to its God. And as God 
 deprived the people of the festivals as days of joy, when they had 
 refused to observe them as days of worship ; so, on the other hand, to 
 deny to the people all that is cheerful on such days as these, would 
 only lead them sinfully to neglect them as days of worship too. 
 
 In what way is the Church affected by this design of the festivals, 
 including the Sabbath, of the Jews ? 
 
34 
 
 The most evident duty of the Church is thus stated by Rothe : " It 
 has not only to take care that its worship shall not be disturbed by 
 any other engagements of the day of rest, but to see also that these 
 shall never be of such a kind as to clash with that calm spirit of wor- 
 ship which should pervade the whole day." But it will not do for the 
 Church to rest satisfied with this exclusively negative, overwatchful 
 position. It will never succeed in checking the search for enjoyment 
 elsewhere, unless it learns how to provide it within its own circle, and 
 ceases to be so monotonous, so unbending, so stern and gloomy, so 
 sermon -mad, as to be unable to teach its children to rejoice before the 
 Lord. — (Lev. xxiii. 40.) 
 
 " Even enjoyment," says Hirscher, " is not without a good effect 
 upon the mind. It was, therefore, judicious and with good intention, 
 that the Church introduced into its service much which was designed 
 to help the poor and often downtrodden people to rejoice before the 
 Lord. And even if processions, for example, could do little to edify, 
 they were not without worth when regarded in this light, that they 
 ministered to religious enjoyment." 
 
 In this respect our Church has greatly erred, and if it would but 
 earnestly apply itself to the work, it might reap more fruit from this 
 than from the other Sunday arrangements, which, indeed, must also 
 continue, but to which many ministers of the Church are apt to attach 
 too great importance. There may be cases in which the magistrate 
 must be called upon to interfere, as, for instance, to protect servants 
 against their masters, who wish to rob them of the Sunday. But for 
 the Church to do this, is to proclaim its weakness and to disgrace 
 itself, for its calling is of a different kind from this. The more the 
 Church is in fault, for having by its austerity increased the disregard 
 of the Sunday, the farther must it be prepared to go, that it may bring 
 back to its worship, by the enjoyment it offers, those whom pleasure 
 has led away. Love must instigate it, not always to keep to the 
 well-trodden and easy road of sermon-worship ; must make it as fertile 
 in the discovery of attractions and sacred pleasures, as the world has 
 been in the invention of worldly amusements. Only this will make 
 the Sunday attractive to the people again. He who thinks that this 
 is beneath his dignity, forgets that he serves a church of the people, 
 which involves much that is difficult, but much also that carries a 
 blessing with it, as surely as we have a Saviour, who came to seek that 
 which was lost. If we look at the present condition of our people, we 
 cannot but smile, though with pain, at the attempts made to promote the 
 
35 
 
 keeping of the Sunday, without applying any but the ordinary means. All 
 that can be secured in this way will be, that there will be less work, but 
 more drinking, &c. We are glad, however, that a beginning has been 
 made, in a different way, and that it only remains to pursue a work, 
 already commenced with the evident blessing of God. To this begin- 
 ning we reckon the liturgical services, which, apart from other consi- 
 derations, are justified by this, that the great mass of the people are 
 still no further advanced than the stand-point of the Old Testament, 
 and must therefore be attracted by that which is suited to this condi- 
 tion. We reckon also the growing popularity of missionary festivals ; 
 and in connexion with these we notice the first signs of a renewal of 
 pilgrimages, but in an evangelical spirit. We have been particularly 
 struck by an arrangement lately made by several ministers of the pro- 
 vince of Saxony. In a certain neighbourhood a missionary festival is 
 held every Sunday at a particular place. The other congregations, 
 with their pastor at the head, proceed to this spot, singing " pilgrim 
 hymns." We have here a sign that the Church is thinking of pouring 
 the old wine into new bottles, since the old ones will not hold it any- 
 longer. Let us proceed in this course, and we may accomplish more 
 by it, than by Church ordinances and Presbyterian constitutions. 
 
 XI. Blessing pronounced upon a proper Observance of the 
 
 Sabbath. 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye justice and do righteousness, for my salvation 
 is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that 
 doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold upon it, that keepeth the Sab- 
 bath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil." — (Isa. Ivi. 
 1,2.) 
 
 In this and the following passage great importance is attached to the 
 preservation of the Sabbath. It opens the way to the enjoyment of 
 all the benefits of the house and kingdom of God. In the prophet's 
 view the Sabbath, in its essence, reaches beyond the Old Testament 
 period. In the whole section his eye is directed to the Messianic 
 time. The conditions, on which its salvation is to be secured, are here 
 laid down ; and, according to ver. 6, the Sabbath belongs to the Gentiles 
 who, in the day of salvation, will enter the kingdom of God. 
 
 The injunction to preserve the Sabbath is connected in vers. 2, 4,5, 
 with other demands, which preclude the supposition that its obser- 
 vance consists in rest alone. Against such an observance the prophet 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 has already, in chap. i. 13, inveighed in the strongest terms. The 
 Mosaic idea of sanctification is embraced in its fullest extent. Those 
 who adopted the superficial view of Vitringa, that outward rest alone 
 constituted sanctification, felt themselves compelled to regard this as a 
 "mystical Sabbath" of a different kind from the legal one. 
 
 We must, however, distinguish between the form of the Sabbath, 
 which belonged specifically to the Old Testament, and its essence. 
 That our passage only serves to prove that the latter belongs also to 
 New Testament times, is evident from ver. 7, where the prophet 
 speaks in the same terms of the Sabbath, the temple, and the sacri- 
 fices : it was not the prophet's vocation to unfold the grand distinction 
 between the form and essence, the letter and the spirit. This must be 
 learned elsewhere. 
 
 XII. Characteristics of a Eight Observance of the Sabbath. 
 
 " 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, ho- 
 nourable ; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine 
 own pleasure, nor speaking words." — (Isa. lviii. 13.) 
 
 The prophet explains most clearly here, what the Sabbath is to him. 
 He gives a full explanation of the Mosaic, " Remember the Sab- 
 bath day to keep it holy." The foot, which moves to and fro on the 
 Sabbath in man's own ways, in worldly business and amusements, 
 trespasses as it were upon its holy ground. But, not the foot alone, 
 the mouth also receives its command. It is in vain that the feet rest, 
 if the mouth speaks words, empty words, such as have no substance 
 in them (Matt. xii. 36), but which the old man delights to indulge in. 
 
 And he who keeps a bridle in his mouth, that it may not offend, has 
 not yet done all. Every thing depends upon the heart after all. If 
 this finds no pleasure in the Sabbath, if it feels it to be a heavy burden, 
 if it regrets that foot and mouth may not wander freely amidst worldly 
 occupations and pleasures, if it seeks to compensate itself for these 
 restraints by satisfying itself the more with the worldly passions 
 within, then the pretended holiness is in truth a more thorough de- 
 secration, and instead of the expected blessing there will come the 
 curse. 
 
 XIII. Psalm for the Sabbath Day. 
 
 Psalm xcii. This psalm is, according to the heading, " A song for 
 the Sabbath day." The proper positive employment of the Sabbath 
 
37 
 
 appears here to be, a thankful contemplation of the works of God, a 
 devotional absorption in them, which could only exist when ordinary 
 occupations are laid aside. " It is good to give thanks unto the Lord, 
 and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most High." " O Lord, how 
 great are thy works." Amongst these works, one of the greatest, of 
 which the psalm speaks, is this, that, with the same power which he 
 put forth in the creation of the heavens and the earth, he also preserves 
 his Church in the midst of an evil world. The circumstances, under 
 which the psalm was composed, dictated this ; from which we may 
 learn, that the constant care of the Church on its days of rest should 
 be, to keep before it especially those sides of the works of God, in 
 which his nature has most prominently appeared, and which, there- 
 fore, under existing circumstances, most tend to edification. Our 
 Church would gain more ground, if we understood this better, and 
 were not so firmly attached to monotony and one-sidedness. The best 
 means of avoiding these, are, on the one hand, to study deeply the 
 whole Bible, that we may thus discover the whole image of God, and 
 all the riches of his works, and be able to draw from this treasure, as 
 circumstances require ; and on the other, to study no less deeply, and 
 with a serious mind, the signs of the times, the spirit of the age, their 
 evils, and the best means of curing them. Churches would not be 
 empty, if the subjects introduced were such as must be at least in- 
 teresting to all, though many might still thrust them from them. 
 
 The mention of morning and evening (" to show forth thy loving 
 kindness in the morning, and thy faithfulness every night"), probably 
 refers to the morning and evening sacrifice, and indicates that the 
 psalm was to be sung at the offering of these sacrifices on the Sabbath. 
 This is confirmed by the next verse, " upon an instrument of ten 
 strings ; and upon the psaltery ; upon the harp with a solemn sound." 
 These were evidently connected with the worship of God. Here, 
 then, we have the same exposition of the Mosaic command; the only 
 one consistent with the permanent character attributed by Christ to 
 the Mosaic law. It cannot belong to both the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, if we look at the surface alone. 
 
 XIV. Neglect of the Sabbath by the Jews. 
 
 " Moreover also, I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, 
 that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them. But the house 
 of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness .... and my Sabbaths they 
 
38 
 
 greatly polluted."— (Ezek. xx. 12, 13.) (Compare ver. 20.) " And hallow my 
 Sabbaths ; and they shall be a sign between me and yon, that ye may know 
 that I am the Lord your God." 
 
 If we understand here, by the polluting of the Sabbath, only the 
 disturbance of outward rest, we involve ourselves in no little difficulty. 
 The prophet could evidently only refer to well-known facts, to such, 
 that is, as were contained in the authentic history of the Mosaic times, 
 the books of Moses. But these contain nothing, on which a charge of 
 this description could be founded. Hitzig, indeed, cites two cases, 
 that of the few who went out to look for manna, and that of the man 
 who gathered sticks. But these examples have no weight. They only 
 speak of the acts of a few individuals, whilst Ezekiel has evidently in 
 view a national sin. The man who gathered sticks was taken prisoner, 
 and, at the command of God, stoned by the whole congregation. This 
 fact, therefore, shows, that at that time the Sabbath was, outwardly 
 at least, strictly observed. Further, nothing of this kind is ever re- 
 lated of the second generation in the wilderness ; yet the same charge 
 is brought against them (ver. 24). We must, therefore, acknowledge 
 that Ezekiel looked upon the keeping of the Sabbath as something 
 deeper than the outward act, that to him the pollution of the Sabbath 
 consisted just in this, that they thought they had sufficiently sancti- 
 fied it by resting from work, and might then give themselves up to 
 the pleasures of an unrenewed heart. This was Calvin's opinion. 
 " The charge refers, not so much to the disturbance of rest, as to their 
 neglect of the design and proper use of the Sabbath." If we take 
 this view of the prophet's complaint, it is confirmed by all the accounts, 
 contained in the books of Moses, of the ungodly character of the 
 people in the times of Moses. It was on the Sabbath, which can 
 never come in as an oasis, when the six days are a perfect waste, that 
 this appeared in its most glaring light, and for this reason was just the 
 point on which the prophet seized. 
 
 The Sabbath appears here as the outward self-manifestation of the 
 Church, the practical proof of the life of God in it, and of its life in 
 God, the seal of its separation from the world. Alas, then, for him, 
 who ungratefully annuls this privilege of the Church, and causes it to 
 be ridiculed by the world, instead of giving to it an imposing aspect, 
 which shall attract rather than repel. This object, however, can never 
 be attained by rest alone. Lastly, the Sabbath is introduced here as 
 something characteristic of Israel alone. It is spoken of as given first 
 and exclusively to the Jews. They, therefore, who seek for " remains 
 
39 
 
 of the Sabbath amongst the heathen," are acting in opposition to the 
 teaching of the prophet. 
 
 XV. The Disciples charged with a Breach of the Sabbath. 
 
 " At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the corn ; and his 
 disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat. 
 But when the pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do 
 that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day. But he said unto them, 
 Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that 
 were with him ; how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shew- 
 bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with 
 him, but only for the priests ? Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the 
 Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless ? 
 But I say unto you, that in this place is one greater than the temple. But if 
 ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would 
 not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of man is Lord even of the 
 Sabbath day."— (Matt. xii. 1—8.) 
 
 In this passage the Saviour leaves it undecided, whether the rubbing 
 out of the ears of corn belonged to the work forbidden on the Sabbath, 
 or not. It was a question that admitted of dispute, although Moses 
 would certainly not have answered in the affirmative. He first asserts, 
 in opposition to tbe views of the pharisees, that necessity breaks the 
 Sabbath ; the disciples had not rubbed out the ears wantonly, but they 
 hungred. Then again, they were the less in fault, because it was their 
 working for his kingdom that had deprived them of the opportunity 
 of providing for their bodily wants. If work for the temple is not 
 opposed to the command, much less is work for Christ, and that which 
 is connected with it. The hunger of the disciples was the result of 
 their labours for Christ's kingdom, so that the question really resolved 
 itself into this — are these allowable ? Love, in the exercise of which 
 the disciples had become hungry, is that which pleases God, and not 
 an outward service, such as that with which the hypocrites sought to 
 quiet their consciences. 
 
 In general the attitude assumed by the Lord here, and on several 
 other occasions, shows that, with reference to the observance of the 
 Lord's day, there are other opponents to deal with besides the licen- 
 tious, and that it is important to be on our guard, lest, in opposing the 
 latter, in an imprudent and one-sided manner, we should fall into the 
 hands of the others. On the other hand, it is a wrong method to 
 pursue, to form our views on the words of Christ, without remember- 
 ing that he assumes the basis of the Old Testament as already laid, 
 
40 
 
 and is speaking to those, who are attacked not by the licentious, but 
 by other foes. He who finds it difficult to fall in with the observance 
 of days, has first to turn to the Old Testament. False liberty must 
 find its corrective there. First Moses, and then Christ. 
 
 The Saviour expressly declares here, that real personal necessity jus- 
 tified the breach of the Sabbath, the disturbance of its rest. David 
 had nothing but hunger to justify his eating the shew-bread in defiance 
 of the Mosaic law. The conscience must decide, what works of neces- 
 sity really are. But we must not impose too severe a task upon the 
 conscience. We must avoid compressing necessity into too narrow 
 bounds. Otherwise it is easy to fall into the error of the pharisees, 
 even whilst admitting the general principle, on the authority of the 
 Lord, that works of necessity are to be regarded as exceptions. 
 
 To the faithful Christian, indeed, the words of Paul are fully appli- 
 cable here : " All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient." 
 But he will make only a sparing and prudent use of the liberty given 
 him by the Lord, because in a time of indifference to the Lord's day, 
 such as ours is, that which is in itself lawful may easily tend to con- 
 firm others in indifference, and lead them, without necessity, to disre- 
 gard the Lord's day. 
 
 The exception, pointed out by Christ, places on the same footing the 
 shew-bread and the Sabbath rest. They agree in this, that they are 
 both means, not ends. The shew-bread typified good works, and pro- 
 moted the performance of them ; the rest of the Sabbath was but the 
 means, of which devotion was the end. Now that, which is only 
 means to an end, can never be placed on an equality with that which 
 has its importance in itself. This should be impressed more strongly 
 on the minds of those, who maintain so earnestly that there is no dif- 
 ference between the fourth commandment and the others, amidst which 
 it stands. The latter are under all circumstances indispensable ; no 
 necessity can justify a breach of them. It will never do to stretch 
 the cords too tightly. The effect will then be just the reverse of that 
 which was intended. But in this, the Sabbath command agrees with 
 the others, that in its essence it cannot be abolished, without the moral 
 world falling into ruins. And he is no friend to the human race who 
 would substitute his own will for that necessity, which appears here 
 as a dispensation on the part of God. 
 
 The second exception pointed out by the Lord, is, that the com- 
 mand to rest is principally and absolutely directed . only against work- 
 ing for one's own interest and the affairs of this life. To help others 
 
41 
 
 forward in the Divine life, can never be to act in opposition to a com- 
 mand to rest, but is rather embraced in it ; for this is but to advance 
 the end, of which the rest was appointed as the means. The Lord is 
 only speaking here of the undue straining of the idea of rest. The 
 pharisees themselves were obliged to admit the force of the argument, 
 from the work enjoined by the law itself upon the priests, as soon as 
 they caught a glimpse of the personal dignity of the Redeemer. 
 Their disputing this troubled him so much the less, because they were 
 convinced in their consciences, and only wilfully suppressed this testi- 
 mony within. It belongs to majesty to pass unnoticed the attacks, 
 which are foolishly and wickedly directed against it. 
 
 The fact, moreover, that under the law the priests were obliged to 
 break the Sabbath, makes a large rent in the pharisaic notion of the 
 Sabbath. If the prohibition of work stood on an equality with that 
 of murder, theft, and adultery, the priests would never have dared to 
 break their rest. In the parallel passage in Mark there is added, 
 " And he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
 for the Sabbath. Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sab- 
 bath." The pharisees regarded the Sabbath as a power superior to 
 men. Rather let a man perish body and soul, than disturb the rest of 
 the Sabbath, which, in their opinion, was important for its own sake, 
 and to which they attributed an independent worth. The Lord regards 
 the rest, in harmony with Moses, as only a help to devotion. If, then, 
 it was appointed only for the sake of man, it could never present an 
 obstacle to the performance of anything which the Saviour, either 
 himself or through his servants, had to do for the good of men. 
 
 XVI. Pharisaic Scruples met by Christ. 
 
 " And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they 
 asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days ? that they might 
 accuse him. And he said unto them, "What man shall there be among you that 
 shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not 
 lay hold on it, and lift it out ? How much then is a man better than a sheep ? 
 Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." — (Matt. xii. 10 — 12.) 
 
 Bengel remarks on this passage, " The subject of the Sabbath occu- 
 pies a considerable portion of the evangelical history." This fact is of 
 no little importance. It can scarcely be supposed that the Lord would 
 have taken so much care to correct the erroneous opinions which pre- 
 vailed as to the Sabbath, if this had been, in its essence, purely an Old 
 Testament institution. No one will take much trouble about the im- 
 
42 
 
 provement of a house, which is directly after to be pulled entirely 
 down. The Saviour does not oppose, with anything like the same 
 assiduity, the prevalent notions with regard to the temple. 
 
 Whilst it follows from what has been said, that the Sabbath was 
 intended to continue, in substance, under the New Testament, we are, 
 by the very nature of the Saviour's instructions, thrown back upon the 
 Old. These instructions have not an appearance of completeness. They 
 always presuppose the positive teaching of the Old Testament. They 
 correct particular mistakes, or fill up particular parts, which were there 
 not fully developed, and might easily be overlooked or misunderstood. 
 Still, all that the New Testament teaches with regard to the Sabbath is 
 of a fragmentary character, unless taken in connexion with the ground- 
 work of the Old Testament. 
 
 It is an important sentence to which the Saviour here gives utter- 
 ance : " It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." It is closely con- 
 nected with the Old Testament point of view, though nowhere directly 
 expressed there. He who keeps to the letter only might indeed think, 
 that the Sabbath was intended purely as a day of worship. The act of 
 Christ shows, that the expression " it is lawful," is only chosen with 
 reference to the pharisaic expression, " it is unlawful," and really 
 means it is praiseworthy, that in fact he regards the Sabbath as the day, 
 to which, more than to any other the doing of good belongs. The disease 
 of the man was not one, in which danger would result from delay. 
 The healing could not be justified on the ground that it was lawful in 
 cases of necessity. How easily could Jesus have waited a few hours 
 till the end of the Sabbath ! The ruler of the synagogue would have 
 praised him then. But the fact that Christ so often healed on the 
 Sabbath, suggests the idea that he purposely chose this day. On the 
 Sabbath he taught in Capernaum and cast out an unclean spirit. On 
 the Sabbath he healed a woman that was diseased, and the sick man at 
 the pool of Bethesda, and gave sight to the blind. 
 
 In order, however, to draw a correct conclusion from these occur- 
 rences, we must keep well in view their symbolical character. The 
 material side has throughout only subordinate importance. These 
 cures of the body were but typical of that which Jesus does as phy- 
 sician of souls. It is only in this light that Matthew regards them- as 
 fulfilling the predictions of Isaiah, " he took our infirmities, and bare 
 our sicknesses " (Matt. viii. 17). The cures of Jesus go hand in hand 
 with the fact, that he went into the synagogue and taught. 
 
43 
 
 XVII. Healing, the proper work of the Sabbath. 
 
 " Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision ; (not that it is of Moses, but 
 of the fathers ;) and ye on the Sabbath day circumcise a man. If a man on the 
 Sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken ; 
 are ye angry at me because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sab- 
 bath day i "—(John vii. 22, 23.) 
 
 We cannot agree with Bengel, that the words " not that it is of 
 Moses," were designed to raise circumcision above the Sabbath, and 
 bring to light its greater value. Apart from other reasons, it is 
 opposed to the context, in which the duty to circumcise is founded 
 upon the law of Moses alone. We look upon the remark as simply 
 a historical comment in passing. But, even in this light, it appears 
 to indicate that the Sabbath was first introduced in the time of 
 Moses. Had the Saviour considered that the notice of the Sabbath 
 in Genesis ii. denoted the period of its institution, he would cer- 
 tainly not have made a remark with regard to circumcision only, 
 which would then have been equally applicable to the Sabbath. 
 
