"The Sabbath of the Lord; and the Lord's Sabbath."
By Editor
SAYS B. P. Hildreth in the World's Crisis of the 29th ult., "Many honest and well-disposed people are utterly at a loss to understand how or why the seventh day was changed to the first day of the week, and are anxious to know by what authority the first day of the week becomes the christian's Sabbath. They fear the alteration was made by that wicked power who should 'think to change times and laws,' with whom they have no sympathy; and therefore still think that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord. To all such I would say," &c. AS we are one of those who fear that the change has been made by that wicked power who should think to change times and laws, we presume we are one of those to whom he "would say." We therefore feel disposed to listen to what he may say, and see if we can find anything which may allay our fears in regard to that work which the Bible attributes to the man of Sin. Allow us to remark here: There is a power introduced to us by the prophet Daniel which should think to change times and laws. It being agreed on all hands, by Protestant commentators, that this refers to the Papacy, we remark that the laws referred to must be some laws over which the Pope has not in reality any control; for he should not change them, but only think to do so. We then inquire: What laws are these? They must be either human or divine. We cannot apply the prophecy to human laws; for these he has instituted, changed or abrogated, according to his own pleasure. In this respect he has had a perfect right to do as he has done. Will any one contend that he who could triumphantly and proudly place his foot upon the neck of princes, and to whom kings would suppliantly bow and kiss his great toe,—that he has no power nor right to interfere with laws of men's making? Therefore, if we make it refer to human laws, the prophecy will not hold good; viz., that he should only think to change them. But if we say that the prophecy contemplates divine laws, will the facts in the case bear us out in the assertion? Has the Pope interfered with those laws by which God claims direct government over men? It is a well-known fact that he has. In what respect? Compare the decalogue of the Bible with the decalogue of the Pope's Catechisms. We find that he has abolished the second commandment, changed the fourth, divided the tenth, and transposed nearly all. According to the testimony and boast of all Catholics, and the admission of impartial history, this work embraces a direct change of the fourth commandment. If the Pope has not taken unwarrantable liberties with the law of God, and this is not the work designated by the prophecy, we ask wherein he has thought to change times and laws. No one can tell us. Has not the prophecy then failed in its specifications? It has; and those that contend that the man of Sin has done no violence to the law—that it was not he who changed the Sabbath—and repudiate the plain testimony of history which declares him to be the author of this work, must take in their strange course, another stride, and place Daniel in the ranks of the false prophets. But stop! we set out to have our fears allayed concerning the work of the man of Sin. Let here, before we are aware, we find them immensely established. To return: In order to fix the fact that the change of the Sabbath was not the work of the man of Sin, B. F. H. endeavors to prove that it was at first a local institution, that there was no command to Adam to keep it, and that nothing was enjoined on the early patriarchs till their posterity left Egypt, and then it became a special covenant, embodied in the decalogue, and "called for the first time the Sabbath-day." As all views publicly advanced become subject to public criticism, let us examine those points. 1. There was no command given to Adam or to the patriarchs to observe the Sabbath: therefore it was not binding in that age. This objection to the existence of the Sabbath previous to the giving of the law on Sinai, is often urged; but if it will hold good with one of the commandments, it will with all the rest. We then inquire, 1st. Do we find any express command from God to Adam or the patriarchs prohibiting murder? No: nevertheless Cain has been universally considered a murderer; and God regarded him as the transgressor of a known law, and punished him accordingly. 2d. Do we find the record of any divine prohibition of adultery? No: yet we may learn how this sin was regarded by reference to the cases of Abimelech and Joseph. Gen. xx, 1-9; xxxix, 9. The one calls it a "great sin," "guiltiness;" and says the other, "How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" 3d. Do we find the first commandment anywhere expressed? No: nevertheless we find Jacob saying to his household and all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you and be clean. Gen. xxxv, 2. 4th. Do we find any distinct prohibition of stealing? No: yet we find Jacob giving sentence that whosoever had stolen the gods of Laban, he should not live. Gen. xxxi, 32. We might multiply illustrations on this point to show that the principles of all ten of the commandments were clearly understood by the early patriarchs. Shall we then dogmatically assert that the Sabbath was not known because we find no express command for its observance? But if we find no command to keep it, we, on the other hand, find no evidence of its violation; and even if we did, it would no more destroy the sacredness of the Sabbath, than a violation of the marriage institution destroys its sanctity. But we have strong inferential evidence from the division of time into weeks, [Gen. viii, 10, 12; xix, 27, 28.] which can be derived from nothing else than God's six days' work in the beginning and rest on the seventh, that the day was well known and observed throughout that age. On this point however our writer remarks (though unadvisedly for his position) that probably by God's sanctifying the day, "he intended they should observe it." Yes this was doubtless his intent. This is all we claim. Therefore are not we who keep the Sabbath, carrying out God's original intent in instituting it? and do not those who refuse to keep it, defeat that intent? Let all carefully consider this point. Remember that God did not sanctify the day in the beginning for his own amusement, nor set it apart to have it fall into disuse and be forgotten. He designed it for something; and the Saviour tells us over four thousand years afterwards, that it was made for man. Let us then observe it, and by so doing fulfill its great design in calling to remembrance the living and true God, who in six days made heaven and earth and rested on the seventh. 