WELL SAID

WELL SAID.

Throw around it the balustrade of the Christian Sabbath. I use this combination of words designedly. A reference to the meaning of the word “Sabbath,” and its relation to our dispensation, will justify this use of the terms. Many things recommend this balustrade.

It is a very old one. It is hoary with age. Kingdoms have risen and fallen; empires have bloomed and withered; republics “have danced into light and died into shade,” but the Sabbath has remained. Before the days of Rome and Athens, before Babylon and Nineveh, before the royal tombs of Thebes and the mighty pyramids of Egypt, the Sabbath was. And after the gnawing tooth of time shall have crumbled them to dust, the Sabbath shall be. In the very dawn of time’s morning this balustrade was erected by the mighty and gentle hand of God. Two institutions of to-day have come down to us beautiful with the innocence and radiant with the glory of Eden,—the Sabbath and marriage. They have withstood the Fall and all its sad consequences; they have outlived all the upheavals of society, and all the cataclysms of time. They are absolutely essential to the highest good of the race; on the Sabbath stands the glorious structure of religious life, and on marriage the security and happiness of social life. Any theory of social life which lifts a rude and unholy hand against the sanctity and glory of marriage is to be received with the utmost detestation. You can usually judge the spirit and tendencies of any social theory by its attitude toward the marriage relation. This is often one of the best tests to be applied; it is oftenest at this point that some of the modern social theories reveal their wicked animus. Not less so is it of any system of opposition to the Sabbath. The man who strikes at either, strikes at all that is holiest in the best men and women, and also at much that is dearest to God. Palsied be the hand that would tear down this old battlement, the Sabbath of God!

This is also a battlement which has received in marvelous ways the sanction of God. Its observance is enforced in the general Mosaic code, and afterward with all the solemnities of the decalogue. We find the first reference to the Sabbath in the second chapter of Genesis, in connection with the close of the record of creation. In some respects the reference is the more impressive because the Sabbath is not mentioned by name. On that day God rested; he took pleasure in the works of his hand; that day he blessed, sanctified, and consecrated. Are not they right who hold that its institution is as ancient, and its obligation as universal, as the race? When we go to the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, we find that the observance of the Sabbath is one of the recognized institutions of the time. On the Sabbath no manna fell. There is nothing in this connection to intimate that the Sabbath was now first given; it is spoken of as something well known. Thus there was a Sabbath, not only before the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, but also, it seems, before Israel came out of Egypt. If this were the first mention of the day, how could Moses have understood God, and how could the people so readily have understood Moses? Already the keeping of the Sabbath was the “good old way.”

Soon after this it was re-enacted, written by the finger of God as the fourth commandment on the tables of stone, amid all the solemnities of the decalogue. The injunction in the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day,” indicates its previous observance. There are several other hints as to its pre-Mosaic origin; but of course I cannot this morning go at length into the discussion. It is sufficient to remember that the fourth commandment formed a part of the decalogue, and that the decalogue had an authority peculiarly its own; that the New Testament does not repeal it; that it was not for Jews alone, but is needful to and is binding on all men in all ages and climes. As Dr. Adam Clarke has said, “Thus we find, 1. That when God finished his creation, he instituted the Sabbath; 2. When he brought the people out of Egypt he insisted on the strict observance of it; and 3. When he gave the law he made it a tenth part of the whole; such importance has this institution in the eyes of the Supreme Being!” As time progressed, the Sabbath was held not in less, but in greater reverence. Isaiah utters his solemn protest against profaning it; he also pronounces large blessings on the proper observance of the day. Thus he speaks, chap. 58:13, 14: “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 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 feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”