Commemorative Institutions.
In the divine economy the great Creator has seen fit to ordain memorials of important things and events. Both the wisdom and mercy of God are manifested in the monumental institutions he has given to the world, because of their proneness to forget that which is for God’s glory, as well as for man’s highest good. Thus God gave to Israel the Passover, a memorial of the deliverance from Egyptian bondage; and to us the Lord’s Supper and Baptism, as memorials of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These divine ordinances are to be celebrated “in remembrance” of the great Author of human redemption. But while we are celebrating memorials of the Redeemer we are not to forget the Creator. For lying back of all the events connected with the history of the world, or the plan of redemption, is the great work of the Creator of the heavens and the earth. The ground of the obligation of the created to the Creator is seen in that stupendous work. Through nature we look up to Nature’s God. And in all scripture the fact of the creation is distinctly set forth as that which distinguishes the true God. For while men direct their thoughts, affections and prayers to Him who created all things, they have a perfect shield against idolatry, and they can never make a mistake. We see, then, how important it is that this great fact should be commemorated. And the Creator himself has said, “This is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” A monumental institution was given to mankind in the Sabbath, that men might know and ever remember the Creator. Ezek. 20:12. “Moreover, also, I gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them.” That the Sabbath was given as a memorial of creation has been almost universally admitted. But of all the testimonies in favor of this position, that of Alexander Campbell is the most interesting. In his work entitled, “Popular Lectures and Addresses,” pp. 283, 284, he says:— “The oldest commemorative institution in the world is that which records the voluminous fact that Nature is herself an effect, and not a primary cause. It is in this sublime and philosophic way that the man of true science views that primeval solemnization of time, called ‘The Sabbath,’ the first and one of the most significant and important of all Patriarchal institutions. Most modern philosophers, though Baconians in every thing else, are Platonists, and Aristotelians here. They assume, because their philosophic wand is too short to reach up to the first Sabbath—they assume I say, that nature is an effect.” “Heaven left not this fact, the basis of a thousand volumes, to be gathered from abstract reasonings, vitiated traditions, ingenious analogies, or plausible conjectures, but from a monumental institution which was as universal as the annals of time, as the birth of nations, and as the languages spoken by mortals. An institution, too, which notwithstanding its demand not only of the seventh part of all time, but of the seventh day in uninterrupted succession, was celebrated from creation to the deluge, during the deluge, and after the deluge till the giving of the law; and which, when transcribed by the finger of God, from the tables of memory to the tables of marble begins with the word, ‘REMEMBER,’ the only word which is legitimately inscribed in every land and language upon every sort