SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5294, 30 January 1879, Page 4

SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

Mr Sidey's Sermon.— No. V,

Having vindicated the right of the Scriptures to speak for themselves on the question of the Sabbath, we are now in a position to listen to their voice. It would have been quite useless, ,to have adduced their testimony, while the possibility of God's speaking to men from Sinai was questioned, and the historic foundations of the Scripture and their divine character were denied. It was absolutely necessary that their right to speak should be vindicated before their counsel was taken. This we have endeavored to do, and we think with some success, in our previous lectures. We accept the Bible as the gift of God to men. Its tidings were communicated by holy men of God, who spake as the spirit gave them utterance. They •were oommunicated at sundry times and in diverse manners, through long ages. And the tidings which they communicated were eminently like the character of the good and gracious God, who presides \ over all his universe. In this view of their character it is eminently reasonable that we listen to their testimony. What do the Scriptures, then, say of the Sabbath? Here we pass away back at once, to the great fountain head of this rill of the Rivor of Life, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb, the rest of God at the close of creation's work. When he had finished the adjustment of our world, for the abode of his living creatures, and especially for man, whom he had mad 6 in his own image, we are told he rested from his work, which he had made, and he blessed the seventh day and sanctiMed it. He blessed the day. He did not simply utter a blessing over it, but he set it apart to a sacred use, or to be the means of keeping his creature man in a living relation to himself, in the pure and clear light of his own holiness. He did that out of respect to his own resting on that day. He meant it to recall the occasion of its consecration that men might be drawn to himself, as the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, and as Lord over all, and so kept loyal to himself. He did this as the last part of his creative work, crowning all that went before with that which would make his world, and especially man, aocording to the constitution of his nature, happy and holy, mighty and true, a veritable son of God. At first the Sabbath was meant for Eden, and was adapted to man in his innocence. It was a permanent provision to keep up the properties of that permanent relation, in which man stood to God, to deepen and mature those principles, which would carry him to the holy consummation or eternal Sabbatismos, which he contemplated in connection with him. He knew that his creature, noble though he was, would need culture, spiritual refreshment, and the rest of his own peace. He knew that man could never rise to glory, except through meditation upon the things that were unseen and eternal, and the happy surrender of his soul to himself in worship and joy. These things would keep him in fellowship with himself, and make him blessed, holy and true. And to secure them for him, he set apart his own Sabbath in Eden, to be kept in special consecration to things of a sacred use. He made the Sabbath for man, for his culture, enrichment, strength and blessedness. And, when man fell into sin, he carried on that marvellous provision of his love and, goodness, into the new purpose of grace and mercy, by which he would yet bring his creature to the holy consummation of his eternal Sabbatismos. The Sabbath passed over into his work of Redemption, just as men passed into it. It was God's permanent arrangement, by which man would carry out his permanent obligation to himself. He was bound to be holy and true, if he would live in fellowship with God, to have his mind familiar with his character, law and love ; and his life conformed to their spirit. He was bound to be all this, just as he was bound to have God first in estimation, to worship him as a ■apirit, not to take his name in vain, to S honor his parents, and to abstain from all overt acts towards his fellow creatures. These things lay in his nature and were essential to his dignity and purity. And God continued his Sabbath with him as the chief means of helping him up into them. Thus we have the day of God passing over into the arrangements of God's mercy. ? And mark, now, how it flows along with the career of man as we see it, at first by allusion and then by positive enactment. In the very earliest ages we have intimation that the sons of Adam gave themselves to worship. Abel brought the firstlings of his flock and presented them in sacrifice to God. Cain brought of the fruits of his ground and presented them to the Lord. The first was accepted and the last was rejected. The 'first carried the qualities of true reverence, love and obedience, and the last of resolute self-will running out into disobedience. Is it not most thoroughly probable, that these offerings were presented to God in a public manner, and at a time appointed by- himself, as well as in submission to a law he had laid down — in other words, that they were offered on God's Sabbath. Men can as little do without a time in which to carry on the exercises of the blessed life, as the soul can do without a body, in which to work. Very early then the plaoe and the power of the Sabbath are seen in the arrangements and fruits of the human life. Two streams are set a running from it, at the very fountain head of existence, which have been flowing on from that time to this. One brings man near to God in reverence, love and joy. The other carries him away from God in alienation and strife.

