2. Its Eelation to the Sabbath. — What was the relation of the Lord's Day to the Sabbath ? We turn for an answer to the New Testament. There can be no doubt whatever that the ancient law was kept among all Jewish Christians, for we read constantly of the Apostles as teaching and joining in the synagogue service of the seventh day. But it is as plain that the Gentile was in no sense bound to observe it. No one can read the striking passages from the Epistles of Paul (Col. ii. 16, 17 ; Eom. xiv. 5, 6) without perceiving that it is classed with all those Jewish usages, new moons, unclean meats, in regard to which no obligation was laid on the believer. Nor can any one fairly accept the express decision of the first Couucil at Jerusalem, without allowing that it is not included in the " necessary things " for Gentile duty. It must be noted, further, that the Lord's Day was never substituted for the seventh. Each rested on its own ground. The Gentile kept the feast of the Eesurrection. The Jewish Christian kept both days, just as he circumcised his children and baptized them likewise. It remained for many years, and by slow degrees faded away ; it was long retained in some churches of the West as a fast, in memory of our Lord's burial before the day of His rising ; yet at length it dropped from use, and by the natural law of life the first day remained alone, the one weekly season of worship. This is the sum of the evidence. It leaves it exactly as in the case of baptism, where the Christian rite took the place of circumcision by historic change, yet rests on the commandment of Christ and the spirit of a larger Gospel^
1 E. A. Washburn.
loo THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
^In the "Apology for Christians," which Justin Martyr wrote to Antoninus Pius, between the years 138 and 150, he says: "We all of us assemble together on Sunday, because it is the first day in which God changed darkness and matter, and made the world. On the same day also Jesus Christ, our Saviour, rose from the dead, for He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn ; and on the day after that of Saturn, which is that of the Sun, He appeared to His apostles and disciples, and taught them what we now submit to your consideration." It is evident from this, and from other historic documents, that Christ's resurrection made the first day far more illustrious to Chris- tians than the seventh ; and when the Temple was destroyed, and Judaism, like a shadow, vanished, the Jewish Sabbath vanished with it. In this change, which was, we believe, wrought by the Spirit of Him who was with His people always, we have a proof of this startling declaration : " The Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day"; and the justification for the change lies there. The shell was broken, but the kernel remained; the transient and typical passed away, but only in order that the permanent and true might remain for ever. And it was because St. Paul saw and understood this, that, in his Epistle to the Colossians (ii. 16, 17), he wrote about the Sabbath words so bold that many are still afraid to take them in their legitimate and obvious signification : " Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come ; but the body [or substance] is of Christ." ^
^ The Christian motive for observing the Lord's Day is the Eesurrection of Christ from the dead. That truth is to the Christian Creed what the creation of the world out of nothing is to the Jewish. The Lord's Day marks the completed Redemp- tion, as the Sabbath had marked the completed Creation. The Eesurrection is also the fundamental truth on which Christianity rests ; and thus it is as much insisted on by the Christian Apostles as is God's creation of all things by the Jewish prophets. Not that the creation of all things by God is less precious to the Christian than to the Jew : but it is more taken for granted. In Christian eyes, the creation of the world of nature is eclipsed by the creation of the world of grace ; and of this last creation, the Eesurrection is the warrant. The Eesurrection is commemorated, as St. Irenaeus points out, on the first day of the week, when God brought light out of darkness and chaos. It is the risen and enthroned Lamb who says, " Behold, I make all things new " : and therefore if " any man be in Christ, he is the new creation," *
1 A. Rowland. » H. P. Liddon, EasUr in St. Paul's, 282.
ST MARK loi
II.
The Use of the Gift.
The importance of Christ's statement, " The Sabbath was made for man," is permanent and universal; it establishes not the exception, but the rule ; it deals not with temporary and fluctuating prejudices, but with fixed, eternal principles. It puts us in a new position with reference to the question. Why do I observe the Lord's Day ? The old questions, What has a Christian to do with Jewish enactments ? What to him is the ceremonial law ? Why is our liberty to be narrowed by the opinions of bigots incapable of distinguishing between the spirit and the letter ? All these had their use, as they certainly have had their misuse, in the past. But put the question in this form. The Sabbath was made for man ; why then should man be deprived of it ? If to the Jewish Church in its best ages, to its most enlightened seers, the Sabbath was a delight, holy and honourable, full of happy thoughts and feelings, a season of refresbment, of bodily repose and spiritual rejoicing, why should the Christian Church forfeit the privilege ? ^