The Pulpit Commentary — Leviticus — Section 380

celebrated by social worship. The people were expected to gather in their tho11Bands to praise the Lord. Were it not for such a regulation as the sabbath, with its public services, even Judaism could not have survived. The same reason still holds for a holy sabbath. In the interests of religion it must be observed. What would become of our holy religion if a set time for its weekly observance were not generally kept? Men need these "trysting times " and" trysting places" (as ",:,P,ic, in ver. 2, might very properly be translated), that religion may keep its position among us. We may imagine what our land would be if no Lord's day were kept, if no sabbath liells summoned people to public prayer, and no preachers got their weekly oppor- tunities. It would soon be an irreligious land, carelessness and indifference reigning throughout it in a measure infinitely greater than they do even now. IV. THE DAY OF BEST IS TO BE REGARDED AB THE LoRn's. "It is the sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings." The Jew regarded the sabbath .as "the Lord's day." It was the day of the week that God regulated, and all whose hours he claimed as his. We claim as much for "the first day of the week" under our dispensation. We ask men to lay the day as a hearty offering on God's altar. They are not doing so while they spend it as they like. It is to be a holy day, not a holiday; a holy day, and therefore to a holy soul a happy day, the day in which we can rejoice and be glad. ,vhen we can say with John," I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day,'' we are sure to have most precious visions of the Lord's beauty and glory (cf. Rev. i. 10, etc.). It is no contention, therefore, about something Jewish, but simply about something honestly dedicated as a day to God. Those who contend against the strict observance of the Lord's day either labour under a total misapprehension about the way some people spend it, or are really bent upon devoting the day to their own purposes instead of to God's. If we are commonly honest, we shall esteem it only right to surrender as the highest offering of our religious life the seventh of our time to him who deserves it all. " Man, then," says Ewald, " shall release his soul and body from all their burdens, with all the professions and pursuits of ordinary life, only in order to gather himself together again in God with greater purity and fewer disturbing elements, and renew in him the might of his own better powers. If, then, the interchange of activity and rest is already founded in the nature of all creation, and is the more beneficial and health-bringing the more regular its recurrence, so should it be found here too ; yet not as when, in the night and in sleep, the body is cared for, but as when, in a joyous day of unfettered meditation, the spiritual man always finds his true rest, and thereby is indeed renewed and strengthened."-R. M. E. Vers. 1-3.-The sabbath. This is here classed amongst the" feasts of the Lord." The greater number of these were first observed after the settlement of the Israelites in Canaan; but the Passover was an exception, which was held at the time of the Exodus, forty years earlier. The sabbath also was an exception. We have to consider- !. Tm: OBLIGATION OF THE SABBATH. 1. It is not altogether a Mosaic institution. (1) Its original enactment took place at the close of the creation week. The wo_rds are these (see Gen. ii. 1-3). (2) It was, therefore, an Adamic law, ond was obligatory upon mankind at large more than twenty centuries before the Israelites had an exist- ence. (3) It was by the Israelites themselves recognized as a patriarchol !aw. ~or, in the wilderness of Sin, probably three months before they were fully constituted mto a nation by receiving their own Law at Sinai, the double portion of manna which they gathered on the sixth day had respect to the sabbath to follow on the seventh (see Exod. xvi. 22-30). 2. It was incorporated in the Sinai code. (1) It formed the fourth commandment of the Decalogue (Exod. xx. 8-11). But even here it is intro- duced with the word "Remember," as a law already known to exist. The reason for its observance also is that given at the original institution. (2) As a Levitical law, however it has an additional reason, viz. the deliverance of the children of Israel from the cruei servitude in Egypt, where they could not enjoy the rest of the ancient insti- tution (Deut. v. 15; see also Heh. iv. 8, margin). (3) In this relation also death was made the penalty of its transgression (see Exod. xxxi. 13-16; Numb. xv. 32-36). 3. The Levitical law of the sabbath is repealed. (1) The body is of Christ, who fulfilled ell. rtm. 1-6.J THE BoOK 0~ LEVITICUS. 345