The Sabbath

By the Rev. PATRICK FAIRBAIRN.

(Continued from page 298).

VII.

BEFORE we bring our argument in vindication of a Christian Sabbath to a close, it may be well to view the question for a moment in its relation to Christianity as a whole. The discussion hitherto has necessarily turned chiefly upon the particular testimonies regarding the Sabbath, which lie scattered through the Scriptures both of the Old and the New Testament, for on these the settlement of the question must mainly turn. But it is still an important consideration, and one that may tell with much weight upon the general argument, what correspondence such an institution as the Sabbath has with the evident scope and tendency of the gospel. Does a weekly returning day, kept apart from ordinary employment and consecrated to the immediate service and worship of God, seem to run counter to that, or rather to harmonize with it? Does it tend to promote or hinder the end which Christianity has avowedly in view? Is it relished or disrelished by those who have drunk most deeply into the spirit of the gospel? And when suffered, more or less, from whatever cause, to fall into neglect, does the religion of the gospel appear to gain or to lose in consequence?

These are very important questions, and are not to be disposed of by a general outcry, that such an ordinance as the Sabbath is not accordant with the spirit of the gospel. We ask, in what respect is it not accordant? Does it tend to beget a temper which the lessons of the gospel are intended to subdue, or to check the growth of feelings which it calls us to cherish and manifest? If this were the case, undoubtedly it would go far to prove the unsoundness of any defence which might otherwise be raised for the Sabbath. We know how little of an express nature is to be found in Scripture about the evils of slavery, how it seems to avoid the question as to the lawfulness or unlawfulness of that atrocious system, and even to suppose the possibility of its existence, to some extent, along with Christianity. These things were eagerly laid hold of by the advocates of slavery, and pressed with all diligence while the subject was under discussion in this country. And how were they met? By this at least, among other things, that a state of living and wholesome Christianity is utterly inconsistent with the continuance of slavish thraldom; that the whole spirit of the gospel is against slavery in every imaginable form, and in favour of a just and well-attempered freedom; and that, wherever it is truly imbibed, the chains, whether of mental or of social bondage, must inevitably fall to the ground. No one, who really knows what genuine Christianity is, could be insensible to the validity and force of this line of argument, and in this country at least it carried almost universal conviction. Are the opponents of a Christian Sabbath willing to abide the result of a similar appeal? Is there any thing like the same contrariety between the design and spirit of Christianity and the strict observance of a weekly Sabbath? Let us for a moment suppose, which we are far, however, from admitting, that the Scriptures of the New Testament say as little of an express nature in favour of the Sabbath as they do against slavery, and try the question of the Sabbath by the manner in which it bears on the leading character and object of the gospel.

1. That the gospel is pre-eminently a scheme of benevolence, and looks with a kind and friendly aspect on the condition of those who stand most in need of sympathy and care, has been already remarked in connection with this question, and must be universally allowed.

But a weekly Sabbath withdrawn from worldly employment, bringing to the very busiest the liberty, at least, of at once relaxing their bodies and refreshing their spirits, is one of the highest boons that can possibly be conferred on the poor. God claimed it as one of His special acts of kindness toward the Israelites, that He had conferred on them the privilege of knowing and keeping such a day. In those trades, such as that of the bakers in London, the workmen on canals in England, and many others, from which the Sabbath has been practically banished by the growing luxury and avarice of the age, a state of grinding oppression, equally unfavourable to a temporal and a spiritual life, is found to ensue; and many statements and memorials from such persons have affectingly represented, though, alas! for the most part in vain, the grievous hardships which they suffer. Nor will any thing be sufficient to secure such a day of repose for the general behoof of the poor, but the sacred obligation of keeping it holy to the Lord. No other foundation but this can protect so important a privilege from the grasp of the avaricious and worldly. France, in the phrenzy of the Revolution, after abolishing the weekly Sabbath, affected to secure every tenth day as one of general rest; but the poor found, to their sad experience, that this was of little avail to them, for, being only a civil provision, and destitute of any religious ground, they could seldom make good their claim to it. So that the continuance of a weekly Sabbath, as a day religiously set apart for God’s service and worship, not only does not in this particular counteract, but fully accords with, the philanthropic and merciful spirit of the gospel, and is even necessary to give it practical effect.

2. The gospel, however, has another characteristic still more prominent and peculiar than this, viz., its spiritual and holy tendency, being pre-eminently designed to beget those who embrace it to a pure and heavenly life.

