THE ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN MESSENGER. Original Papers. THE SABBATH DAY. THE present truth which stands in imminent peril is-the Sabbath Day. One by one the old landmarks are being swept away. The flood is fast rising; and the old paths, trodden hard by the footsteps of our fathers, are being gradually submerged. In one quarter, men are struggling hard for the plainest and simplest of reformation-truths; in another quarter, the battle is for the truth of God against the devices of proud and self-conceited men. There is not much firm ground left on which a man may plant the soles of his feet. The Bible is treated by certain parties as if it were the production of an uninspired poet or historian. Men sit in judgment on its doctrines, and accept, or reject, with the grave look, and satisfied air of a judge. And now, last of all, and, mayhap, worst of all, the Sabbath, which has been long trodden down in theory, is to be practically put under feet of mammon-worshipping men. It is to be turned into a day of pleasure. The overwrought sons of toil are to be robbed of their day of rest, that they may increase the gains of the rich, and be tenfold more their slaves. And these things are countenanced and encouraged by the highest authority respectively in the judicial and administrative government, so that the sin is to be adopted and endorsed by the nation; these men being like Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who was not content with sinning himself, but also caused the whole house of Israel to sin. It is time for us to gird on our armour, and be forth to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty. This day, which is now imperilled, is the last outward bulwark between the Church and the world. This barrier once overpassed, the whole land will speedily be flooded with infidelity, sensuality, drunkenness, theft, false witness, trucebreaking, swearing, and covetousness, which is idolatry. It is time for each of us to be putting forth his individual effort, as God may give him grace and strength. It is time for us to be up and doing, gathering eagerly round this blessed inheritance handed down to us from our fathers, and standing up for its defence as our most precious privilege and most prized patrimony. These men cannot break their own Sabbath without breaking ours. When the waters of the flood rise and cover their field, ours also must be submerged along with it. These are national peculiarities that are going. No. 61.-New Series. VOL. V. B National sins bring down national judgments. When fire and brimstone fall upon Sodom, the righteous Lot escapes, only with his life. When the deluge gathers on the world, Noah loses his all, though he is saved in the ark. These things deeply concern us. They concern us as individuals, for we are subjects of this mighty kingdom. They concern us as members of Christ's Church on earth, for all our Christian privileges stand or fall with the Sabbath-day. They concern us as Christian men and women, for the law of our God is on its trial; the honour of God is at stake; his sovereignty is about to be openly denied and repudiated. They concern us as we love the Lord Jesus Christ, for this Sabbath is his memorial day. It is the time set apart for His worship and service; for reading His word, and holding close and sweet communion with himself. These things concern us deeply for time, in all its interests; they concern us for the interests of our souls for eternity: us and ours-us and our children. We propose in this paper, to direct special attention to the subject, showing the grounds on which our faith in this matter rests. And in doing so, we may have to be somewhat more controversial than usual, and on a topic also with which many of our readers may already be familiar. It is asserted, that the Sabbath is no longer a binding institution-that it was given to the Jews, and was binding on them only so long as their peculiar polity stood; and that when Christ came, the Sabbath ceased with all the other Jewish rites and ceremonies. To this we find, in Genesis ii. 1-3, the first, the best, and the completest answer. The Sabbath was instituted by God at the close of creation-work, ere ever the Jews, as a nation, had a being. The Sabbath was made for man, not for the Jews. We find many traces of it in Old Testament history; in the fact that time was divided into portions of seven days; and before the giving of the Law itself, we find distinct reference made to the Sabbath, as an existing and well-known ordinance, in the fact, that while the Jews were marching through the wilderness, the manna fell in sufficient quantity on the sixth day for the seventh, in which, therefore, no work was to be done. But let us mark how the Law itself was given. As a preface to the whole law—as an argument and reason why the whole law should be kept, it is introduced by these words, "I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." This is the general reason prefixed to the whole law; this is the reason, the particular reason, why this people should keep this whole law now given formally to them. He was their God-He had redeemed them. He had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies; He had bought them with a price. They were not their own, and therefore they ought to render full obedience to all the commandments of God. But when we come to this particular commandment, we find it given in a different form from all the rest, and with a different reason: "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; 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 seventh day, and hallowed it." Now, what is there Jewish in