 Jesus had made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath. On 
 this rests the similarity to circumcision. Had the cure been con- 
 fined to the body, it would have been inferior to circumcision, which 
 had reference to the health of the soul. That the bodily disease, 
 in the case referred to by Jesus, was only the outward sign of an 
 inward spiritual disease, is shown by John v. 14, where Jesus says 
 to the healed man, " Behold, thou art made whole : sin no more 
 lest a worse thing come unto thee." As the evil had commenced 
 with the soul, so must the cure also. In Matt. ix. 2, Jesus says to 
 the palsied man, " Son, be of good cheer ; thy sins are forgiven thee." 
 Thus did the Lord point out the day of rest, as one intended as a 
 " medicina mentis " both to one's self and others. 
 
 XVIII. — Paul's Choice oe the Sabbath for his Missionary Work. 
 
 " Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came 
 to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews ; and Paul, as his manner 
 was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath-days reasoned with them out of the 
 scriptures. Opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and 
 risen again from the dead ; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is 
 Christ. . . . And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded 
 the Jews and the Greeks. — (Acts xvii. 1 — 3, xviii. 4.) 
 
 These passages show, that on the Sabbath Paul performed nearly all 
 his missionary work. He was accustomed to go on the Sabbath into 
 
44 
 
 the synagogues and preach Christ, and in this way he converted 
 both Jews and Greeks. Hence we see that the practical importance 
 of the weekly festival was fully recognised by Paul. That, which he 
 had found so important, he was not likely to wish to set aside. We 
 may obtain from this a preliminary rule, which may help us to ascertain 
 the meaning of the expressions we are about to examine. 
 
 XIX. Paul's Warning against a Distinction of Days. 
 
 " One man esteemeth one day above another ; another considers all days 
 alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." — (Rom. xiv. 5.) 
 
 " Let no man, therefore, judge you by meat or by drink, or in respect of a 
 festival, or a new moon, or Sabbaths ; -which are a shadow of things to come ; 
 but the body is of Christ." — (Coloss. ii. 16.) 
 
 " But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how 
 turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to 
 be in bondage. Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years." — Gal. iv. 
 9, 10. 
 
 It has been often thought, that the arguments of the apostle are 
 directed entirely against the transference of the Jewish festivals, as 
 such, to the Christian Church, and, therefore, concern us no further. 
 But, if this were the case, the apostle would mention them particularly 
 in all three passages, as he does in the second. The fact, that in the 
 first and second he speaks against all preference of days and times, 
 shows that the Jewish festive times are only regarded by him as speci- 
 mens of a class, and that his sentence of condemnation fixes upon 
 Christian festivals also, as soon as such views are entertained of them, 
 as place them in the same category with those of the Jews. 
 
 The Jewish idea of the festivals, which is to be distinguished from 
 that of the Israelites contained in the Old Testament, was this, that 
 these festivals were the only bright points amidst the darkness of the 
 people's life, that they were, from the first, distinct from all other days, 
 and that they possessed an inherent holiness. They were not regarded 
 as means for promoting the holiness of every day ; but the keeping 
 them holy was thought to be in itself enough. The transference to 
 Christianity of this miserable view is nothing less than contempt and 
 denial of Christ. By his redemption he has made a full end of all 
 piecemeal religion ; and, since his atonement and the pouring out of 
 the Holy Spirit, nothing less than the filling of the whole life by Christ 
 will find acceptance ; and every setting apart of sacred times is worth- 
 less, except for the purpose of using them as means to this greater 
 
45 
 
 end. Their points of departure must be man's sinfulness and weak- 
 ness, which render it necessary to employ such means, and require 
 that at times we should concentrate the light, that we may the more 
 effectually contend against the darkness. The Jewish idea of the festi- 
 vals, which was objectionable even from the Old Testament point of 
 view, is, since the coming of Christ, an unpardonable anachronism. 
 
 We have passed the limits drawn by the apostle with regard to the 
 Christian festivals, if we think with Liebetrut, " that the necessity for 
 them is something more than practical, that it reaches beyond the mere 
 notion of their usefulness and adaptation ;" or if we hold with Riicker 
 that, " the setting apart of days may be imagined possible even in a 
 state of innocence ;" or if we agree with Kraussold that, " the Church 
 was not at liberty to choose any day but Sunday for its worship, and, 
 if it had chosen another day, this would not have been truly the 
 Lord's day, the festival of the New Testament." Even scrupulosity 
 and excessive rigour, in the observance of days, rest generally, though 
 perhaps unconsciously, upon a somewhat Jewish notion of sacred 
 days. It is not till they have been invested with a false halo of sanc- 
 tity, that there arises an anxious fear of desecrating them. But if 
 we regard them as means to an end, our relation to them will be one 
 of greater liberty, though, still, we shall not forget the warning of the 
 apostle, "use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh." In this case 
 the rule, by which to decide whether a certain thing is allowable on the 
 Lord's day or not, is to ascertain whether it helps or hinders the life in 
 God. It cannot be a harmless matter to cherish, however slightly, the 
 views which are condemned by the apostle. Were it so, he would not 
 have said so earnestly, " I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon 
 you labour in vain." In the warmth of our zeal against the frivolity 
 and wickedness with which the Lord's day is despised, we must never 
 forget that there are dangers, too, on the other side ; we must take 
 care that whilst calling attention to the former dangers, we do not con- 
 tent ourselves with a partial view, like those who oppose the interests 
 of the church. 
 
 The apostle speaks in the passage quoted from the Epistle to the 
 Galatians of the elements of the world. These elements are, as in 
 Heb. v. 12, the beginnings or first principles of religion.* In Gal. 
 
 * We adopt the usual explanation of the elements of the world. (Thus 
 Ruclcert says, " First principles of knowledge such as the world possesses, in 
 contradistinction from the higher and more perfect wisdom of the children of 
 
46 
 
 iv. 3, he speaks of the elements of the world in connexion with children. 
 Where we meet with such mere first principles of religion, we may be 
 sure that the cause is not to be found in God, but that the fallen, cor- 
 rupt world, has been at work. Compare 1 John ii. 16 ; and that 
 which is said in 1 Cor. i. 20 and iii. 19 of the wisdom of the world. 
 Such a worldly A, B, C, religion was heathenism with its worship of 
 Nature. Such a worldly A, B, C, religion was Judaism with its restric- 
 tion of the sphere of religion to the festivals, with its notion that the 
 observance of these was all that God required, that they were something 
 more than the first amongst equals, and with its heartless celebration 
 of the festivals themselves, which was the necessary consequence of 
 such a notion ; " when will the new moon be gone, that we may sell 
 corn, and the Sabbath, that we may have wheat cheap ; making the 
 ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances ? That 
 we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes ?" 
 
 The apostle designates these elements of the world as " weak and 
 beggarly." They cannot fully and truly satisfy the spiritual wants ; 
 they look miserably poor by the side of the riches of Christ, which are 
 sufficient to sanctify the whole human life. The apostle speaks of a 
 slavish service which is rendered to these elements. Wherever Christ 
 is not embraced in living faith, and the sun has therefore not arisen, 
 which enlightens the whole life, wherever a man is still devoted to a 
 piecemeal religion, which is confined to certain observances, and seeks 
 salvation in them, there he groans under a heavy yoke, " there the 
 spirit gnaws, and complains, and still pursues true pleasure in vain." 
 Real freedom is only to be found where the true and perfect Christ is, 
 with his spirit and gifts, and there all piecemeal religion is at an end. 
 
 XX. The Lord's Day. 
 
 " I was in the spirit on the Lord's day." — (Rev. i. 10.) 
 
 There can be no doubt that the Lord's day here is our Sunday. A 
 comparison of ver. 5 and 18 leads to the conclusion that it was called 
 
 God.") In Neander's view, "the elements of the world are worldly, natural 
 objects, the world in general, the same as Paul generally speaks of under the 
 name of carnal things. This subjection to the elements of the world had its 
 culminating point in the deifying of Nature." But this does not explain why the 
 apostle speaks of the elements of the world. If we understand the" elementary 
 matter of nature, Time can scarcely be regarded as belonging to this, nor can we 
 see why it should be regarded as a slavish service jendered to Time, that the 
 Jews considered certain days as specially holy. 
 
47 
 
 so, as the day of resurrection, and, therefore, without any regard to 
 what the Church would do on it, but simply on account of that which 
 the Lord had done on it. Still, what the Lord had done on this day 
 was in itself an inducement to the Church to observe it ; and it was 
 by yielding to this, by giving himself up to the death-conquering power 
 of Christ, that the apostle became able and worthy to receive his reve- 
 lation. 
 
 We meet with the Sunday here for the first time under a spiritual 
 name. In the evangelical history, and in the epistles, it only appears 
 under its natural name. It is there always called the first day of the 
 week. The keeping of the day, however, preceded the new name. 
 On the very first return of the day on which Christ had risen, we find 
 the apostles assembled in remembrance of that which had occurred a 
 week before, hoping probably that the Lord would appear again ; and 
 this day is distinguished for the second time by the appearance of the 
 risen Saviour (John xx. 24 — 29). Paul, in writing to the Corinthians, 
 appoints the first day of the week as the day on which each one should 
 lay by his gifts. On the first day of the week we find the Christians 
 in Troas assembled to " break bread " (Acts xx. 7). The apostle had 
 arrived just a week before, and was evidently anxious to be with them 
 a second time on the first day of the week. 
 
 How did the observance of Sunday originate in the Christian 
 church ? " The New Testament festival," says Kraussold, " has its 
 roots in the Divine act of redemption, is devoted to the praise and 
 honour of this act, and on this act and its meaning is the manner of 
 its observance founded." " The Lord's day ! this is in itself sufficient 
 to lead the Christian mind to regard it as sacred without a law, and to 
 shrink from neglect of it as from a desecration." This, however, is 
 more than we can say. For this event to exert precisely this influence, 
 the Church must already have been impressed with the unconditional 
 necessity of a weekly festival, and this conviction must have been first 
 derived from the scriptures of the Old Testament, especially from the 
 ten commandments, as well as from observing the blessing, which in 
 the Church of the Old Testament rested upon the fulfilment of this 
 command, in spite of all the corruptions which had crept in. And so 
 with regard to the manner of observing it, this, too, was decided with 
 reference to the Old Testament revelation. Without this the Chris- 
 tians would never have come to so universal an agreement to set apart 
 the whole day ; nor would it from the very first have been considered 
 of such great importance, that it should be a day of rest. The autho- 
 
48 
 
 rity of the apostles, which was nowhere exerted, as far as we can per- 
 ceive, must have been exerted, if there had not been in the Old Testa- 
 ment a safe regulator at hand. 
 
 In every century of the Church's history, the observance of the 
 Christian festival has been connected in some way with the Old Tes- 
 tament, and especially the ten commandments, even where there has 
 been the clearest conviction, that the letter of the Mosaic law was only 
 for the Jews. A consciousness which manifests itself so uniformly in 
 every age of the Christian Church, must have existed at its commence- 
 ment. 
 
 And if the necessity for a weekly returning day is to be gathered 
 from the Old Testament, the fact of the resurrection does not offer the 
 only reason why this day should have been chosen. The continuance 
 of the Sabbath, even in the Church of the New Testament, might have 
 been advocated on forcible grounds ; and history shows that it was 
 with a heavy heart that the Church left it at last. The historical 
 continuation of the kingom of God would thus have appeared in the 
 clearest light. The Sabbath, first consecrated to the contemplation of 
 the works of God, was well fitted to take into connexion with them the 
 completion of those works in Christ. The Church, however, was not 
 bound to this day. It knew that the letter of the Old Testament law 
 did not apply to it at all, and that the spirit of the command did not 
 consist in the observance of this day, but only in the keeping of some 
 one day. And all that could be adduced in favour of the Sabbath was 
 outweighed by one important reason for its discontinuance. A number 
 of false notions, prejudices and bad practices had become connected 
 with this day, and since, in the course of centuries, they had taken 
 deep root in Judaism, it would have been a difficult matter to pre- 
 vent their coming over into the Christian Church, especially as they 
 were strongly supported by the Judaizing party in the Church. The 
 choice of another day tore this danger up by the roots, When this 
 was once determined upon, the day of the resurrection, from the im- 
 portance of this event to the Church, would naturally offer itself. Still 
 we have no right to suppose that the Church was bound to this 
 day ; and the question started by Kraussold, " supposing the Church 
 had chosen another day for its worship, would this have been the 
 Lord's day, the New Testament festival ? " must be unhesitatingly 
 answered in the affirmative. We have no more right to say that Sun- 
 day was exclusively, or even chiefly, dedicated " to the praise and 
 honour of the fact of the resurrection," than that " the Old Testament 
 
49 
 
 Sabbath rests upon the completion of the creation, and is dedicated to 
 the praise of this creation, and the confession of God, who made the 
 heavens and the earth." The day of the New Testament is rather a 
 day of spiritual refreshment, a day for meeting together, and seeking 
 edification in the worship of God ; and on it all the works of God, from 
 the beginning of the world, are the proper objects of contemplation, 
 everything, in fact, by which God has made to himself a name, and re- 
 vealed his nature. If these events all culminate in the resurrection, 
 and the day of resurrection is thus especially recommended, still the 
 boundary line between this and other memorable days, such as that of 
 Christ's death, of his ascension, and the pouring out of the Spirit, 
 cannot be so clearly drawn, that the Church must be unconditionally 
 and under all circumstances bound to it. If, for instance, the day 
 of resurrection had been a Sabbath, the Church would have had 
 perfect freedom to choose another day, in order to keep clear of 
 Jewish corruptions. And even if we wished to place the New Tes- 
 tament festival in direct connexion with the resurrection, we should 
 not therefore be right in maintaining the absolute necessity of -choosing 
 just the Sunday. It is, indeed, pleasant, and more exciting, to keep 
 up the remembrance of an event on the day on which it happened. 
 But it is not absolutely necessary. No one would think of assert- 
 ing, that the keeping of a birthday materially suffers, because, from 
 some cause or other, it is held upon another day than the actual 
 day of birth. Or, to take a more pertinent case, the enjoyment of 
 the Christian Christmas festival is not really affected by the fact, 
 that we have no means of ascertaining whether it is really held upon 
 the day on which the Word became flesh. We cannot maintain 
 the necessity of choosing the day of the resurrection, " in praise and 
 honour of this event," without trespassing upon the view so expressly 
 condemned by Paul, according to which certain days are in them- 
 selves more holy than others, and coming into collision with the 
 Saviour's words to the woman of Samaria (John iv. 21), " Ye shall 
 neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." 
 For what the Saviour says here of places of worship, is evidently as 
 true of times. 
 
 If, then, we inquire on what the Sunday festival rests, the first 
 ground is evidently the authority of the Church. " Everywhere," says 
 Liebetrut, with pe-fect correctness, " where the Church has been and 
 is, it has kept the Sunday as the Lord's day, and its own day. The 
 authority of the Church, so far as this is the bride of Christ, led by the 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 Spirit of the Lord, is itself a divine authority, from which none of its 
 true members can withdraw." To cast away this authority altoge- 
 ther, is a sad symptom of historical rationalism, of which rationalism, 
 commonly so called, is but the necessary consequence, springing from 
 the common root of spiritual pride, which fancies that wisdom will die 
 with it, and that it has monopolized all its treasures. 
 
 He who with humility acknowledges this authority, which no one 
 can slight without at the same time slighting the Lord, who has pro- 
 mised his Spirit to his Church to lead it into all truth, who has pro- 
 mised also to be with it always to the end of the world, and has said, 
 " Whoso heareth you, heareth me ;" such a man will soon have his 
 eyes opened to perceive how great a blessing has attended this arrange- 
 ment of the Church, and will thus be confirmed in the conviction, that 
 it has been made in the Spirit of the Lord. " The living practice pre- 
 ceded all theory, and decided long ago as to the undeniable necessity 
 for the regular Sunday festival, and as to the good resulting from it, 
 which nothing else could supply.'' He who has once acknowledged this 
 authority will perceive, more and more clearly, the internal grounds for 
 the necessity of preserving the Lord's day. He will see that without 
 such an arrangement the Church would soon cease to be a church, 
 amidst the labours, and cares, and distractions of human life ; that it 
 would perish through dulness, indifference, and an animal nature ; that, 
 in fact, the best means which Satan could apply in order to make the 
 Church's watchword, "Let the whole life be a Sabbath," but empty 
 words, would be to encourage doubt as to the utility of setting apart 
 particular days for rest. 
 
 But we must not stop here. We, who are evangelical, cannot deny 
 the abstract possibility that the Church has done wrong. All that the 
 authority of the Church does for us, is to excite a decidedly favourable 
 prepossession. The internal grounds, too, are still open to an impar- 
 tial sifting. They only suffice in cases, in which there is no inclination 
 to break through the fences of the day of rest, and no strong tempta- 
 tion from without. But these are, after all, but outworks; the real 
 citadel is still the command which sounded on Sinai, with all the words 
 of God which are connected with it, either preparing the way, or ex- 
 panding the letter, or confirming its importance, or guarding from 
 abuse. The institution is far too important, the temptations too 
 strong, for us to be able to dispense with a solid scriptural foundation. 
 The fact that the New r Testament presents one of so partial a descrip- 
 tion, refers us decidedly to the Old ; and if we but open this with the 
 
51 
 
 prayer, " Lord, open our eyes, that we may behold wondrous things out 
 of thy law," we shall find what we seek, and discover how good a 
 thing it is that the heart be established. It is clear that the force of 
 the Old Testament command has not diminished, but increased. This 
 is but a necessary consequence of the fact that the redemption effected 
 by Christ is incomparably more glorious than the deliverance from 
 Egypt, on which, in the introduction to the ten commandments, the 
 obligation to obey them is based. No ingratitude is so black as that 
 which refuses obedience to God, after he has given for us his only- 
 begotten Son. 
 
 E 2 
 
PAET II. 
 tfre 3tikM\ of tfo fetos, w& tlje ^uito of christians. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HISTORY OF OPINIONS ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE SABBATH 
 
 AND SUNDAY. 
 
 There can be no doubt, that the circumstances of the times render a 
 thorough examination of this part of our subject highly desirable. It 
 is unfortunate that this has been so long delayed. The numerous 
 accounts received from England and America of the agitation of the 
 question of Sabbath observance, have necessarily suggested the fre- 
 quent inquiry, what estimate ought we to form of the fundamental 
 doctrine held by English and American Christians on this subject? 
 And the subject has excited the more attention in consequence of 
 attempts originating in England, but principally made through the 
 medium of the Tract Society of Lower Saxony, to introduce this doc- 
 trine into Germany. Many adopt it without hesitation, because it 
 seems to them the only remedy for the evils which prevail in reference 
 to the observance of Sunday : the injurious effects of which are seen 
 most clearly by those who come most into connexion with the world. 
 Others, who are most interested in the doctrinal question, are driven to 
 the other extreme, and oppose this doctrine with all their hearts, 
 at the risk of thereby increasing the gaiety so prevalent on the Sunday. 
 Our intention here is to establish an opinion, which shall be satis- 
 factory both from the practical and doctrinal points of view. But 
 before we proceed to this, we think it necessary to glance at the 
 history of the opinions which have prevailed in the Christian Church, 
 
53 
 
 as to the relation of Sunday to the Sabbath, and thus prepare the way 
 for our own discussion of the subject. 
 
 To exhibit at the outset the chief design of the following historical 
 sketch, we give here an extract from Gemberg's " Scotch Church," 
 which contains an outline of the opinions generally held in Great 
 Britain and America : — " The law of the Sabbath is of divine autho- 
 rity, given by God in the days of our first parents, and afterwards 
 repeated by Moses to the children of Israel. Christ did not repeal it, 
 but taught us how to interpret, and keep it rightly. It is not merely 
 a ritual law, but stands amongst the commandments of the Decalogue, 
 to which he gave, in the Sermon on the Mount, a more spiritual 
 explanation, but which he did not repeal. Paul, in Rom. xiv. 5, 6, 
 Gal. iv. 10, Col. ii. 16, warns against a false Jewish mode of obser- 
 vance, and justly enforces the one thing needful, that Christ be formed 
 in us, without on that account treating as antiquated this primeval 
 command of God." According to this view the only difference be- 
 tween the Sabbath of the Old Testament and the Sunday of the New is, 
 that, under the latter, the first day of the week has taken the-place of 
 the seventh by divine command. With this exception, the Jewish 
 Sabbath and Christian Sunday are precisely the same. 
 
