THE SABBATH THE TEST OF OBEDIENCE.
By G. E. Fifield
THE present is but a continuation of the theme of my last article, as space forbade me to complete it then. On earth, the highest type of Divinity is noble fatherhood. Jesus taught us to pray, "Our Father, who art in heaven." In Christ's recorded words, oftener than any other name or title for God occur the sweet words, "My Father," and, "Your heavenly Father." It is scarcely too much to say that the whole teaching of Jesus was an effort to make men practically realize the fact of the divine Fatherhood. Since God is the ideal Father, it follows that His government is but that of the loving, tender parent for his children. The good father does not seek to ostentatiously display his authority, he does not arbitrarily command his child. His laws are but family regulations, given not merely to manifest his authority, but because they are absolutely necessary to the happiness and well-being of his children. But while the father has some loving reason for every requirement, many of these reasons are as yet not apparent to the children. The only reason he assumes the right to command them, is because they are children, and as yet not wise enough to know the best way. So far from seeking to keep them in a state of vassalage, where they will continually require to feel the restraining force of his laws, his one object is to so instil the principles of his government into their lives that they may become capable of self-government, or of absolute liberty. At the age of twenty-one, it is hoped that these principles may have been so written in the heart as to have become the inner actuating law of the life ever after. Then the outer parental restraint does not consciously fall off all at once, but it has unconsciously and imperceptibly become the law of the inner desires of the heart, leaving the child absolutely free to do as he pleases, since he now pleases to do only those things which are in harmony with the liberty and joy and peace of all the members of the family. This is a perfect illustration of the divine government. He required us all to give to Him, the one Father, our supreme love and worship, not only because He loved us and it was the only natural, normal attitude of the soul to love Him, but also that by that common love of the one all Father, He might forever unite us all in one loving family of brothers and sisters. Image-worship was forbidden because He foresaw that by it men would get to worshiping different gods, and so disregard and deny the universal brotherhood. An image also is a creed in marble, holding the mind to its present conceptions of God instead of leaving it free to forever progress to higher, nobler thoughts of Him. That holy name must not be taken vainly or lightly upon the lips, lest it lose its power to lift all hearts into the attitude of reverent, loving, brotherly praise, so bringing them nearer to God and nearer to each other. The Sabbath was the sign that the only true God was the Creator, so if all men continued to worship the Creator only, as the one Father, the brotherhood could never be broken. Then, too, there is an infinity of beauty in every flower, which, with all our microscopes, we can never fathom. How, then, if we worship the Creator only, can we expect to ever fathom the spiritual beauty of Him who made the flower, or hold ourselves other than ever ready to receive higher, truer, more loving thoughts of Him, that shall bring us all nearer together, and nearer to His great heart? To honor the father and the mother is necessary to the happiness of every family. "Thou shalt not kill." This guards the joy of living. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." This guards our sacred domestic happiness. "Thou shalt not steal." This guards the joy of honest possession. "Thou shalt not bear false witness." This guards also the joy of property and life, as well as of reputation honestly earned. "Thou shalt not covet." This is to cut off the thought of sin, and so leave the soul safe and secure in its joy forevermore. It is easy to believe that God, who made this heaven and this earth, might unmake them if He chose. But it is not even thinkable that He could ever so make them over that the disregard of these precepts would not surely be fatal to the happiness of all intelligent beings who should inhabit them. This is what Christ said: "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than for one tittle of the law to fail." This, then, is God's law unchangeable, everywhere. It is perfectly obvious that the only way such a law as this can ever be abolished, or done away, is by so writing its divine principles of love in the inner life of the soul that they shall be our own, and so actuate us from within, instead of restrain us from without. We then can do what we please, because we please to do only what the law requires, and so there is an end of all legal restraint. This is how Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one who believes. As illustrated at the beginning of this article, our Father gave these laws to His children, because they were absolutely necessary to our happiness and life as members of His family. He did not even then compel us to keep them, but lovingly warned us by telling us the result of not obeying them. Altho through our disobedience misery and death have come, He still seeks, by His love, through the Gospel, to so write these precepts in our hearts as to make us capable of happiness and perfect liberty forevermore. So far from seeking to keep us under the arbitrary control of even this necessary and loving