V.
(Continued from page 222.)
A day of weekly, stated rest, on which all ordinary labour is forbidden as unlawful, and nothing allowed as right and proper but what is connected with the life and wellbeing of the soul, with the exception only of works of necessity and mercy, is thought by many unsuitable to the nature of Christianity. They do not wonder to find it in Judaism; and to see it expressly enjoined and jealously enforced in the writings of the Old Covenant, is no more than what they would have looked for: but they cannot reconcile it to the free and generous spirit of the gospel. And yet, however common such a mode of thinking may have become, there must be some strange perversion at the bottom of it—a grievous misunderstanding, either of the nature of the gospel, or of the true aspect and character of a weekly Sabbath. For surely, if there be any feature of Christianity, in its connection with a present society, more prominent than another, it is the tenderness it breathes toward the poor and needy, and the benign influence it is fitted to exert on the condition of those who require most of sympathy and kindness. Christ Himself gave it as the leading characteristic of His work on earth, that thereby the objects of deepest compassion were relieved, and that the poor had the gospel preached to them. There was in His bosom a depth of tenderness and fellow-feeling for such, even in regard to temporal evils, which often excited the wonder of His immediate followers, and rebuked their comparative kindness of heart. But is not a weekly Sabbath, bringing a periodical release from the toils and burdens of life, permitting the most weary and oppressed to spend a season of repose in the bosom of their families, and mind, what they must otherwise neglect, the higher interests of their being—is not such a day an unspeakable boon to the great bulk of mankind? Has not the Sabbath been well characterised as one of “the most wise and beneficent, as well as most ancient institutes of heaven—the first gift which God conferred on our newly-created parents, and by which He continues to testify His care both for our bodies and our spirits, by providing relaxation for the one and refreshment for the other?” Undoubtedly this is the real character of the Sabbath; and if Christianity has done anything to destroy the foundation on which such an institution rests, it must surely, in this particular, be strangely inconsistent with its general tendency and design. In its care for the poor and helpless, it must then actually rank lower than Judaism, and be chargeable with removing one of the noblest bulwarks of the weak against the strong—of the labouring classes of society against the greed and oppression of their more powerful neighbours. That the gospel of the grace of God was intended to produce such an unfavourable effect, or can be made to do so, otherwise than by some gross perversion of its meaning, will not readily be believed by any one who knows what the spirit of the gospel is and the beneficent character of the gospel, viewed in connection with the equally beneficent character of the Sabbath, amounts at least to a strong presumption that the one cannot possibly subvert, but must rather establish and support the other.
This presumption, however, grows into certainty, when we look into some of the express declarations of our Lord. One of His first announcements was—”Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” Here Christ asserts, in the strongest and most emphatic manner, that His mission into this world was designed in no respect to abolish or relax, but only to ratify and confirm, what had been declared both in the law and the prophets to be of God. This He did in a twofold manner—first, by perfectly fulfilling in Himself the righteousness which they required; and then, secondly, by imposing the same upon His people as the measure of that obedience to which, through His grace, they were to be ever growing. To have fallen from the requirements of the law and the prophets in either of these respects, would manifestly have been to destroy, and not to fulfil them; it would have been for Christ to become either personally the doer, or as the author of a new dispensation—the patron of that which they disallowed and condemned as sinful. But is not the ordinance of the Sabbath equally recognised in the law and the prophets? In that solemn and comprehensive revelation of law, which was proclaimed from mount Sinai, and which in Scripture is usually denominated the law, it has a broad and honourable place. And in the prophets, not only when they speak of Jewish but also when they speak of Christian times, there is, as we had occasion to show in our last article, a testimony not less explicit and authoritative in favour of the Sabbath. When Christ, therefore, declares He came not to destroy, but to fulfil, the law and the prophets, He must of necessity be held as adopting the testimony they deliver concerning the day of sacred rest; and on His word we have it, that heaven and earth shall pass away before the precept which ordains its observance shall be obliterated from the statute-book of heaven.
The declaration on which we have just been remarking, was uttered near the commencement of our Lord’s ministry, and though yielding a most unequivocal testimony in support of the Sabbath, it does so in general terms, which were equally comprehensive of that and of many other commandments of God. But let us now pass to another uttered near the termination of His ministry, and of a nature the most definite and express. Speaking of the troubles that should attend the siege of Jerusalem, and instructing His disciples when they should consult for their safety, He said, “But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath-day.” Matt. xxiv. 20. The earliest possible period to which this direction can refer, is the siege of Jerusalem—a period at least forty years after the ascension of Christ, that is, after the full establishment of the gospel dispensation, and after “the gospel of the kingdom,” to use His own words in verse 14, “had been preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations.” At such an advanced period in the gospel age, and in a season, too, of unparalleled distress, the disciples were, by the direction of their Lord, to make it a matter of special prayer, that they might not need to take their flight on the Sabbath. Was the Sabbath, then, in His account, a mere ceremonial institution? Was He gravely admonishing them in this advice to be all concerned, while every thing was reeling around them about being kept from doing violence to an old Jewish scruple, and thus encouraging them to love and abide in the very yoke from which He came to emancipate them? The thought is repugnant to every pious mind. It is impossible to entertain due respect to Christ as an infallible teacher, without admitting it to be His clear intention in this passage, that the weekly Sabbath should continue after the gospel dispensation was fully set up. And there is even more than that intimated in the passage; for it evidently contains a prophetic warning against that species of Sabbath desecration which has ever been the first to creep in, and which admits, perhaps, of the most plausible defence. Would to God that the infatuated advocates of railway travelling on the Lord’s Day would but listen in time to the warning! In this striking passage (the only one in our Lord’s discourses in which He expressly cautioned His disciples against any particular kind of encroachments on the day of rest), it is in regard to travelling on that day that he points their attention and bespeaks their supplications. And for what does He teach them to pray? That they might be kept from travelling for pleasure? or on visits of kindness? or for purposes of commerce? No; but that, in a time of great calamity and danger, events might be so ordered that they should not be obliged to travel even for their lives, or to flee for safety, on the day of hallowed rest. Why, in circumstances of such imminent peril, should they have been admonished to care for this exemption, and seek the privilege of enjoying their Sabbaths even then, as a distinguishing favour from Heaven? Why, but that our Lord foresaw the peculiar danger to which His holy day would be exposed from this quarter, and therefore wished to impress it on His followers, that, so far from gadding about on that day for any light or frivolous pretext, when life itself was in jeopardy they should still be tender of violating it, and should pray to be kept, even in the greatest emergencies, from being forced to make it a day of travel?
