THE SABBATH OF THE SAVIOUR.
By George A. Snyder
AND He said unto them, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." Mark 2:27, 28. We read of the Saviour in John 1:1-3; Heb. 1:1, 2, and Col. 1:16 that "by Him were all things created," and that "without Him was not anything made that was made." The Sabbath being one of the things which were made, it is clear that it was made by the Saviour when He rested at the close of the week of creation. Hence it was fitting that He should call Himself Lord of the Sabbath. No one will deny that it was the seventh day of the week that He called the Sabbath on this occasion. If He is "Lord of the Sabbath,"—the seventh day of the week,—then the seventh day of the week must be the "Sabbath of the Lord," or "the Lord's day." Compare Ex. 20:10; Isa. 58:13, 14; Rev. 1:10. The Pharisees accused Christ's disciples of breaking the fourth commandment when they plucked a little grain to satisfy their hunger on the Sabbath. He who made both man and the Sabbath answered that "the Sabbath was made for man," not against him. The Sabbath is not a Moloch to which man must be sacrificed; neither is it a toy to be used or abused to satisfy every whim of man. It is a benign institution, ordained for man's highest good; and the Sabbath law runs, not crosswise, but parallel with every other law of divine origin. When Jesus healed the withered hand on the Sabbath, the Pharisees questioned whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath. When He answered that it was "lawful to do well on the Sabbath," He recognized the validity of the Sabbath precept, which the Pharisees professed to keep so strictly, and at the same time passed sentence on their narrow ideas of its observance as being subversive of the spirit of the law. Matt. 12:10-13. In answer to the lawyer's question, "Which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matt. 22:36-40. The great universal law of love embraces the two great principles of love to God and love to our neighbor. The first four precepts of the Decalogue, when rightly observed, show our love to God, and the last six, our love to our neighbor. These two great principles, and all the precepts which grow out of them, can never interfere with each other, but must always work together in perfect unison. Any seeming jar is always the result of a misconception on our part. The Saviour's life is the only perfect illustration of the harmonious fulfilment of all the requirements of the law of love. Love to God, the first and great commandment, was perfectly revealed in Him; and love to His neighbors, the second great commandment, instead of being less important than the first, was "like unto it" with Him. "In Thy life the law appears,
Drawn out in living characters." In 1 John 4:20 we read, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth [loveth less, or persecuteth] his brother, he is a liar." Our protestations of love to God amount to nothing unless they are interwoven with actual manifestations of love to all God's children. All these scriptures show that the two great principles of love to God and love to our neighbor are co-operative, and that when they are evenly inwrought in our hearts as they were in Jesus, we, like Him, will fulfil "all the law." We shall keep the same Sabbath which He kept, and just as He kept it. Our lives will be the harmonious fulfilling of all the precepts which grow out of the two great generic principles of love. Jesus kept the Sabbath in the flesh when He was on earth, and He will surely keep the same Sabbath in our flesh to-day, if we will only let Him; for He is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."