THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT by J. M.

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Dec 20, 1853

THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.

By J. M.

"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Ex. xx, 8-11.

The law authorizing the Sabbath to be kept holy to the Lord, was not a mere ceremonial statute which should pass away with the bringing in of another dispensation, but an enactment which is intended to hold authority over man so long as he is upon the earth. Whatever portions of the judicial laws of Moses may have been abrogated, whatever of the types and symbols which were shadows of the heavenly things—a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ may have given place to the good things which came to us in Christ; yet the ten commandments remain untouched—unchanged.

There were religious observances enjoined upon the Jewish people, which have no authority over us. But the Sabbath was not made for the Jews—not made for any one nation of the earth; but for man—for the entire race. Its advantages, and blessings, and objects, and duties, are no less valuable under the Christian dispensation than under the Mosaic. Whatever the gospel has done to enlarge and extend our privileges, it has not curtailed them. We point to the period of the bringing in of the gospel, as an introduction to the enjoyment of special graces and special mercies. But did the coming of Christ disannul the authority of the Sabbath, did it set aside the law appropriating the seventh of man's time to religious uses, then would it have proved, in that particular at least, an injury rather than a blessing.

Never can man do without the Sabbath. His physical, his mental, his moral and religious well being, demand it.

The finger of God not only engraved the command, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," on a table of stone, but on the mental and bodily constitution of our race; and wherever we find the true christian, it is engraven on the fleshly table of his heart. Physicians of great eminence and number, have attested the Sabbath as a day of rest from toil. One affirms, "That a longer life and a greater degree of health are the sure results of a careful regard to the law of the Sabbath." Dr. Mussey says, "There cannot be a reasonable doubt that under a due observance of the Sabbath, life would on an average be prolonged more than one-seventh of its whole period." Dr. Farre maintains in his testimony given before the British house of Commons, "1st, That men who labor but six days in the week will be more healthy; and 2d, they will do more work and do it in a better manner."

No less valuable is the Sabbath for man's mental well being. The mind cannot be confined perpetually in one given direction. It must have a change of application; hence the truth of the statements of a certain writer who says, "Without the Sabbath, the work-shops of the world would resemble the wards of some mighty hospital, tenanted by the pining victims of immense toil. Manhood would in one or two generations lose all its characteristic strength. Youth would be smitten with fatal blight ere it had attained half its growth, and hale-old age would become a prodigy, to be wondered at in the land."

The moral and social welfare of society also certify the sacredness of this day, and the absolute necessity of its strict observance. Without public religious worship, disorder, and confusion, and moral death would reign universal in society. But religion is valued only when the Sabbath holds a place in man's affections. Let it be abolished, or changed from its holy purposes into a day of festivity and mirth, of unbridled amusement and pleasure, and soon, very soon the temple will be abandoned; the word of God will be forgotten; the family altar will be taken down; virtue and morality will become extinct, and society will rapidly approach to dissolution and death, amid scenes of anarchy and blood, like to that never to be forgotten period of the French Revolution.

It is not merely nor chiefly however because it secures rest from toil, because it secures mental growth, because it tends to preserve the moral and social well being of community, but because of the sanctifying influence upon the soul that we prize the Lord's day. The fact that we are heirs of eternity, makes it a matter of tremendous importance that we obtain a fitness for heaven. The opportunity afforded for religious improvement, for the promotion of true holiness in man's heart, for becoming acquainted with God and the truths of the Bible, makes the Sabbath a day of joy and rejoicing to the christian. Accordingly we find that the annals of christian biography do not mention one single man or woman of eminent christian character, who was at the same time a Sabbath breaker. Nor has any church been distinguished for spirituality and winning souls to Christ, while regardless of the Sabbath. On the other hand, almost every notorious criminal began his dread career by Sabbath breaking, and the greatest dejections of christian churches have been characterized by disregard of the Sabbath. The history of Romanism is a forcible proof of the truth of this remark.

Thus we are furnished with the most direct arguments of the sanctity of the Sabbath, in the universal demands of our race. The Sabbath was made for man. The elevation and perfection of humanity, no less than the growth and expansion of christianity, asserts its necessity. David felt the most devoted attachment to the temple of the Lord when he exclaimed, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." But what are your temples or christian churches without the Sabbath? Abolish the Sabbath, and these must crumble to the ground.

For the perpetuity of the Sabbath, we have then the irrefutable arguments drawn from the fact that God has made it a part of the moral law; that he instituted it not for a nation, but the race; that the great purposes of man's elevation and sanctification chiefly depend upon it; that the New Testament specifically enjoins it by the example of the early church, and from the strict observance of the Lord's day, subsequent to the time of the apostasy. To these add another consideration, God has set his seal of approbation upon the righteous observance of this day and his seal of disapprobation upon its profanation. His providential government of the world has marked it as a sin of no trifling moment. For this sin, God's heaviest judgments were poured out upon the Jewish nation. (See Nehemiah xiii, 17.) By the prophet Jeremiah also he publishes the solemn decree:—"Thus saith the Lord, if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the Sabbath day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerus

lem, and it shall not be quenched." (See Jer. xvii, 24-27, and Eze. xxii, 23-38.) Sabbath desecration was one of the great sins and curses of the children of Israel. With their violation of this command, began their repeated apostacies from God, which led to their destruction as a nation.

Subsequent nations no less truthfully speak the will of God in this particular. Where it has been hallowed, morality and good order, and liberal forms of government, and general prosperity have prevailed. Where it has been discarded, the reverse has invariably been the case. To the life and health-giving power of the christian Sabbath over us as a nation, we are indebted for the civil and religious privileges we enjoy; and if you would sow the seeds of infidelity, of profligacy, of vice and of general ruin, just lay the foul hand upon the christian Sabbath. Our national existence very much depends upon the revival and perpetuation of the elevated sentiments of morality and religion: those high thoughts and noble purposes; those holy affections and sacred principles with which the early fathers of this land were inspired, and which induced in them a devoted attachment to the Fourth Commandment.

The question will here arise, what constitutes the proper observance of the Sabbath? For an answer, see Isaiah, 58th chapter, 13th and 14th verses. In this is forbidden all worldly conversation and of implied necessity, all thought wholly upon secular business, all pursuits of pleasure and amusement; there is required a cessation from the ordinary business of life, and a consecration of the time to religious uses. God intended the Sabbath to be decidedly a religious day; and to use its sacred hours in festivity and mirth, in excursions of pleasure, in writing letters of friendship or business, in seeking new relaxation from toil or in obtaining repose and quiet for the physical man, is a profanation of the day; is robbery of God.

My brethren, hearer, reader, let your Sabbath thoughts, Sabbath conversation and Sabbath acts be such as will tend to sanctify your hearts and hallow your lives; and then, and only then will you meet its great purposes. Oh, remember the fact that you are an heir of eternity, and if you lose Sabbath privileges you are lost for ever.

Christian, if you would have the power of godliness reign in your soul, if you would live by faith, if you would overcome the world, if you would have your affections fixed on things above and not on things on the earth, spend well these golden opportunities of becoming rich towards God—these days of the soul's gain.