 This opinion, that the Jewish Sabbath has been simply transferred 
 to the Sunday was entirely unknown in the first ages of Christianity ; 
 so much so, that it is never even discussed; whilst the opposite opinion 
 is always mentioned, without any appearance of partiality, as that 
 which universally prevailed. And there was never any controversy in 
 reference to the Sabbath, except with the Jews, who required that the 
 Christians should observe the seventh day, and with the Manicheans, 
 who concluded that because the orthodox Christians did not keep the 
 Sabbath, they secretly distinguished between the God of the Old 
 Testament and the God of the New. An examination of a few wit- 
 nesses of great importance will prove the correctness of our assertion. 
 In this our object is simply historical, and we by no means wish to 
 defend the many obscurities and one-sided errors which are mixed up 
 with their testimonies. We shall pronounce upon these when we 
 state our own opinion, so that it will be unnecessary to do this when- 
 ever they occur. Our only concern at present is to ascertain the 
 leading principles, which were professed by the early Christian Church. 
 
 Justin Martyr* in his Dialogue,! introduces the Jew, Tryphon, as 
 
 * Died a.d. 163. " t Dialogus cum Tryph. c. 10. 
 
54 
 
 making the following objection to the Divine origin of Christianity : — 
 " This is the strangest thing to us, that you, who pretend to be pious, 
 and think yourselves better than other men, are not in any respect 
 different from them, but still imitate the Gentiles in your lives, by 
 refusing to observe either the festivals, or the Sabbaths, or circumci- 
 sion.'" To this Justin replies, not that the Sabbath is transferred to 
 the Sunday, but that the whole Mosaic law is abolished. " The law 
 given on Horeb has now grown old, and belongs to you alone ; the new 
 law is for all without distinction. But since one law has been given 
 in the place of another, the later has repealed the earlier, and the new 
 covenant fixes the termination of the old. To us, however, Christ is 
 given as a last and eternal law, the sure covenant, which contains no 
 law, no commandment, and no precept." He contrasts the spiritual 
 Sabbath-keeping of the New Testament with the outward observance 
 of the Old (c. 12). " The new law requires that you keep a. perpetual 
 Sabbath, and you fancy you are pious, if you spend one day in idle- 
 ness, without understanding why this was prescribed. If there is 
 amongst you a perjurer or a thief, let him leave his sins ; if an adul- 
 terer, let him repent ; thus will he keep the true and acceptable Sab- 
 bath to the Lord." He maintains (c. 18) that the keeping of the 
 Sabbath, and other similar things, were enjoined by God solely with 
 reference to the peculiar condition of the people of Israel, and were, 
 therefore, not an eternal law, but alterable according to circumstances. 
 " We would retain circumcision, and the Sabbath, and all the feasts, 
 without hesitation, if we did not know the reasons for which they 
 w r ere enjoined on you, namely, on account of your lawlessness and 
 hardness of heart." He speaks of the law of the Sabbath as a means 
 of reminding a rude people of its God. He answers the assertion, 
 that the law of the Sabbath is valid for ever, by remarking that in that 
 case, instead of being first given to Israel in the wilderness, it would 
 have been given from the very first to the whole human race, of which 
 we find no trace. " If we deny this (that the law of the Sabbath is 
 abolished, &c), we must entertain the preposterous opinion, that it 
 was not the same God who was the God of Enoch and of all those 
 who had no circumcision, and neither kept the Sabbath nor the other 
 things which Moses commanded. Or, if it were the same, that he 
 did not wish the whole human race to perform the same duties to him. 
 To suppose this would be ridiculous. But to maintain that he, who 
 is always the same, commanded this and other similar things on ac- 
 count of the sins of men, is but to represent him as the friend of man, 
 
55 
 
 foreseeing, perfect, just, and good." " If no circumcision was neces- 
 sary before Abraham, and no Sabbath, no festivals, and no sacrifices 
 before Moses, there is no necessity for them now, since the Son of 
 God, Jesus Christ, has been born of the Virgin, by the will of God, 
 of the seed of Abraham." 
 
 Tertidlian* argues at great length against the Jewish notion of the 
 perpetual obligation of the law of the Sabbath. He says, amongst 
 other things : — " Lastly, let them show that Adam kept the Sabbath ; 
 or that Abel, when he brought a sacred offering, pleased God by keep- 
 ing the Sabbath ; or that Enoch, who was translated to heaven, was 
 an observer of the Sabbath ; or that Noah, who prepared the ark on 
 account of the great flood, kept the Sabbath ; or that Abraham offered 
 his son Isaac in observance of the Sabbath ; or that Melchizedek in 
 his priesthood received the law of the Sabbath. But the Jews will 
 say, since this law was given by Moses it has been always necessary 
 to observe it. But we have here at the same time a confession, that 
 the commandment is not an eternal and spiritual, but a temporal one ; 
 one, therefore, which was to come to an end." f ;» 
 
 Jrenceus\ expresses himself to the same effect. § 
 Augustine || explains his views of the Sabbath in many places, but 
 most fully in his work against the Manichean, Faustus. He considers 
 the law of the Sabbath to be purely ceremonial ; the keeping of the 
 Sabbath a symbolical act, a type of the saints' rest from earthly labours, 
 which has been secured by Christ, and as having, therefore, ceased, 
 with all the shadows of the Old Testament, as soon as the essence 
 came. "We select a few passages : — B. vi. c. 1 : " Faustus said, dost 
 thou accept the Old Testament ? What, accept that whose command- 
 ments I do not obey ? I believe that thou also dost not. For I reject 
 circumcision as repulsive, and I believe that thou dost the same. The 
 keeping of the Sabbath I look upon as something superfluous, and so 
 do you." C. 2 : " Augustine said, I answer that they are thoroughly 
 ignorant of the great difference which exists between the precepts 
 which are to guide the life, and the precepts which are to indicate life. 
 For example, thou shalt not covet, is a precept which is to guide the 
 life ; thou shalt circumcise every male, is a precept which is to indi- 
 cate it. From the stand-point of the present they blame the things 
 which were suited to that time, and which indicated as future that 
 
 * Died a.d. 220. f C. Judrcus, c. 4. X Died a.d. 202. 
 
 §' C. Hser. iv. c. 30. || Died a.d. 430. 
 
56 
 
 which is now made known." C. 4 : " The observance of the festival 
 of the Sabbath appears to us now superfluous, since the hope of our 
 eternal rest has been revealed. But it is not useless to read of and 
 understand it, because, as that which is now revealed to us was pre- 
 dicted in the prophetic times, not only by words, but also by actions, 
 so by this sign that which we now possess was prefigured." B. xvi. c. 28 : 
 " As to what thou sayest about the Sabbath, and circumcision, and 
 difference of meats, Moses taught one thing, and, from Christ, Christians 
 have learned another ; thus we have said above, in the apostle's words, 
 all these are types for us. It is, therefore, not the doctrine, but the 
 age, which has changed. For the age, in which this could only be 
 taught by figurative prophecies, was different from that in which it is 
 fully revealed by the truth, which is made manifest, and has been im- 
 parted to us. But what wonder is it that the Jews, who only under- 
 stood the Sabbath according to the letter, resisted Christ, who inter- 
 preted it according to the spirit ? " 
 
 In his 36th letter* he says : — " The Lord allowed the disciples to 
 rub out the ears of corn and eat on the Sabbath, in order that the 
 former might serve to refute those who advocated idleness on the Sab- 
 bath, and the latter those who would enjoin fasting ; showing that the 
 former is superstitious, since the times are changed ; the latter, both 
 under the Old and New Testaments, always free." 
 
 In the letter to Januarius,f he unfolds the spiritual meaning of the 
 Sabbath law, and then continues : — " And, for this reason, the only 
 one of the ten commandments, which refers to the Sabbath, is to be 
 regarded as figurative : and we have received the figure, that we may 
 understand it, but not that we may keep it by bodily inactivity. The 
 observance of it by the Jews themselves would have been justly pro- 
 nounced ridiculous, if it had not indicated another spiritual rest." 
 How far he was from placing the Sabbath and Sunday on an equality, 
 is evident from his attributing to the Sunday a spiritual meaning alto- 
 gether different from that of the Sabbath. The Sabbath denotes, in 
 his opinion, the rest of the whole earthly nature, the Sunday the new 
 heavenly life. 
 
 Jerome,\ commenting on Gal. iv. 10,§ starts the question, whether, 
 if, as Paul says, we are not to observe days, or months, or times, 
 Christians do not fall into this error in their observance of Sunday 
 
 * Opp. ii. p. 53. Bened. Cler. f Ep. 55. al. 119. 
 
 + Died a.d. 420. § Opp. t. ix. p. 142. 
 
57 
 
 and other festivals. He answers this question by pointing out that 
 the Christian festivals have an entirely different signification from those 
 of the Jews. To the Christian every day is a Sunday, a Whitsuntide 
 and Easter festival. But to enhance enjoyment by intercourse, and 
 for the sake of the weaker Christians, who are too deeply engrossed 
 in the business of the world to be able to keep a perpetual festival, 
 the Church has chosen out of the days of the year, which are all equal 
 in themselves, some few in which especially to magnify the gifts of the 
 grace of God which have been bestowed upon them. He says, 
 amongst other things: — " And lest disorder in the assembling of the 
 people should diminish their faith in Christ, certain days have been 
 appointed, that we may all meet at the same time. Not as though 
 there were any superiority in the day on which we meet, but in order 
 that, whichever day is chosen for our meetings, the sight of each other 
 may increase our pleasure. But if we were to give a strict answer to 
 the question started, we should say, that all days are alike, that not 
 Friday only is to be regarded as the day on which Christ was crucified, 
 nor Sunday only as the day on which he rose, but that every day is 
 to us the sacred day of resurrection, and every day we eat of the flesh 
 of the Lord." 
 
 Jerome agrees with Augustine as to the spiritual interpretation of 
 the Sabbath law, so far as Christians are concerned. He says on 
 Isa. lviii., " The Sabbath, which word means rest, must be always 
 sanctified by believers, by their doing continually not the will of the 
 flesh, but that of the Spirit."* And on Ezekiel xliii., " The literal 
 Sabbath, the Sabbath of the Jews, is properly neglected by those who 
 are a chosen, royal, priestly, race. He sanctifies God's Sabbath, who 
 bears on that Sabbath no burden of sin." 
 
 We may see from the following circumstances, how far the Chris- 
 tians of the early ages of the Church were from entertaining the opinion, 
 that the Sabbath was transferred to the Sunday : — 1. Work was under 
 certain circumstances considered lawful. It is true, that Tertullian 
 says, " business is laid aside, in order that no place may be given to 
 the devil ; " in which Neander^: thinks, that a trace of the erroneous 
 opinion, that the law of the Sabbath was transferred to the Sunday 
 may be observed. But apart from other passages of Tertullian, which 
 are altogether opposed to the notion of such a transfer, the reason 
 
 * Opp. t. iv. p. 186. t De Orat. c. 17. 
 
 \ Church Hist. v. 1, p. 403. Clark's Ed. 
 
58 
 
 given by himself shows, that the cessation of work on the Sunday was 
 not, as the Jews considered it, an act of religion in itself, but only an 
 ascetic means of promoting the worship of God. Work is to be 
 abstained from, because it draws away the thoughts from God, and 
 thus opens the door to the prince of this world. The council of 
 Laodicea enjoins, in its 29th canon, that " Christians are not to 
 imitate the Jews, and be idle on the Sabbath, but to work on that day ; 
 but on the Sunday, if circumstances allow, they are to abstain from 
 work as Christians." This, " if circumstances allow," is worth atten- 
 tion. Balsamon, a later writer on canon law, has this suitable com- 
 ment upon it (p. 839) : " Our forefathers enjoined abstinence from 
 work on the Sunday, not as an inviolable command, but added, ' if be- 
 lievers are not prevented by circumstances.' For if any one from 
 poverty, or other necessity, works on the Sunday, he is not to be con- 
 demned." And so Zonaras (p. 349) : " The canon adds, ' if circum- 
 stances allow.' The civil law, on the contrary, commands rest on the 
 Sunday, unconditionally, with the exception of the agriculturists ; for 
 these are allowed to work on the Sunday, because when work must be 
 done, they would probably not be able to find another day so suitable 
 for it." The Emperor Constantine forbade on the Sunday all judicial 
 processes, all work on the part of mechanics, and all military exercises, 
 but expressly allowed agricultural labour. Such a permission is in- 
 conceiveable if the Sunday was not distinguished from the Sabbath. 
 The third council of Orleans, in the year 538, says, in its 29th canon : 
 " The opinion is spreading amongst the people, that it is wrong to 
 ride, or drive, or cook food, or do anything to the house or the person 
 on the Sunday. But since such opi?u'ons are more Jewish than Chris- 
 tian, that shall be lawful in future, which has been so to the present 
 time. On the other hand, agricultural labour ought to be laid aside, 
 in order that the people may not he prevented from attending church." 
 The reason here given shows clearly, that even the more stringent 
 edicts of the later Greek emperors, with regard to agricultural employ- 
 ment, on the Sunday, did not proceed from any idea that the law of 
 the Sabbath was transferred to the Sunday. They were dictated by 
 the same motive, which led both elders of the Church, and rulers in 
 the State, to unite in the effort to abolish theatrical exhibitions and 
 other public amusements on the Sunday, namely, from the desire to 
 remove everything which could interfere with devotion on that day, of 
 which Augustine says : " This day is called the day of the Lord, 
 because on it the Lord rose from the dead ; and also, in order that the 
 
59 
 
 name may teach the importance of entire self- consecration to the 
 Lord."* 
 
 2. Mosheim f has already shown, that a distinction was made in 
 the primitive Church between the Sabbath and Sunday, from the fact 
 that the early Christians celebrated the Sabbath as well as the Sunday, 
 though not in a Jewish manner, by strict abstinence from work (which 
 is in itself a proof that it was not because the Mosaic law was 
 thought to be still binding), but by prayer and in remembrance of 
 the Creator, who finished his work on this day. Such an observance 
 of the Sabbath would have been altogether unmeaning, if the Sunday 
 had simply taken its place. 
 
 3. Even those theologians who were of opinion that the Sabbath 
 was instituted immediately after the creation, and kept by the pious 
 before Moses, never thought of inferring from this, as was afterwards 
 done, that the Mosaic law of the Sabbath is binding upon Christians 
 still. 
 
 If the opinion had not been so universally prevalent in the time 
 of the Fathers, that the Sabbath law applied only to Old Testament 
 times, it would be difficult to explain the fact that the same opinion 
 prevailed in the Middle Ages, when the inclination was so strong to 
 bring over that which belonged to the Old Testament into the sphere 
 of the New. But even here we find no trace of the opinion, that 
 the Sunday has taken the place of the Sabbath, and that the law of 
 the Sabbath applies to it. 
 
 Bede\ says on Gal. iv., " The new covenant is manifestly promised 
 (in the Old Testament Scriptures), but not after the pattern of the 
 covenant which was made with the people, when they were brought 
 out of Egypt. Since, then, in that old covenant, precepts were given, 
 which are no longer binding upon us who belong to the New, why do 
 not the Jews confess, that they have remained behind amidst antiquities 
 which are now superfluous, rather than complain of us who have 
 received the new thing which was promised, because we do not ob- 
 serve the old ? Since the day has thus dawned, the shadows may 
 well depart ; let the spiritual meaning shine forth, and the_ literal 
 observance fall. Since that keeping of the Sabbath which consisted in 
 a day's inactivity is done away, he keeps a perpetual Sabbath who 
 performs his works in hope of future rest, and boasts not of his good 
 
 * De Verb. Apost. serm. 15. f Ethics, P. 5. 
 
 t Died a.d. 735. 
 
60 
 
 deeds, as though they were his own, and he had not received them, 
 but confesses that He who, at the same time, works and rests, is 
 working in him. The Christian keeps the true Sabbath, when he 
 abstains from servile work, that is, from sin ; for he who sins is the 
 servant of sin."* The disciple of Augustine is unmistakeable here. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas,] who is renowned both for piety and sagacity, 
 expresses on this subject a more independent opinion. He regards 
 the command to keep the Sabbath as applicable, so far as the letter is 
 concerned, to the Jews alone ; but he endeavours to extract the 
 kernel from the shell, and to separate from the temporary form, which 
 belonged only to the people of the Old Testament, the eternal truth 
 which the commandment contained. To the form belonged, in his 
 opinion, the appointment of a particular day (which is to be borne in 
 mind, as showing that he did not derive the choice of Sunday, in the place 
 of the Sabbath, from divine appointment) ; and also the precepts as to 
 the manner of keeping it, which were not, in his opinion, inviolable, and 
 to be literally observed. The outward observance is only of worth as 
 means to an end ; and the mode is to be determined (a thing unlawful 
 under the Old Testament), according to its apparent fitness to promote 
 the end. " This command to ' keep the Sabbath holy,' is, literally 
 interpreted, partly moral and partly ceremonial. Moral, inasmuch as 
 men are to devote a certain portion of their time to an attention to 
 divine things. For men have a natural inclination to fix a certain 
 time for everything that is necessary, such as for bodily refreshment, 
 and other things of a similar kind. And, therefore, in compliance 
 with the dictates of natural reason, they devote a certain fixed time to 
 that spiritual refreshment by which their spirits are strengthened in 
 God. Thus it is a moral precept, which enjoins upon men to set apart 
 a certain time for the purpose of devoting it to divine things. But inas- 
 much as a special time is named in the commandment as a sign of the 
 creation, it is in this respect a ceremonial command. — Servile works are 
 inconsistent with the keeping of the Sabbath, so far as they hinder us from 
 fixing the mind upon divine things. And because a man is kept away 
 from divine things more by sin than by work, even of the body, the man 
 who sins breaks the command, more than he who performs any lawful 
 bodily work. — The observance of Sunday, under the new law, follows 
 the keeping of the Sabbath, not in consequence of a legal precept, 
 but from the decision of the Church, and the custom of Christians. 
 
 * Opp. i. 6, p. 662. t Died a.d. 1224. 
 
61 
 
 For this observance is not typical, as the keeping of the Sabbath was 
 under the old law. And, therefore, the prohibition of work on the 
 Sunday is not so strict as on the Sabbath, but some employments are 
 lawful on the Sunday which were forbidden on the Sabbath, such as 
 the cooking of food and other similar things. And with regard to 
 things not allowed, it is easier to obtain a dispensation in case of need 
 under the new law than under the old, since the design of a type is to 
 bear witness of the truth, and therefore must not be departed from in 
 the smallest things ; but works in themselves considered can be 
 changed according to the changes of time and place." 
 
 If, however, there had been anything like an established opinion, 
 that the Old Testament law of the Sabbath was binding upon the 
 Church, it would certainly have been overthrown by the powerful 
 attacks of the Reformers upon any mixture of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments. 
 
 Luther s opinion as to the law of the Sabbath can be easily inferred 
 from his views as to the Old Testament law in general, and especially 
 the ten commandments. The distinction, so current in later times, 
 between the moral and ceremonial laws, according to which only the 
 latter has been abolished by Christ, whilst the former is valid in all 
 ages and binding upon all men, received no support from him. He 
 looked upon the whole law as an outward compulsory letter, only 
 intended for the Jews ; a view, which, as we shall show in the second 
 chapter, can only be objected to by those who misunderstand it. Thus 
 he says, in the work entitled, " Instruction to Christians how to make 
 use of Moses," " The law of Moses belongs to the Jews, and is no 
 longer binding upon us. The words of Scripture prove clearly to us, 
 that the ten commandments do not affect us ; for God has not brought 
 us out of Egypt, but only the Jews. We are willing to take Moses as 
 a teacher, but not as our lawgiver, except when he agrees with the 
 New Testament and with the law of nature. . . . No single point in 
 Moses binds us. . . . Leave Moses and his people alone. Their work 
 is done. He has nothing to do with me. I listen to the word, which 
 concerns me. We have the gospel. . . . We do not read Moses, 
 because he concerns us, because we have to obey him, but because he 
 agrees with the law of nature ; and has expressed this law better than 
 the heathen ever could. In this way the ten commandments are a 
 mirror of our life, in which we see our defects." 
 
 To the same effect he says, in the explanation of the ten command- 
 ments : " We must remark at the outset, that the ten commandments 
 
62 
 
 do not apply to us Gentiles and Christians, but only to the Jews. If 
 a preacher wishes to force you back to Moses, ask him whether you 
 were brought by Moses out of Egypt. If he says, No, then say, How 
 then does Moses concern me, since he speaks to the people that have 
 been brought out of Egypt ? In the New Testament Moses comes to 
 an end, and his laws lose their force. He must bow in the presence 
 of Christ. . . . The words, ' I am the Lord thy God,' apply to all of us, 
 to the whole world, not because Moses has written them, but because 
 God has created, and preserves and governs all." And in another 
 passage of the same work he says : " We must stop the mouths of the 
 factious spirits, who say, ' Thus says Moses.' Then do you reply, 
 Moses does not concern us. If I accept Moses in one commandment, 
 I must accept the whole Moses. In that case I should be obliged to 
 be circumcised, and to wash my clothes in a Jewish manner, and to 
 eat and drink, and dress and do everything of this kind, in the manner 
 in which the Jews are commanded to do them in the law. Therefore, 
 we will not obey Moses, or accept him. Moses died, and his govern- 
 ment terminated when Christ came." 
 