law, He seeks in this childhood state to so educate us and write these principles in our inner souls, that He may give us our majority by and by as men and women in Christ, and make us perfectly free to do as we please forevermore, since we will then please to do only those things which are in harmony with liberty and life. What has all this to do with the Sabbath? We answer, Very much. The Sabbath is the only point in all this law which tests us upon obedience to God's naked Word. We can easily see that if God had not said so, to lie, to steal, to kill, to commit adultery, and to covet, and to dishonor our parents, would have made every world a hell, and rendered happiness, and even life in the end, impossible. So, too, to have imaged God, would have inevitably led to the worship of different gods, and this would have destroyed the peace and unity of the family, and filled the world with hostile tribes, who disowned and denied their brotherhood. To take God's name in vain would as surely have destroyed the reverence for the universal Father, and the happiness of His family, as is disrespect of an earthly parent destructive of family happiness here. These principles are all written in the inner nature of things. It is not thinkable that they should be different. They are not so merely because God said so, but He said so because they were so. Of the Sabbath, however, it is apparently different. If God had seen fit to put His blessing upon some other day, setting it apart, and commanding us to keep it, we can not see but that it would have done as well. So far as we can understand, this matter of the precise day of the Sabbath rests solely on the fiat of God, as does no other part of the law. It is for this reason that men argue that it is unnecessary to strictly obey here. This is precisely the reasoning of the disobedient child. No child refuses obedience when he sees and fully understands the reason of love back of the command, and so finds it in accord with his own desires, and proceeding from his own enlightened soul, as well as from the father's will. It is only when he sees no reason that appeals to his own soul, but must obey, if at all, simply because the father requires it,—it is only then that his faith in the father's wisdom and love is tested at all. At other times he is really obeying his own will, since the two, his will and the father's, are in accord; it is only now that his obedience is tested, and he is learning to say, "Thy will, not mine, be done." As we have seen, the good father commands his child only because he is above him in knowledge and wisdom, and he seeks to lift him to his own higher and wider range of vision, and to set him free. The child that refuses to yield to the father only where he can now see and comprehend the reason, stops all this beneficent work of the father in his life, and condemns himself to stay at his present low level of ignorance and imperfection. So also our heavenly Father seeks to command us only that He may broaden our view by lifting us unto love's everlasting mountain-top with Him, so making us free forevermore. How much of real Christian experience lies right here! It is this walking with God in ways that we do not know, and can not yet understand, content to go only because He leads the way, and we have learned, since He is Lord, that His way is best, that leads us always to pray, "Not my will, but Thine, be done." As Whittier says, "The steps of faith fall on the seeming void, but find the rocks beneath." It is thus that Jesus was ever saying: "Not My way," "Not My will," "Not My word," "My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me." Submission to the higher will and the infinite intelligence, is the very key-note of the Christian life. Without this submission, God can not make7with us His covenant and work out His ideals in our lives. The Christian must learn with Christ, not on the transfiguration summits only, but also in the Gethsemane valleys, as well, to pray, "Not my will, but Thine, be done." Now the Bible says, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." And I ask you, dear hearts, if it did not test us on this one, all-important point, whereon all Christian growth and true conversion depends,—if it did not test us on this point of submission to the naked will of God, would it be a perfect law? Could the Spirit's Gospel power use a law that was minus this test to convert the soul? I know you will answer that it could not, for the conversion of the soul is simply the soul's change from following the ignes fatui of our own wills, to submission to the abiding will of God. But it is the Sabbath pre-eminently, if not exclusively, as we have shown, that, of all the requirements of the law, tests us on yielding our wills to God's naked Word. The child who will obey his father implicitly, when he can see no other reason, only because the father says so, and he knows his way is best, that child will render unfailing submission and obedience elsewhere and everywhere. So, also, the Christian who will obey God's will, yielding his life in trusting submission to do His will, merely because God requires it and the soul recognizes His command as sacred, that soul will yield to God everywhere and at all times, and the Father can work His own will in that life. The Sabbath alone, of all the requirements of the law, tests the soul on this kind of submission to God. It is therefore the test of true obedience, the sign of the soul's submission to God, that enables God to make with us His covenant. "It is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you."
G. E. FIFIELD.