Like things follow from the lives of Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who all brought their offerings to God, in token of their homage to him, and grey in conformity to his mind and spirit. By every law of deduction, drawn from human experience, we are entitled to conclude that these men kept a time for worship and sacrifice, as they held the fact, and what time so likely as God's time. Some interpreters think there are traces of its being kept in Egypt. When Moses asked Pharaoh in the name of Jehovah, to let the Hebrews go, that they might hold a feast to God in the wilderness, Pharaoh answered, " Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works. Get yon unto your burdens : Behold the people of the laud now are many, and ye make them rest (Sabbatise) from their burdens." He knew of their Sabbath, and hated it, as all wordly tyrants have done in every age. However, this may be, there are clear traces of it, as a pre-existing institution, in the wilderness of Sin, before the Israelites came to Sinai. When directing the people as to the way in which they were to use the manna, Moses said, "Tomorrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord ; bake that which ye will bake to-day, and seethe that ye will seethe ; and. that which remaineth over lay up for you, to be kept until morning. Six days shall ye gather it, but the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall be none." , Here the Sabbath was kept sacred to God and is spoken of as a well known and pre-existing institution. And then, when God was formally to unite himself in covenant, with hisJCaptive Bride around the marriage altar at Sanai, we have it re-enacted amid all the solemnities of the Mount, as part of the law of the covenant. She was to remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy, to be a sign between her and her covenant God for ever.

And now we enter on another phase of the out-working of the divine purpose of love. Certain formal, legal, and ceremonial precepts gather round the great moral commandment of the Sabbath. Moses was led, as emergencies arose, to lay down special enactments for the guidance of Israel, having a special relation to the temporary character of their aationa.l life, as preparing fox 1 the coming of