 Luther's opinion of the Sabbath, in harmony with this general view, 
 is so clearly expressed in his larger Catechism, that there is no necessity 
 to bring forward other passages from his writings. " God set apart 
 the seventh day, and appointed it to be observed, and commanded that 
 it should be considered holy above all others ; and this command, as 
 far as the outward observance is concerned, was given to the Jews 
 alone, that they should abstain from hard labour, and rest, in order 
 that both man and beast might be refreshed, and not be worn out by 
 constant work. Therefore this commandment, literally understood, 
 does not apply to us Christians ; for it is entirely outward, like other 
 ordinances of the Old Testament, bound to modes, and persons, and 
 times and customs, all of which are now left free by Christ. But, in 
 order that the simple may obtain a Christian view of that which 
 God requires of us in this commandment, observe that we keep a 
 festival, not for the sake of intelligent and advanced Christians, 
 for these have no need of it ; but first for the sake of the body, because 
 Nature teaches that the working-classes, servants and maids, who have 
 spent the whole week in their work and occupation, absolutely require 
 a day in which they can leave off work, and rest and refresh them- 
 selves ; and, chiefly, in order that men may, on such a day of rest, have 
 time and opportunity, such as they could not otherwise have, to attend 
 to the worship of God, that so they may come in crowds, to hear the 
 
63 
 
 word of God and practise it, to praise God, and sing, and pray. But 
 this is not bound to any particular time, as with the Jews, so that it 
 must be this day or that ; for no day is in itself better than any other, 
 but it ought to be performed daily; only, because this would be im- 
 possible to the mass of the people, we must at least devote one day to 
 this purpose. And because Sunday has been appointed from the 
 earliest times, we ought to keep to this arrangement, that all things 
 may be done in harmony and order, and no confusion be caused by 
 unnecessary novelties." 
 
 Melancthon speaks just as decidedly in the Augsburgh Confession, 
 art. 28 : — " Those who maintain that the Sunday is necessarily insti- 
 tuted in the place of the Sabbath, are greatly mistaken ; for the sacred 
 Scriptures have abolished the Sabbath, and teach, that all the ceremo- 
 nies of the old law may be dropped since the introduction of the 
 gospel ; still, as it is requisite that a certain day should be appointed, 
 in order that the people may know when to assemble, the Christian 
 Church has appointed Sunday for this purpose ; and this change it has 
 made with the greater pleasure and good will, since it sets before men 
 an example of Christian liberty, and teaches that neither the keeping 
 of the Sabbath nor of any other day is absolutely necessary." 
 
 The Lutheran theologians of the century following the Reformation 
 remained true to the views of Luther and Melancthon. This could be 
 easily shown by copious quotations ; but for the sake of brevity we 
 shall content ourselves with one passage from a work by Chemnitz : — 
 " It is a part of Christian liberty," he says, " that the consciences nei- 
 ther are bound, nor ought to be bound, to observe certain days or 
 times, in the New Testament sense of ' binding ' ; but since it is the 
 will of God that the church should assemble at times, to hear the- word 
 of God, to partake of the sacrament, for public prayer and thanks- 
 giving, and for other united exercises of piety, and since Paul enjoins 
 that, in the meetings of the church, everything be done in order, a 
 certain day in the week was appointed in the days of the apostles, in 
 the exercise of Christian liberty, for the meetings of the church for 
 worship ; and this was done for the sake of order, to prevent confu- 
 sion, and irregular meetings, and that men might not neglect the 
 assembling of themselves together. And though the meetings of the 
 church are not necessarily bound to that day, in consequence of any 
 law or precept of the New Testament, it would bo an act of rude 
 caprice to refuse to conform to this custom of the apostolic and primi- 
 tive Church, which was established for the sake of order and union, 
 
64 
 
 since entire Christian freedom is left to the conscience, and it tends, 
 and can be employed, to the edification of the church." * And again : 
 — " It is a remnant of Jewish leaven to be over anxious to forbid out- 
 ward employments on the festivals, whether they do or do not inter- 
 fere with those exercises, which constitute the observance of the Sab- 
 bath. They abuse the Sabbath most who employ it in sensuality, 
 frivolity, drunkenness, and other disgraceful practices ; which, how- 
 ever, are so frequent, that on hardly any day is God more grievously 
 offended than on those which have been especially devoted to his 
 service. It is also a remnant of Jewish leaven to contend, with too 
 great eagerness, that the observance of the day must extend exactly 
 from midnight to midnight, as many do." f 
 
 The Reformed Church held at first precisely the same doctrine as 
 the Lutheran. Those writings, which possessed the authority of arti- 
 cles, afford such positive proof of this, that we need search no further. 
 The Catechism of Geneva contains the following questions and answers 
 upon the fourth commandment? — Q. "Does it forbid all work?" 
 A. " This commandment is one of a distinct and peculiar kind. For 
 the observance of rest is a part of the ancient ceremonies ; it is, there- 
 fore, done away by the coming of Christ." Q,. " What part of this 
 commandment, then, applies to us ? " A. " That we do not neglect 
 the religious institutions which belong to the spiritual constitution of 
 the church, especially that we attend the religious meetings which are 
 held, to hear the word of God, and observe the sacraments, and offer 
 prayer." Q. " Is the framework, then, entirely useless to us ? " 
 A. " By no means. But we must learn the truth which it teaches, 
 namely, that since we have been planted into the body of Christ, and 
 have become his members, we must cease from our own works, and 
 thus give ourselves up to the guidance of God." 
 
 In the Heidelberg Catechism, the 103rd question reads thus: — 
 " What does God require in the fourth commandment ? " A. " God 
 requires, first, that preaching and schools should be maintained, and 
 that I come diligently, especially on the feast day, with the church of 
 God, to learn the word of God, to observe the sacraments, publicly to 
 call upon the Lord, and to give alms. Moreover, that I rest every 
 day of my life from my wicked works, that I let the Lord work in me 
 by his Spirit, and thus commence in this life the Sabbath of eternity." 
 
 The Helvetic Co?ifcssion, which was drawn up in the year 1566, and 
 
 * Examen Concihi Tridentini, b. iv. p. 155. f P. 15G. 
 
65 
 
 adopted by the Reformed Churches in England, Scotland, France, the 
 Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Germany, reads as follows : — 
 "Although religion is bound to no- particular time, yet it cannot be 
 fostered and carried out without a fixed arrangement and distinction 
 of times. Thus every church chooses for itself a certain time for 
 public prayer and the preaching of the gospel, as well as for the 
 observance of the sacraments. But it is not left free to every one 
 capriciously to overturn this arrangement of the church. And unless 
 sufficient leisure is reserved for the outward exercises of religion, men 
 will certainly be drawn away from them by their worldly affairs. We 
 find, therefore, that in the early churches not only certain hours in the 
 week were appointed for meeting together, but the Sunday was also 
 devoted to these meetings and to sacred leisure, even as early as the 
 times of the apostles : a custom which our churches very properly 
 retain for the promotion of love and the worship of God. But we do 
 not tolerate here either superstition, or the Jewish mode of observance. 
 For we do not believe that one day is holier than another, or that rest 
 in itself is pleasing to God. We keep the Sunday, not the Sabbath, by 
 a voluntary observance. 
 
 The Socinians, in the Rakow Catechism, which is acknowledged 
 as containing their confession, expressly deny the identity of the 
 Sabbath and Sunday. — Q,. " What is your opinion as to the fourth com- 
 mandment ?" A. " I believe that, like the other ceremonies, it is 
 abrogated by the New Testament." " Q. Why, then, is it placed in 
 the Decalogue ?" A. " In order that it may be seen that the most 
 perfect part of the Mosaic law is still not perfect, and that thus an 
 intimation might be given, that a much more perfect law would super- 
 sede the law of Moses." Q. " Has not Christ enjoined that we should 
 keep the Sunday instead of the Sabbath ?" A. " By no means. For 
 the Christian religion puts an end entirely to the choice of days, as 
 it does to other ceremonies, as the apostle clearly shows in Col. 
 ii. 16. But, as we perceive that, from the earliest times, the Sunday 
 has been observed by Christians, we allow all Christians the same 
 liberty." 
 
 The wretchedness of the reason here given for the introduction of 
 the Sabbath commandment into the Decalogue, the fallacy of the 
 opinion on which it is founded, that the fourth commandment is a mere 
 shell, a mere letter without spirit, and the perversity of regarding the 
 observance of the Sunday only as a thing to be tolerated from compas- 
 sion to the weakness of others, were perceived to some extent by later 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 Socinians. Thus Ruarus says, " Although I do not believe that we 
 are under a direct obligation to keep the commandment of the Deca- 
 logue relating to the Sabbath ; yet I do think that we may argue cor- 
 rectly in this way, if the Israelites were commanded to devote the 
 seventh part of their life to the worship of God, what ought we then 
 justly to do ?" 
 
 Even the Romish Church did not venture directly to oppose the 
 views of the Reformers, in the face of the decided opinions expressed by 
 the Fathers. In the decrees of the Council of Trent, this subject is 
 passed by in silence ; the Catechismus Romanus discusses it, but with 
 evident wavering. The ten commandments are said to be binding, 
 not because they were given by Moses, but because they coincide with 
 the law of nature. There is a part of the fourth commandment, 
 however, which cannot be deduced from the law of nature, and is 
 therefore ceremonial, and subject to change, namely, the appointment 
 of the seventh day. This is repealed by Christ. In the place of the 
 seventh, the apostles established the first day. The fourth command- 
 ment teaches how it must be observed. 
 
 The opinion that the Sabbath was transferred to the Sunday was 
 first broached in its perfect form, and with all its consequences, in the 
 controversy, which was carried on in England between the Episcopa- 
 lians and Presbyterians. The Presbyterians, who carried to extremes 
 the principle, that every institution of the Church must have its 
 foundation in the Scriptures, and would not allow that God had given, 
 in this respect, greater liberty to the Church of the New Testament, 
 which his Spirit had brought to maturity, than to that of the Old, 
 charged the Episcopalians with Popish leaven and superstition, and 
 subjection to the ordinances of men, because they retained the Chris- 
 tian " feasts." The Episcopalians, on the other hand, as a proof that 
 greater liberty was granted to the New Testament Church in such 
 matters as these, appealed to the fact that even the observance of the 
 Sunday was only an arrangement of the Church. The Presbyterians 
 were now in a position which compelled them either to give up the 
 observance of the Sunday, or to maintain that a direct appointment 
 from God separated it from the other festivals. The first they could 
 not do, for their Christian experience was too deep for them not to 
 know how greatly the weakness of human nature stands in need of 
 regularly returning periods, devoted to the service of God. They, 
 therefore, decided upon the latter. They maintained that the fourth 
 commandment was a perpetual one, binding upon all ages, and that 
 
67 
 
 the difference between the Old and New Testament consisted solely in 
 this, that at the command of God, given through the apostles, the first 
 day of the week was substituted for the seventh. 
 
 This doctrine — for which many Puritan clergymen were deposed, 
 because they either would not read the proclamation of James I., 
 issued in the year 1618, and renewed by Charles I., in the year 
 1633, that all kinds of public sports should be allowed on the Sun- 
 day, or, if they did read it, added the words, " Remember the Sab- 
 bath day to keep it holy," — commended itself by the greater sanctity 
 which it gave to the Sunday in the eyes of the people, and its con- 
 sequent tendency to promote a Christian spirit and conduct. This 
 affords the best clue to the striking fact, that it was gradually adopted 
 even by the theologians of the Episcopal Church. There was less to 
 hinder this in England than elsewhere, because the Thirty-nine Articles 
 of the 1 English Church do not teach the opposite doctrine, as is the 
 case with the other Reformed Confessions of Faith. 
 
 The following passage in Spencer's book, De Legibus Hebrgeorum 
 Ritualibus, shows how extensively this view had spread by the second 
 half of the seventeenth century : — " Many in the present day appear 
 under the Christian name, but in the character of Jews, and introduce 
 a religion, which troubles the minds of the weak with many scruples of 
 conscience ; saying, that we are bound, according to the fourth com- 
 mandment, to devote one day of the seven entirely to rest, and medita- 
 tion, and prayer, and other pious duties. Some even are so far gone in 
 their folly, as to think, that religion consists chiefly in keeping the 
 Sabbath. They allow no investigation of the subject, and regard all 
 as atheists, exposed to the wrath of God, who are so presumptuous as 
 to violate the rest and observance of the Sabbath (as they call it) by 
 any worldly occupation." 
 
 Spencer's vehement opposition to this view was insufficient to stay 
 its further spread ; the more so because he was unable to meet the 
 erroneous opinions with correct ones. He could not fathom the deep 
 religious meaning of the observance of the Sabbath, under the Old 
 Testament, nor could he see any meaning in the laws relating to it, 
 which could possibly affect the Church of the New Testament. He 
 maintained the harsh doctrine, that the observance of the Sabbath was 
 nothing more than a formal declaration on the part of the Jewish 
 people, that the world was created by God and not by idols, and was 
 therefore simply intended to preserve them from idolatry. The 
 
 f 2 
 
08 
 
 outward rest prescribed was not intended at all to promote inward 
 rest from worldly affairs, and raise th© mind to God. It was only 
 ceremonial, an imitation of the rest of God after the creation. By 
 resting and working, according to the example of the work and rest 
 of God, the Jews were to signify clearly, that they continued to 
 believe in the completion of the creation in six days. 
 
 The stricter view of the Sunday, on the other hand, gained so per- 
 fect a victory, that it may now be regarded as the only one preva- 
 lent in England, Scotland, and America. It has scarcely an opponent 
 in the sphere of theology ; only the worldly and the sceptic oppose it, 
 and that with timidity, from the fear of public opinion, whose power is 
 so great in these lands. 
 
 The feeling which is now so general in these countries, that all 
 opposition to this doctrine must be the result of frivolity, is favoured 
 greatly by the striking proofs which have been given them through a 
 long series of years, and are still given every day, of the beneficial 
 effects of a strict observance of the Sunday. German travellers, whose 
 theological principles are opposed to this doctrine, have been so over- 
 powered by the sight of these results, as to be unable to refuse a 
 certain testimony to the value of the doctrine itself. 
 
 The German minister in London, Wendeborn, remarks in his book, 
 on the Condition of the State, of Religion, of Learning, and of Art in 
 Great Britain, at the end of the eighteenth century : * " The respect 
 shown in England to the Sunday, whatever it may spring from, cer- 
 tainly preserves a kind of outward reverence for religion. Criminals, 
 who have been executed at Tyburn and in other places, have often 
 been known to warn the crowd of spectators, present on such occa- 
 sions, to keep the Sabbath, as Sunday is generally called here, because, 
 in their opinion, their own miserable and untimely death is to be 
 ascribed to their neglect of it." 
 
 Dr. Sack, in his remarks on religion and the Church of England,f 
 says : " Religious improvement and instruction are promoted generally 
 by the love of the people to the Church, which has never been alto- 
 gether destroyed, and by their deep respect for the worship of God, 
 and the day which is devoted to it. The strictness with which the 
 Sunday is observed in England is well known. So far as the irreli- 
 gious are concerned, the manner in which this day is spent, seems 
 
 * Berlin, 1785, pt. 3. f Berlin, 1818, p. 148. 
 
69 
 
 indeed often useless and spiritless ; and even the religious do not 
 always keep it in the free spirit of the gospel. But the number of 
 those who do keep it in this spirit, is very great, and this strictness is 
 remarkable and of great worth, when considered as an expression of 
 the national sentiment. For thus it is ; and if the Government were 
 to endeavour to effect a change, most probably the strongest opposition 
 would be raised by all, from the lowest to the highest classes of the 
 people. Thus the restless driving of this ever busy people is quieted 
 on this day by a general voluntary rest ; and the strong feeling of a 
 higher order and repose is certainly sustained thereby. Fidelity to 
 this ancient custom of the Christian Church, respect for worship, and 
 the encouragement of peaceful meditation, present a strong and favour- 
 able contrast to the very dishonourable disregard of the Sunday by 
 work and pleasure, which is witnessed in so many of the large towns 
 in Germany.'' 
 
 From England the doctrine of the obligation of the Mosaic law of 
 the Sabbath spread to Holland. Some English Puritans, who sought 
 an asylum in Zealand, introduced it. It was first published in two 
 works on Ethics, by Udemann in 1612, and Teelling, in 1617. Several 
 ministers embraced the new opinions ; others retained the old. The 
 Synod of Dortrecht attempted to put an end to the controversy ; but 
 they did not venture to do so by giving a positive decision as to the 
 doctrine. They sought to stifle the discussion. At last it was deter- 
 mined, that, in the reprint of their minutes, what had passed about the 
 Sabbath should be omitted. A commission of four theologians was 
 entrusted with the settlement of the question, and the preparation of 
 articles, which both parties could accept. They accomplished this, 
 and both parties were at first really satisfied with their six articles. 
 At the same time it was decreed that these should be retained, and 
 that no one should preach or write against them, till a national synod 
 was held, which was not likely to be very soon. 
 
 As we may readily imagine, these means were not adapted to secure 
 the desired effect. It was not long before the controversy was renewed 
 with greater warmth than ever. From the ministers it soon passed to 
 the professors. It spread through all the academies of Holland, and 
 for a whole century was the cause of great and uninterrupted discord 
 in the Church. 
 
 At the commencement of the controversy, the principal opponent of 
 the validity of the Mosaic Sabbath law, was the renowned Gomarus, 
 who uublished his work, Examen Sabbathi, in the year 1628. In this 
 
70 
 
 he maintains, that the Sabbath was first instituted in the desert, and 
 was ceremonial. The chief writers on the other side were Rivet, 
 Walaeus, Amesius, and Boetius. No attention was paid to a moderate 
 theologian, Thysius, who warned them not to attach too great im- 
 portance to their differences, and either to be silent, or at least to 
 tolerate each other. At last, however, they grew weary of the con- 
 troversy, and it rested for a time, but only to break out again with the 
 greater violence. 
 
 The principal opponents of the validity of the Mosaic law in this 
 new period of the controversy, which commenced in the year 1658, 
 were Heidanus and Cocceius in Leiden ; the chief writers on the other 
 side, Hoornbeek in Leiden, and Essen in Utrecht. A long series of 
 works appeared on both sides in Dutch and Latin, of which those of 
 Cocceius were the most important, whose opponents went so far as to 
 accuse him of Socinianism, on account of his views. At last the 
 States-General were obliged to interfere. The controversy was stopped 
 by them at Leiden by the edict, issued by them on the 7th August, 
 1659, prohibiting any more writing upon the subject, and commanding 
 that the six articles of the Dortrecht Commission should be regarded 
 as final. But it continued at Utrecht with the greater warmth. There 
 Francis Burmann appeared as the opponent of the Jewish observance 
 of the Sabbath ; and was warmly opposed by his less known colleagues. 
 In Groningen, too, these contests were carried on ; Alting defending 
 against Maresius the universal validity of the Mosaic Sabbath law. 
 
 The controversy was kept up in Holland till the eighteenth century, 
 but with greater calmness. However, the more liberal views gradually 
 advanced, and became more and more prevalent throughout the Re- 
 formed Churches, with the exception of Great Britain. 
 
 In Germany, the agitation of this question in Holland was watched 
 with great attention. The more stringent views, which commended 
 themselves by the appearance of greater piety, and promised to do 
 much to stop the prevalent neglect of the Sunday, were preferred by 
 most of the theologians to those contained in the works of the Refor- 
 mers. But they were kept very quiet during the whole of the second 
 half of the seventeenth century, from a knowledge that they were 
 held in direct opposition to the powerful authority of the Confessions 
 of Faith. In 1688, however, Fecht, a theologian at Rostock, entered 
 the lists against these views, and, amongst other things, quoted the 
 whole list of historical witnesses against them, whom many would 
 gladly have buried in oblivion. No one ventured to oppose him. But 
 
71 
 
 this did not prevent their gaining fresh adherents, with such rapidity, 
 that at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the more zealous advo- 
 cates, believing that nearly all the orthodox theologians were on their 
 side, ventured to make a fierce assault upon the few who still defended 
 the more liberal views. 
 
 A slight contest arose as early as the year 1700, when Liinekogel, 
 a minister in Holstein, translated into German Francis Burmann's 
 work on the Sabbath ; and in a preface and notes defended his opinion, 
 that the law of the Sabbath was purely ceremonial, and did not apply 
 to Christians. His superior, Schwarz, the general superintendent of 
 Holstein, wrote a reply. In the year 1701 appeared his " True Ac- 
 count of the Sabbath, in reply to Burmann's false doctrine, which a 
 minister in Holstein has sanctioned, and introduced into Germany, 
 with evil consequences to the Land." 
 
