SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1159, 14 February 1874, Page 1

SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

In the middle of a controversy upon the Sabbath question we take the opportunity of presenting our readers with a few of the facts of history concerning the day. So much is being said, and so ignorantly, upon both sides, that a few historical notes cannot be without interest. For the first five centuries of Christianity no writer ventui-es to claim a Divine obligation for the Fourth Commandment, or to identify the Sabbath with the Lord's Day. Justyn Martyr says Christians met together upon the First Day because " on it God dispelled the darkness and the original state of things, and formed the world." The fathers before Abraham, and Abraham himself, and his sons up to the days of Moses, pleased God without keeping Sabbath. Ikenaeus declared that the Sabbath, like the whole Jewish law, was symbolical. Tertullian says — " Hewhoargues for Sabbath keepingand circumcision must show that Adam and Abel, and the just of old time, observed these things. We have nothing to do •with Sabbaths or other Jewish festivals, much less with those of the heathen." Obi gen says — " It is one of the marks of the perfect Christian to keep the Lord's Day. As for the Sabbath, it has passed away as a matter of obligation." Cyprian, Commodian, Clement of Alexandria, Dionysius, and Milito, all wrote to much the same purpose during the first two centuries. The celebrated edict of Constantine ran as follows :—": — " On the venerable day of the sun, let the magistrates and the people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in the work of cultivation may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits, because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain growing or for vine planting ; lest by neglecting the proper moments for such operations the bounty of Heaven should be lost." Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, A.D. 326, clearly enforces the facts that the Sabbath, the end of the old creation, has deceased, and that the Lord's Day, the commencement of the new creation, has set in. Macarius, A.D. 350, spiritualizes the Sabbath, which he calls a purely Jewish institution. " They who rest from sin, keep a true, delightsome, and holy Sabbath." Cyril, a.d. 345, says, " Turn thou not out of the way to Samaritanism or Judaism. Reject all observance of Sabbaths, and call not meats which are really matters of indifference, common, or unclean." Gregory, a.d. 372, says of the Sabbath that it was part of the old law, and to be classed with the other ordinances of that law, crnmmcision, distinction of meats, sacrifices, and the like. C/HRYSOSTOM solemnly warns Christians against " Sabbatizing with the Jews. The Sabbath, as an observance, is now abolished, the first day of the week is to be honoured." To quote the words of an eminent authority, " in no clearly genuine passage that 1 can discover, or in any public document, ecclesiastical or civil, is the Fourth Commandment refen'itd to as the ground of the obligation to observe the Lord's Day. In no passage is there anything like a reference to the Creation words, as the ground of the obligation to observe it. In 110 passage is there anything like the confusion between the seventh day and the one day in seven of which we have heard so much in England since a.d. 1595, In no passage is there any hint of the transfer of the Sabbath to the Lord's Day, or of the planting of the Lord's Day on the r^jins of the Sabbath, these fictions of modern time*," The -catena of evidence we have quoted proves very clearly that in those ages which are usually considered the purer ones, the obligation of the Fourth Commandment -was not even dreamed of, From the eighth to the fifteenth ce&tut^ a gradual Rectification of the

Sabbath with the Lord's Day set in, though even in those dark ages there were not wanting bold hearts and vigorous pens to distinguish and define. Still, as time passed on, it is clear that there was a general tendency to confuse the two things. We have one learned writer telling us, '* that if a musician wait upon a gentleman to recreate his mind with music, and they are agreed upon certain wages, he sins in case he plays or sings to him on Holy Bays, including the Lord's Day, but not if his reward be doubtful, or depend only upon the bounty of the parties who enjoy his music. A cook that on a Holy Day is hired to make a feast or to dress a dinner, commits a mortal sin, but not if he be hired by the month or year. Meat may be dressed upon the Lord's Day, but to wash dishes is unlawful. A man that travels on Holy Days to any special shrine or saint commits no sin, but he commits a sin if he returns home xipon those days." Such puerilities are indeed the necessary consequence of attempting* to govern the observance of a Christian festival by the rules given for a ceremonial Jewish observance. They have been the stock-in-trade of those not inaptly called "moral invertebrates," who are unable to rule their conduct without a precision in thoir laws of guidance which may rival the tedious prolixity of a conveyance, and imitate the minuteness of a mediaeval casuist.

To give one more quotation, from Thokndike "Of the principles of Christian truth". Speaking of the Sa-turday-Sabbath Christians he says — " And surely those simple people who of late times have taken upon them to keep Saturday, though it were in truth and effect no less than renouncing of their Christianity, yet in reason did no more than pursue the grounds which their predecessors had laid, and draw the conclusion which necessarily follows upon these premises — that if the fourth Commandment be in force, then either the Saturday is to be kept or the Jews were never tied to keep it."