I.
ONE of Scotland’s noblest distinctions—her well-spent Sabbaths—is now on the eve of being lost. The old landmarks, which have so long guarded the day of rest, as within a sacred enclosure, and which were commonly understood to have been set up by the hand of God Himself, are in progress of being taken down and cast aside as useless incumbrances.
*This is the first of a series of articles from the pen of the Rev. Patrick Fairbairn, Saltoun (afterwards Principal Fairbairn, Free Church College, Glasgow) which appeared in the Christian Miscellany (1842).—Editor.
Not only has a corrupt practice, in various places, been encroaching on its devout observance, but, what is unspeakably worse, a change of sentiment regarding its nature and obligation is fast loosening its hold of the national conscience, and opening the way for its unscrupulous desecration. Indeed the Sabbath, properly so called, that is, a day in every week hallowed and set apart, by the special appointment of God, for bodily and spiritual rest, and allowing no interruption except what may arise from the works, which either cannot or should not be deferred, of necessity and mercy—such a day no longer exists in the opinion of a large and influential portion of the community. The only thing they acknowledge is what is more fitly called “Sunday,” a day which requires, and that by common consent, rather than by express precept, the consecration of a few hours to the public worship of God, but leaves men free to spend all its other hours according to their taste or circumstances, either in pleasant recreations, or in pressing business. If our readers have watched any of the discussions, regarding the Sabbath, which within the last few years have taken place in the town-councils or other public bodies, and observed how often this lighter notion of a “Sunday,” or a first day of the week, is made to supplant the notion of a proper Sabbath, now reputed old, Jewish, or Puritanical, even by men who have a name in the religious world, they will be satisfied that what we say is not without foundation. And if further proof were needed, it may surely be found in the Resolution so lately adopted by the Directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company, which begins with acknowledging their “obligation to give implicit obedience to the law of God,” and concludes with declaring it to be their duty to the public, to “run trains on every morning and evening of Sunday.” Such a Resolution obviously implies that, in the opinion of the Directors, who, in this, are certainly backed by a large and intelligent class of the community, there is no law of God, which can render such intended traffic, on certain portions of the Lord’s Day, improper; no word of God now in operation forbids it, and therefore, as no disobedience should thereby be done to His authority, the public, for whose benefit and convenience the Railway is constructed, have a right to demand it. When such sentiments are so widely spread, and are no longer held as speculative opinions or private tenets, but are coming into practical operation on some of the largest works and most public thoroughfares of Scotland, it is surely time for the humblest Christians to have their minds accurately informed on the subject. It is not enough for them now to have a sound creed regarding it; they must also be sure of the grounds on which it rests, that they be able intelligently to resist the dangerous current, which is threatening to undermine this sacred and important bulwark of religion. For, to use the words of Owen, “If this is once taken off from the basis on which God hath fixed it, all human substitutions of any thing in the like kind, to the same purposes, will quickly discover their own vanity. Nor, without the advantage which it affords, as it is the sacred repository of all sanctifying ordinances, will religion long prevail in the minds and lives of private men. And thus we have known it to have fallen out with many in our days, whose apostasies from God have hence taken their rise and occasion.” It is justly remarked by Bishop Butler, in regard to the evidence of religion at large, that “its not appearing obvious, may constitute one particular part of some men’s trial in the religious sense.” It was not God’s design that it should be obvious to every one; and if, not considering this, some men will look no farther than superficial objections or first-sight probabilities—much more, if they are anxious to find an excuse for rejecting any of its truths, or omitting the performance of any of its duties—they will easily discover enough to countenance them in their suspense or neglect, which is so agreeable to them. Persons in such a state of mind, will naturally say in regard to religion as a whole, or that particular part of it which they are disposed to except against, “If this were really the truth of God, how much more distinctly might it have been expressed! or how much more palpable might have been the evidence which supported it!” And yet, to the sincere and honest enquirer, there is such a clearness in the statements of doctrine contained in the Gospel, and such a convincing force in its evidence, when thoroughly investigated, that he never fails to derive from it the impression of a well-established certainty. Now, there is, perhaps, no part, at least of practical religion, to which this line of remark so strikingly applies, as the institution of the Sabbath—meaning by that the entire consecration of one day in seven, as enjoined in the Fourth Commandment, and explained in our Shorter Catechism. If it had been God’s design to render this, as a part of Christian obligation, so perfectly obvious, that there should be no room whatever for doubt or difficulty concerning it, how easily might He have