 Far more important was the agitation, caused by the work of Stryk, 
 a jurist in Halle, on the Sabbath. This man, who was actuated by 
 truly religious zeal, and inclined to the views of the pietists, was led 
 especially to oppose the doctrine which had become prevalent regard- 
 ing the Sabbath, from the fact that it seemed to him to promote 
 generally a merely external fear of God, a kind of Christian phari- 
 saism. He himself says, in his answer to Mayer, which appeared in 
 1707: "This dissertation is written with no other object than to 
 show how, in the present day, men are relying upon outward worship 
 alone, so that the real inward worship, the worship in spirit and in 
 truth, is almost entirely forgotten." He borrowed his weapons chiefly 
 from Spencer. In the first part of the treatise, which consists of four 
 chapters, he treats of the origin and progress of the Sabbath, and 
 its force under the New Testament. He maintains, that the Sabbath 
 was not prescribed by any law before the time of Moses. From this 
 it follows, that it affects the children of Israel alone. This is still 
 further confirmed by the fact, that the reason stated for the institution 
 of the Sabbath, only applies to the Jews. It is said to be appointed, 
 in order that they may be reminded on the Sabbath of their bondage 
 in Egypt ; that the Sabbath may be a special sign between God and 
 the Jewish people ; and that the children of Israel may be preserved 
 by it from idolatry. If the commandment had been a moral one, no 
 alteration could have taken place under the New Testament in refer- 
 ence to the day. The Sunday of Christians does not stand on any 
 common ground with the Sabbath of the Jews. It has not been 
 introduced by a direct Divine command, for it cannot be proved that 
 
72 
 
 the observance of it originated with the apostles ; and even if it could, 
 they evidently did not wish to lay down any law with regard to it. 
 The observance of the Sunday rests entirely upon a simple arrange- 
 ment of the Church. In the second chapter the author proceeds, on 
 this ground, to examine the rights and duties of a government with 
 respect to the Sunday. He maintains that a prince has authority to 
 appoint another day for public worship instead of Sunday, though this 
 would be a decidedly imprudent course.* His duty, in reference to 
 the Sunday, is to see that the design of it is secured. He must, 
 therefore, make a difference between his subjects. The rude and inex- 
 perienced in Christianity he must urge to attend upon public worship ; 
 but the more advanced, on the contrary, who no longer need a Sunday, 
 he has full liberty to leave to themselves. Such men serve God at all 
 times in spirit and in truth, and must, therefore, enjoy the full liberty 
 which Christ has gained for them. All worldly amusements, which 
 interfere with the design of the Sunday, ought to be forbidden. In 
 the third chapter he treats of the rights of individual Christians. He 
 maintains that the Christian ought to be bound to no day, as that on 
 which he must worship, but that he has a perfect right to set apart 
 now one day, and now another, for the worship of God, as the Spirit 
 prompts him. But this right does not belong to all who bear the 
 name of Christians, but only to the true members of Christ and of the 
 new covenant, with whom the whole life and every day is nothing else 
 than a Sabbath. But those who are not established in the true faith 
 are bound to keep the Sunday, not because of the commandment of 
 the Old Testament, but from a knowledge of their condition, which 
 makes the observance of the Sunday a useful arrangement of the 
 Church. 
 
 This work, as we may easily imagine from its contents, excited great 
 attention. It was soon translated into German ; and by the year 1715 
 had reached the fifth edition. The author, too, threw his opponents 
 into perplexity by a reprint of the treatise of Fecht, with a preface of 
 his own, in which he maintained, that he needed no further defence, 
 since this theologian, whose opinion agreed with his own, had never 
 been answered. The large number of his opponents showed, how 
 deeply rooted the views he attacked had by this time become. Nearly 
 all of them, however, instead of attacking the false spiritualism so 
 
 * The author writes, of course, from the stand-point of a State-church, and 
 from that with indisputable consistency. — Tk. 
 
73 
 
 apparent in this work, and whose nakedness when applied to the Sab- 
 bath we shall discover, when we discuss the subject presently, directed 
 all their efforts to defend the moral nature of the Mosaic Sabbath 
 commandment. The "moral nature of the Sabbath" was a favourite 
 theme for academical exercises for many years. 
 
 The opponents of the Sabbath did not omit to appeal to the 
 authority of the articles of belief. " Our articles of belief," says a 
 writer in 1703, "are brought forward against the opinion of all our 
 teachers, with the complaint that the people are compelled to swear 
 upon these books, and yet those opinions are condemned which are in 
 accordance with them." We can see at once what perplexity would 
 be caused by such an appeal ; but the means resorted to for escaping 
 from it — the forced interpretations by which the clearest passages were 
 made obscure — are too miserable to deserve quotation. 
 
 It is worthy of notice, that the opinions expressed by Stryk were 
 rejected as warmly by the theologians of the pietist school, as by the 
 orthodox, and that, not only that they might avoid giving the latter an 
 occasion of commencing a doctrinal controversy, but, even more, be- 
 cause the practical result, at which Stryk aimed, was counterbalanced 
 by another which, in their estimation, was more important. The 
 result which, even in Stryk's opinion, the Sunday ought to ensure, 
 they believed to be unattainable unless the views, which he 
 opposed, were firmly maintained. And they knew too well, that, 
 even in believers, the conflict between the flesh and the spirit is not yet 
 terminated, to dream of perfect Christians who need no special times 
 of devotion and meeting. Buddaeus and Walch defend the ordinary 
 view ; and so also Spener, who has written at greater length than 
 others on the subject. He thinks, however, that it is better not to 
 carry on the controversy in too public a manner ; partly, because the 
 consequence will only be, that men will indulge a liberty injurious to 
 their souls and their edification ; and partly because the Augsburg 
 Confession is more against them than in their favour. It is better, he 
 thinks, to recommend the strict observance of Sunday on the ground 
 of experience. "I am convinced, that, if the people could be persuaded, 
 for a certain time, to spend the Sabbath sacredly in honour of God, 
 their own experience would advocate the practice most strongly, and 
 would show them so clearly the will of our heavenly Father, who has 
 granted us such rest for the good of our souls, that there would be no 
 necessity for further discussion on the part of those who watch over 
 their spiritual interests." He recommends others to test the question, 
 
74 
 
 by the same means which were effectual in his own case. " I thank 
 my God," he says, " who caused me to learn this important lesson, 
 that I ought to abstain on the Sunday, not only from worldly amuse- 
 ments, but from studies also, even though theological, by which I was 
 seeking to advance in learning rather than in goodness or piety." 
 
 But Spener, though he regarded the Sabbath commandment as 
 part of the moral law, did not overlook another distinction between the 
 two Testaments in reference to it, besides the difference of days. 
 Under the Old Testament, in which everything was outward, the dis- 
 continuance of work, of that which was outward, formed a most essen- 
 tial part of the commandment ; but since worship, under the New Tes- 
 tament, consists more in that which is within, the sanctification of the 
 Sabbath is to be sought by us principally in the inward rest of the 
 soul, and in giving this up to the operations of God ; and outward rest 
 is connected with this, only as a help to the rest within. Therefore, 
 sports on the Sunday are more sinful under the New Testament, than 
 the performance of the duties of one's calling, even though these con- 
 sist in hard work. For a few hours spent in amusements do more to 
 disturb the soul's rest in God, than a whole day spent in work ; since 
 the latter may have been accompanied with thinking upon the word of 
 God. The same is true of all worldly studies, of cares, of everything, 
 which rivets the mind and thoughts upon itself; for by this they all 
 hinder the keeping of the Sabbath, more than severe labour. The 
 fourth commandment differs, in his opinion, from the others in two 
 respects. First, in the fact, that what is forbidden in it, work on the 
 seventh day, is not wrong and sinful in itself, which is the case with 
 all that is prohibited in the other commandments, but something 
 which became so, simply in consequence of the divine prohibition ; 
 and therefore, even under the Old Testament, as Christ has explained, 
 some work ceased to be sinful when necessity compelled. And se- 
 condly, inasmuch as this commandment, according to Col. ii. 16, 17, 
 belongs in part to the shadows and types of the Old Testament, and 
 God appointed it especially as a sign between himself and the Is- 
 raelites. Therefore, not only does that, which was typical of the 
 future, cease in the New Testament, since the body itself has come ; 
 but all the different ordinances which are added in the Old Testa- 
 ment, beyond that part of the Sabbath which human nature requires, 
 and which gives the command its force, are no longer binding upon 
 us who are under the New Testament. Men, who are so far ad- 
 vanced in spiritual things, that they would not be hindered by outward 
 
75 
 
 works, might even on the Sunday, to some extent, engage in them 
 without sin, and yet by inward spiritual exercise obey the command. 
 But if engagements of this kind were, in the present day, to be at- 
 tended to by persons, who cannot comprehend this liberty, but feel 
 scruples about it, or who would do so in opposition to their con- 
 scientious convictions, it would be sin in their case, because of their 
 scruples ; it is better, therefore, not to use this liberty, but to avoid 
 evil, and the appearance of it. In cases of necessity, however, work 
 on the Sunday is right. To these belong commands of governors and 
 masters, which save those, who are under their authority, from the 
 charge of sin ; and also labour in the field. 
 
 If Spener had thought out the views, which he expresses here, more 
 thoroughly, he would have seen that his agreement with the prevalent 
 opinion was much less than he imagined. He would have perceived, 
 that the Old Testament Sabbath commandment has quite lost its legal 
 power under the New Testament. For the application, which he 
 makes of it, can be made as powerfully by those who hold that the law 
 of the Old Testament, having been given by God, cannot be abro- 
 gated in the same sense as the laws of men, but must ever contain 
 a treasure of instruction, to which the free Church of the New Testa- 
 ment must always go for the material, with which to prepare its oivn 
 laics. 
 
 The prevailing doctrine, as to the Sunday, was not affected by the 
 theology, upon which the influence of Wolff's philosophy was exerted ; 
 but, in the second half of the last century, it began to lose its sway. 
 Mosheim arose as one of its most active and powerful opponents. He 
 rejects the Old Testament basis of the observance of Sunday alto- 
 gether. He goes in this respect to a decided and erroneous extreme, 
 and maintains that the Sabbath of the Jews has scarcely anything in 
 common with the Sunday of Christians, except that they both belong 
 to the seven days of the week. But he thinks that there is quite as 
 much cause for disputing the opinions of those, who hold that the 
 observance of the Sunday rests upon the authority of the Church. 
 Actuated by the same motive which led others to identify the Sabbath 
 and Sunday, he seeks to trace the obligation, to observe the Sunday, to a 
 direct precept from God. "The apostles of the Redeemer," he says, "at 
 the very commencement of the Church of the Lord, chose the first day 
 of the week, on which the Lord rose from the dead, for the Christians' 
 day of meeting. (Acts xx. 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 1; Rev. i. 10.) And they 
 themselves, as well as their disciples and fellow-workers, instituted it 
 
76 
 
 in every Church which they founded, and amongst all the nations of 
 the earth, to whom the gospel had been preached. This fact is suffi- 
 cient in itself to remove all doubts as to the claims of our Sunday, and 
 the duty of Christians to keep it holy." 
 
 A work, written by a cbristian-minded jurist, which appeared in 
 1830, with the motto, " Stand fast in the liberty, wherewith Christ 
 has made us free ; and be not entangled again with the yoke of 
 bondage, Gal. v. 1," deserves to be noticed here. The author has 
 written with the intention of opposing the doctrine of the identity of 
 the Sabbath and Sunday, which was coming over from England. He 
 maintains that the application of the Jewish law of the Sabbath to the 
 keeping of the Sunday, as the so-called Christian Sabbath, is a return 
 to the weak and beggarly elements, and thoroughly opposed to the 
 gospel ; and that it is unwise to go so far, as some do, as to begin with 
 the unconverted, by attempting to terrify them with the consequences 
 of breaking the commandment to " keep holy the Sabbath day." The 
 observance of the Sunday he regards as a human institution, occa- 
 sioned by the weakness of man and the relations of society, but one 
 which stands in close connexion with another institution of divine 
 origin, that of the office of preacher of the gospel, and with the ne- 
 cessity of the godly man for Christian fellowship, in order that our 
 inward life may be sustained. The design of Sunday is, in fact, to 
 give us time for availing ourselves of the means of grace. This time is 
 not holy in itself, and the mere cessation of work brings no advantage ; 
 but we gain advantage only when we so use the time, that we grow 
 in the work of faith, the labour of love, and the patience of hope. 
 
 We have now brought the historical account to a close. We shall 
 in the next chapter examine only those views, which are based upon 
 the common gi - ound, that the Mosaic law is to be received as divine. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 INVESTIGATION OF THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE SABBATH AND SUNDAY. 
 
 Our first course in making the investigation, which we are about to 
 attempt, is obviously to examine the arguments, by which the advo- 
 cates of the continuance of the Old Testament Sabbath under the 
 New support their views. We shall confine ourselves chiefly to those 
 
77 
 
 brought together by Dwight in his " Theology; " from the conviction 
 that this theologian, who is highly esteemed in England and America, 
 has collected all the arguments, including those which are only appa- 
 rent ones, which have ever been used in support of his views. 
 
 The perpetuity of the Sabbath, it is said, is evident from its original 
 institution, Gen.ii. 1 — 3. The Sabbath was instituted and commanded 
 for the first parents of the human race, and therefore for their whole 
 posterity. The ground then given for rest on the seventh day, namely, 
 the rest of God on that day, is altogether a general one, and does not 
 affect the Jews more than other men. The example of God is set 
 before the whole human race for imitation. 
 
 Now it is very striking, in the first place, that, in the passage 
 appealed to, there is no mention of a command, nor even of God's 
 having made it known to men, that he had blessed and sanctified the 
 seventh day. This impression is increased by a reference to Exod. 
 xx. 8, and the other passages in the Pentateuch relating to the 
 Sabbath. Looking now at the commandment, we see clearly how 
 necessary it is to distinguish between the decision of God, and the 
 revelation of it with a command, from the fact that this decision 
 supposes the fall of man, and, therefore, the execution of it could not 
 have been enjoined upon him before he fell. Where sin has not 
 entered, the whole life is one continued service of God ; and there is 
 no danger that attention to earthly things will be the cause of worldli- 
 ness, and, therefore, there is no necessity for the setting apart of 
 special times. And if it was not made known at once, it cannot be 
 maintained that it was known at all before the time of Moses. 
 
 No one can bring the smallest probable ground for assuming that 
 this was the case. The argument has indeed been often used, that 
 without a Sabbath the origin of the week cannot be explained, and 
 that in the earliest times, in Gen. xxix. 27, 28, even as early as 
 ch. vii. vers. 4 and 10, the division of weeks occurs. But the origin of 
 the week may be explained in another very natural manner. It is but 
 the subdivision of the lunar month ; instead of 7| days, which are the 
 average of a quarter moon, the nearest whole number was taken, 
 namely, seven days. This explanation is confirmed by the analogous 
 origin of days, months, and years, and by Gen. i. 14, in which the sun 
 and moon are to serve for signs, for division of time, and by the fact, 
 that the division of time into weeks of seven days does not exist in 
 some nations, where we might expect to find remains of a primitive 
 tradition, and does exist amongst some nations, which, like the Chinese 
 
78 
 
 and the ancient Peruvians,* are certainly out of the line of tradition 
 which has descended from the earliest times. 
 
 It is further asserted, that the seventh day of the week has been 
 considered sacred by the most different nations of the earth, without 
 the possibility of the idea having been obtained from the Jews ; and 
 that this is a proof that it was instituted in the earliest times of the 
 human race. And, certainly, when we look at the collection of passages, 
 cited by Dwight, or Spener, we cannot but be struck by them at first. 
 But when we see the test, to which these passages have been sub- 
 mitted by Selden and others,f we soon recover from our first astonish- 
 ment. It is proved, that the seventh day has not been kept by a 
 single people, except the Israelites, and that where a seventh day has 
 been observed, it has not been the seventh day of the week. The 
 argument then changes into one for the opposite side. If the Sabbath 
 had been instituted at the first, we should expect to find traces of its 
 observance elsewhere than amongst the Israelites. At any rate, this 
 argument against the institution at the first, serves to strengthen the 
 more important one, that, in the whole history of the times anterior to 
 Moses, no trace of the observance of the Sabbath occurs. 
 
 It is said also, that the account of the gathering of the manna, 
 related in Exod. xvi. 22 — 30, affords us ground for presuming that the 
 Sabbath was observed before the giving of the law. For the Israelites 
 gathered a double portion of the manna on the Friday, because they 
 would not gather any on the Sabbath. But this assertion rests upon 
 a misconception of the whole account. A correct interpretation, on 
 the contrary, shows evidently that the Sabbath was a Mosaic institu- 
 tion. The gathering of the double portion on the Friday was not an 
 arbitrary act of the people. They gathered every day all the manna 
 which was upon the ground, and, according to the Divine arrange- 
 ment, this was just sufficient for their wants. On the Friday they 
 found unexpectedly so much, that exactly twice as much as the usual 
 portion was gathered. Thus understood, we find in this a striking 
 parallel to another event. At the first passover the command to eat 
 unleavened bread was not given to the people, but God, contrary to 
 all expectation, so ordered the circumstances, that, without any inten- 
 tion on their part, they were compelled to eat their bread unleavened. 
 This Divine arrangement served to give a sanction to the Mosaic com- 
 
 * Ideler, Chronol. th. i. p. 87. 
 
 t Selden, de Jure Nat. et. Gentium, i. 3, c. 10, &c. Gomarus de Sabb. c. 4. 
 Spener and Ideler. 
 
79 
 
 mand, as to the future observance of the festival. In the same way 
 God sanctified the Sabbath, before he gave the people through Moses 
 the command to sanctify it. How could the people have been possibly 
 led to acknowledge this command in a more effectual manner ? 
 
 After it has been thus shown that there is every ground for doubting 
 the observance of the Sabbath before the time of Moses, those pas- 
 sages gain importance in which particular emphasis is laid upon the 
 fact, that the Sabbath belonged peculiarly to the Israelites. Thus 
 Exod. xxxi. 12, Ezek. xx. 12, where it is said, in the summing up of the 
 mercies of God to Israel, after the giving of the law on Sinai has been 
 spoken of, " Also I gave them my Sabbaths ; " and Neh. ix. 14, in the 
 statement of the acts of kindness on the part of God to Israel, " Also 
 thou madest known to them thy holy Sabbath." Nothing but the 
 most decided grounds for believing in a pre-Mosaic observance of the 
 Sabbath could justify us, in assuming that the Sabbath is here spoken 
 of as a new institution, peculiar to the theocracy, only because it now 
 received a new meaning. 
 
 But even granting that the design of God, that the Sabbath should 
 be sanctified, was made known to men before Moses, and that the 
 command was given and obeyed, this does not in itself justify us in 
 concluding with certainty that this arrangement was to last under the 
 New Testament. If it did, it would also follow, that the prohibition 
 to eat blood given to the descendants of Noah is still binding in New 
 Testament times, whereas it is evident that even before Christ this 
 prohibition might have been passed over without sin by a people, in 
 whose altered circumstances more effectual means were at work to 
 create a horror of murder. And so also the command to circumcise 
 would of necessity be binding, at least upon the descendants of Abra- 
 ham. The proper view of the subject is, that all commands which 
 occur before the time of Moses stand in the same relation to the New 
 Testament as the law of Moses itself, under which name they are all 
 referred to in the New Testament. In both cases the decision as to 
 their being still binding, rests upon the investigation of the relation 
 in which the commandment stands to the nature of the New Testament. 
 This investigation, however, so far as the Sabbath is concerned, 
 must lead, in all that is important, to a favourable result. It is 
 true that two things have been adduced with great, plausibility, as 
 showing that in the principal points, the Sabbath fails to harmonize 
 with the New Testament times, and, therefore, Gen. ii. 1 — 3 cannot 
 be regarded as applicable to them. But on a closer examination, it 
 
80 
 
 becomes apparent that both, of these are based upon an incorrect 
 interpretation. 1. It is said, "The essence of the Sabbath, accord- 
 ing to Gen. ii., consisted just in this, that it was instituted as a me- 
 morial of the creation. Because God worked six days for us, for 
 whom the whole creation was intended, we were to cease from our 
 work, from seeking our own interests on the seventh day, and devote 
 it to him. Now, under the New Testament, the goodness of God in 
 the creation has been cast into the shade by the grace of redemp- 
 tion. It would be to place redemption below creation, in opposition 
 both to the Scriptures, and Christian consciousness, if a festival de- 
 voted to the latter were made the chief festival amongst Christians. 
 Such a course, with all the show of Christianity, would lead to the 
 principles of Deism, and be only justifiable by them." But it is an un- 
 founded assertion that the Sabbath was instituted as a memorial of the 
 creation. The observance of the seventh day was funded, not on 
 the fact that God worked six days for us, but that he rested on the 
 seventh day. 2. It is said that, " The rest on the Sabbath was, ac- 
 cording to Gen. ii. 1 — 3 taken in connexion with the fourth com- 
 mandment, first and chiefly an imitation of God, though it might 
 have answered another end. It was a symbolical action. Whilst 
 men by their work and rest followed the example of God, they copied 
 the creation, and thus practically confessed that it was the work of 
 God's almighty power." But this symbolical representation appears 
 evidently calculated for a certain condition, with the termination of 
 which it loses its importance, as much as the prohibition to eat blood. 
 It no longer makes upon us, in whom the understanding is more pre- 
 dominant, the same impression which it made in ancient times, and 
 especially in the East. And in addition to this, since Christianity pos- 
 sesses more effectual means for exciting the consciousness of God, it 
 no longer needs for this purpose " the beggarly elements of the world." 
 But we must dispute such a symbolical character in the rest enjoined 
 on the Sabbath. This view is decidedly opposed to Lev. xxiii., where 
 the rest of the Sabbath is placed on the same footing with the rest of 
 the other festivals. It is not the rest of man, but that of God, which 
 possesses this symbolical character. The rest of man serves to pro- 
 mote devotion, and that of God was designed to invite to it. This 
 end it still subserves under the New Testament. And under this, too, 
 the loving condescension with which God gave us a type both in work 
 and rest, calls attention to the great importance of rest to the pros- 
 perity of the Church. 
 
