do not find a word to teach us that His disciples were not to keep a Sabbath at all.
It is of much importance to observe this. The mis- takes that have arisen from a superficial consideration of our Lord's sayings on the Sabbath question, are neither few nor small. Thousands have rushed to the hasty con- clusion, that Christians have nothing to do with the fourth commandment, and that it is no more binding on us than the Mosaic law about sacrifices. There is nothing in the New Testament to justify any such conclusion.
The plain truth is, that our Lord did not abolish the law of the weekly Sabbath. He only freed it from incorrect interpretations, and purified it from man-made additions. He did not tear out of the decalogue the fourth command- ment. He only stripped ofi' the miserable traditions with which the Pharisees had incrusted the day, and by which they had made it, not a blessing, but a burden. He left the fourth commandment where he found it, a part of the eternal law of God, of which no jot or tittle was ever to pass away. May we never forget this !
Let us, in the second place, settle it in our minds, that our Lord Jesus Christ alloios all works of real necessity and mercy to he done on the Sabbath day. y.
This is a principle which is abundantly established in the passage of Scripture we are now considering. We find our Lord justifying His disciples for plucking the ears of corn on a Sabbath. It was an act permitted in Scripture. (Deut.xxiii. 25.) They " were an hungered," and in need of food. Therefore they were not to blame. — We find Him maintaining the lawfulness of healing a sick man on the Sabbath day. The man was suffering from
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disease and pain. In sucli a case it was no breach of God's commandment to afford relief. We ought never to rest from doing good.
The arguments by which our Lord supports the lawful- ness of any work of necessity and mercy on the Sabbath, are striking and unanswerable. He reminds the Phari- sees, who charged Him and His disciples with breaking the law, how David and his men, for want of other food, had eaten the holy shew-bread out of the taber- nacle.— He reminds them how the priests in the temple are obliged to do work on the Sabbath, by slaying ani- mals and offering sacrifices. — He reminds them how even a sheep would be helped out of a pit on the Sabbath, rather than allowed to suffer and die, by any one of them- selves.— Above all, He lays down the great principle, that no ordinance of God is to be pressed so far as to make us neglect the plain duties of charity. '' I will have mercy and not sacrifice.'' The first table of the law is not to be so interpreted as to make us break the second. The fourth commandment is not to be so ex- plained, as to make us unkind and unmerciful to our neighbor. There is deep wisdom in all this. We are re- minded of the saying, " Never man spake like this man."
In leaving the subject, let us beware that we are never tempted to take low views of the sanctity of the Chris- tian Sabbath. Let us take care that we do not make our gracious Lord's teaching an excuse for Sabbath profanation. Let us not abuse the liberty which He has so clearly marked out for us, and pretend that we do things on the Sabbath from '' necessity and mercy," which in reality we do for our own selfish gratification.
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