THE SCRIPTURE AUTHORITY AND OBLIGATION OF THE SABBATH EXAMINED.
By Rev. W. M. O'Hanlon
BY REV. W. M. O'HANLON, BURNLEY, LANCASHIRE. We now advance to a consideration of the remaining part of this boasted argument of Paley, where he infers the non-existence of the Sabbath from the silence which, as he alleges, is maintained in respect to it—the absence "of even the obscurest allusion to it," from the mention made in Gen. ii, down to "the sojourning of the Jews in the wilderness." Now, it did not require the sagacity of this acute writer to perceive that mere negative evidence is of little or no avail, in the face of that which is positive. If we have arrived at a just conclusion as to the import of the passage in the book of Genesis, and the somewhat extended record in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, the total silence of the Scriptures on this point, during the interval, as though it might cause surprise, should not be allowed to disturb our faith, if we profess to be guided in our deductions here, by those laws acknowledged, in the department of inquiry to which this question belongs. It goes far to neutralize all the force of any conclusion derived from such premises, to observe that, at times, the very silence of a document speaks volumes on behalf of the thing which is omitted; indicating, as it may do, the notoriety of it. But had our author extended his investigations into the field of Old Testament story, as he was bound to do before he hazarded an argument upon such a basis, he would have discoverd very remarkable parallels to the omission upon which he presumes so much. He would, for example, have found that there is absolutely not even a reference to the rite of circumcision (of which the Jewish people were so proud,) from the time of their entrance into the land of promise down to the days of Jeremiah—a period of at least eight hundred years—and that then it is referred to (Jer. iv, 4) simply in a figurative sense, in relation to the heart; while there is no account of the actual observance of the rite, or any further mention of it whatever, from the entrance into Canaan until we come to the record of the circumcision of John the Baptist, being a period of nearly fifteen hundred years and yet how minute, circumstantial, and extended is the history of these centuries, in comparison, with that of the earlier ages of the world. It has been generlly admitted, that the institution of sacrifice was established immediately after the fall; and yet, during a period of fifteen hundred years, according to some computations, two thousand years according to others,—from Babel downwards to the flood,—we find no allusion to it. So, likewise, from the death of Moses to the death of David, a space of four hundred and fifty or five hundred years, we have no mention of the Sabbath itself; which is the more remarkable when it is remembered with what solemnity it was enjoined, amid the glories of Sinai, and that it had become a special sign to the Jews of the relations into which they had been brought; and let it be added, that the records of this period are not wanting in circumstantial lineaments. The student of sacred Scripture need hardly be reminded how very succinct and rapid, in general, are the notices both of the antediluvian and post-diluvian times onward to the exodus. Nor ought it to be imagined that it was the object of Moses, at the distance of so many ages, to supply a full and minute account of primitive institutions and customs. Whether he wrote from some existing records, under the guidance of inspiration, or whether his narrative is altogether and in every sense of the term an original, divine communication; it is clear that his design was, after the enunciation of the great fundamental principle of theism and the record of man's fall, to convey, by a few bold strokes and a few biographic sketches, the form and spirit of those primeval times, and to mark the footsteps of the chosen seed, until God had separated his people from the surrounding nations, and given them a "local habitation and a name" in the midst of the earth. Hence we find centuries upon centuries dispatched without more than the record of a line. A few pages carry us from the creation to the call of Abraham; and a few more, from that event until the enslavement of Egypt, when the ordinance of the Sabbath, in common with all other Divine ordinances, must have fallen, almost, if not altogether, into disuse. Certainly, as Paley remarks, we do not find "any permission recorded to dispense with the institution during the captivity of the Jews in Egypt, or on any other public emergency. This would, indeed, have been a strange and unparalleled procedure upon the part of Jehovah; and to suppose that the absence of it supports this writer's design, is to betray (to say the least) most remarkable inattention. God, in the government of his creatures, is not wont to repeal his statutes, or to grant formal dispensations, though he doubtless measures individual responsibility upon the scale of individual means and