accomplished the design! A single verse in the New Testament Scripture, re-inforcing the Fourth Commandment, and intimating the change of day from the last to the first of the week, would have been sufficient. This, however, has not been done. The evidence for the still remaining obligation of the Sabbath is not so obvious, but that there may be room for the exercise of moral principle in giving it a fair and candid examination; and yet we may affirm, with the utmost confidence, that there is such an amount of evidence in its favour, as will be found even more than sufficient to produce a deep and settled conviction in the minds of all who sincerely and thoughtfully consider it. For surely, if it can be proved from the Word of God—1. That the Sabbath did not come into existence with the Jewish religion, but existed long prior to that. 2. That in the Jewish religion it had the place, not of those things which were of a carnal and temporary nature, but of those which were permanent and spiritual. 3. That the prophets, who foretold the introduction of a better dispensation, not only gave no intimation of the discontinuance of the Sabbath, but distinctly mentioned the love and observance of it, as a leading characteristic of believers in Gospel times. 4. That Jesus Christ himself, while He sought to rid the day from superstitious usages, which served rather to hinder its proper observance, neither said nor did any thing which implied that the obligation to observe it was to cease under the new dispensation; but, on the contrary, left it clearly to be understood, that His people were still to have their Sabbaths, hallowed and set apart from all ordinary labour. 5. Finally, that the apostles of our Lord have left on record nothing which can fairly be construed into a repeal or essential modification of this primeval ordinance. If all this can be proved to the satisfaction of every sincere and honest inquirer, it will go hard to show what further evidence in such a case could be required, or what amount of evidence would be necessary to carry the convictions of men, if they have not enough of moral principle, to be influenced by this. And, if to all that may thus be alleged in vindication of the Divine authority of the Sabbath, we further take into account its transcendent usefulness, in regard both to the temporal and the spiritual interests of men—its absolute necessity, as a hallowed and unbroken day of rest, to bring the mass of a community within the sphere and influence of the Gospel, and the utter impossibility without it, of maintaining in a sound and healthful state, either public or private religion; we cannot but feel, that it is the bounden duty of every lover of God and His Bible, to do his utmost to preserve inviolate this sacred palladium of truth and holiness, and that he, who seeks to invade its sanctity, is guilty of something more than the error and sin of those who “break one of the least of God’s commandments and teach men so.” But can all that we have advanced in behalf of the Sabbath, really be proved? We are confident that it can, and shall endeavour to make good our positions in a series of articles, which shall exhibit, we trust, the solid ground they have in the Word of God, and overlook nothing that can plausibly be urged against them. The contest regarding the Sabbath has now manifestly reached the foundations, and it is neither wise nor safe to stop short of a careful examination of these. But for the present, we shall simply conclude by referring to a notion, by which arguments in defence of the authority of the Sabbath are often hastily set aside, and on which, perhaps, less pains might have been bestowed, than it has sometimes received from the defenders of the Sabbath. The Sabbath, it is said, was a positive institution, which, however suited it might be to Judaism, is contrary to the free and untramelled spirit of the Gospel, and may therefore be concluded to have ceased, if it did not also begin with the former. Now, such a mode of thinking plainly confounds positive institutions with carnal ordinances. The one is unsuited to Christianity, but the other is not. The appointment of an ordained ministry, and a preached Gospel, and Baptism, and the Lord’s supper, and stated prayer, are all positive institutions, and yet have each unquestionably a place in the Christian religion. And is not marriage also a positive institution, introduced by God into Paradise itself, and destined to hold its place through all the future ages and dispensations of the world? But what holds true of one positive institution, may equally hold true of another, and there is nothing in the nature of things to prevent the Sabbath from running its course, in like manner, through all the generations of mankind. That it is positive, concludes nothing either against its permanency or its essential morality. “Whoever then,” to use again the words of Bishop Butler, “instead of cavilling at words, will attend to the thing itself, may clearly see, that positive institutions in general, as distinguished from this or that particular one, have the nature of moral commands,” —they are positive in contradistinction to moral, only in so far as they specify some particular mode, or form, or time; and the only practical use of the distinction, as that eminent author goes on to show, is not to make us view the one class as more binding or more permanent than the other, but only in the case of a duty of the one class competing with one of the other, to lead us to give the preference to that which is simply moral, as being the one, the reasons of which we can fully understand, and itself a part of the ends, for which the positive command was enjoined. This distinction must be kept in mind, as we shall have occasion to refer to it afterwards.