Had our Lord been anxious to provide an argument against that particular mode of Sabbath desecration which has now begun to inundate this land, or to cut off all excuse from those who either advocate or practise it, we can scarcely conceive how He could have more effectually done so, than by delivering this caution among His last warnings and instructions to His disciples. Nor is it only in a peculiar manner applicable to the present circumstances of our country; it has, unfortunately, a much wider range of application; for we believe it will be found, that travelling on Sabbath has generally taken the lead in evils of this description, and opened the door for many others. It certainly did so in Scotland, as we learn from the “Testimony” of Willison, published before the middle of last century; in which he states, not only that it was by travelling in various ways that the Sabbath first began to be publicly violated, but also, that this was one of the first open defections from the good old paths that appeared in Scotland, and which came flowing in from England, shortly after the Union between the two countries. It was not, therefore, without reason that Christ so pointedly referred to the subject; and let those who now contend for liberty to set up or to use travelling conveyances on the Lord’s Day know, that it is the very kind of encroachment against which He expressly forewarned His people; teaching them, as He did, to pray that they might not be necessitated to resort to it, no, not even amid the perils of war.
It will, perhaps, be thought a sufficient reply to all this, that on other occasions our Lord Himself did things which were held by the Jews to be inconsistent with the observance of the Sabbath as a day of holy rest to the Lord. It has even been said, by a recent advocate for railway travelling on Sabbath, that Christ freely travelled from place to place on that day. But that He did no violence even to the Jewish notions on that score is evident, from their bringing no accusation regarding it against Him. There is no instance on record of their having charged Him with having walked too far on the Sabbath, although their views on that point are well known to have been rigid enough; and they certainly were not unwilling to have noted His trespass, if there had been any. Besides, Christ was Himself born under the law—under the ceremonial as well as moral law; bound to perfect Himself in all its requirements; and if He failed in the smallest particular to walk in conformity with the law of the Sabbath, even as imposed upon the Jews, He failed in the work given Him to do—He is not the perfect Saviour of the world. It may do for a Socinian or a Jew to allege, that Christ did not strictly observe the Sabbath; but for a professing Christian to do so, is to destroy the very ground-work of salvation.
There were just two kinds of action occurring in Christ’s life which were objected to by the Jews, as contrary to their notions of sabbatical rest. The first, His permitting the disciples to rub the ears of corn, for satisfying a present hunger; and the second, His stretching out His hand to heal, when objects of compassion were cast by Providence in His way. When attacked by the Jews, in regard to these acts of necessity and mercy, on what ground did He rest His defence? Did He claim for Himself an exemption from its peculiar duties which was not given to others, or throw out any hint of the Sabbath being to undergo in His hands a relaxation of its ancient strictness? Not at all; He appealed to Jewish practice itself for His justification: to the conduct of David, in the one case; and in the other, to the common treatment which even the inferior creatures were accustomed to receive at the hand of their owners. In short, the Pharisaical portion of the Jews had come to view the Sabbath too exclusively as a day of outward rest, to the neglect of those higher ends for which rest and all other things in the rank of means are ordained by God; and our Lord, by what He personally did, and by appealing also to what they themselves occasionally did, sought to convince them that the rest enjoined in the Fourth Commandment, being ordained for man’s life and wellbeing, was not properly violated by doing such things as were necessary to the support of life, or by embracing such opportunities for relieving the distresses of others as God in His providence may set before us. To such an extent the Son of man, and under Him, every child of God, is “Lord of the Sabbath,”—not bound implicitly to obey it as an absolute master, so as thereby to be restrained from satisfying the wants of nature, or showing mercy to a suffering fellow-creature, but entitled cheerfully to use it as an instrument of blessing to ourselves and others. “It was made for man, not man for it;” never designed, therefore, to interfere with, but rather to promote, his essential comfort; nor to tie up his hands from doing good, but only to fit and dispose them the more for the work. Though, as an ordinance of Heaven, it is lasting as the pillars of nature, it is still a positive enactment, subservient, not opposed, to the great ends and purposes of man’s being; and doubtless, leaving him always at liberty to take his own necessary food, and show compassion to the poor: the positive and subordinate, in such a case, giving way to the indispensably requisite and the simply moral. But beyond that, and apart from that, neither Christ’s word, nor His example, warrants us to go in our employment of Sabbath time to other purposes than those for which it was specially and expressly set apart.