the Christ. And he was so guided by the apirit of God in doing so, whether he took them from customs previously existing or from things totally new, that they were held binding by the Jews, through all the time of their national life. These precepts included such things as circumcision, sacrifice, the priesthood and others. And among the rest, the form of keeping the Sabbath had a special place given to it. It was to be observed with great formality and to be enforced with special penalties. "Six days may work be done, says Moses, but on the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holiness to the Lord; whosoever doeth any work on the Sabbath Day, he shall surely be put to death." And we have the practical exemplification of this law, in the enforcement of the penalty upon the man that was found gathering the sticks. This precept does not belong to the fourth commandment. It was part of the ceremonial and political law of the Jews, which, as the proper educating process for that people in that stage of development, whose liberty was made peculiarly fitted to affect the senses. And it simply served to show the profound conception which Moses entertained of the importance of the sacred keeping of the Sabbath. Such a penalty is nowhere else attached to the violence of any other ceremonial precept. In the view of its position in the ceremonial institution of the Jews, we see nothing hateful, even in that precept, except what would lead us to make the woes uttered by Christ over the Pharisees and Sadducees and impenitent communities like Chorasin hateful, and many other things in all societies of men. Penalty lies in the Government of God, whether men like it or not. And if men, like this famous person found gathering sticks, choose, in direct opposition to the laws of his nation and his God, to show his contempt of law and of God by his open and flagrant violation of law, we cannot wonder that he suffers the penalty. It is only a mawkish sentimentality that finds occasion for its anathemas here. The operation of these positive precepts runs on through all the history of the Judges, the Kings, and the prophets, and everywhere give the same attestation to the results of keeping and violating the Sabbath that we found with Abel and Cain. The men and the nation were prosperous and peaceful as they obeyed God's voice, and turbulent and declining as they transgressed it. By a long succession of tides of prosperity p-nd adversity, of captivity and restoration, did the Israel of God pass, until, in the fulness of the time, Christ came to bring in everlasting righteousness ; and these tides had always these characteristics belonging to them. The people were righteous or profane, Sabbath keeping or Sabbath transgressing, and the blessing or the penalty of God came upon them. Before I proceed to Christ's times, there is one objection of Mr Colenso's which I wish to notice here — that the Sabbath is not especially noticed through all the age of the Patriarchs or the early Christian Church. According to the laws which regulate history there is nothing wonderful about this. A matter never gets into a prominent place in history until it is cast into the heats of controversy. And good men, at these periods, never dreamed that the truth of God on this subject admitted of two views.. Besides, the book of Genesis contains the whole extant record of nearly two thousands of years. In these views of the case the objection has very small force. We now proceed to the time of Our Lord, and here I purposely give you as brief a view of the case as I can, because the points in controversy with Mr Colenso, to which we must turn to serve our purpose in this lecture, will bring the chief parts of the substantial features of the case fully before us. Isaiah predicted as one of the chief characteristics of the Messianic age, that ie would be a Sabbath loving age. He says, "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, honorable ; and thou shalt honor, him not doing thine own ways nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words ; then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord ; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth and N feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." It never fell to any one to I give a better exhibition of the beauty and grace of the Messianic times than to the Lord Himself. He was holy, harmless and undefiled, self-denying and Godobeying. He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. And He was peculiarly Sabbath loving. He found it existent when He came among men, and with His whole mind He accepted it. He recognised it as lying in the moral government of God, and in the moral nature of man, and He sets Himself to keep it, as necessary for Himself and as essential for His work. It was his custom to go to the synagogues on the Sabbath, and give Himself heart and soul to their services. He also went to Jerusalem to keep the feasts, and observed them with all affection. He never repealed the Sabbath, although He did repeal many of the more formal services, which had gathered around it in the dispensation of Moses. He removed all those things belonging to that temporary stage, which were made to be removed, that the things which could not be shaken might remain. Everything essentially Jewish Christ put away ; but He never uttered a word against the Sabbath. He kept it holy unto the Lord. And so did His Apostles. With the change of the day from the seventh to the first, which flowed from the outcarrying of God's loving purpose in redemption, and which seems to have been contemplated from the first ; and to have been enacted by a sufficient authority, even by the Lord of the Sabbath, the Apostles, in this matter, followed closely on Christ's example. They made the day a day of holy spiritual culture, heavenly worship, rich refreshment, and blessing ; and carried themselves forward, through its means, to the blessed consummation of the eternal Sabbatismos, in the heavens of God. With this very brief view of tho attitude of Christ and His Apostles to the Sabbath, I now turn to the statements of Mr Colenso. And here I begin with his views of the Sabbath under the Old Testament. He says : "It is very noticeable that, except in the Pentateuch itself, where the laws are thickly laid down for its observance, as an express Divine institution, there are no signs of its ever having been kept with strictness . . . before the time of

Josiah. ... On the contrary, in the very few passages in which the Sabbath is mentioned at all, it is put upon the same level as the new moon. Not at all as having any peculiar honor— as having been enjoined by express Divine authority, amidst the terrors of Sinai." What right has Mr Colenso to lay aside the Books of Moses ? So far as any evidence is produced, just as much as to say that Napier does not now exist. The thing is done on his simple ipse dixit. And even then he cannot keep consistent with himself, stating at one time that Exodus was written 1100 years before Christ, and at another that the first copy of the Decalogue was palmed on the Church 450 years before Christ. By all the laws of evidence the five books of Moses stand as part of the sacred Scriptures. There was no reason why they should be repeating on every page that the law was given at Sinai. Had they done so, no doubt Mr Colenso would have found a splendid opportunity of pointing to their mere human source, their base object, as they set themselves to prey on men's sensibilities. But what of the new moon and the Sabbath 1 Were they really esteemed as of equal honor among the Jews 1 It is observable that Dr. Kalisch, the Jewish commentator he quotes, does not say so. He says : " The new moon was generally celebrated with some distinguishing solemnity, which, like all festivals, is regulated and fixed in the Mosaic law ; and the new moon is in the Old Testament frequently mentioned w^h the §a.bba.th."

