NEANDER ON THE SABBATH.
By S. A. Taft
THE view taken by Neander in his Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 1, page 294, if I understand him—and if I don't, I hope some one will correct me—is this: The Old Testament law of the Sabbath, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, &c. . . . for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it," [Ex. xx, 8-11,] is the New Testament law "to keep holy the entire life, as a life consecrated every day alike to God," expressed I suppose in some such language as the following: "Be ye holy"—"Pray without ceasing"—"Rejoice always"—"Do all things without murmurings and disputings that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life," &c. The idea of constancy is either expressed or understood in all these affirmations. Fidelity unto death, every day alike is the principle. Now I am most ready to believe and embrace all that is expressed or implied in these and many other like expressions and that the New Testament—nor do I know that this sentiment is peculiar to the New Testament, I believe the same is most amply inculcated in the Old—imposes upon us the obligation to glorify God daily in our bodies and spirits I do most fully believe; but that this is the ultimate resolution of the old original law of the Sabbath, I shall be most slow to believe. I demand testimony. That all may see that I do not misrepresent the celebrated Neander I will give his language. It is this: "In the New Testament fulfillment, i. e., the keeping holy of the entire life as a life consecrated every day alike to God, the Old Testament law of the Sabbath must find its resolution." Now what is this but saying that the Old Testament law of the Sabbath as quoted above, is the New Testament law to live daily to the honor and glory of God. That is to say, that law which in the Old Testament ordains that we keep holy the Sabbath day, which is the seventh or last day of the week, in the New Testament ordains that we keep holy every day of the week; not only seventh and first day, but every other day. Neander then would maintain, and did, I presume, that every day was the Sabbath, every day was the Lord's Rest-day; and if this be so, where were the Lord's working days, and where are ours? For the Old Testament law of the Sabbath not only ordains that we "Remember the Sabbath day" to keep it holy but positively forbids all labor on that day; and if in the New Testament this same law is so far amplified as to embrace every day of the week—a thing impossible in the very nature of the case—then it must exclude all labor, and we are doomed to perish, or be supported by a miracle. Such is the absurdity of trying to reconcile what is positively irreconcilable, the law of the Sabbath with the keeping of the first day of the week, or any other day but the seventh day. In truth Neander was a no-Sabbath man. He did not believe that under the New or Gospel dispensation, any one day was more holy than another. This must be so, by virtue of the quotation already given. But lest some may doubt, I will give another, same page as above, 294. "Not barely the observance of Jewish feasts, but all forms and modes of particularizing the christian life by reference to certain times, is reprobated by the apostle Paul, as a Jewish practice, a descent to servile dependence on the elements of the world." This is a remarkable passage—Sunday-keeping, is "a Jewish practice," because it is one of the modes "of particularizing the christian life," a thing, according to the above, "reprobated by the apostle Paul as a Jewish practice." I wonder if Sunday, or First-day keepers, who make so much of Neander, understand all this.40Now the position which I once held, was precisely this with some modifications, though I held it independent of Neander; for I did not then know what Neander's position was. I was driven to this from a serious conviction of the absurdity of all the arguments favoring a change of the day, and from an equally serious conviction, that the keeping of the first day was legitimate as a conventional arrangement, believing that the old Sabbath law was abrogated. But the contrary of all this, is the solid truth of God's holy Word. The Sabbath law of the Old Testament has not been, in the New, resolved into the law of a holy life; neither has it been abrogated; universal Protestantism affirms this. Nor does it begin with indefiniteness and end in definiteness, as all those say who affirm that it only decrees that we keep holy a seventh part of our time indefinite, while they always fasten it upon the First-day, definite. As well might they resolve the finite into the infinite, the particular into the general, as to have the indefinite end in the definite. An indefinite law must eternally remain such. It can never decree the definite. But the Sabbath law is definite and beyond equivocation—it lacks nothing. And better by far had it been for all the world that they obeyed it. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, &c. . . . but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work." Amen. Even so let it be.