this? It is not a Jewish reason the Lord gives for keeping this commandment. He gives a Jewish reason why the people should keep them all; but within the commandment itself—in the body of the law, is the true general reason why the commandment should be kept, and that reason is-" For in six days the Lord made," &c. It is as wide as heaven, earth, and sea, which the Lord made. But this law is separated from all the other parts of the Jewish ceremonial, by a wide distinction. It alone was graven with a pen of iron on the rock for ever, to show that it alone, of all the Jewish ceremonial rites, was to be binding on mankind for ever. There is nothing Jewish in any of its companions. It stands on the same ground as they. It is fortified by a particular reason, and that reason is of world-wide concernment. It is the most minute, stringent, and particular of them all. It occupies the central place. It is the very key-stone of the whole arch. It stands between our duty to God, contained in the first table, and our duty to man, as set forth in the second table. It is evidently the transition between the two; and its very position tells us this truth, that without a right observance of the fourth command, we cannot be in a position to discharge either our duty to God, that goes before; or our duty to man, that follows after. It is that command by keeping which alone we are rightly enabled to keep all the others. This taken away, all the rest fall to the ground. But that there is nothing merely Jewish in the Sabbath, appears most distinctly from the apostle's reasoning in the Hebrews, fourth chapter, "Into the rest of God, with all its blessedness and sanctity, man at first might enter; and hence the seventh day, as the day which was the beginning of the rest of God, became the Sabbath made for man. To the people of God still, in every age, there is a promise left, that they shall again enter into his rest. And the promise is still outstanding, for the rest of Canaan was not that rest, but only its type and shadow. Thus the apostle argues, building his argument on that solemn denunciation in the ninety-fifth Psalm, "I sware in my wrath, they shall not enter into my rest. For if Jesus (i. e. Joshua) had given them rest, then would he not afterwards have spoken of another day. There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God." And as the rest still remaineth for the people of God, so the day of rest, which is its type and earnest, the blessed and holy Sabbath, remaineth also. But it is said, the Sabbath must be a Jewish ordinance, because they who profaned it were punished with death. Now it is not pretended that those who break the Sabbath are worthy of this condemnation, and, it is argued, because the punishment has passed away, the ordinance has passed away also. Now, be it marked, it does not follow that a law is temporary, because its violation is punished after a particular method. It does not follow that the fourth commandment was not intended to be binding on us, because the Jews who broke it were punished by death. This was only a particular usage of a particular state. God himself was its Sovereign, and he marked out the fundamental laws of the kingdom by attaching this penalty to the breaking of them. The punishment is not contained in the fourth commandment itself, but is contained in another code of laws which is granted to have been merely temporary, and peculiar to the Jews. There are here two things that differ. There is the law of the ten commandments, and there is the Jewish code which embodied that law of the ten commandments. To certain of these commandments, certain sanctions were annexed. The Jewish code passed away in Christ, but the ten commandments stand where they were-the central law of all the nations of the earth. But besides, this argument, if it prove anything, proves rather too much for the first, second, third, fifth, sixth, and the seventh, all had the same punishment of death attached to the breach of them. So that the argument that does away the keeping holy the Sabbath, also makes theft, adultery, disobedience to parents, swearing, and idolatry, no longer sins; in short, the argument that does away the fourth commandment does away with all the rest, and it may be here as it was in Israel, when every man did that which seemed to him good in his own eyes. But the Sabbath could not have been merely Jewish, for all the Jewish ceremonial observances had a spiritual significancy: they all pointed at some substantial Gospel truth; they were all shadows of some one good thing to come. But the Sabbath was typical and symbolical of the rest that remaineth for the people of God. It foreshadowed God's rest in heaven, and this was shadowed forth under the law, by the rest of the people in the land of Canaan. So that this Edenic Sabbath over-lapped the whole Jewish economy. It raised its broad shadow over all that came between it and Judaism; it stretched on even over all Gospel times, and rested only in God's own rest above-the heavenly paradise-where sin cannot enter, and where the rest can neither be broken nor disturbed. The ordinance of marriage came from the same source. It, too, was re-enacted in Jewish times; and in the beginning of the Gospel was hallowed and made permanent by our Lord's own presence. These ordinances, both of them so blessed, come down to us laden with the sweet fragrance of the flowers of paradise. The one embodies the union between Christ and his Church; the other the rest and eternal peace which Christ hath purchased for his Church. They embody all that is essential in the faith: love, union with God, rest in him, with him, and before him. They speak