Isai. lviii. 13, 14. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day ; and call the Sab- bath a delight, The holy of the Lord, Honourable ; and shall honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine oivn words : then shall thou de- light thyself in the Lord ; and I will cause thee to ride upon
the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father : for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
THAT the observance of the Sabbath was intended to be of universal and perpetual obligation, does not admit of any reasonable doubt. It was enjoined to man in Paradise : and the commandment relating to it, when renewed to man at Mount Sinai, was, like all the other moral commandments, written by God himself on tables of stone. The Jewish prophets spake of it as to be continued under the Gospel dis- pensation3 : and the Apostles evidently continued the observance of it, transferring it only from the last day of the week to the first, in commemoration of our Lord's resurrection from the dead, and of the work of redemption which was thereby completed11. The ceremonial laws relating to it are abrogated ; but the moral part of it is as much in force as ever.
In the passage before us we may see,
I. In what light we should view the Sabbath —
The estimation in which it should be held is here variously expressed : we are taught to account that day,
1. Holy—
[Whatever was consecrated to God under the law was accounted holy : it was separated from all profane or common use, and was employed solely for the ends and purposes for which it had been thus set apart. Thus the Sabbath, being- consecrated to the especial service of God, is called in our text " God's holy day ;" and, " The holy of the Lord." In the New Testament also it is called, " The Lord's dayc." Hence it is obvious, that every part of it is to be regarded as the Lord's property, and to be improved for him alone. We should feel a veneration for it, precisely as we should for any thing else that had been dedicated to the Lord : and, as we shudder at the impiety of Belshazzar in using, at a feast, the sacred ves- sels which he had taken from Jerusalem, though he himself was not a worshipper of Jehovah ; much more must we, who acknowledge the sanctity of the Sabbath, shudder at the thought of alienating any portion of it from Him, to whom it exclusively belongs.]
a See Isai. lvi. 1, 4, 6.
b See John xx. 19, 26. Acts xx. 7. 1 Cor. xvi. 2. » Rev. i. 1Q