(1.) The Sabbath provides for i-est and icorship. Our sensuous being requires the one, and our spiritual being the other. To deny the laboring population any inter- mission of toil, or the heir of immortality any time for religious observances, would be to ofl'end against the fundamental conditions of our state of existence. Un- der these aspects the Sabbath is not arbitrary. It is founded on the essentials and necessities of the human constitution, and nothing here below can be more solid and stable than its groundwork. To speak of our spirit- ual responsibilities more especially — if it be a moral duty to worship God, it roust also be a moral duty to observe that worship to the best advantage. For this the Sab- bath provides. It is advantageous for worship that a certain day be set apart for it, and guarded from intru- sive distractions. It is advantageous that the worship- pers set apart the same day, both to the end that one may not draw another into temporal toil, and that relig- ion may have the aids of social stimulus. It is advan- tageous that the day recur with suitable frequency. What freciuency would be best it might be difficult or impossible for us to determine ; but that would not show the proportioning of the time to be a matter of in- difference. We can easily perceive that there are ex- tremes to be avoided. If every day were a Sabbath, our terrestrial occupations would be suppressed. If the Sabbath returned once a year, it would be inadequate for the maintenance of liabitual devotion. One of these arrangements would have been evidently incompatible with what we owe to this world, and the other with du- tiful regard for the world to come. If we can judge thus far of the too often and the too seldom, why may not God descry unerringly the mean, and perceive that one day in seven is the best possible adjustment? — the most conducive to moral good in our existing circum- stances? Experience has recommended no other divi- sion of time as preferable ; on tlie contrary, every at- tempt to elongate or contract the week has utterly failed, and has owed the failure to a manifested impracticabil- ity or mischievousness. It follows that not only the duty, but the very timing of the duty, is of moral ac- count, and that the Sabbath is entitled, by its nature, to the place it occupies in the decalogue — fitly and justly ranking with statutes which transcend casualties, and will maintain their jurisdiction while the world lasts. On the same principle, if the sacredncss of the Sabbath has been enhanced by rendering it commemorative of some great event, such as the natural creation, there may be religious benefit, and therefore moral suitable-
ness, in transferring it to another day of the seven, in order to commemorate another event of analogous but superior consequence — such as the accomplishment of a spiritual creation by the resurrection of Christ from the dead. See Lord's Day. Even the old economy, not- withstanding its necessary regard to times, did not show any rigid adherence to particular days, when a sufficient reason existed for departing from them. Thus, while circumcision was by the law fixed to the eighth day, the great mass of the people who had grown up in the wilderness were circumcised on the same day (.Josh, v, 1-9) ; and when any obstacle prevented men from the eating the Passover on the 14th of the first month, they were allowed to postpone it to the next (Numb, ix, 6).
(2.) The pn-ophets, speaking in the name of God, al- ways express themselves in reverential language of the Sabbath. (See, in particular, Isa. Ivi, 6, 7 ; Iviii, 13, 14 ; also Ixvi, 23.)
It is objected that in tliese and like instances the Sabbath is allied with acknowledged constituents of the Mosaic law, and that such passages would therefore equally prove their permanency. It is in plain accord- ance, however, with the moral claims of the Sabbath that its continued observance should be foretold, and the absence of such prediction would have been urged in proof of its abrogation. Besides, these prophecies are in no part meaningless. They point to real and to improved worship in such diction as the .Jews were fa- miliar with and could alone comprehend. Shall we sav, then, that the change in worship would be improvement, and the change as to the Sabbath abolition? We can- not see that this conclusion is called for " by parity of reasoning." On the contrarc, these passages, to have sense or truth in any of their clauses, recpiire a perpet- uated Sabbath ; for the effect would be to sweep away worship altogether if a day for it were not preserved.
(3.) As regards Christ's compress saijings on this subject, he discouraged, no doubt, such a traditional observance of the Sabbath as would have transformed it into a day of heartless neglects and sanctionless rigors. But he countenanced the keeping of it in its true spirit, as a da}' of personal privilege and beneficent usefulness — avowing that " the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." This seems to teach that the Sabbath was made for man not as a Jew or as a Chris- tian, but as man, and therefore entitled to his regard in all conditions and through all ages. In reply, however, we are told that the expression in the original is the man. This must mean, it is said, "those for whom it was appointed, without specifying who they were, and not at all designating man in general." We see no grounds for such a paraphrase, but very much to de- mand its rejection. The article in such expressions de- fines the individmd or the species. No indi\'idual man could be thus singled out as having the Sabbath made for him unless it were Adam ; and none will assert that it was made for him in any sense exclusive of his pos- terity. Again, the article may define the species, as we say the horse, the ass, the ostrich. Where the species is defined, all the individuals are comprehended, or such an allegation is made as would apply to any of them in- differently. For example, " If the salt have lost its sa- vor, it is good for nothing but to be trodden under the feet of men" — literally " the men," or the species, men without the distinction of Jew and Gentile. '• Let your light so shine before men," literally " the men," in the sense of any or all men. " That which comcth out of the mouth this defileth a man" — literally "the man." equivalent to man or any man. Practically the distinc- tion here attempted to be made is visionary. Since 7n(in without the article is general, and the man, mean- ing the species man, is also general, the article may be dropped or retained without affecting the sense. Ac- cordingly, these modes of expression are often used in- terchangeably, AVhen Christ, then, declares that the Sabbath was made for man, we can only understand him as teaching that it was intended and instituted for