The Jewish scholar is far move guarded in his statement than is Mr Colenso, and puts the case as it really stands. The first day of every month was sacred to the Jews, and was to be observed by abstinence from common worldly business, and by religious duties and services. Particular sacrifices were appointed, in addition to the daily sacrifices, and were to be attended with the sound of the trumpet. This was particularly the case with the first day, or new moon, of the seventh month, which was the beginning of the Jewish civil year, and particularly regarded above other feast days of the same period. But was it really placed on an equality with the Sabbath? The single proof referred to of any relevance is the story of Elisha and the Shunamite. When the woman had resolved to go to the prophet, to tell him of her calamity in the death of her child, miraculously given to her, she took it to the prophet's chamber and laid it there, without informing her husband of her purpose. She seems to have felt that he would thwart her in her design. She simply asks him to saddle her ass, and he replied, " Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day. It is neither new moon nor Sabbath.," Upon the saying of a man who, apparently, had very little sympathy with either, he would make all the Jews regard the new moon and the Sabbath alike. As days of ceremonial observance, they may have had some common feeling to them, but that they ever set down the new moons as of equal authority with the fourth commandment in the law, there is not the slightest probability. An analogous case might be supposed in the present day. Would any intelligent Protestant regard Christmas Day or Ascension Thursday as of the same authority as the Sabbath ? Ido not speak of a member of the Church of Rome, who gives the Church power to appoint feast days, but of a Protestant, who maintains that that falls to God alone. However such a Protestant might feel to the feast days, he would never say they were equal to God's Sabbath. No more did the Jews. As Kalish says, they are sometimes mentioned together, but that is all. Before we pass from this passage, it is observable that the devout Jews were those accustomed to meet together, on the Sabbath and feast days, for purposes of worship and instruction ; and, as Mr Colenso reminds us, that they rode thither. And why should they not? Who says that they ought not? This is an instance in which men of the type of Mr Colenso would twine a cord of iron and throw it on their opponents, by forcing on them a position which they do not accept. This will appear afterwards. Before I pass from this question, I wish you to look at a specimen of the slipshod style of argument, in which Mr Colenso excels. He has quoted a number of testimonies to prove that men attained to their knowledge of the Sabbath, by the simple phases of the moon, without any voice from God. Passing from the case of the ruder nations, we come on to his conclusion about the Jews, He says " The new moon was the first Sabbath of the month, and gave law for the rest . . . . though, as the lunar changes are completed, not in 28, but in 29£ days, it would seem that the last week of the month Imust have continued sometimes eight and sometimes nine days, and probably lasted until the new moon was seen. Is not this style of accommodation wonderful ! Will Mr Colenso again stake his reputation upon it, as a matter of fact, that the Jewish week was sometimes eight and sometimes nine days long. He would be a very rash man to dare to do that. The truth is his principles of natural computation will not hold to other nations any more than to the Jews. It necessitates such an amount of compromise that it breaks down under its own weight. The Hebdomadal division of time seems to have been a divine origin, and to have circulated through the nations very largely through tradition.

We now pass on fco the example of Christ. Did he keep the ' Sabbath religiously, or did he use it as a day on which he simply sought his own pleasure. Mr Colenso tells us he did it in a liberal way; that is, as he means it, in a way simply to gratify his own inclinations, even if opposed to the divine law, if that were possible. He adduces various proofs of this. The first is the going of Jesus to the feast in the Pharisee's house, where Mr Colenso says, there was a "great company of guests (which must certainly have caused the servants a deal of unnecessary labor in preparing the banquet and in waiting upon the guests), and where there was a scramble for the chief seats." It is remarkable how illdigested Mr Oolenso's information often is. A little time before, he inveighed against the law, which prohibited the Jews from kindling a fire on the Sabbath, and now he concludes, that the Jews have violated that law, as a matter of course. Christ's attendance at that feast did not violate the Sabbath law, as the food was cooked the day before, and there was no work, properly so called, performed on the Sabbath. From the opposition that had set in against him, among the Pharisees, a number of them seem to have assembled there and tried to entangle him. But there is nothing in the narrative to show that a public repast was intended. Christ has been personally invited to it, for he turned to those who bade him, and proceeded to counsel them, when they make a feast to call the poor to it, according to the spirit of their grand old law. Mr Colenso thinks there is something in this incident inconsistent with the principles of the Evangelical faith. It must be in his imagination, which loves to revel in the fierceness of partisanship and to attribute views to others, which they do not hold. There are very few indeed of real religious view and sentiment would feel themselves constrained to refuse the invitation of a friend to a quiet meal, and to spend the remaining part of the day in religious converse as Christ did here. The Lord Jesus presented the fairest pattern of true social courtesy. He always carried about him a holy freedom, coupled with a sublime conscientiousness and dignity, but that never degenerated into what Mr Colenso pleads for, when he speaks of him spending it in a liberal way— in feasting for feasting's sake, and in putting subordinates to any measure of unhallowed labor. Christ's example in the case before us, as in all else, is one which his disciples may and do well imitate.

