The Christian Sabbath, by Terry L Johnson, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, booklet, 60 pages, £3.00, obtainable from the F P Bookroom.
Sabbath observance has fallen on dark days, and the author of this booklet comments at some length on its near-disappearance. In his childhood, the United States “largely was Sabbath-keeping”. The shops “were closed, youth sports didn’t hold practices or games. . . . However, by the late 1960s” Sabbath observance “had collapsed”. A wealth of useful quotations from writers of the past includes one from Robert L Dabney which points emphatically to the importance of keeping holy the first day of the week: “The vitality and holiness of the Church are usually in proportion to its reverence for the Sabbath”.
Three Puritan writers are quoted in succession. First, John Owen denying that the Christian religion “can be maintained without a due observation of a stated day of sacred rest”. Then Thomas Case, who argues that holiness is “the great end for which God has ordained a Sabbath”. Finally, Thomas Brooks: “The ends for which the Lord’s day was appointed are all spiritual, namely, the glory of God, the illumination, conversion and salvation of sinners, and the edification, confirmation, consolation of saints”.
James Durham is quoted emphasising strongly God’s example of resting on the first Sabbath Day. Durham further stresses that the Sabbath was made “for man” – for all of humanity. Mr Johnson says that the Sabbath was given for mankind’s physical well-being, as a day of rest, but that there is “a higher purpose”, mankind’s spiritual well-being. A quotation from Matthew Henry
expresses it well: the Sabbath is a “day of holy rest in order to do holy work”. In addressing the question of the Sabbath continuing into the New Testament age, Mr Johnson asks, “Were the Old Testament saints the beneficiaries of the institution of the Sabbath [of] which the New Testament believers are now deprived?” The answer, of course, is obvious: New Testament believers do have the benefits of a Sabbath. Dabney puts it like this: “As there remains to believers under the Christian dispensation a hope of an eternal rest, so there remains to us an earthly Sabbath to foreshadow it”.
The author discusses works of necessity and mercy, which may legitimately be carried out on a Sabbath, but he helpfully warns that “we should be careful not to interpret the category of ‘necessity’ too broadly”. And he quotes Matthew Henry insisting that it “ought not to be a self-created necessity”. Interestingly he mentions that “the United States has been without a President for a full day twice in our history”, when Zachary Taylor, in 1849, and Rutherford B Hayes, in 1877, refused to be installed because the day appointed for doing so fell on a Sabbath.
There is a great deal of useful teaching and information in this booklet, yet Mr Johnson speaks too loosely about leisure activities on a Sabbath. We would wish that he had used the Authorised Version for Scripture quotations and that he had not used Sunday for the Lord’s Day.