In this respect it not only equals, but far surpasses Judaism. It is not, indeed, like that—so much a revelation of law as of grace; but grace abounds, only that believers might attain to higher exercises of faith and holiness. Every doctrine it reveals, and every privilege it confers, is avowedly designed to have its present fruit unto holiness, as well as its final end unto eternal life. To be conformed to the pure and lovely image of the Son of God—to live like Him under the powers of the world to come, and dead to the corruptions, nay, comparatively loose to the possessions of a present life, is the character at which the gospel aims through all its truths and ordinances to produce, and without which its great end is practically defeated. Hence the covetous, the lovers of pleasure, the earthly-minded, though, it may be, outwardly decent and respectable, not less than the grossly impure, are expressly declared to be unfit for a place in the kingdom of God, as now constituted; and the Apostle Paul tells us how he wept over the case of many who could only be described as “minding earthly things,” because they thus betrayed themselves to be “enemies of the cross of Christ.” Now, as Christianity is thus identified with a spiritual and heavenly character on the part of its professors, what relation has the institution of a weekly Sabbath, dedicated throughout to the worship and service of God, to such an object? Does it tend to promote, or rather to hinder and retard, the high design? The question is not, whether men may not strictly adhere to the observances of a proper Sabbath, and yet resort to unhallowed practices on other days of the week; for hypocrisy, of course, may counterfeit its regard to this as well as to any other ordinance of God. Neither does the question at all turn upon the point, whether the strict observance of the Sabbath, by the better part of the community, may not have the effect of inducing more of another class to spend the day in secret dissipation and low vice, than might otherwise be the case. We have good ground for believing that, in general, the very reverse would be the effect; but even if it should be, as some men would fain have it, that well spent Sabbaths, on the part of the community at large, become the occasion of increased drinking and profligacy among the more worthless members of society, what should that have to do, after all, with the main question at issue? We are surely not to judge of the proper effect of an institution by the vice and mis-conduct of those who choose to neglect or misuse it. Christianity itself should inevitably fall before such a false criterion; nay, fall the more certainly the higher the standard it establishes of right and wrong. For the more pure and sanctifying the effect is, which it produces upon those who truly receive it, the more will those who do not receive it be disposed to give scope to their sinful propensities in secret; ashamed to do before their fellow-men what they might otherwise have done in open day, they will be the readier to fall into the lower dens of wickedness, and become a speedier prey to the more ruinous lusts. When such unhappy results appear, neither Christianity at large, nor the Sabbath in particular, can be held responsible for them; they happen not in consequence, but in spite, of these divine institutions; and it were just as proper to say, Better have no Christianity at all, than that it should any how tell unfavourably upon the state of its contemners, as to say, Better have no Sabbaths, with their devout and solemnizing effect upon the people, than that any, in their heedless infatuation, should thence take occasion to plunge into a worse career of profligacy and crime.

The question with which we have now properly to do, respects those only on whom the gospel is producing, or who are truly desirous that it should produce, the purifying effect at which it aims. Does a weekly returning day, consecrated to exercises of religion and kept carefully apart from all ordinary labour, in itself tend to help forward, or rather to mar and defeat so blessed a design? The question, when thus directed to its proper object, admits of a speedy answer; for not only is a day of holy rest greatly conducive to the end in view, but it is scarcely possible to conceive how, without such a day, the end could, among the bulk of mankind, be accomplished at all. Even under the Jewish dispensation, when the character as to spirituality and holiness of life was confessedly lower than it ought to be now, the Sabbath was found necessary for the same purpose; and on this account especially did God set it to be “a sign between Him and His people throughout their generations, that they might know that He was the Lord who sanctified them.” How much more, therefore, must it be required now, when His people are called to live so much more by the faith of what is spiritual and divine, and to cultivate that elevated frame of mind and course of life which is proper to a near communion with God? No doubt, the gospel requires this to be common to every day of the week, and does not allow it to be confined merely to one. But take away the wholesome and renovating influence of that one, constantly coming round with its hallowed services, and what is likely to become of the rest? How soon would the other bulwarks of piety give way, and the whole spirit and character become secularized, if the Sabbath were practically abolished, and every day of the week were alike devoted to worldly pastime or business? Unquestionably, if the interest of God is to thrive, and the great end of the gospel to be promoted in the souls of men, this day of holy rest to the Lord cannot be dispensed with, nor can it be too jealously guarded against the encroachments of worldly occupation; for it is through the sacred leisure and exercises of that day that men are especially to familiarize themselves with the things of God—through these especially that they are to grow in abstraction from a present world and blessed fellowship with the Father of their spirits. To remove or curtail the Sabbath as a day of spiritual employment, were just so far to cut off the main well-spring which feeds the powers and energies of a spiritual life.

3. There is another way of learning the relation which the Sabbath holds to practical Christianity, by inquiring how they who have drunk most deeply into the spirit of the gospel usually feel toward such a day.