The other cases adduced by Mr Colenso, as incompatible with the principles of Evangelical faith and life, are those in which he wrought miracles of healing on the Sabbath, on cases of old standing affliction and in a public way. How these serve his purpose it is hard to see. All true Protestants maintain, that the day is kept, according to the spirit and letter of the fourth commandment, when they attend to cases of necessity and mercy on that day ; no matter how old the cases may be, or how public may be the manner in which they are attended to. Just let us take two of the cases as including the principle of the whole. The first is that of Christ and his disciples passing through the corn-fields, and rubbing and eating the ears of corn. Mr Colenso says, this could scarcely be within the Sabbath day's journey, allowed by the law, 2800 ells. On the other hand, we say it is every way probable that it was. From the time in which the chief priests have been persuaded that he will not be the Messiah they wish, they have resolved that he shall be put to death. They have agents pursuing him everywhere, to entangle him with the civil law. They are here, watching Christ at this moment. Had he exceeded the journey allowed by the Sabbath law, how likely it was that they would have seized on that point of transgression rather than on any other. But he does not seem to have been on a journey, but passing only through a bye path, not long after the Synagogue service. His own spirit appears to have been so marvellously elevated by his worship, that he did not feel the. pangs of physical hunger. It wa,s, not &Q with his apogtles

however. They are suffering from their fast, and uo sooner do they come to the ripe corn, than they began to appease their hunger. The spieß, who are watching the Lord, at once begin to impeach him for the deeds of his disciples. And Christ at once proceeds to reply, in a way which struck at the root of their false interpretation of the moral la.w, and of those things in their ceremonial system which were temporary and were not to be removed. He said, "Have, ye not read what David did when he was an hungered, how he entered the Temple, and ate the sacred bread, which it was not lawful to do, except for the priests. And how the priests profane the Sabbath by their labor in the Temple and are blameless. And then gave, as the explanation of his and ther conduct. " The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Here then we have a most profound and important announcement, coming from the lips of the infinite wisdom. How well that it is thoroughly understood. Observe he is meeting the contaminations, which had come to circle round the law, through Pharisaic punctitiousness. They have acted as if man were made for the Sabbatth. They have subordinated # everything about man's health, and life and usefulness, to their former Sabbath keeping Christ tells them, that was not the law of the Sabbath. It was made for man ; for his rest, refreshment, edification and eternal joy. It was made to give him opportunity for worship, for thought on the things of the unseen, and for fellowship. Its purpose was to carry on that work in man, which would con. duct him to the consummation of the divine holiness. It was made for marmot for the Jews, nor for the people of any age or nation, but for man, as man. This does not mean that it was not made for God as well ; or that man might take it and do with it according to his own pleasure. That does not lie in the saying. Man himself was made for the divine service and glory, and this is the highest end of the Sabbath, as well as of all things. It is still the Sabbath of the Lord— the Lord's day. It was designed for man's benefit subordinately, but it is not man's day, and therefore not for man's business. It is God's day, and therefore a day for God's work. And it is beneficial to man, just in the measure in which it is applied to its chief object, the serving and honoring of its author. The other case is the healing of the man with the withered hand. The emmisanes of the Pharisees are again watching watching him to see if he will heal on the Sabbath, when he boldly challenges them, whether there was one among them who would not lift a sheep from a pit, if it fell into one ; and then said, It is lawful to do well, or, as the word means, to confer benefits on the Sabbath day. It was thoroughly harmonious with its design and spirit. The law had long before announced, v I desired mercy and not sacrifice ; and the knowledge of God more than proud offerings. Hence, whatever ministers to man's health, or life, or wellbeing, or to the due performance of religious worship, he declared had always been lawful for the Sabbath. And this is ■just faith of the Evangelical Church. That sanctifies the Sabbath, by a holy resting all that day, from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful" on other days, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy. To that grand principle, in the words of Christ, evangelical Christendom has given itself, refusing, on the one hand, to surrender the liberty of doing what is necessary or merciful on that day, or, on the other, of being carried beyond them to what is unhallowed or sinful. It is not here that any real breach can be made on the faith of the Church from Christ's words.

