ii. The Sabbath of the Decalogue.
The account of the observance of the Sabbath in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus precedes the giving of the law on Mount Sinai
' J. H. Vmeeut.
ST. MARK 95
When the manna fell, it marked the Sabbath day. None fell on that day. Twice as much fell on Friday as on any other day. For forty years that standing miracle marked the division of time into weeks, and made one day sacred as a day of rest and of worship. Then when the moral law was given, as you find it in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, observance of the Sabbath was incorporated in it by the finger of God. What else did God ever write with His finger ? God's finger wrote upon the tables of stone, "Eemember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." He wrote it in what company ? " Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." In what other company ? " Honour thy father and thy mother." Do jow want to vacate that commandment ? And what other ? " Thou shalt not kill." You want to abrogate that ? And what other ? " Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness."
% Take a single example of the way in which modern states have dealt with the day of rest along the lines of the Decaxogue : The law of the State of Indiana and its penalty are found among the General Laws, chap, xxxv., sec. 1 : "If any person, of the age of fourteen years and upward, shall be found on the first day of the week, commonly called Sunday, at common labour, or engaged in his usual vocation, works of charity and necessity only excepted, such person shall be fined in any sum not less than one nor more than ten dollars ; but nothing herein contained shall be construed to affect such as conscientiously observe the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath."
iii. The Sabbath of Subsequent Times.
Come at once to the fifty-eighth and sixty-sixth chapters of Isaiah, the Messianic part of that book, the very last part of it, that glorious prophetic consummation which commences with the fifty -second chapter and extends to the end, presenting a Saviour who is Christ the Lord, unfolding the glorious hope of eternal life, and describing the crowning glories of Messianic days. Now in the very end of that book, where the prophet stands on tiptoe to see the remotest events, to see the last forecast of man in Messianic days, there he says,
96 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
"And from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord."
Not all Jews, but all flesh. And so the Old Testament leaves it. Now how does the New find it ? First, in this second chapter of Mark, our Saviour afiirms in the broad language of the text that the Sabbath was made for man. What a catholic utterance ! How universal in its application ! Then, in the twenty-second chapter of Matthew, and from the thirty-fifth to the fortieth verse, we have an instructive lesson. A lawyer came to Him for light on the Ten Command- ments : " Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law ? " And He said, " This is the first and great commandment : ' Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, strength, soul, and mind.' " That covers four of the ten, the four that relate to God. " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." That covers the other table of the law.-^
1. The Pharisaic Misunderstanding. — I suppose that the Christian conception of religion may be briefly defined as communion with a God who has revealed Himself as a loving Father by the manifestation of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To the Jew, on the other hand, religion appeared to be rather communion with a God who had revealed Himself by the law of Moses. What the Lord Jesus Christ is to the Christian, that the law of Moses was to the orthodox Jew of the time of Christ. As it is our aspiration to grow up into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, so it was the aspiration of the pious Jew to conform in all respects to the law, or, as St. Luke puts it, " to walk in all the command- ments and ordinances of the Lord blameless." It was, perhaps, almost inevitable under such circumstances that men should study the law with a minute attention to detail which was fatal to the apprehension of the great principles of right which it embodied. It was not that the Scribes and Pharisees (I refer, not to the hypocrites among them, who are always to be found in every religion, but to the sincerely religious men, who were numerous) — it was not that they were wilfully disloyal to the great principles of the law, but that their method of looking to its details rendered them incapable of seeing its general efiect.
J B. H. Carroll.
ST. MARK 97
Since they regarded the law as all given by God, they did not, for the most part, perceive the relative importance of the various commandments, nor did they endeavour to trace out the principles underlying them. Their great object was to ensure that no commandment should be passed over. They carefully counted the exact number to be kept, and arrived at the conclusion that there were 613: 365 negative commandments, "Thou shalt not," or one for every day of the year; 248 positive commandments, " Thou shalt," or one for every bone of the body.^