of purity, love, holiness, and rest. They speak a language which is but little heard in our evil, cold, money-loving world. They tell of primitive peace, primitive purity, and primitive holiness. They point forward to a brighter and more glorious day-a day of complete union with God, and complete joy and rest in his everlasting love. Thus have we seen that the Sabbath is no ordinance of merely Jewish appointment. Now, let us see in this institution, first, a picture of holiness. It ought to be the whole rational creation standing still, one day in every seven, looking up to its God. It comes to tell all men that they have a master and a Father in heaven. It tells the rich that what they have is not their own; that they are but stewards of a master who has ordered that on that day the toilworn servant may lay him down to rest; that the meanest slave shall be as his master; that the weary beast of burden shall be loosed from the yoke ! and that all shall rest in peace, according to the commandment. It tells the world of that day when God looked on all his works and pronounced them very good; when he shall again rest in his love, and rejoice over his Church, with singing. It speaks, moreover, to the Christian heart, of the rest from redemption's finished work. It reminds us that that too was very good. That that rest into which He entered, when he rose from the grave, is the true God's rest, the resurrection rest that remaineth for all the people of God. This Sabbath is the essence of love to God, when we look upon it aright: it is looking lovingly up to God the Creator, and God the Redeemer. It is the basis of the fulfilling of the whole law. It is also an institution of mercy. It is older than Judaism. It is older than the fathers and the prophets. It is a voice, earlier than the written record itself, speaking of mercy to our fallen world, from out of the fair bosom of the first paradise. It is a remnant of primeval blessedness. It is part of the good gift which God gave to sinless Adam, not yet taken It links our guilty race with Adam, ere yet he fell; when the sun of God's love and favour shone sweetly down upon him; and when he re away. flected its bright rays lovingly back to the brimming source whence they came. To man unfallen there were six days of easy and unfatiguing labour, but on the seventh the vine was to grow unpruned, and the rose to bloom untended; the falling leaves were to lie on the green grass where they fell, and Adam was to spend the day in unbroken converse and communion with his Father and his God. Oh, what longings these pictures of Eden's blessedness waken up in the soul; what visions of gladness and peace open up to our gaze in a world without sin; a sun without a cloud; a life that never knew disease, sorrow, or death! And these longings, the peaceful hours of the Sabbath are intended to kindle and keep alive! When man fell, the Sabbath was left. Our God, in his goodness, love, and mercy, perpetuated his rest day, that man might not be wholly miserable. The curse which said, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread all the days of thy life," was taken off on God's rest day. The same voice which said, "Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work," said, " and on the seventh day shalt thou rest." It brings fifty-two spring days every year to this toilsome world. It mitigates the now inevitable burdens of life. It connects the region of bliss that has been lost, with the still brighter region of love and glory that is to come. For what is heaven, but an eternal Sabbath? It is but eternal communion with the Godhead, without sin, without weariness, and without interruption. It is a permanent Institution, for all ages of the Church's history. It is needed. The world being what it is, Christian men cannot do without their Sabbaths. If Adam, in Eden, needed his Sabbath, much more do we need ours. We need it for the public and formal worship of God. We need it for the communion of the saints. We need it to refresh the toiled and weary body, exhausted with the week's endless moil. We need it to rest the harassed intellect, to refresh and invigorate the harassed powers of the mind. We need it to study the blessed book, to fill the fountains of our spirit with prayer; to meditate on ourselves, on God, on time, and on eternity. We need it to teach our children, to instruct the ignorant, to comfort those who mourn. We need it for confession of sin, for thanksgiving for our blessings, for petitions for mercy to pardon and grace to help. We need it to think over our past ways, and in God's grace and strength to form plans of amendment for the future. We need it for our souls' comfort, for their edification and growth in grace. We need it for the closer fellowship we then feel with God, for the sweeter relish of the Scriptures, for the peace-giving influences of the Holy Ghost on our souls. We need it, and we get it; we have got it hitherto. The Lord grant that our Sabbaths be continued with us still. THE DUTCH CHURCH. We begin with Groningen. The predominant theology in that University has a very peculiar character. The Professors Pareau, Hofstede de Groot, and Muurling coincide in their fundamental principles. Their system may be ascertained from a series of Compendiums which they have issued on the most important departments of theological science; and from * * The only one of these Compendiums the translator has seen is " Compendium Dogmatices et Apologetices Christianæ," by Pareau and De Groot, of which the third edition appeared in 1848. Pp. 226. 8vo. It is a learned and comprehensive work, skilfully written, scientifically arranged, but very heterodox. |