81 
 
 But the fact remains unchanged, that the passage in Genesis con- 
 tains no command ; and that if it did, it would not, as a command, be 
 binding upon the Church of the New Testament. If these could not 
 be established on general grounds, there would be a sufficient proof in 
 the fact that it is not the observance of one day in seven which is com- 
 manded, but specially that of the seventh day. A command which 
 requires to be divided and changed, before its validity can be enforced, 
 may contain a rich store of instruction (and that is the case here, the 
 temporary element being quite a subordinate one), but its authority as 
 a command is gone. 
 
 The second strong argument for the perpetuity of the Sabbath, to 
 which we now proceed, is founded on the fact that the commandment 
 to keep the Sabbath is placed amongst the ten commandments. This, it is 
 maintained, is an evidence that the Sabbath commandment belongs to 
 the moral law ; in which case it cannot have been abolished by Christ, 
 who only repealed the ceremonial law. 
 
 We shall commence our examination of this argument by asking, 
 What is the Decalogue ? In what relation does it stand to the other 
 laws of the Old Testament ? English theologians reply, — The Deca- 
 logue differs entirely from the other laws of Moses. It contains the 
 purely moral law, and is binding upon all men and all times. The 
 arguments brought forward in defence of this are the following: — The 
 rest of the law was written by Moses in a book ; the Decalogue was 
 first proclaimed by the voice of God, amidst fearful natural phenomena, 
 which called attention to its importance, and then written by the finger 
 of God upon tables of stone, the symbol of perpetuity. 
 
 But these arguments do not furnish the proof intended; full jus- 
 tice is done to them when we affirm, what every one will allow, that 
 the Decalogue contains the kernel and quintessence of the whole code 
 of laws of the Old Testament. It was important that, immediately after 
 the covenant was concluded, the chief points in the arrangements of the 
 new house should be sketched in rough lines upon the door-post. The 
 Decalogue is the sketch of all the legislation which follows ; and this 
 is the filling up of the former — so that Calvin has adopted a correct 
 method, when he adds to every commandment all that belongs to it 
 throughout the Pentateuch. Thus he appends to the Sabbath com- 
 mand, not only all that occurs with direct reference to the Sabbath, 
 but all that relates to the Sabbatic year, the year of jubilee and the 
 festivals. From this view alone, that the Decalogue contained the 
 quintessence of the whole of the Mosaic laws, is the appropriateness of 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 the symbol of the stone tables made sufficiently apparent, and the 
 frequent allusions made to the ten commandments by Christ and the 
 apostles, under the simple name of the commandments, explained. 
 For if they were indeed the most important part of the Old Testa- 
 ment legislation, it follows that the kernel in them must be of greater 
 worth than the shell — the eternal than that which was merely tem- 
 porary ; though it by no means follows that there was no shell at all 
 in them, that no special ends were to be answered, and that they had 
 no exclusive reference to the people to whom they were first given. 
 On the contrary, there are several proofs that such a special purpose 
 did exist ; that the ten commandments are not to be applied in this 
 unhesitating manner to the Christian Church ; and that, in fact, regarded 
 as laws, they are no more applicable to it than the rest of the Pen- 
 tateuch. The words with which they are introduced — " I am the Lord 
 thy God, which brought thee out of Egypt, out of the house of 
 bondage," are sufficient in themselves to prove this. These words 
 establish the right of God to give the law, and the duty of Israel to 
 obey it. This right is claimed by God, not on the ground of his 
 general relation to the human race, but on that of the special relation 
 into which he has entered to Israel. He has bought it at a great price 
 from its former hard masters, the Egyptians, not that it may belong to 
 itself, but that it may belong to him. This ground of obligation does 
 not affect us, and therefore the obligation itself does not. This Luther 
 saw, who, in general, like all the Reformers, understood the nature of 
 the Decalogue far more correctly than many later theologians. He 
 says, in his " Instructions how to make use of Moses," — " It is thus 
 clear enough that Moses was lawgiver to the Jews, and not to the 
 Gentiles. For in this text Moses has given the Jews a sign, that, when 
 they address God, they may conceive of him as the God who brought 
 them out of Egypt. Christians have another sign, by which they con- 
 ceive of God as the God who has made his own Son wisdom, and 
 righteousness, and holiness, and redemption to them." Moreover., 
 even in those commandments, which seem to be the most general of all 
 at first sight, a special Old Testament element is not to be mistaken. 
 Only prejudice has ever led, or can lead, men to deny that the term 
 " neighbour" denotes the members of the people of the covenant. Not 
 as though this limitation gave permission to do wrong to those who 
 were not Israelites. On the contrary, if we trace the special command 
 to its idea, we see that it did apply to those who were not Israelites ; 
 just as in the command to love the brethren there lies wrapt up, also, 
 
83 
 
 the command to love all men. But still the special reference made 
 here to the members of the people of Israel in their relations to each 
 other, shows that the letter of the Decalogue was intended for this 
 people alone. 
 
 And not only does the Decalogue not contain a purely moral law, but 
 the whole distinction between moral and ceremonial law, such as is 
 generally made, — namely, that the first is for all ages, the latter 
 entirely done away, — is not founded on the law itself, but is a mere 
 invention of theologians, who fancied that to deny the validity of the 
 moral commands of Moses was equivalent to cancelling the obligation 
 to obey the moral law. The whole Mosaic law forms an indivisible 
 whole ; in one sense it is all abolished by Christ, and no longer affects 
 the Church of the New Testament ; in another sense it is all esta- 
 blished by Christ, the ceremonial part no less than the moral. 
 
 These two are the principal arguments of our opponents. The 
 others, adduced in support of these, are so unimportant, as to need no 
 elaborate reply. "The perpetuity of the Sabbath," they say, "is clearly 
 taught in Isaiah lvi. 6 — 8. If the house of God is a house of prayer 
 for all nations, then the Sabbath is a divine institution. And the house 
 of God first became a house of prayer for all nations under the New 
 Testament." They might quite as correctly prove from this passage, 
 that the temple of Jerusalem is to continue under the New Testament, 
 in its former dignity (" I bring them — the heathen — to my holy 
 mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer ;") and also 
 the whole of the sacrificial worship (" their burnt offerings and their 
 sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar"). If, now, we must admit 
 that, throughout, the prophet has clothed the idea, which belongs alike 
 to the Old and New Testaments, in Old Testament drapery, according 
 to the prophetic style ; that he points out the kingdom of God by that 
 which was its centre and seat under the Old Testament — the temple ; 
 and the acceptance of the homage rendered by a pure mind, by the 
 well pleased acceptance of the sacrifices ; how can any one be justified 
 in, immediately after, pressing the letter, in reference to the Sabbath ? 
 The passage shows, undoubtedly, that the Old Testament command- 
 ment contains a germ which lives through all ages ; but cannot prove, 
 what is said to be proved, that the letter of this commandment retains 
 its force in the Church of the New Testament. 
 
 The weakest argument is that which is founded on the 118th Psalm, 
 ver. 24 : " This is the day which the Lord hath made." It is said to 
 follow from this, that there was to be still a Sabbath under the gospel, 
 
 g 2 
 
84 
 
 or after the resurrection of Christ ; and, consequently, that it must 
 continue to the end of the world (D wight, p. 10). Now, supposing, 
 what is by no means granted, that the Messianic interpretation of 
 the psalm is the right one, the day cannot, certainly, be any other than 
 the day of the deliverance or resurrection of the Messiah. But there 
 is nothing said of the institution of a perpetual festival in honour of 
 it ; and if there were, still what connexion would there be between 
 this and the Sabbath ? The day, however, is rather the day on which 
 the foundation stone of the temple was laid, in the second year after the 
 return from exile. The Lord had made this day, inasmuch as his 
 salvation had occasioned its celebration. 
 
 The last appeal is to the passage in Rev. i. 10: "I was in the 
 spirit on the Lord's day." But the argument, " there was according 
 to this passage a Lord's day under the New Testament : therefore the 
 Old Testament Sabbath must be perpetual under the New Testament," 
 is most unfortunate. The first thing to be proved is the exact identity 
 of the Sabbath and the Lord's day ; and that has not been done. 
 
 In the refutation of the arguments used for the perpetuity of the 
 Sabbath, which we have just concluded, there have appeared several 
 important proofs of the contrary, whose force we have only to 
 strengthen by the following observations : — 
 
 The first thing which strikes us here, is the inconsistency of the 
 advocates of the Sabbath. They, themselves, partially break the com- 
 mandment, whose perpetual validity they uphold, and thus give a 
 practical proof of the incorrectness of the doctrine. 
 
 It is certainly indisputable, that, if the proof of the perpetuity of the 
 Sabbath is a conclusive one, it is not the first, but the last day of the 
 toeek which should be observed. It must not be overlooked that the day 
 enjoined in the Sabbatic law, even if not the chief thing, is not a 
 matter of indifference. Because God rested on the seventh day, it is 
 not one day in seven, but precisely the seventh day which is to be 
 observed by rest. It was the seventh day which God blessed and 
 sanctified. And to observe another day instead of it, is not to observe 
 it at all. 
 
 In reply to this, our opponents say : — 1. " That a distinction was made 
 between the Sabbath, or the sacred rest, and the day on which it was 
 held, even under the Old Testament. It is said expressly in the Deca- 
 logue : The Lord rested on the seventh day and blessed (not the 
 seventh, but) the Sabbath day, and sanctified it ; so that the blessing 
 is not fixed to the day, but follows the Sabbath, to whatever day it is 
 
8o 
 
 transferred." But, to this we say, it is evident that the " Sabbath-day" 
 is here the seventh, and no other, partly from the words contained in 
 Gen. ii. 3, where it is expressly said, " And God blessed the seventh 
 day;" partly from the article, the Sabbath-day, the precise day just 
 spoken of; and partly also from the therefore. The connexion between 
 the two parts, " he rested on the seventh day," and " he blessed the 
 Sabbath," is only intelligible if Sabbath and seventh day are identical. 
 The opponents, indeed, are aware that, even if the correctness of this 
 untenable position be granted, they will still have objections to meet. 
 For if we may at will consider one part of the law as abrogated, it is 
 not easy to see why others may not do the same with regard to other 
 parts. But a law ceases to be a law, as soon as criticism has liberty 
 to deal with it in this way. They declare, therefore (2), that the 
 seventh clay would still have to be observed, if it were not that we 
 could produce an express declaration, on the part of the same authority 
 by which the Sabbath was instituted, to the effect that it had been 
 transferred from the seventh to the first day. Of this transfer they 
 adduce the following proofs : — 1. " In the nature of the case there is an 
 d, priori probability, that the Sabbath of the New Testament would be 
 celebrated on a different day from that of the old. The blessings of 
 God, to commemorate which the seventh day was kept under the Old 
 Testament, namely the creation and the deliverance from Egypt, are 
 infinitely surpassed in value by the redemption by Christ. After the 
 accomplishment of this, therefore, the earlier observance ceases to be 
 in its proper place." But this argument proves nothing in favour of the 
 alteration of the day, but rather of the abolition of the Sabbath itself. 
 If the creation and deliverance from Egypt no longer affect the Church 
 of the New Testament, as they did that of the Old, then the ground 
 on which the Sabbath was blessed and sanctified by God has no longer 
 any force, so far as the former is concerned. But if it is, notwith- 
 standing, still affirmed that the Sabbath continues under the New 
 Testament, it can only be so by those who allow themselves at pleasure 
 to remove some of the characteristic marks of the Sabbath of the Old 
 Testament, and add new ones in their place. Now this was unlawful 
 under the Old Testament ; the law of the Sabbath must, therefore, 
 necessarily stand in a different relation to the New Testament ; and, 
 therefore, as an outward letter, requiring unconditional obedience, is 
 abolished. 2. It is said to be expressly predicted by Isaiah lxv. 17, 18, 
 4i That the work of redemption is to celebrated, rather than that of 
 creation." The answer to this is the same as to the former. 3. " The 
 
86 
 
 118th Psalm contains a direct prediction, that the day of Christ's 
 resurrection will be the day on which the Sabbath will be observed 
 under tbe gospel. ' This is the day which the Lord has made.' " We 
 have already remarked that here nothing is said of a perpetual celebra- 
 tion. And even if it were so, how can any one prove that this day is 
 the Sabbath ? 4. " The apostles taught, by their example, that the 
 day of Christ's resurrection was to be the Christian Sabbath." In sup- 
 port of this, the well-known passages, Acts xx. 7 ; 1 Cor. xvi. 2 ; 
 Acts i. 10, are quoted. But in none of these is there any mention of 
 the Sabbath being transferred to the Sunday. 5. " The transference 
 of the Sabbath to the Sunday is evident from the important fact, that 
 God has conferred so great a blessing upon the observance of this 
 Christian Sabbath." This fact we have no wish to dispute ; but it is 
 no proof of the doctrine, unless we erroneously imagine that the Church 
 of the New Testament is still in a state of Old Testament pupilage ; 
 and that every arrangement which it makes, without a direct command 
 from God, is under the curse. And, even if we granted this, it would only 
 follow that the Christian Sunday is of divine appointment ; still 
 nothing could be decided from this as to its relation to the Sabbath. 
 
 Every one can now decide for himself, whether our opponents have 
 accomplished what they themselves confess that they are bound to 
 perform ; whether they have succeeded in proving the transference of 
 the Sabbath to the first day of the week, from an express testimony on 
 the part of God. And if it is evident that they have followed in this 
 respect, not the commandment of the Old Testament, but their own 
 views, how can they any longer maintain, in other respects, its binding 
 power as a laio ? 
 
 But there is another thing still, in which the inconsistency of our 
 opponents appears. We will not here lay stress upon the argument, 
 that, since, as we have already shown, the distinction between the 
 Decalogue and the rest of the laws is a purely arbitrary one, they 
 ought, for the sake of consistency, to apply to themselves everything 
 which occurs in them in reference to the Sabbath, everything which is 
 decreed as to the punishment of a breach of it, and, in the same way, 
 all the precepts relating to the Sabbatic year and year of jubilee, which 
 are so closely connected with the Sabbath commandment ; in fact, that 
 they ought to return to the observance of the whole law, and again 
 become perfect Jews. But we will, on the contrary, suppose that this 
 theory of a separation between the Decalogue and the other laws is a 
 correct one. Now, it is said in the fourth commandment, " Thou shalt 
 
87 
 
 not do any work, thou and thy son," &c. The question occurs here, 
 What is work ? Even if the force of law is denied to the other Mosaic 
 precepts in reference to the observance of the Sabbath, it must be con- 
 fessed that they are to be regarded as the safest commentary upon the 
 command in the Decalogue. Now let these other passages be com- 
 pared, and it will be evident that this prohibition of all work (as the 
 word itself shows, being used in distinction from labour) is to be taken 
 in its strictest sense — a sense so strict that even the most zealous 
 friends of the Sabbath do not follow it. Thus the lighting of fires and 
 preparation of food belonged to the prohibited works ; compare 
 Exod. xxxv. 3, where this special prohibition is expressly mentioned 
 as contained in the general prohibition of work. From this Michaelis 
 correctly infers the restriction of the law of the Sabbath to Israel. In 
 the East, where the time of the principal meal is the evening, and the 
 want of food is less during the day on account of the great heat, and is 
 altogether not so great as in our climate, this arrangement could easily 
 be carried out ; not so with us, at least not without interfering with 
 the chief design of the Sabbath. And as the adaptation of the law of 
 the Sabbath to the Old Testament alone is evident from its requiring 
 abstinence from employments, which even the advocates of its per- 
 petuity allow ; so is it, also, from its laxity with regard to other things, 
 which the earnest-minded man considers highly prejudicial on the day, 
 which, under the New Testament, is devoted to God. There can be 
 no doubt that sensual enjoyments are inconsistent with the idea of 
 such a day; and yet these are not expressly forbidden, either in the 
 commandment itself or the frequent repetitions of it. Michaelis, indeed, 
 goes to the extreme in saying, " If some of the Israelites spent the 
 Sabbath in the enjoyment of dancing, this was not only not opposed 
 to the Mosaic institution, but even in accordance with its principal 
 design." It can be shown that, if we trace the Sabbath commandment 
 to its idea, which we shall presently do, the moral unlawfulness of 
 sensual pleasures may be inferred from that idea. But the fact, that 
 the moral obligation can only be inferred, and no civil obligation 
 existed, whilst both the moral and civil obligation to abstain from 
 work are expressly declared, and repeated again and again, proves that 
 under the Old Testament the relation of the two to each other was 
 different from that which exists under the New. 
 
 We have only to add, in order to complete our view of the incon- 
 sistency of our opponents, that the truths which were to occupy the 
 minds of the Israelites during their outward rest were very different 
 
88 
 
 from those which the Christian should make the theme of his medi- 
 tation — there the creation and the deliverance from Egypt, here the 
 redemption by Christ. It is true that Dwight observes, that " the Sab- 
 bath is still a memorial of the creation, though the institution is so 
 enlarged as to take in the celebration of the redemption also." But 
 this "also" is unfounded, unless the facts, on which the observance 
 under the Old Testament were based, still occupy the chief position. 
 Since, however, this is not the case, but, on the contrary, — as the 
 alteration of the day proves, and the consciousness of every Christian 
 attests, — the redemption by Christ is the one great fact which is cele- 
 brated, whilst the other derives its importance only from its connexion 
 with this, it will be readily seen that the advocates of the validity of 
 the Sabbath commandment depart from their own principles, and 
 ought, for the sake of consistency, to raise the celebration of the work 
 of creation to its central position again. 
 
 The negative portion of our work is now complete. After destroy- 
 ing, it becomes our duty to build. It might appear, from what we 
 have said, as though we denied the Old Testament basis of the observ- 
 ance of Sunday altogether. But this is not the case ; and we believe 
 that, in this respect, Luther and others have, in many cases, expressed 
 themselves in an imprudent and one-sided manner. We must com- 
 mence with an examination of the relation in which the Christian 
 Church stands to the whole Mosaic law. If once we acknowledge this 
 law as truly divine, we cannot possibly regard it as repealed, like the 
 Code of Napoleon, or its precepts as no more affecting us than those of 
 the Koran. Since the will of God is the expression of his nature, no 
 caprice can be attributed to him, and it is impossible that any merely 
 temporarxj laws can be given by him. Melancthon's expression, " The 
 law of Moses is not binding upon us, though some things which the 
 law contains are binding, because they coincide with the law of nature," 
 is only partially correct. There certainly existed a temporary ingre- 
 dient in the Mosaic law ; and for this reason it has no longer any force 
 as an outward letter, and may often be neglected with propriety, so far 
 as the letter is concerned. But if this form, which was only intended 
 to last for a time, be removed, and thus the spiritual element be 
 obtained in its purity, the latter is of no less importance to us than to 
 the people of the Old Testament. We are not free to choose whether 
 we will follow it or not. To reject it, would be to resist God. 
 
 This view of the importance of the Mosaic law to the Church of the 
 
89 
 
 New Testament, has been assented to by M. Weber, amongst modern 
 theologians, but not fully developed. He confines it to the Decalogue, 
 instead of extending it to the whole of the Mosaic law, not excluding 
 that part of it which is commonly called the ceremonial law. The 
 separation of the Decalogue from the rest of the Pentateuch, of the 
 moral law from the ceremonial, is here also an arbitrary proceeding. 
 The moral law is no less abolished than the ceremonial ; the ceremonial 
 law is as eternally binding as the moral. To maintain the opposite is 
 to deny the divine origin of the former. For if it be divine, it must 
 contain revelations of the nature and will of God, which are simply 
 clothed in a form suited to the peculiar necessities of the people of 
 Israel. But Weber's fundamental idea is perfectly correct, that the 
 commandments are not simply binding, because they are coincident 
 with the law of nature, but also because they are repeated by God in 
 the Old Testament Scriptures. Bialloblotzky has attempted in vain a 
 refutation of this. " If," says he, " a man observes only those laws 
 of a legislator which appear good to him, and leaves the others at 
 his pleasure, he does not follow this outward legislation, so much as 
 himself, even though his actions express at times the purport of the 
 law, in such a manner that he appears to regulate his life by it." If in 
 this argument the supposition applies to the present case, the conclusion 
 would be equally applicable. But is this the fact ? It is not at plea- 
 sure that the eternal substance is separated from the temporal form, 
 but according to fixed laws. To the latter, only that can belong, which 
 can be proved from the nature of the theocracy to refer especially to it. 
 There may be differences of opinion as to particular points ; but where 
 these do not arise, it is not left to a man's own pleasure to obey or not. 
 He who does not obey, manifests his contempt of God, as clearly as a 
 disobedient member of the old covenant. Upon this view the entire 
 question of the validity of the Decalogue in the Christian Church rests. 
 The effect which it has produced upon the Church in every country 
 proves that its commands are something very different from friendly 
 counsels. They are not subordinate to the law of nature, but on a par 
 with it ; the manner in which they are drawn up, the events which 
 attended their promulgation, and the solemn sanction which they 
 received from God, secure for them effects which the law of nature, 
 however drawn up, will never produce. Many a man has been kept 
 from the sin, by the law of Sinai, " Thou shalt not commit adultery," 
 echoed loudly within him, when the law of nature, which is so easily 
 obliterated and silenced, would never have preserved him from it. 
 
