It is objected, however, that the Sabbath disappears from the record during the antediluvian and patriarchal periods. AVhy this protracted silence about it if it had then a place among religious articles and usages? Tliis evidence of its absence is negative, and cannot outweigh express contrary proof of its initiation. Of these times, be it also remarked, we have not detailed accounts, and we must therefore make allowance for great brevity and many omissions. Succeeding annals are more ample, and yet we have no indication of the observance of the Sabbath during four hundred years after its sacredness had been confessedly proclaimed from Mount Sinai. Even if neglect of the day could be established, such negligence would not disprove obligation. The Pass- over, during protracted periods, fell into disuse, and there was general and continued departure from the marriage relation as originally constituted.
It is not the case, however, that allusion to the Sab- bath is wholly wanting during the time alleged. Oc- casional mention is made of weeks ; and we know that the heathen world very extensi»-ely distributed days into sevens, with some notion of sacredness belonging to the seventh. This arrangement is traced by some to the lunar month, divided into quarters, each of seven days, by the phases of the moon. But this computation does not accord, except proximately, with fact, as the lunar month exceeds twenty- nine days in duration. It as- cril)es consequence also to the wiimhGr four, as well as to the number seven — partitioning the month into four divisions — and /bur has no distinctive sacredness in any known country or language. The explanation, though ingenious, is simply a guess, without anj' support from Scripture or other writings, and has like validitj' with another conjecture, that the assignment of seven days to a week may have been derived from the supposed number of the planets.
II. That the Sabbath owes its maintenance to its mo- rality we will endeavor more expressly to substantiate. Here a consideration of first consequence is that it forms the subject of the fourth commandment. Some deny the ethical character of the decalogue. They allege it to be of a mixed nature, and insist that though par- ticular elements in it are of inherent and enduring worth, yet, as a whole, it belonged to an economy of shadows, and has vanished with them. Therefore the presence of any statute in such a compendium is no de- cisive evidence of moral force.
1. But the decalogue in its integrity has a very dis- tinctive place and consequence in the Bible. It was proclaimed with extraordinary solemnity, peculiar to itself, from Mount Sinai (Exod. xix, lG-24). God caused it to be written on tables of stone, and he made these stones to be deposited in the ark, representative of him- self. " These words," says Moses, '• the Lord spake to all your assembly in the mount, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice, and he added no more." The decalogue was fre- quently called the covenant, and the chest containing it the arh of the covenant. Would a fragmentary and het- erogeneous compound create or warrant any such desig- nation? Again, as often as Christ cited any of these commandments he enforced them emphatically. The Jews seem to have distributed them into greater and less, and to have treated the less as scarcely deserving consideration. But he impressively declared, " Whoso- ever shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." The kingdom of heaven is the Gospel dispensation. Certain statutes our Lord declares to be congenial with that economy, and their observance he characterizes as
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a sure constituent or guarantee of its greatness. But what statutes could he speak of which verify this de- scription, and are rccognisalile from others, unless those composing the decalogue? When, also, he resolved the law into two great commandments, he made evident ref- erence to the two tables of the covenant, for he insti- tuted the same classification of devotional and social du- ties; and when he further resolved all duty into love, with God and man for its objects, he impressed on the whole code a moral interpretation. AVhat can be more truly or purely moral than charity? — charity branching off into piety and benevolence? In a word, the dec- alogue is reproduced by the apostles. What it enjoins they enjoin in the identical terms, or with only verbal alterations; and how could they more decisively affix their seal to its indelil)le righteousness?
2. The decalogue, then, as a whole, is moral. See Law of JIoses. If the Sabbath be an exception, it is the only exception. But when we have found it in a code collectively moral — the morality of which is at- tested by the clearest and most cumulative proof — and when we find it sharing all the conspicuousness and honors of the allied enactments, it would require strong- argument indeed to render credible its exceptional ritu- alism. Let us see whether good cause for so regarding it be discoverable in its own iiature, or in prop/iecy, or in w/iat Christ said of it expressly, or in the apostolic epistles.