I must content myself with two more references to the papers of Mr Colenso. Laying down the arbitrary and utterly unreasonable test, that Christ should, in every instance, have quoted the words of the ten commandments or of the fourth, he would deprive them all, and especially the fourth of all authority. There could scarcely be anything more sophistical or heartless than this. The fifth commandment is not referred to in the sermon on the Mount, any more than the fourth, except in the statement " Till heaven and earth pass one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled." But he did that for the fifth on another occasion, which he did for the sixth and seventh in Matthew. He cleared it of the corrupt glosses, which the Pharisees had thrown around it, when they said that a man was freed from the duty of providing for his parents, by saying Raca, or it is a gift to the temple. Christ tore that perversion to shreds and restored the fifth commandment to its place in the divine law. We have already seen that he did the same thing for the fourth. What higher attestation could be given to the moral law, by our Lord, than was given by him, it would be hard to conceive. We can scarcely think of any greater perversion of intellect, than that displayed by Mr Colenso, in the tortuous treatment to which he subjects the words or Christ, or anything more prurient, sickly and offensive than many of his conclusions. To a man possessing any brains, coupled with any conscience or heart, his failure is most conspicuous. He tried to prove a great deal too much, in seeking to shew, that Christ ever sanctioned that liberal rendering of the Sabbath for which he pleads— which will permit a man to sleep, or ride, or walk, or work just as it pleases him. Christ never uttered a word which can be fairly construed into that meaning. He never said to any man, in connection with the fourth, or fifth, or sixth, or seventh commandments, that he could do just as it pleased him. He always required of man that his ways pleased the Lord, and then he was at peace with him.

I wish I could have put his observations on the Apostles' words to the same scrutiny, but that is impossible now. We should certainly have reached the same results. His observations on the two much abused passages, Col. ii.-10 and Rom. xiv. 5, I must notice. He speaks of them, and in this many do the same, as if they gavo to men a good rule for their Sabbath keeping, or their Sabbath neglect. For the sake of greater force lot me quote the words of Charles Hodge : " Appeal is made to such passages as 'Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon or of the Sabbath days,' and 'one man esteemeth one day above another , another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.' Every one knows that the Apostolic Churches were greatly troubled by Judaisers, who insisted that the Mosaic law continued in force, and that Christians were bound to conform to its prescriptions, with regard to the distinction between clean and unclean meats, and its numerous feast days, on which all labonr was to be intermitted. These were the false teachers and this waa the false doctrine against which so much of Paul's Epistles was directed. It is in obvious reference to these men and their doctrines that such passages as those cited above were written. They have no reference to the weekly Sabbath, which had been observed from the creation, and Avhich the Apostles themselves introduced and perpetuated in the Christian." If men will use these passages let them do it fairly. They give no basis for the conclusion Mr Colenso draws from them.

Some may ask, and what test may one lay down for himself, for right Sabbath keeping. The rule seems to me exceedingly simple, and to be as free from causistry, as one can well wish. Whatever leads us to Christ and God is Sabbath observance, and whatever leads us away from Ch.ist and God is Sabbath desecration. Let each one so walk. Next Sabbath I shall consider the Scottish Sabfeath and book of sports,