90 
 
 We have so striking a confirmation of the views we have just stated, 
 in an expression of Christ's, that we need not look for any further 
 scriptural proofs. It is the passage contained in Matt. v. 17 — 19, 
 " Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets ; I am 
 not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till 
 heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from 
 the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of 
 these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called 
 the least in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do and teach 
 them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." The 
 prophets are mentioned here, not as foretellers of the future, but as 
 preachers of the law, as in ch. vii. 12, xxii. 40. This appears from the 
 use of the word or, not " and," and is confirmed by the whole con- 
 nexion, especially by the word for in ver. 18, in which the law and the 
 prophets are classed under the general name of law. In ver. 19, too, 
 only the commandments are mentioned ; and the design of the whole 
 paragraph, to which these verses serve as an introduction, is evidently 
 to prevent a false opinion as to the relation of the law to the new eco- 
 nomy ; so that a reference to prediction would here be out of place. 
 Destroying and fulfilling are the direct opposites the one of the other, 
 and, therefore, the explanation given of the latter, that it consists in 
 doing and teaching, shows that destroying denotes not doing, and not 
 teaching. The former are performed first by Christ himself, and partly 
 by his members. The parallel passage in Luke xvi. 17, explains what 
 the Saviour means by, " till all be fulfilled ;" where he says, " It is 
 easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail." 
 From this it is evident that the simplest meaning is the correct one ; 
 namely, the law will continue for ever, and not fail in any point, till it 
 is entirely satisfied. 
 
 Here, then, the perpetuity of the law, and its demands upon the 
 members of the New Testament, are expressly maintained. And we 
 have no right, arbitrarily, to restrict to one part of the law, the moral 
 law, what is said of the whole. But there is just as little reason to 
 understand " one jot or tittle," as meaning " one jot or tittle" of the 
 letter. The words of Christ would then stand in direct and evident 
 contradiction to other statements of the New Testament ; but the dis- 
 course of Christ which immediately follows, demonstrates the fallacy of 
 such an opinion. The Saviour, in this discourse, goes far beyond the 
 letter of the Mosaic law; whilst he unfolds the idea, which Moses 
 himself could not fully express, on account of the hardness of the 
 
91 
 
 people's hearts. But, if that which is contained in the idea, is to be 
 regarded as a real ingredient of the law, this mode of treatment must 
 be consistently carried out, and the accidental be separated from the 
 essential — the conditional from that which is independent of all condi- 
 tions. And thus no jot or tittle of the true spirit of the law can fail. 
 
 What passes then, and what remains of the Sabbath commandment ? 
 If we follow Spencer and his school, very little remains. The " keep- 
 ing holy' 1 '' consists in his opinion only in the setting it apart for a certain 
 object — devoting it to rest instead of work. The outward rest is not 
 related in any way to the inward. It is simply a symbolical represen- 
 tation of the rest of God after the creation, except that it is designed 
 to secure refreshment to slaves. This completed the observance of the 
 Sabbath in his estimation. If any one, in addition to this, devoted the 
 day to meditation on divine things, and the worship of God, he did it of 
 his own accord. 
 
 According to this view, the law, under the Old Testament, was fully 
 carried out by those who abstained from outward work ; they might 
 turn their thoughts and feelings entirely away from God, or even 
 indulge in gross excesses, without breaking the law. But the expres- 
 sions, " God sanctified the Sabbath," and, " Remember the Sabbath, to 
 sanctify it," are in themselves sufficient to prove this to be false. This 
 one word, " sanctify," expresses the whole idea of the Sabbath. The 
 passages brought forward by Spencer are not sufficient to prove that 
 sanctifying meant merely setting apart, nor are there any passages from 
 which it can be proved. Who, for instance, can fail to see that the 
 words of Joel, ii. 15, " sanctify a fast," mean not simply, fix a time for 
 fasting, but appoint a holy fast ; one which is, outwardly and inwardly, 
 truly devoted to God ? And again, the expression in Joshua xx. 7, 
 '* and they sanctified Kedesh in Galilee," indicates not only that they 
 appointed it for an asylum, but that they consecrated it to God, so 
 that it was an attack upon the rights of God, for any one to endeavour 
 to execute his right of vengeance upon a fugitive who had fled thither? 
 Sanctifying the seventh day, therefore, can only mean the dedication of 
 it to God. How this is to be performed must be determined from the 
 idea itself, and from the accounts contained in the records of the Old 
 Testament religion. The offering of a special sacrifice, and the holding 
 of a sacred assembly (Lev. xxiii. 3), are a sufficient proof that the 
 observance of the Sabbath demanded something more than mere in- 
 active repose. 
 
 The full extent and import of the sanctification enjoined were im- 
 
92 
 
 pressed upon the people, who were too ready to rest satisfied with the 
 outward observance, by the prophets, who were raised up as the legal 
 expositors of the law. It is true, that, in cases in which men went so 
 far as outwardly to break the law, this was punished as a gross exhi- 
 bition of ungodliness, just as the murderer is punished without any 
 mention of his neglect of the duties of Christian love. But even where 
 the day was outwardly observed, they still declare, most emphatically, 
 that this is not all, and that, in fact, it cannot be regarded as a fulfilment 
 of the law at all, unless the inward emotions correspond. Isaiah says, 
 that a merely outward observance of the Sabbath is an " abomination 
 to God" (Isa. i. 13); and afterwards explains, in a positive manner, in 
 what the true sanctification of the Sabbath consists : " If thou turn 
 away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy 
 day, and callest the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, and 
 honourest it, not doing thine own ways, nor seeking thine own pleasure, 
 nor speaking words" (Isa. lviii. 13). In this passage the following 
 points deserve to be noticed, as showing, in the clearest light, the pro- 
 phet's idea of sanctification. He indicates as the opposite of this, 
 doing one's own pleasure and one's own Avays : these are, in his esti- 
 mation, the real desecration of the Sabbath, a daring attack upon it, 
 whilst the opposite is called " turning away the foot." He grasps so 
 thoroughly the idea of doing one's own pleasure, following one's own 
 inclination (for which Gesenius, in defiance of all the rules of interpre- 
 tation, would substitute work, simply because the idea is too deep for 
 him) in all its extent and depth, that he includes in it speaking words, 
 that is, such words as are words only, mere gossip, and do not promote 
 either the glory of God, or the improvement of one's self and others. 
 The prophet lays such stress upon the feelings of the heart, that he 
 requires that the Sabbath shall not be felt as a heavy burden, by which 
 men are kept, against their will, from their own occupation ; but as a 
 delight, a gracious privilege, which God has given to his people, that 
 they may turn to him amidst the distractions and cares of the world. 
 And lastly, he requires that the Sabbath shall be honoured, because the 
 Lord hath sanctified it ; which honouring consists in this, " thou shalt 
 abstain from thine own work, that God may have his work in thee." 
 "With this view of the nature of sanctification, which was evidently that 
 held by the prophets, we may understand how it was that they held 
 meetings for instruction on that day, to which the faithful came even 
 from a great distance, of which a notice is contained in the narrative 
 of the Shunammite (2 Kings iv. 23). 
 
93 
 
 This more spiritual meaning of the Mosaic institution was also 
 recognised by the later Jews, and on that their custom, of devoting it 
 to the exercises of worship, was founded. Philo, the Alexandrian, 
 says : — " It is a custom received from our forefathers, and still conti- 
 nued, to consecrate this day to science, the study of the nature ' of 
 things.' " And Josephus says : — " Moses commanded them not merely 
 to read the law once, or twice, or more frequently, but to leave their 
 other works every week, and meet together to hear the law." And it 
 is no light thing to maintain, as Spencer does, that this view was em- 
 braced by the whole people from a misunderstanding of the law. 
 
 If now we have succeeded in ascertaining, in this way, the funda- 
 mental idea of the Sabbath under the Old Testament, it will not be 
 difficult to determine to what extent it applies to us, and what duties 
 it devolves upon us. 1. It shows us, that whilst God does not, like a 
 Pharaoh of the moral law, demand without giving, yet he does not 
 give without requiring, so that every one of his benefits brings with it 
 the obligation that we sanctify ourselves to his service. If this obli- 
 gation was so great under the Old Testament on account of the crea- 
 tion, and the deliverance from Egypt, how much greater must it be 
 under the New Testament, in which " he spared not his only-begotten 
 Son, but freely gave him up for us all ! " 2. We learn from it, that 
 human weakness, which is ever too ready to forget this duty, stands 
 in need of fixed and periodical occasions, on which all outward hin- 
 dranees are removed, that they may be devoted exclusively to the per- 
 formance of it. The notion, that this want only existed under the Old 
 Testament, that, because every day is a Sabbath to the Christian, the 
 setting apart of certain days is only desirable for those who are merely 
 outwardly members of the New Testament, but inwardly belong to 
 the Old, will certainly find no advocate in the truly advanced Chris- 
 tian, but only in those who have been so absorbed in their imaginary 
 self, as to lose sight of what they really are. The false spiritualism, 
 from which such assertions spring, is a worm, which gnaws more de- 
 structively at our spiritual life than legality ever can. That which is 
 true in theory, is not always true without restrictions when put into 
 practice by individuals ; and this is more than ever the case in our 
 day, whose impurities are so great, whose faith is so feeble, and whose 
 seeking for holiness is so destitute of earnestness. If we were mem- 
 bers of Christ, and nothing else, we should no longer require to set 
 apart certain times ; for our whole life would be an uninterrupted wor- 
 ship. But the flesh still exists in us as well as the Spirit, and its 
 
94 
 
 strength is always so much the greater in proportion to our uncon- 
 sciousness of its existence. And, therefore, the louder and more con- 
 fident a man's assertions that fixed times for assembling are superflu- 
 ous, and the more he despises those who still think them necessary, 
 as though they could not tell the signs of the times, the stronger is 
 the proof that he needs them still. For flying, something more is re- 
 quired than simply to fancy we have wings. He who is conscious 
 that he has none, and pursues his pilgrimage humbly leaning on his 
 staff, will have made the greatest progress at the end. The continu- 
 ance of sin in us brings with it always susceptibility to external im- 
 pressions, and to the influence of evil around us, together with wan- 
 derings of mind. The spark may fall upon iron without danger, but 
 not upon tinder. For this reason, in order that we may pray without 
 ceasing, in a manner befitting our station, we must sometimes " enter 
 into our chamber, and shut the door behind us ;" and in order to keep 
 every day as a day of the Lord, we must keep one day free from every- 
 thing that can disturb our devotion. Such disturbance arises most of 
 all from earthly employments. But the extent to which these should 
 be avoided, and the measure of our obligation to abstain from them, 
 must be regulated according to the position of the individual ; and it 
 is, therefore, impossible to lay down any general rules. But this must 
 be noticed, that hard bodily labours, though generally regarded as 
 most incompatible with the rest of the Sabbath, are generally less so 
 than mental ones, even including such as relate to a learned research 
 into the words and ways of God. These tend more than the others to 
 occupy the whole man, both body and soul. 
 
 And with regard to this second particular, the Old Testament 
 arrangement has gained in power. We have much more reason for 
 observing everything with the greatest care, on which the health of 
 our spiritual life depends. Csesarius, of Aries (in the fifth century), 
 said with propriety in this respect : — " I say with truth, that it is wrong, 
 and indeed ungodly, for Christians to have less respect for the Lord's 
 day, than they see the Jews show to the Sabbath. For if these unhappy 
 men keep the Sabbath so strictly, that they avoid every earthly work 
 on that day, how much more ought we, who are redeemed, not with 
 silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, to think of the 
 price paid for us, and on the day of the resurrection to consecrate our- 
 selves to God, and to reflect with the greater earnestness upon the 
 salvation of our souls." We cannot infer the obligation to devote 
 exactly one day in seven exclusively to the worship of God, with the 
 
95 
 
 same certainty with which we conclude that there must be some times 
 appointed. For it is doubtful whether this arrangement is founded 
 upon a natural want, which is common to all, or whether it is only 
 made with reference to the history of the creation, in which case it 
 would lose its application to us. It seems, however, to be confirmed 
 by the experience of every age, which has discovered the adaptation 
 of this arrangement to the nature of man, both in the inferior and 
 nobler nature, that whilst the reference to the creation is not to be 
 lost sight of, it is founded upon the former also. Further study of this 
 subject increases our conviction, that the dedication of one day in 
 seven to the worship of God belongs to the essence of the command- 
 ment. The rest of God after the creation is not the real ground of 
 the observance, but serves to recommend it. 
 
 3. We perceive from the law, that the appointment of certain sea- 
 sons for worship is not only the duty of individuals, but also of the 
 whole Church. Not only was the Sabbath kept by every one in his 
 own house, but there were united religious services, the offering of the 
 sacrifices, the holy assemblies, in which men were not inactive, but 
 joined together in the praise of God, and acknowledgment of his ways. 
 He who neglects the assembly, as some do, may be convinced of sin 
 even from the Old Testament ; and so also he who fancies that, having 
 selected certain times, he has only to think of his own necessities. 
 
 It only remains now to examine the basis of the duty of the Chris- 
 tian, and the whole Church, to regard and observe Sunday in particular 
 as a day set apart for edification. Two different views have been 
 entertained on this subject. Some appeal to the custom of the Church. 
 Thus an author who wrote in 1702* says: — " The fixing of one day 
 in seven is a Divine ordinance, which cannot be overthrown ; but the 
 choice of Sunday is an agreement of the whole Church, which is not 
 to be attributed to any private individual, still less to the Government." 
 Others look upon this view as very suspicious. Thus Mosheim says : 
 — " The Church, say they, has appointed Sunday, and we are bound 
 to submit to it. How weak is this support ! Jesus has made us free 
 from the ordinances of men, and, therefore, the Church has no right 
 to make laws." The advocates of this view appeal to a Divine com- 
 mand issued through the apostles. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the Sunday was generally observed as 
 early as the days of the apostles. This can be proved from the New 
 
 * Unschuldige Nachrichten. 
 
96 
 
 Testament. The three passages, which are commonly adduced in 
 support of it, are each decisive on the matter ; but they afford a much 
 stronger proof, when taken in connexion with each other. 
 
 The first passage is Acts xx. 7. From this it appears that the 
 church at Troas, at the time when Paul visited it, was in the habit of 
 meeting for worship on the first day of the week. The same name is 
 given to the day as to the day on which the Redeemer rose, in Matt, 
 xxviii. 1, and John xx. 1. The different parts of the service alluded 
 to are, the preaching, which was customary, as we find from Acts ii. 42, 
 in the meetings of Christians, from the very first, — on this occasion, 
 Paul took the place of the ordinary preacher, — the Lord's Supper and 
 the feast of love. It is true that Franke and Neander both dispute 
 the argument from this passage, thinking that the assembly was an 
 extraordinary one, called in consequence of the apostle's intention to 
 depart on the morrow ; and that, therefore, it happened to fall on a 
 Sunday. But a closer inspection of the passage will show, that the 
 assembly, and the breaking of bread which was the chief object, 
 were altogether independent of the apostle's departure, and only gave 
 him the opportunity of speaking, and that at such great length. 
 
 The second passage is 1 Cor. xvi. 2 ; in which the apostle writes, 
 that on the first day of the week every one is to lay by, according to 
 his ability, for the contribution to the saints. Relieving the wants of 
 the saints is an occupation worthy of the day. The heart is then more 
 open, and inclined to give. The apostle's remark, that he had written 
 the same to all the churches in Galatia, shows that there also the 
 Sunday was already observed. Franke and Neander, indeed, remark 
 here, that all this may be understood if we suppose it to refer merely 
 to the ordinary commencement of the civil week. But it seems to be 
 overlooked, that the church at Corinth, which consisted for the most 
 part of Gentile Christians, had no civil commencement of the week, 
 since the Jewish division of weeks was not customary amongst the 
 Greeks and Romans. And if this had been the only reason for the 
 apostle's fixing the first day, he would certainly have mentioned this, 
 and would scarcely have spoken with such decision, but would rather 
 have simply advised, and recommanded it to their consideration. If 
 we were required by any one to contribute on the Sunday to religious 
 objects, no further explanation would be necessary ; the reason for 
 choosing this day would be obvious ; but any one, wishing to fix on 
 Monday, would certainly think it necessary to give a further explanation. 
 
 The third passage is Rev. i. 10 : "I was in the spirit on the Lord's 
 
97 
 
 day." That we are to understand by the Lord's day the Sunday, and 
 not, as some do, Easter day, is evident from the fact, that the oldest 
 Greek and Latin ecclesiastical writers universally apply the term, the 
 Lord's day, to the Sunday, and never to Easter. This is now generally 
 acknowledged. The application of this name to the Sunday, however, 
 is closely connected with the observance of it ; and the fact that the 
 apostle was honoured on that day with extraordinary communications 
 of the Holy Spirit, seems to indicate that he was then especially 
 engaged in those exercises of devotion which prepared him for them ; 
 whilst, on the other hand, these communications necessarily helped to 
 increase the sanctity of the day. For they contained a kind of prac- 
 tical declaration that the observance of this day was well pleasing to 
 God. 
 
 We'arrive at the same conclusion from an examination of the diffe- 
 rent sources of the earliest history of Christianity. Unless the 
 observance of the Sunday originated in the days of the apostles, it is 
 difficult to explain how it is that we find it, immediately after, in the 
 most distant regions ; whilst, amidst all divisions, secessions, and con- 
 troversies, we meet with none affecting this question, and no heretical 
 church had another day for meeting. We shall quote some of the 
 most important witnesses. Pliny, in his well-known epistle, says that 
 the Christians were in the habit of meeting for worship on one regular 
 day. It is evident, from a comparison of this passage with statements 
 made in other places, that this could not have been the Sabbath, as 
 some have imagined. Barnabas, the disciple of the apostles, says, in 
 his epistle, which has been suspected on insufficient ground, " The 
 Christians no longer observe the Sabbath, which has been abolished, 
 but they spend the first day of the week as a day of enjoyment, as the 
 beginning of the new world, the day on which Jesus rose from the 
 dead." In the epistle from the Corinthian bishop Dionysius, to the 
 Roman bishop Soter, we read, " To-day we have kept the sacred day 
 of the Lord." He says, too, that the Ebionites observe the Lord's day 
 as a memorial of the Saviour's resurrection. So, also, Justin says that 
 the observance of the day, on which God chased away darkness and 
 chaos, and created the world, and Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from 
 the dead, is practised by all Christians. 
 
 But, even if it must be unreservedly admitted, that the Sunday was 
 observed as early as the days of the apostles, under the eyes of the 
 apostles, and that they approved of, and joined in the observance, it 
 does not follow from this that a direct command had been given by 
 
98 
 
 God. Such a command would certainly have been more clearly re- 
 vealed to us, and not have been left to mere inference. And such a 
 command would be as much opposed to the very nature of the New 
 Testament Church, as the Old Testament law of the Sabbath, and 
 would confound the two economies, not less than the literal transfer of 
 that law. The Church of the New Testament has been brought to 
 maturity by the Spirit of Christ, so far as all outward arrangements are 
 concerned. If this is not the case, how is it that we find no directions, 
 which are general in their form and valid for every age, with regard to 
 the most important outward institutions, such as the constitution of 
 the Church ? To say, with the Puritans, that whatever arrangements 
 the Church makes in this respect, are ordinances of men, in a bad sense, 
 is only to set up an ordinance of one's own, namely, the baseless 
 assumption that the law of the Old Testament ought to be transferred 
 to the New without modification or change, and forces into a number 
 of arbitrary practices. For, so far as those outward institutions are 
 concerned, which we want to preserve, we are compelled to invent a 
 direct sanction on the part of God, as is evident from the transfer of the 
 Sabbath to the Sunday, and the change of the apostolic injunctions in 
 reference to the constitution of the Church, which were evidently in- 
 tended only for the apostles' times, into universal laws, which shall be 
 valid under all circumstances. Nor is it less evident from the fact, 
 that it is also necessary to do away with many things, whose retention 
 is loudly demanded by the consciousness of Christians, such as the 
 Christian festivals, the observance of which rests upon the same basis 
 as that of the Sunday. If this is observed as a memorial of the resur- 
 rection of the Lord, why should not the anniversary of that event be 
 observed as well ; and if this, why not the day of his birth, of his 
 death, of his ascension, and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit ? 
 The distinction which men feel themselves compelled to draw between 
 things which must stand or fall together, ought to be sufficient to prove 
 that the whole principle is false. The episcopal theologians, in their 
 controversy with the Puritans, pointed out how, even under the Old 
 Testament, the freedom of the Church was not so fettered, with refer- 
 ence to outward institutions, as some would have it now ; as we may 
 see from the feast of Purim, which was instituted by Esther and Mor- 
 decai, without a direct command from God ; and the feast of Dedication, 
 which was established at a period in which direct Divine communica- 
 tions had ceased, but which the Saviour himself, nevertheless, joined in 
 celebrating. 
 