2. It is said that it is for the first time called the Sabbath-day on Mt. Sinai. It was called Sabbath as we learn from Ex. xvi, a month previous to the giving of law on Sinai, but in the fourth commandment we find positive proof that it was the Sabbath in the very beginning. The term, Sabbath, is applied by the fourth commandment to the seventh day of the first week of time. It says, "The Lord . . . rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Gen. ii, 3, says that God blessed the seventh day. The commandment says he blessed the Sabbath-day; it must therefore have been the Sabbath-day in the beginning; and it must be such, by consequence, ever since. In order to show us "by what authority the first day of the week becomes the christian Sabbath," the writer argues that since the wave-offering, "on the morrow after the Sabbath," [Lev. xxiii, 11,] and the new meat-offering fifty days later, met their antitype in the resurrection of Christ and the day of pentecost, on the first day of the week, that that day therefore took the place of the Sabbath. Brethren, dare any of you make this a pretext for infringing upon and changing a precept of that law by which the great God governs mankind, which he spoke with his own voice amid the sublime scenes of Sinai, and which his inspired servants have pronounced perfect and immutable? Mention is then made of two (?) instances of the Saviour's meeting his disciples; viz., on the evening of the day of his resurrection, and after eight days again! John xx, 19, 26. The writer then innocently inquires if these examples of their meeting together on those morrows after the Sabbath do not demonstrate that the Lord's Sabbath had taken the place of the Sabbath of the Lord. If they do we must confess that our ideas of what constitutes a "demonstration," must be intensely modified. But what is meant by the Lord's Sabbath and the Sabbath of the Lord, and one's taking the place of the other? Has God one Sabbath and Christ another, rivals to each other? We had supposed that in this respect Christ and his Father were one, and that Christ was Lord of the Sabbath, which God also calls his holy day. Passing over various remarks about the work of redemption being greater than that of creation, about the propriety of celebrating the birth-day of great men, &c., we will notice one point which is entertained by some whose ideas of the Sabbath, are more matured, and better digested than those under consideration: it is that the Sabbath is a type of the saints' future rest. Passing over also some other absurd remarks and remarkable absurdities, such as that the Sabbath was a shadow, that Christ was the substance of that shadow, and at the same time that it is a type of the seventh thousand years, but might nevertheless cease at the cross, as it is not necessary for the type to reach the antitype—the shadow the substance, &c.,—passing over these positions which are actually taken by this writer, we pass to remark briefly upon our proposition, which is that THE SABBATH IS NOT A TYPE OF THE CHRISTIAN'S REST.
Those who would make the Sabbath typical usually resort to the third and fourth chapters of Hebrews as their main fort; but we think the Apostle in those chapters teaches something very different. There is nothing in the origin or the object of the Sabbath which would lead us to conclude that it was a type of the saints' rest. We have seen that it was instituted at creation. If therefore we make it a type we take the position that God instituted a type of the future rest of the redeemed, before man had fallen; that he observed that type himself; that he set it apart and blessed it, and made it a sign of the sanctification of his people. Ex. xxxi, 13, 17. This surely is stretching a point, which is but an assumption in the beginning, to its utmost limit. In the chapters mentioned, Paul indeed reasons from type to antitype; but let us see what the type is. He says, "And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, [house of Israel,] as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after. But Christ as a son over his own house; [household of faith,] whose house are we if we hold fast the confidence and rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." As Moses was leading the children of Israel from Egypt to Canaan, the Lord promised him that his presence should go with him and he would give him rest. Ex. xxxiii, 14. Again we read in Josh. xxi, 43, 44, And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he swore to give unto their fathers. . . . And the Lord gave them rest round about according to all that he swore unto their fathers. There stood not a man of all their enemies before them, &c. The people however entered into this rest under Joshua as Moses was not permitted to cross Jordan. But if Joshua, says Paul, had given them rest, that is, the rest contemplated in the promise made of God13to the fathers, then would he not afterwards have spoken of another day, saying in David, [Ps. xcv,] "To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me," &c. "Wherefore I was grieved with that generation . . . and swore in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest." From these examples of unbelief Paul exhorts us to beware lest there be in any of us an evil heart of unbelief, and lest a promise being left us, of entering into his rest, any of us should seem to come short of it. The promise to us is mentioned in Ps. xcv, and has been left to us since the children of Israel inherited Canaan. Says Macknight, "We who believe enter into the rest of God." God's rest dates from the foundation of the world; for then the works were finished. Verse 3. This is proved by the quotation in verse 4: "For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise: And God did rest the seventh day from all his works." From these premises, and not from the fact that the seventh day is the Sabbath, the conclusion is evident that there remaineth a rest to the people of God. And it is manifest that the rest given by Joshua bears the same relation to the true rest remaining for the saints; that the land of Canaan bears to their true inheritance, [Rom. iv, 13,] that the house of Israel does to the household of faith, and that Joshua does to Christ; namely, that of the type to the antitype. But the Sabbath can have no connection with the rest given by Joshua, as it has been in force from the foundation of the world as is proved by Heb. iv, 4, and its observance was enjoined before the law was given on Mt. Sinai. The rest given to Israel according to Josh. xxi, 43, 44, consisted in the peaceable possession of the land: their enemies having been driven from it or destroyed, according as the Lord had sworn unto their fathers. The antitype of this rest we shall enjoy, when we being delivered "out of the hand of our enemies may serve him without fear;" [Luke i, 74;] when we stand on Mt. Zion singing the song of Moses and the Lamb. Then will the saints peaceably possess the land (the new earth, Rom. iv, 13,) promised to Abraham and his seed. Then let us strive to find grace in the sight of the Lord, and to know his ways: then will his presence go with us, and shortly he will give us rest.