The following remarks in regard to the Sabbath, in a recent number of the New York Tribune, are too good to pass unnoticed. In answering a correspondent, the Tribune says :
"SAMUEL W. LANGLEY.—We accept the Bible as a whole, the Old and the New Testament. Jesus Christ says, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’ From this divine utterance we conclude that the Sabbath is not a Hebrew or Mosaic institution, but was given to the whole human race; and whatever religious or civil reasons made its observance obligatory on the Jews, make it equally so upon all human beings. This day of rest was given to our domestic animals as much as to us; and what does the ox or the ass know about a change of dispensations? You ask where is the command to keep the first day as a Sabbath, in the New Testament? There is no command with reference to the first or the seventh day; but Christ distinctly, in the utterance we have quoted, recognized the Sabbath a day of rest, and was wont to go into the synagogue on the Sabbath-day. He also said, ‘I came not to destroy, but to fulfill.’ The Mosaic dispensation was displaced by the Christion dispensation; but various traces of a Sabbath previous to Moses may be found in the sacred writings, and the very first word of the fourth commandment contains proof that the observance of this day existed before the giving of the decalogue. ‘Remember the Sabbath-day.’ It thus appears that the Saviour recognized the Sabbath both in his example and in his teaching. When a Christian parent, as our friend from Kentucky appears to be, wishes to lead his family in the footsteps of the great Teacher, does he wait for an express injunction? Is not the example of the divine Pattern a sufficient guide? Besides, we would ask our Christian friend Langley, in what regard society will be injured if the influence of this column should be thrown on the side of Sabbath-keeping? Will his children, or will ours, be any happier or more virtuous if instructed by us that the Old-Testament Sabbath is a dead Judaism? The Puritan Sabbath is one thing, the Bible Sabbath is another; but in protesting against the grimness of one, let us not bate a jot from the blessed rest of the other."