99 
 
 How, then, are we to account for the origin of the observance of 
 Sunday in the primitive Church ? It arose, undoubtedly, in a sponta- 
 neous manner, on the same ground on which all nations, however 
 unconnected, commemorate the birth and death of friends, or kings, or 
 benefactors ; a practice the more naturally complied with in this case, 
 on account of the infinite extent to which father and mother, and child, 
 and earthly kings or benefactors, are surpassed by our Lord and Saviour. 
 Where this natural emotion found expression, it was encouraged by 
 intercourse with those who had already adopted the practice of observ- 
 ing the Sunday. The apostles, who united in this observance, did so, 
 not as apostles, but as standing, in this respect, on a perfect equality 
 with the other members of the Church. Their example is only of im- 
 portance to us, as it removes every doubt as to the fact, that it is a 
 true and Christian feeling, from which the observance of the Sunday 
 springs. 
 
 On what, then, is our duty founded, to select Sunday as the day to 
 be observed, since, as we have shown, we cannot dispense with a fixed 
 and regularly returning period, exclusively devoted to the worship of 
 God ? We reply, in the first place, on the same feeling which first 
 dictated that selection. This reason must have the same force as ever, 
 since Christ is still the same Saviour, and his resurrection, the climax 
 of his whole work of redemption, must have the same importance for 
 us, as for those who saw him, when risen, with their bodily eyes. 
 
 There is yet another reason, which was unknown to the primitive 
 Church, and, therefore, gives the Sunday a stronger claim upon us, 
 than it had in the days of the apostles. For now nearly eighteen 
 centuries it has been observed as the Lord's day. The prayers and 
 supplications of millions have been offered on it to the Lord ; an infi- 
 nite fulness of blessings has been poured out upon the Church on this 
 day. It is still observed in every quarter of the globe by all peoples 
 and tongues. By this observance of the Sunday we enter into the 
 closest fellowship with the whole Christian Church of the present and 
 the past ; and the consciousness of this fellowship must of necessity 
 exert a lively influence upon our devotion. 
 
 In closing this part of our work, and seeing the injurious effects 
 which the neglect of the Lord's day is producing amongst us, a neglect 
 which cannot but react upon the ungodliness from which it springs, 
 we would summon every one, who has received from God strength and 
 talents for the work, to help in this respect to rebuild the walls of Zion. 
 
 h 2 
 
PART III. 
 8*meM»i oBforts femineb. 
 
 The year 1850 was distinguished for the zeal and energy with which 
 efforts were made to promote the observance of Sunday. Societies 
 Avere formed, prizes offered, a periodical started, and a large number 
 of publications issued, and put in circulation. We heartily rejoice in 
 this fact. And if we venture to express some objections to the course 
 pursued, we do so, not with the intention of impeding the movement, 
 but with the sincere desire of assisting it. 
 
 We think, in the first place, that it is necessary to guard against 
 overrating the effects which will be produced by these means. We 
 admit that there is a certain truth in the assertion that " without a 
 proper observance of the Sunday the Church will never be edified and 
 restored to purity again ;" but we believe that it would be more cor- 
 rect to say that, " unless the Church is built up and purified, there 
 cannot be a proper observance of the Sunday at all." From the 
 inward to the outward is the New Testament way, it was the way 
 spoken of by Jeremiah,* under the Old Testament ; and this, too, is 
 the way peculiarly befitting the evangelical Church. From the expe- 
 rience of the past, derived from similar efforts, as, for example, those 
 of temperance societies, we expect nothing like complete success, even 
 with reference to the immediate object of this movement. But it will 
 have this great advantage, that by thoroughly exposing the evils re- 
 sulting from the habits of the people in this respect, it will help to 
 bring them to a " knowledge of sin." And it may lead some to avail 
 themselves of the means of grace. If anything beyond this could be 
 effected by such outward means, how is the fact to be explained that 
 the epistles to the Seven Churches, in the Revelation, are addressed 
 
 * Yid. ch. xxxi. 31—34. 
 
101 
 
 exclusively to that which is within, and do not advance beyond the 
 preaching of repentance, and that, in the whole of the New Testament, 
 no commandment and no exhortation is given with reference to the 
 Sunday ? It brings us to this, that the really royal way to that which 
 is outward, is through the heart ; that the former will follow of itself, 
 when once a man is right within. What has been said of kingdoms, 
 is true of churches, " they are fortified by the same means by which 
 they are founded." " Kepent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," 
 was the proclamation which announced the kingdom of heaven ; and 
 when these words fail, with which the Saviour, like John the Baptist, 
 began his work, very little will be accomplished by any other means. 
 Still, in miserable times, we must be content with miserable success. 
 Only it is necessary to guard against expecting too much, otherwise 
 the enthusiasm will soon cool ; and, what is worse, it will interfere 
 with the concentration of all the strength upon the more important 
 work, on the earnest prosecution of which the success even of this 
 movement must depend. 
 
 The second thing is, that the agents of this movement are acting im- 
 prudently upon the principle, that " it is their duty to lay aside all fear and 
 all learning, and to keep before them but one thing, namely, the miser- 
 able condition of both high and low amongst the people, who are wickedly 
 robbing God of every seventh day," and are, therefore, without hesi- 
 tation spreading publications amongst the people, which advocate the 
 English view of the Sunday, a view which, according to our conscien- 
 tious conviction, is opposed to the Scriptures, and which is certainly 
 at variance with the doctrine held by our church, and with the view 
 which prevailed throughout the early ages of Christianity. And this 
 view they are themselves ready to adopt, thinking that " it is of little 
 consequence whether it is theoretically right or wrong, seeing that 
 practically the English view has certainly accredited itself.'' But we 
 have not to do with human learning in this case, but with the know- 
 ledge of the word of God ; and all indifference, in reference to this, is 
 sin. Our people have specially the commission to explore the depths 
 of the word of God ; and everything which tends to draw them away 
 from this work, in favour of a false estimate of the practical, must 
 injure their souls. Moreover, just because this is our work, anything, 
 which is theoretically weak and untenable, will be of far less service 
 amongst us than elsewhere, as the groundwork of a solid practical 
 edifice. It will not be long before criticism will begin its work ; and 
 the proverb will be verified, " lightly come, lightly go." And from 
 
102 
 
 its indefensible position and weak foundation, the cause itself will fall 
 into disgrace. 
 
 It is of the greatest importance that a clear idea he first obtained of 
 the meaning of the fourth commandment ; and when this is done, that 
 the question be satisfactorily settled, whether (a strange question, 
 which should never have been raised), and how far, this commandment 
 affects the Church of Christ. 
 
 If this commandment contains the injunction to worship God, it is 
 evident that we are not to content ourselves with the letter, " Remem- 
 ber the Sabbath day ;" but that we can only regard the observance of 
 the one day, as the climax of this worship, according to the plan 
 usually adopted in the ten commandments. They generally select one 
 out of a number of equally important examples. Thus, in the third 
 commandment, literally only perjury is forbidden ; but the chief design 
 is to impress the importance of a sacred reverence for the name of God. 
 And so, if we content ourselves with the Sabbath, and think that the 
 worship of God is limited to that, this commandment would present a 
 poor contrast to the grand declaration, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
 God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
 strength." How could it be possible to icorship but once a week a 
 God thus loved? Such an idea, too, would clash with the rest of the 
 laws of Moses, which contain nothing of which the germ does not exist 
 in the Decalogue. Even in these laws, the worship of God occupied a 
 far larger space than this one day; for, by the side of the Sabbath, we 
 find the observance of the festivals, and the morning and evening 
 sacrifice, expressly required. 
 
 The complete fulfilment of this command, in spirit as well as in 
 letter, is to be found in the life of Anna, of whom it is said, " She 
 departed not from the temple, but served, with fastings and prayers, 
 night and day." The injunction of Paul, " Pray without ceasing," 
 contains, undoubtedly, the New Testament development of the spirit 
 of the command. The opinion expressed in a prize essay, lately pub- 
 lished, that, " the eternal and essential germ of the Sabbath command- 
 ment is this, that every seventh day is to be devoted to our heavenly 
 calling, is too contracted." Such a view certainly resembles too much 
 the righteousness of the Pharisees, so strongly condemned by Christ. 
 And it is incorrect, inasmuch as it overlooks the fact, that the seventh 
 day in the Old Testament was not merely the day of worship, but de- 
 signed also to be the day of rest, of refreshment, and of humanity : 
 qualities which should be distinguished from each other much more 
 
103 
 
 than they generally are. The old Heidelberg catechism has certainly 
 expressed the meaning of the commandment far more correctly and 
 perfectly :* " First that I meet with the Church of God, &c. And 
 besides, that I keep every day of my life holy, by abstaining from evil 
 works, that I let God work in me by his Spirit, and thus begin in this 
 life the Sabbath of eternity." 
 
 If the commandment be thus understood, the observance of a day 
 acquires, on the one hand, greater meaning and importance ; in the 
 same way as the commandment, " Thou shalt not kill," is first seen 
 in its true light, when we learn that even anger is criminal in the sight 
 of God ; and the seventh commandment, " Thou shalt not commit 
 adultery," when we consider the sentence pronounced by Christ upon 
 its secret commencement in the heart. If, then, we ought to serve 
 God without ceasing, what must be the condition of those who will 
 not serve him at all, but who do all they can to keep back the least 
 they could give him, the observance of a seventh day. On the other 
 hand, however, the scruples of legality are prevented by this interpre- 
 tation ; since the seventh day is only separated from the others by a 
 fading boundary line. In cases of necessity, and when it can be done 
 without offending the consciences of others, the observance of it may 
 be neglected. And that which has been necessarily left undone on the 
 one day, can be performed at another time. Again, the more earnestly 
 we seek to fulfil the commandment on other days, the less reason is 
 there for scrupulous strictness with regard to this. The amount of 
 obligation, to keep the day strictly, varies according to circumstances. 
 It is strongest in reference to nations, times, and individuals, in whom 
 the divine life, and, therefore, the worship of God, are at the lowest 
 ebb. But the most enlightened Christian, and the most eminent 
 church, are not altogether free from it. 
 
 Obedience to this command of God, however, requires in our day 
 that we do something more than merely seek to promote the observ- 
 ance of Sunday. It demands as loudly that we seek to fill up the other 
 days with the pleasant worship of God. 
 
 With this interpretation of the Old Testament command, the expres- 
 sions of Paul completely harmonize, whilst those who favour the Eng- 
 lish opinion find them inconvenient, and seek by forced interpretations 
 to explain them away. This is seen most clearly in the remarks of 
 Haldane on " certain expressions in the New Testament." No one, 
 
 * See page 64. 
 
104 
 
 on reading his work, can help feeling that the author would be glad if 
 these " certain expressions" were not there. In Rom. xiii. 5, 6, the 
 apostle speaks indulgently of those who esteem one day above another. 
 He has in his mind those, who do not seek to enforce upon others the 
 practices which they cannot relinquish themselves ; Christians, who 
 have come over from Judaism, and who, therefore, require time before 
 the new principle can have its perfect power. In Col. ii. 16, however, 
 he warns them to beware of those who wish to judge others in meat, 
 and drink, and festivals, and new moons, and Sabbaths, " which are a 
 shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ," who gives his 
 own people the power to rise above the Jewish, piecemeal religion — a 
 religion not favoured by the Old Testament — and serve God without 
 ceasing. But he speaks most strongly in Gal. iv. 9 — 11 : — " How turn 
 ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire 
 again to be in bondage. Ye observe days, and months, and times, 
 and years." The preference of certain days, whatever they may be, 
 whether called Sundays or Sabbaths, or by any other name, appears 
 here as a return to an elementary and child's religion, such as the 
 Galatians had submitted to before, when in their heathen condition ; 
 and is denounced as unworthy of Christians, who are to be a godly 
 people, walking constantly before God, and presenting themselves con- 
 tinually unto Him, a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. 
 
 These expressions are certainly opposed to every view of the Sunday, 
 which leads to its being regarded as the only day of religion, the 
 " pearl of days," the " light of the week," if by this is meant that 
 the other days belong to man, and this alone to God. They show the 
 fallacy of every view which supposes that God is satisfied with one day, 
 and which, in order that this day may be invested with a brighter halo, 
 allows deep shadows to rest upon the other days of the week. Sacred 
 days and hours are a part of Judaism, not of the true religion even of 
 the Old Testament ; they are well suited for Rationalism, but not for 
 the Christian Church. To seek to introduce them is to misunderstand 
 Christ. It cannot, however, be doubted that those who hold the Sab- 
 batarian view are inclined to this ; although, by carrying it out, we 
 frustrate the lofty aim which ought never to be lost sight of by the 
 Christian Church. 
 
 With regard to individual Christians, these expressions show, as the 
 Mosaic command also does, that the Sunday can only be regarded as a 
 crutch, the use of which is rendered necessary by the weakness of men, 
 though not in all cases to the same extent. Thus Bengel says, " For 
 
105 
 
 those who are deeply engrossed in the business of the world, a fixed 
 day is not only useful, but necessary ; but they who keep a constant 
 Sabbath enjoy the greater liberty ;" to which, however, we must add 
 that, in general, they require it most, who think they can do without it ; 
 and that nothing is more repulsive than to hear men talk with boasting, 
 as though they had reached the summit of Christianity, when they 
 hardly possess the first elements of the Christian life and worship. It 
 was not without good reason, that in a church of brethren, such as the 
 primitive church was — whose earnest prayer was ever, " Lord Jesus, 
 come quickly " — the Sunday stands out with far less prominence amidst 
 the other days, than elsewhere; and less in the Catholic Church, which 
 has its services every day, than in the Evangelical. Nor is it without 
 good reason, that in England the Sunday is held with almost a convul- 
 sive grasp. With this restless, busy people it is but the impulse to 
 spiritual self-preservation which dictates this strict observance. And 
 there is also good reason why, amongst us, zeal should be kindled for 
 the observance of the Sunday, just at the time in which the stormy 
 waves of worldly mindness are threatening to spread universal desola- 
 tion. But we must avoid making a virtue of necessity, and gilding 
 over the calamity, by upholding that which is only the result of a 
 return to the imperfect condition of the Old Testament, as though it 
 belonged peculiarly to the New ; and by picturing as an ideal condition 
 that which in reality resembles the last effort of a drowning man. If 
 the days of her first love could return to the Church, the difference 
 between the Sunday and the other days would be scarcely perceptible. 
 What could there be to distinguish the Sunday, where all were of one 
 heart and of one soul, and were daily together in fellowship and 
 breaking of bread ? Only as the first amongst equals could it possibly 
 appear then. 
 
 With reference, however, to Sunday as the chief day of ivorship, 
 the words of Chemnitz are important. " Although the Christian 
 meetings are not bound by any law or precept of the New Testament 
 to a particular day, it would be an act of wanton caprice to refuse to 
 observe, for the sake of order and union, the custom of the apostolic 
 and primitive Church, since it certainly tends to the improvement of 
 the Church, and does not interfere with Christian liberty." Apart from 
 a man's own wants, it is a work of love, and a duty binding upon 
 every member, as related to the whole body, to join with heart and 
 soul in the meetings for worship on the Sunday, and in every respect 
 so to spend the day that his example shall be beneficial to others. 
 
106 
 
 He who neglects this, has not only his own fault to bear, but, in part, 
 that of others also. 
 
 But we tremble at the mass of untenable arguments which are put 
 in circulation in support of the strict Sabbatarian view of the Sunday. 
 By these arguments, the observance of the Sunday is unhappily 
 damaged by its friends ; not less than its opponents. "We regret to 
 find many of these in Oschwald's prize essay, whose merits, in a prac- 
 tical point of view, we cheerfully admit ; whilst that of Liebetrut, 
 though it contains a smaller number, is not entirely free. Thus the 
 injunction of Christ to his disciples, " Pray that your flight be not in 
 the winter or on the Sabbath," is brought forward as a proof of the 
 stress laid upon the observance of Sunday in the New Testament, 
 without the possibility of proving that the Sunday is ever called the 
 Sabbath by the New Testament writers. It is also overlooked, that, 
 if the meaning which is here attached to the words be the correct 
 one, the Saviour is but helping to build up, what he always aimed to 
 overthrow, the scruples of the Pharisees with regard to the outward 
 observance of the Sabbath. All that can be gathered from this 
 advice is, that the Sabbath was likely, from the arrangements of that 
 time, to present as great an impediment to their flight as the winter 
 itself. But if the modes of expression peculiar to the Saviour's dis- 
 courses are lost sight of in this way, we shall be brought to the conclu- 
 sion that, under certain circumstances, it is our duty to pluck out the 
 right eye, and cut off the right foot or right hand. 
 
 Let us not throw away our gifts, or prove unfaithful to our calling, 
 when attracted by a mere delusion. Let us not overlook the fact, that 
 the English Sunday, which has made so deep and favourable an 
 impression upon many, as to enlist them as advocates of the theory 
 which prevails there, is not the product of the theory itself, but 
 results partly from the Christian fear of God, so deeply rooted in the 
 hearts of the people ; partly from the ceaseless bustle and restlessness, 
 which characterise so large a part of the population both of England 
 and America ; and, lastly, from the love of law which is so prevalent 
 there. This last, however, when applied to religion, has its dark, as 
 well as its bright side, and easily leads men to despise the noblest 
 cravings of the Christian life as impracticable idealism. To those who 
 look deeper than the surface, even the English Sunday has its dark 
 side. 
 
THE SABBATH QUESTION. 
 
 HENGSTENBERG ON THE LORD'S DAY. Translated from 
 the German by James Martin, B.A., of Lymington. Cloth, price 2s. 6d. 
 
 THE AGITATION AGAINST THE OPENING OF THE 
 CRYSTAL PALACE ON SUNDAYS. Reprinted from the " Noncon- 
 formist." Price Id., or 6s. per hundred. 
 
 THE CRYSTAL PALACE AND THE WORKING MEN: 
 
 Opinions of Clergymen and others on the question of opening on Sunday. 
 Price Id. 
 
 THE PEOPLE'S PALACE AND THE RELIGIOUS WORLD; 
 
 or, Thoughts on public Agitation against the promised Charter to the New 
 Crystal Palace Company, and on " Sabbath Desecration." By a Layman. 
 Price 6d. 
 
 "This able and seasonable pamphlet." — Gateshead Observer. 
 
 " The religious subject is very ably reviewed." — Spectator. 
 
 " A well-reasoned pamphlet. . . . which we commend to the perusal of our 
 readers." — Norfolk News. 
 
 " The subject is calmly and ably discussed." — Leeds Times. 
 
 " The writer of ' The People's Palace and the Religious World,' has much to 
 say on the other side, and we commend his pamphlet to careful attention." — 
 The Critic. 
 
 " A well-timed, moderate, and sensible pamphlet. . . . which well deserves 
 attention, as it is written in an eminently religious spirit." — Leader. 
 
 " These are neither loosely devout nor coldly intellectual ' Thoughts.' They 
 are the product of a mind accustomed to bold and correct thinking, and of a 
 heart warm with religion and philanthropy." — Leicester Mercury. 
 
 " We recommend the pamphlet to the careful consideration of our readers." — 
 Western Times. 
 
 " The tone is argumentative — the reasoning firm — the taste displayed correct 
 — the side taken the right one. The author is a religious man, writing to reli- 
 gious men, in quiet, gentlemanly language, and showing them the want of scrip- 
 tural ground for their opposition to opening the Crystal Palace on Sunday, 
 while it warns them against bringing religion into disrepute by associating it 
 with asceticism." — Economist. 
 
 " Penned with great skill, moderation, judgment, and ability, it is a pamphlet 
 calculated to set every Christian man thinking. . . . The writer's arguments 
 we believe to be unanswerable, and his general -views have our entire concur- 
 rence." — Hants Independent. 
 
 " The pamphlet deserves perusal." — London Weekly Paper. 
 
 " We recommend the perusal of this sensible pamphlet to all those friends of 
 religious liberty who feel somewhat in doubt on this head. It is as forcible in 
 argument as it is admirable in temper." — Weekly News. 
 
 LONDON : W. FREEMAN, 69, FLEET STREET. 
 
In One Vol., price 2s. 6d. cloth, 
 
 SIX VIEWS OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 By J. FLETCHER. 
 
 1. THE CREED OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 2. THE BIOGRAPHY OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 3. THE MORALITY OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 4. THE CONSOLATIONS OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 5. THE CHARMS OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 6. THE ANTAGONIST OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 LONDON: W. FREEMAN, 69, FLEET STREET.