Thus it may be said of the majority of religious Jews of the time of Christ that their object was not to mould their lives according to some few great principles, but to keep 613 distinct commandments. Some great men, it is true, were exceptions to this general rule. Thus, a generation or so before the time of Christ, Eabbi Hillel had summed up the whole law to an impatient proselyte in the memorable words quoted in a slightly different form by our blessed Lord Himself : " What thou wouldest not have thy neighbour do unto thee that do not thou to thy neighbour : this is the whole law ; all the rest is commentary ; go, study." But among men of less spirituality and genius than Hillel the idea of religion was not to work out a great principle, but to avoid transgression of a number of more or less distinct commandments.^
^ The Eabbis themselves occasionally admitted the principle ; see Mechilta, in Ex. xxxi. 13 : " The Sabbath is delivered unto you, and ye are not delivered to the Sabbath." Our Lord's words rise higher, and reach further: at the root of the Sabbath law was the love of God for mankind, and not for Israel only.*
2. Christ's Interpretation. — The Sabbath in Christ's time was a veil upon the eyes of the people. It blinded the Jews so that they could not see further than the narrow walls of the synagogue, or the exclusive walls of the Temple court. It prevented them beholding any duty on that day further than the hearing of the law, or the offering of the set form of sacrifice. But Jesus Christ came to show them of the Father. A man who, believing that the Sabbath was specially God's
1 Canon R. H. Kennett. 2 jUd.
' H. B. Swete, The Gospel accordincf to St. ifark, 49, ST. MARK — 7
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day, and that because it was His day he was on no account to cure a sick man and tell him to realise he was cured by taking up his bed and walking, — on no account to lift an ox or an ass out of a pit, if either of them was the ox or ass of a foreigner, — what could such a man know of the duties of man to man, or of man to lower animals, as children of one Father who is in Heaven ? No, the Sabbath, if men were to see in its ordaining the work of a Father of love and pity, mercy and gladness, must be spiritualised. They must make the Sabbath a real Sabbath if they would see that the Maker of it is a real Father.
^ If this was part of the mind of Jesus Christ, if He came to get men to sit loose to the world, or as St. Paul put it, "to crucify the world unto themselves, and themselves unto the world," to care little about the kingdom of earth and the glory of it as compared with the Kingdom of Heaven — if Jesus came to show men of the Father of their spirits, and that all religious ordinances, all Sabbath observances, were but to lead men to behold God and live — then surely our Lord, speaking in meta- phor as was His wont, might well have said, as one of the Oxyrhynchus Logia has it, " Except ye fast to the world, ye shall in no wise find the kingdom of God," and, " Except ye keep the Sabbath in the spirit — a real Sabbath — sabbatise the Sabbath — ye shall not see the Father." This is what the reputed saying seems to assert.^
iv. The Lord's Day.
1. Its Origin. — We have at the close of the Gospels the earliest record of the first day of the week as the time of our Lord's resurrection ; and in memory of that event it became, during the Apostolic age, the recognised festival of the infant Chnstian community. We know not the exact date when it began to be set apart, but the notices of it are quite enough to show its character. It is mentioned in the Acts as the time when " the disciples came together to break bread," i.e. for the Lord's Supper. It is urged by the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. xvi. 2) that believers should "lay by in store" on the first day, for the offering on behalf of the poor; and the passing allusion makes it probable that it had become already a fixed time of worship. It is named again in the book of Kevelation (i. 10); ^ H. D. Rawnsley, Sayings of Jesus, 23.
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and from the phrase, "the Lord's Day," we may fairly infer that it had gained that place in Christian worship which must have preceded the specific name. Henceforth it grew more and more into the reverent affection of the Church, until it became the great season of religious gathering; and at last, under Constantine, the laws of the empire forbade the opening of the courts and other secular business. Such was its origin and growth. It was the weekly Easter. It spoke to the early believer, as to us, of the risen Lord, and of that risen life in which was the bond of all holy fellowship.