THE JEWISH AND THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
Mataura Ensign, Volume 11, Issue 791, 20 July 1888, Page 7
About this newspaper
THE JEWISH AND THE CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
But a weightier charge, more persistently reiterated, more violently. resented, remained behind — a charge of distinctly violating the express laws of Moses by non-observance of the Sabbath. This it was which caused a surprise, an exacerbatiori, a madness) a thirst for sanguinary vengeance, Whicn pursued Him to the cross. For the Sabbath was a Mosaic, nay, even a primeval institution, and it had become the mos« distinctive and the most passionately reverenced of all the ordinances which separated the Jews from the Gentiles as a peculiar people. It was at once the sign of their exclusive privileges, and the centre of their barren formalism. Their traditions, their patriotism, even their obstinacy, were all enlisted, in its scrupulous maintenance. Not only had it been observed in heaven before man was, but they declared that the people of Israel had been chosen for the sole purpose of keeping it. Was it not even miraculously kept by the Sabbatical river of. the Holy City ? Their devotion to it was only deepened by the universal ridicule, inconvenience, and loss which it entailed upon them in the heathen world. They were even proud that, from having observed it with a stolid literalism, they had suffered themselves on that day to lose battles, to be cut to pieces by their, enemies, to see Jerusalem itself imperilled aiid captured. Its observance had been fenced round by the. minutf st, the most painfully precise, the most ludicrously insignificant , restrictions. The Prophet hadijalied.it a " delight," and therefore it was the duty even for the poor to eat three times on that day. They were to feast on it, though no fire was to be lighted and no food cooked. According to the stiff and narrow school of Shammai, no one on the Sabbath might even comfort the sick or enliven the sorrowful. Even the preservation of life was a breaking of the Sabbath •. on the other hand, even to. kill a flea, was as bad as to kill a camel. Had not the command to "do no manner bf work upon the Sabbath day " been most absolute and most emphatic ? had not Moses himself and all the congregation caused the son of Qhelomith to be stoned to death for merely gathering sticks upon it ? had not the Great Synagogue itself drawn up the thirty-nine abhoth and qu'te innumerable toldoth, ox prohibitions of labours which violated it in the first or in the second degree ? Yet here was One, claiming to be a prophet, yea, and more than a prophet, deliberately setting aside, as it seemed to them, the traditional sanctity of that day of days ! An attentive reader of the Gospels will be surprised to find how large a portion of the enmity and .opposition which our Lord excited, not only in Jerusalem, but even iv Galilee and in Perse, turned upon this point alone. — : From Farrar's Life of Christ.
