fallen man, of acquiring holiness, and of obtaining salvation." "In every one of these respects, the Sabbath is equally useful, important, and necessary to every child of Adam. It was no more necessary to a Jew to rest after the labor of six days was ended, than to any other person. It was no more necessary to a Jew, to commemorate the perfections of God, displayed in the works of creation; it was no more necessary to a Jew to obtain holiness, or to increase in it; it was no more necessary to a Jew to seek or to obtain salvation. Whatever makes either of these things interesting to a Jew in any degree, makes them in the same degree interesting to any other man. The nature of the command, therefore, teaches as plainly, as the nature of the command can teach, that it is of universal application to mankind. It has, then, this great criterion of a moral precept, viz, universality of application."* Again; that the fourth commandment is still in force, and will be to the end of the world, is manifest from the following declarations of Christ himself, in his sermon on the mount: Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. That our Saviour speaks here, not of the ceremonial, but of the moral law, we gather with certainty, from his proceeding in *See Dwight's Theology, Vol. 4. Ser. 105. this very connexion, to expound the sixth, seventh, and eighth commandments. Now, if he had intended to abrogate one of the longest sections of the law, would he have disclaimed all intention of touching a word, or letter of it? It cannot be. But if he left it just as he found it, and if we have his divine pledge that no part of the law shall fail, then is the Sabbath a perpetual institution. Further, we infer the perpetuity of the fourth commandment from Rom. iii. 31. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid; yea, we establish the law. What law? Not the Jewish ritual, for it had already "waxed old and vanished away." It was the moral law, then, which the apostles by their doctrines established. And what is it to establish any law? Is it not to preserve every section of it inviolate? But it could never have been said that the moral law was established through faith, if an essential part of it had been annulled by the bringing in of the gospel dispensation. Finally, the very position of the fourth commandment, or the place which it occupies in the decalogue, strongly confirms the foregoing conclusions. The first three commandments prescribe the duties which we owe to God: the last six, the duties which we owe to our fellow men · and one relating to the Sabbath stands betweer them, as the connecting link-as the main pillar and support of the whole system. Without this divine bond of union, neither piety to God, nor love to man, could be preserved in the world. Or, as an old writer rather quaintly, but forci bly remarks, "The fourth commandment is put into the bosom of the decalogue, that it might not be lost; it is the golden clasp which joins the two tables together; it is the sinew in the body of laws, which were written with God's own finger; it is the intermediate precept, which participates of the sanctity of both tables; and the due observance of which, is the fulfilling of the whole law." Such a "clasp" who shall venture to break? Such a "sinew" who can attempt to sever with impunity? SECTION IV. It is, to our minds, a delightful and conclusive argument in favor of the Sabbath, that it was given to man in his primitive holiness, and is to be perpetually kept in heaven. 1. It was given to man before his apostacy. We should have been apt to think, perhaps, that while our first parents retained their primitive innocence, it would answer no valuable purpose to enjoin upon them the religious observance of any particular day, inasmuch as they were disposed to spend every day in the service of their Creator. The Sabbath they could not need as a season of rest, for their labor, if labor it might be called, was most easy and invigorating. It was only to dress the garden and keep it. No more toil, as the prince of epic poets expresses it, Than sufficed To recommend cool zephyrs, and made ease God, however, was pleased to enjoin, even upon them, a weekly intermission of their delightful care of plants and flowers, that nothing might divert their minds from the far more animating duties of praise and adoration. And had they kept their first estate, and remained in paradise forever, the same reasons which made it proper for them to observe the Sabbath at all, would have made the duty and the privilege perpetual. Or had they lived a thousand years in perfect holiness, and then been translated to heaven, they would have gone from the enjoyment of earthly Sabbaths to an eternal rest. For, 2. Heaven is a place of rest. It is that holy Sabbatism, which "remaineth to the people of God;" and of which the weekly Sabbath is evidently a type. In Heaven, there will be no toil, no bodily wants to supply, no fatigue demanding repose, no wasting or flagging of the immortal energies of the blessed. And yet, they will rest for ever. They will keep an endless Sabbath. They will spend a blissful and ever-brightening eternity, in celebrating the perfections of God-the works and glories of the Lamb. And can it be, that he who gave the Sabbath to our first parents, as soon as he had created them, and will give an eternal Sabbatism to all his people in Heaven, has left so wide a chasm between the earthly paradise and the celestial? Was the rest which God ordained below, a type of that above? It is the nature of every type, to continue until it is superseded by the anti-type. Thus it was with all the typical institutions of the Jewish ritual. They continued till Christ, the great antitype, came, and then they disappeared. And thus the earthly Sabbath must continue, till it shall be superseded by the heavenly. For the same reason, that it was the duty and the privilege of the first human pair to keep the Sabbath before the apostacy, would it have been the duty and privilege of all their posterity, had sin never entered the world. But how much more do their depraved children, in every land and every age, need stated seasons of rest from the laborious employments to which they are doomed? How much more do they, who have lost the image of God, and are prone, continually, to forget their obligations and dependance, need the leisure and the solemn stillness of the Sabbath, to recall them from their wanderings, and assist them in their preparations for Heaven? Had man, in his primitive state, been totally depraved, and since been made perfectly holy, as Adam was; had the Sabbath, moreover, been given him in his original sinful state, it might have been plausibly argued, that since the happy renovation, such an institution could no longer be necessary. But what can be more absurd, than to adopt the reverse of this argument, and say, that the sacred rest which God gave to man in his innocency, has ceased to be needful, or obligatory, since the apostacy! And yet this is the absurd conclusion, to which all the arguments against the perpetuity of the Sabbath unavoidably come. We might, as we draw towards the close of this part of the discussion, avail ourselves of |
