DR. COPLAND ON THE SABBATH QUESTION.

Otago Witness, Issue 1160, 21 February 1874, Page 8

DR. COPLAND ON THE SABBATH QUESTION.

The North Dunedin Church was well filled on Sunday, when the Rev. Dr Copland delivered a sermon on the question of the abrogation of the Fourth Commaudment. It had been announced that special reference would be made in the sermon or lecture "to the misrepresentations contained on the Sabbath, by the late Rev. F. W. Robertson, of Brighton, which had been widely circulated in Dunedin." The text of the sermon was the 31st verse of the 3rd chapter of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans : " Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law." The rev. gentleman commenced by saying that he purposed to answer the question as to whether the Fourth Commandment was abrogated, and to meet the misrepresentations of those who had argued that the Fourth Commandment had been abrogated. The persons who so argued formed an insignificant minority in the great body of Christians. The principal Churches acknowledged the perpetual obligation of the Fourth Commandment. After alluding specially to the Church of England and the Presbyterian Church in connection with this matter, the lecturer alluded to what he termed the misrepresentations of the Rev. F. W. Robertson with respect to the Sabbath. The author of this sermon sought to prove that the Sabbath only dated from the time of Moses, and was purely a J ewish institution. In the second chapter of Genesis, it was not only stated that God rested on the Sabbath Day, but that He also blessed it and sanctified it. For the same people for whom God made the world. He made the Seventh Day and sanctified it. He asked them to look at the symbolical use of the number seven. There was the seven- fold vengeance against him who should slay Cain ; there were the waters on the earth for seven days when Noah was in the ark ; "Noah waited seven days in the ark ; Job's friends mourned soven days with him : and Joseph mourned for his father seven days. God at the beginning set apart the seventh day as a clay for himself, and the seventh day was , even observed differently from the other six by heathens, who had reoeived it from tradition. The observance of the Sabbath was a neoessity for true piety. In the xyi. chapter of Exodus it would be seen that a double portion of manna was given by God oa the sixth day, and this '< was a recognition of the Sabbath appointed at the beginning of the world. The Sabbath was made for man universally. Another misrepresentation was to the effect that tho observation of the Sabtath was only a Jewish custom ; but Christ had shown that under the Fourth Commandment, works of mercy and necessity could be done on the seventh day, and he had recognised its sanotity. The Fourth Commandment; was greatly misrepresented in the present day (> The lecturer then alluded to other misrepresentations that had been made, and dwelt particularly upon the fact that the Fourth Commandment

had not been abrogated, and upoti the obligation of all Christians to observe the SabJ bath.