If we might have any doubt as to the proper connection between a Sabbath and the great ends of the dispensation of grace, we ought surely to be resolved, if we find the general pulse of holy and Christian men beating, as it were, in unison on the subject. We would seldom fail to gather aright the bearing of any particular measure on the constitution of a country, if we heard one and the same sentiment expressed regarding it by those who were most thoroughly conversant with the nature, and most deeply imbued with the spirit of that constitution. And can any such testimony be produced in favour of the Sabbath? Have the most pious and devoted men generally espoused or rejected it?—sought to promote its observance, or otherwise? Practically, there has been little difference of opinion on the subject; and from the best of every land, we may say a unanimous verdict might be returned for the strict and careful observance of the Lord’s Day. No doubt, many of the ablest and most pious divines, who lived at, and shortly after, the period of the Reformation, fell into the doctrinal error of supposing that the Sabbath, as enjoined in the Fourth Commandment, was a Jewish ordinance, and typical of the spiritual rest which believers were to enjoy in Christ—an error into which they fell from various circumstances peculiar to their condition, though it would be out of place here to investigate them. It must not be forgotten, however, that their error was chiefly a doctrinal one; that their anti-sabbatarianism stood opposed not so much to what we understand by the proper duties of a Sabbath, as to the mere fleshly rest in which the Jews had generally made its due observance to consist; and that practically they both themselves observed, and inculcated upon others the duty of observing, the Lord’s Day. Did our space permit, we could abundantly prove this by particular references to the lives and writings of the more eminent divines in question; and the biographies of the most lively Christians of all times might be appealed to in proof of the value of the Sabbath as an institution of God, and the importance to practical religion of its being devoutly hallowed. Many striking examples might be produced of persons who, at one period of their lives, when the truths of the gospel had taken but slight possession of their minds, disowned the obligation of the Sabbath, and treated it with little ceremony, but who, at another period, when they had become more alive to divine things, both thought and acted very differently. This, to a considerable extent at least, was the case with Dr. Paley, whose loose opinions upon the Sabbath, as published in one of his earliest works, have had the most unhappy effect in England; for when, in advanced life, he became, as is well known, more deeply imbued with a religious spirit, we find him, in one of the sermons which are understood to have been written then, mentioning, among other things, the observance of which he commended, and the neglect of which he deplored, not only “the attending upon public worship at church,” but also “the keeping holy the Lord’s Day regularly and most particularly.” (Sermon on Seriousness in Religion.) The testimony of the very learned and pious Dr. Owen on this point is most solemn: “For my part,” says he, “I must not only say, but plead whilst I live in this world, and leave this testimony to the present and future ages, that if ever I have seen any thing in the ways and worship of God, wherein the power of religion or godliness hath been expressed; any thing that hath represented the holiness of the gospel, and the Author of it; any thing that hath looked like a prelude to the everlasting Sabbath and rest with God, which we aim through grace to come unto, it hath been there and with them where and amongst whom the Lord’s Day hath been had in highest esteem, and a strict observation of it attended unto, as an ordinance of our Lord Jesus Christ. The remembrance of their ministry, their walking and conversation, their faith and love, who in this nation have most zealously pleaded for, and have been in their persons, families, and churches or parishes, the most strict observers of this day, will be precious with them that fear the Lord, whilst the sun and moon endure. Their doctrine also in this matter, with the blessing that attended it, was that which multitudes now at rest do bless God for, and many that are yet alive do greatly rejoice in. Let these things be despised by those who are otherwise minded, to me they are of great weight and importance.”

4. It adds much to the force and conclusiveness of all that has been said upon the necessity of a Sabbath to the life and power of godliness, that wherever the observance of such a day falls into practical neglect the consequences to religion are most disastrous.

Ministers of the gospel, and teachers and guardians of youth, have often proclaimed it as the melancholy result of what they have witnessed in many lands, that neglected or ill-spent Sabbaths infallibly carry in their train a declining religion, and, for the most part also, a depraved morality. The chaplains of prisons and correction-houses have in like manner testified, that the vast majority of offenders brought under their notice have been notorious Sabbath-breakers, and that very frequently their neglect of Sabbath privileges was amongst their first steps in the career of crime. In a word, all experience testifies that, as a sense of religion decays in the soul or evil habit becomes predominant, the proper duties of a Sabbath are at first disrelished and afterwards abandoned; and when that takes place, it is as when an embankment gives way—religion has lost its best safeguard, and vice its most effective restraint—the world with its cares or corruptions becomes every thing, God and eternity comparatively nothing. If the man of piety is drawn to the Sabbath as his delight, and feels that the health of his soul imperatively requires it, the irreligious or profligate man as surely repels it, and in doing so he never fails to reap the bitterness of his own doings; and from both alike a strong confirmation is afforded to the truth we have been endeavouring to establish, that the religion of the gospel, so far from being repugnant to a proper Sabbath, in reality stands or falls with its observance.

We trust we have now said enough to establish to the conviction of every serious and truth-loving heart the positions we originally advanced regarding the Sabbath, and shown that, however some men may be able to find pretexts for excusing themselves in the neglect or profanation of this day of God, those who really cleave to the service of God, and take His Word for their sole rule and warrant in duty, may abide in the conviction that he still requires them to “remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.” We have written to little purpose, if our readers are not disposed to join with us in the prayer of Baxter, which, with only one slight alteration, may form an appropriate conclusion to our meditations:—”O most glorious and gracious Creator and Redeemer, I humbly return my unfeigned thanks for the unspeakable mercies which I have received on thy day; and much more, for so great a mercy to all thy Churches and the world: and craving the pardon of the sins which I have committed on thy day, I beseech Thee to continue this exceeding mercy to Thy Churches and to me, that its blessed privileges and comforts may not be forfeited and lost; and let me serve Thee in the life, and light, and love of Thy Spirit, in these Thy holy days on earth, till I be prepared for, and received into, the everlasting rest in heavenly glory. Amen.”