The claim of the Lord’s Day to this pre-eminence has been unfortunately prejudiced by controversies on its relation to the Saobath. This question has been thought to be of much practical interest, especially by that large class of persons who think that they require guidance in details, and who feel that a general direction to keep a day holy is too vague, and leaves too much to their individual responsibility. On the one hand, those who incline to a severe observance of the day identify the Lord’s Day with the Sabbath, regarding it as the same institution with a Christian reference added, the change of day being regarded as immaterial.
They combine with this assumption a theory of |
scriptural Sabbath observance, for which there is
LORD'S DAY 139 but slender evidence from ancient or modern Jewish life. On the other hand, some of those who reyolt from this rigidity feel constrained to justify themselves by a denial of any relation whatever between the two days ; and then, in the default of any divinely ordained rules for its observance, they are in danger of not observing it at all. The truth will be found to lie midway between these two extremes. The Lord’s Day is, and is not, the Sabbath, much as John the Baptist was, and was not, Elijah.
When Jesus uttered the cry, ‘It is finished,’ the Mosaic dispensation virtually passed away. His Resurrection, Ascension, and Outpouring of the Holy Spirit were successive aflirmations of the great fact, and the destruction of the temple made it plain to all but the blindest. But in the mean- time nothing is more striking than the tender wa in which the apostles and Christians of Tamia birth were weaned from the old religion. The dead leaves of Judaism fell off gradually, they were not rudely torn off by man. The new facts, the new dogmas, the new ordinances first established them- selves, and then little by little the incompatibilit of the old and the new was realized, which necessarily issued in the casting out of the old. The old things of Judaism were made new in Christianity. This, however, was not accom- plished by a deliberate substitution of one ordi- nance for another; but first the old ordinances were simply antiquated, and then experience matured under the influence of the Holy Spirit proved that the positive institutions of the new religion more than fulfilled those of the old. This was realized, first of all, in the case of the sacra mental ordinances. Baptism was soon seen to be analogous to circumcision (Col 2"), and also to the legal ablutions (He 10”); while the Eucharist corresponded to the peace-offerings (1 Co 10!*), He 13”). But the realization of the fulfilment of the Sabbath in the Lord’s Day does not find expression in the NT. This silence is especially marked in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In that Epistle the writer is addressing some who were in danger of relapsing into Judaism, who could scarcely bear to forego all the associations of the old religion, its antiquity, authority, splendour, variety. His design therefore is to adduce all that Christianity had analogous to the cherished rites of Judaism. The priesthood, sacrifice, the temple, the solemn services, are all shown to have their more than parallels in the gospel. But when he touches on the Sabbath, it is as a type of the state of salvation on which believers have entered, a Sabbath rest to be consummated in the world to come (48-4). Hessey (Bampton Lectures, 1860) proves by copious quotations that up to the end of the 5th century, and even later, the twe days were not considered to have any relation to each other. But a believer in the perpetual guid- ance of the Church by the Holy Spirit will scarcely accept this as conclusive that the Church of later ages was not right in seeing a close analozy between the Lord’s Day and the Sabbath; an analogy expressed by the retention of the Fourth Commandment by all Christian Churciies, as part of the Decalogue considered as a convenient sum- mary of the Moral Law. Assuming that public
worship is a moral duty, it is absolutely necessary that a day of rest from ordinary labours be set apart for that purpose, and for the cognate duties of religious instruction and special private devotion. As regards the proportion of our time which should be given to such duties, we may well follow the apostles in accepting unquestion-
ingly that laid down in the Mosaic Law. ‘This is the moral element in the Fourth Commandment. Experience has shown that the excessive multipli
140 LORD’S DAY
LORD’S DAY
cation of holy days regarded as in any degree co-ordinate with the Lord’s Day is fatal to the maintenance of those objects for which the Lord’s
Day was designed. The antiquation of the Sabbath equally with circumcision, ete., was gradu- ally realized as the sequence of events led up to it. The key to a right understanding of the revolution is found in the first description of the public worship of the apostolic Church: ‘continuing steadfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home’ (Ac 2“), To the customary Jewish devotions was added the one distinctive Christian service. The Church professed to be a divine development of Judaism (Ac 24" etc.). All that was eternally true in the Law is with us still, and that which was essentially transitory was tolerated until it became positively hurtful. At Jerusalem an inconsistent allegiance both to the old and the new was maintained probably until the destruction of the temple, but even there we early find traces of the antiquation of the Sabbath. Considering the prominence assigned to it in Pharisaic Judaism, there can be little doubt that it is one of ‘the customs which Moses delivered,’ the changing of which by Jesus of Nazareth was announced by St. Stephen (Ac 64, ef. 21°). The falsity of the witnesses lay in the malicious spirit which prompted the arcusation rather than in the charge itself. Thirtsen years later, Sabbath keeping is not one of the ‘necessary things’ enjoined on Gentiles by the apostolic council (Ac 153), This decision amounted to an acknowledgment that the Sabbath as well as circumcision, ete., was no longer binding on Gentiles, though James, as we should expect, seems to contemplate the continuance of the ordinance for Jews (v."!). No valid objection can be drawn from the frequent references in Ac to the apostles preaching in synagogues, or in Jewish places of prayer, on the Sabbath day (13% 4 44 16317? 184). Their mission was to the Jews jirst, and, apart from the natural desire on their own part to join in the only public worship avail- able, common - sense Sail lead them to go where they could address large bodies of Jews assembled with minds disposed to receive religious truth. About A.D. 58 St. Paul in Gal 4% 1° reckons ‘the observation of days’ as one of the ‘weak and beggarly rudiments.’ Now, as we may gather from 1 Co 16+? that St. Paul had himself bidden the Galatians observe in a certain way the first day of the week, it is plain that he is not here condemning the principle of religious distinction of days; and the fact that in this Epistle he is combating Judaistic teachers forces us to the conclusion that the compulsory observ- ance of a specially Jewish day, i.e. the Sabbath, is what is meant. On the other hand, in Ro 14°, written a little later, to a Church where the con- troversy may not have reached such a height, the regarding or not regarding of such days is a matter of indifference. Finally, in Col 2 the Sabbath is distinctly mentioned as one of the ordi- nances ‘which are a shadow of things to come.’