Entry 46

Remember the sabbath day—Sabbath is from the Hebrew Shabath, to rest, the day of rest, the Sabbath day. This name is the most ancient name of the day, and till New Testament times it was the only scriptural and ecclesiastical name. The Lord’s day is the New Testament and Christian name (Rev. i. 10). In the early Church the weekly commemoration of Christ’s resurrection was observed on that day, hence the Greek Church still calls it Resurrection day. Another familiar name of the day is Sunday. This is an astrological and heathen designation, and comes down from times when Sol or Apollo, the Sun god, was worshipped on that day of the week, just as Saturn was worshipped on Saturday and the Moon on Monday. The Puritans and Presbyterians tried hard to get this pagan title removed from the first day of the week, but in this as in many other things they were overborne. In their own Confessions and Catechisms, however, they use the only defensible names, Christian Sabbath or Lord’s day.

The Sabbath day is the oldest religious institution in the world. It existed long ages before the Mosaic legislation, into which it was afterwards incorporated. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, circumcision and the Passover, public worship, nay, the Holy Scriptures themselves, all these ordinances and possessions are ancient and venerable, but none of them all can compare with the Sabbath day for hoary antiquity. It is the noble and beautiful representation of the most ancient page of Scripture, a representation, in Ewald’s words, of “unsurpassable truth,” that the first morning that rose on Adam and Eve was the morning of the Sabbath day. And in spite of the fall, the Sabbath has kept its place among mankind as one of the two sweet relics of Eden, and is week by week sent down among us as an earnest of heaven, a foretaste of the rest that remains for the people of God. The second great epoch of sabbatical development and legislation was in the time of Moses. Standing at the head of human history and looking down the long vista, we hardly ever, even among the most darkened nations, lose sight of a Sabbath day. But it is only at the time of the exodus that the Sabbath becomes a permanent national and ecclesiastical ordinance, a political and religious institution of first-rate importance.

Sinai was not the birth-place of the Sabbath day. The law of the Sabbath as it was published in the fourth commandment was not a new thing on the earth, any more than the law of reverence for the name of God, or the law commanding honour to parents. The law of the Sabbath, like the laws of worship and parental honour, was rather a reinforcement and republication of a law that had been written on the human heart from the beginning. The Sabbath was first appointed by the Creator of mankind, and it was issued anew by Him when He became the Redeemer and Lawgiver of Israel. And within this holy field of time, within and around this hallowed day, all the holiest practices of religion, and all the best blessings of national, domestic, and individual life gathered in Israel. By this commandment a space was cleared in the daily life of that ancient people for the study and pursuit of divine things, and among all the debts that modern Christendom owes to ancient Israel, and they are many and irrequiteable, after Christ Himself and the Holy Scriptures, the Sabbath day is the greatest.

It is well known that the Hebrew Sabbath began at sunset on Friday, and ended at sunset on Saturday. And from the Holy Scriptures themselves, as well as from the expository and ecclesiastical writings of the Jews, we gather a pretty full acquaintance with the habits of Sabbath observance that obtained among that people. Perfect rest from all manual and mental toil was the original and fundamental idea of the institution. The Sabbath was literally and universally the day of quiet and repose. And to signalize and fix that idea in every mind, the commandment became unusually explicit and minute. “The seventh day is the rest of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work: thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter: thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.” And though troublesome and vexatious rules about this and that personal and domestic habit rose up among the later Jews, still this matter of rest was and is to them and to us the fundamental law of the Sabbath day. But it did not follow that this weekly vacation from ordinary labour was to be left void of all occupation. The law of holy rest did not leave the day open to be wasted in sloth and idleness. Indolence of body and vacancy of mind are not the divine rest designed for the physical, intellectual, and spiritual natures of man. And hence it was that in Israel, the Sabbath, without ceasing to be a day of real repose, became at the same time a day of special occupation with divine things. On the Sabbath the daily sacrifices were doubled in the tabernacle and temple. On the Sabbath the priests made ready the new display of shewbread, changing last week’s preparation, and setting forth the new service upon the sacred table. On that day also the new relays of priests relieved the exhausted occupants of the holy office: the refreshed and recruited functionaries commenced their weekly terms on the seventh day. And throughout the whole nation the same special religious aspect was given to the Sabbath day. The seventh day was the day of holy convocation. On that day the pious people resorted to their prophets to hear their new revelations, and their expositions and applications of the divine law. In later times, when the prophetical office had come to a standstill, the people gathered into the synagogues on the Sabbath day for reading the Scriptures, and for mutual exhortation and prayer. At home also, in the more devout households, all light and foolish as well as all anxious and worldly thoughts were banished from the mind, and quiet meditation and communion with the highest subjects was devoutly cultivated. “And,” as one of their own writers has said, “it is to this intellectual and religious observance of the Sabbath day that the Jewish nation owes the gratifying and auspicious fact that ignorance never spread among them as among many other nations and sects, and that every Israelite was, in consequence of the instruction given to him on the Sabbath day, enlightened in the principles of his faith, so that, even in the Middle Ages, when everywhere the deepest darkness of ignorance and superstition prevailed in Christendom, immortal philosophers and poets flourished in Israel.”

Remember—“This unique verbal form suggests that our liability to transgress the command is increased by a danger of its slipping our memory. Not that the day itself is likely to elude observation: on the contrary, temporal affairs are in Christian lands regulated and modified in reference to its occurrence. But we must not merely start in the morning under a conviction that Sunday is Sunday: we must bear the circumstance in mind all day long, doing or not doing in intentional subordination to that dominant circumstance, or else we shall not hallow the hallowed day. Wandering thoughts and a wandering heart desecrate it” (Christina Rossetti’s Letter and Spirit).

thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates—“In this I go so far that I would not have the rest of the Sabbath day broken up even by too large demand for public worship. We should have time for both body and mind to come into a state of repose. . . . All letters of business, all messengers of business, and all conversation of business, and all books which treat of business we should exclude. . . . And as the commandment is upon our servants and the stranger within our gates, so we should hinder our workmen from doing anything on our account, and we should require nothing of them save what is necessary for our own health and the health of the cattle. We should not encourage any traffic, nor employ any Sabbath vehicles. Our Sabbath journeys should be indeed Sabbath-day journeys; and if we employ the services of our servants and cattle, it should be to them after Sabbath-day measure, for health or refreshment sake, by no means for labour or for profit. . . . I have no ascetic views of the Sabbath, and grudge not to myself or the people whatever may comfort and refresh their minds. And if they find that end to be served by walking abroad to meditate and muse upon the handiworks of God, to escape from the noisy city, and rest in some retired rural plain, I commend them to that or any other method which they find best for fulfilling the purposes of God. But sure I am, a crowded vehicle, whether by land or water, or a public inn, or a crowded garden, or a bustling highway, or a park parade, are not the places most fitting for repose and retirement: and they who so spend the Sabbath, and call it keeping the commandment, do but lie unto the Lord and their own soul” (Edward Irving).

“The Being unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan.”—Lamb.

Questions

1. Derive Sabbath, Lord’s day, Sunday. Which is the most fitting and proper designation for us to use? and which is the least so? State your reasons.

2. Study the analysis of Remember in Larger Catechism, 121.

3. Perversion of the spirit while retaining the letter of the precept is an old art. Show the application of this aphorism to the matter in hand.

4. Commit to memory Watt’s hymn:

   Blest morning! whose first dawning rays.

5. Explain Pope’s line:

   Ev’n Sunday shines no Sabbath day to me.