"Doing Thy Pleasure on My Holy Day."
"If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath,
From doing thy pleasure on my holy day;
And call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy of the Lord, honorable;
And shalt honor him,
Not doing thine own ways,
Nor finding thine own pleasure,
Nor speaking thine own words;
Then shalt thou delight 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."
Isa. 58:13, 14. It is evident that Isaiah's teaching—God's teaching rather—respecting the spirit and mode of the proper observance of the Sabbath, is regarded by many as obsolete. As to the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath, how can it be denied without rejecting the decalogue in which it is imbedded? If the fourth commandment is no longer binding, how about the third and the fifth, between which it stands, and all that follow? If the spirit and mode of Sabbath-keeping set forth in the 13th and 14th verses of Isaiah 58, quoted above, is obsolete under the new covenant, how about the spirit and mode of fasting, as a divine institution recognized by our Lord, set forth by Isaiah in the preceding verses of the chapter? Analyzing the lines of the texts they suggest: (1) Turning the foot away from wonted ways on the Sabbath—not doing thine own ways; (2) nor doing thine own pleasure—nor finding it; (3) nor speaking thine own words of wonted themes; but, (1) setting apart the Sabbath as a holy day (not holiday) for God's honor; and, (2) finding pleasure and delight in so doing; (3) such observance secures divine delights, which earthly pleasures cannot equal, and divine honors that exalt and satisfy. Bishop Andrew comments thus: "To keep the Sabbath in an idle manner is the sabbath of oxen and asses; to keep it in a jovial manner is the sabbath of the golden calf, when the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play; to keep it in surfeiting and wantonness is the sabbath of Satan, the devil's holiday." The day is God's, by right and claim,
Yet made for man; then what a shame
To rob the Lord of praise divine
Seeking not his but only thine. The foregoing is from the Christian Secretary of some months ago. Its logic and its interpretation are alike faultless. It would be difficult to make a stronger case in so few words. The perpetual obligation to observe the Sabbath cannot be denied without rejecting the decalogue in which it is imbedded. Nay, more. It cannot be denied without ignoring the spirit of the teaching of the prophets, Nehemiah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, on the subject; it cannot be denied without falsifying the teachings of Jesus in the declaration that the Sabbath was made for man; it cannot be denied without involving the custom of Paul, as described in the 13th, 16th, 17th and 18th chapters of the Acts, in gross inconsistency. The writer of the above extract states the occasion of his writing as follows:— "A recent occurrence prompts these questions. On a recent Sunday a yacht squadron lay anchored in a bay of Long Island Sound. It was announced along the coast that the chaplain of the fleet would hold divine service in the morning of that day on the admiral's yacht. It is honorable to the squadron that they should have an evangelical chaplain, and that they should anchor on the Sabbath and have divine service, and that they should invite the dwellers on the islands and shore of the coast, who live remote from houses of public worship, to attend. But how about church-members who live hard by sanctuaries and must drive four or five miles and pass by several of God's houses to reach the shore?" That such an occurrence on Sunday should call forth such truthful utterances regarding the Sabbath of Jehovah, seems a little surprising. The writer certainly must know that the Sabbath of which Isaiah spoke was not Sunday, but seventh day. And in the vivid picture of the prophet we have the manner in which God wants that Sabbath kept. It is not a day of idleness, of pleasure-seeking, or of dissipation; it is a day for holy delights in the worship of God. This is the so-called "Jewish Sabbath." The writer must also know that it was this same Sabbath whose universality Jesus declared when he affirmed that it "was made for man." It was this same Sabbath which Jesus sought to divest of the cumbersome traditions with which the people had invested it, and which he sought, like Isaiah, to make a source of spiritual blessing and joy to men. It was this same Sabbath which Paul, in his ministry, honored, using it as a source of instruction and spiritual help to his fellow-men, while he labored among them on the other six days of the week at his trade. The Sabbath of Moses and Isaiah is the Sabbath of Jesus and Paul. The New Testament never uses the term Sabbath, referring to the weekly day of rest, in any other sense than that in which the Old Testament uses the same term, and never means any other day of the week than that which is meant by the same term in the Old Testament. There is, then, no such thing as the "Jewish Sabbath" or the "Christian Sabbath" known to Scripture teaching. The Sabbath which God required his ancient people to keep holy, he requires his people everywhere and in all times to keep holy, for the same reasons, for the same ends, and in the same spirit. But Sunday, or the first day of the week, as a holy day, is wholly unknown to the Scripture calendar. That the tying up of a yacht on Sunday and the flocking of people from the shore to attend religious services on board the vessel should have provoked a Baptist to such a vigorous, Biblical exegesis of the Sabbath doctrine is surprising.—Sabbath Recorder.