opportunities. It is fully admitted that there is no direct mention of the Sabbath in these early memorials. But neither is there any allusion to any set time whatever, especialy set apart for the more immediate worship of God, during all the extended period represented by these memorials. Yet we cannot suppose that the pious posterity of Seth before, and the pious posterity of Shem after the flood, lived without the observance of such seasons; or that religion could have been preserved in the world, in the absence of such fixed times for the study of the Divine character and claims, and the cultivation of the spirit and habits of devotion. The sum of human nature is the same in every age; and we may fairly argue back, from the admitted necessity of such regularly recurring services in our own day, to their necessity in the earlier patriarchal eras of the world's history. But while there is no direct mention of the Sabbath, there are statements of such a character as are always deemed peculiarly valuable in the authentication of such facts as lie beyond the sphere of ordinary observation. Broad and palpable coincidences might be contrived and adjusted for the express purpose of investing a narrative really fictitious with an air of verisimilitude; but the indirect and incidental references to which we now point, are the more valuable because of the improbability of their having been made with any such design. And it might have been supposed that the author of the "Horæ Paulinæ" would have given greater weight to this species of evidence; for certainly it would require only the due application of the principles which he employs in that incomparable work, to elicit much important confirmation of the existence of a primeval sabbatic ordinance. Thus, in Gen. iv, 3, 4. Cain and Abel are represented as bringing their offerings to the same common altar; and this is said to have taken place "in the process of time," or, as the Hebrew terms might be rendered with greater propriety, and in consonance with their usage elsewhere, [see Job vi, 11, xxviii, 3; Eccl. xii, 12; Gen. viii, 6; xli, 1; Hab. ii, 3; Dan. viii, 17; xii, 13,] "in the end of days;"—a mode of expression which seems to indicate here a fixed and definite period, when men were wont to recognize by some outward and visible means, their dependence upon God, and to render to him the homage which is his due. In like manner do we perceive still more specific references bearing upon this subject in the narrative of the flood, which is somewhat more extended and minute in its delineations. In Gen. vii, 4, it is written, "For yet seven days and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights;" and it is added in the tenth verse, "And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth." Then in Gen. viii, 10, it is said, "He stayed yet other seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark;" and in the twelfth verse it is added, "And he stayed yet other seven days and sent forth the dove, which returned not again unto him any more." So also in the account of the burial of Jacob, Joseph and his brethren are described [Gen. l, 10] as mourning "with a great and very sore lamentation" for their father "seven days." And in Ex. vii, 25, we read that seven days were fulfilled after that the Lord had smitten the river."43 This is the place to notice also the fact, that this septenary division of time becomes the basis of many Scriptural symbols in the writings both of Old and New Testaments. Those which belong to the ages subsequent to the journey of the Israelites into the wilderness, might be understood as drawing their significance from the events which then occurred, and cannot therefore be so confidently employed in this argument. But let the following passage be examined, and it will be seen that the number seven had become emblematical and sacred before the Mosaic period: Gen. iv, 15, 24; xxix, 18, 20, 27, 28; xxxiii, 3; xli, 2-7. We omit the language of Balaam and the act of Balak, [Num. xxiii, 1, 29,] lest it should be supposed these were derived from more recent transactions, though this it would be impossible to prove. And we omit Job i, 6; ii, 1, 13, since the age of the author of this book is a matter of doubt and controversy. Enough however has been adduced to demonstrate that some septenary arrangement existed from the beginning, being recognized both as a fact and as the foundation of a symbol, before the establishment of the Jewish economy or the promulgation of the Jewish code. Moreover it is impossible to read the portions of Scripture adverted to above, without perceiving the artless and undesigned character of the allusions; that incidental air and manner upon which Paley, in common with all who have examined the laws of evidence, have been accustomed to lay so much emphasis. Now, how are we to understand the notices of this division of time, thus pervading the early narratives of the Bible? What meaning must we attach to a week? Where shall we discover its archetype and model? To us nothing seems more obvious than this, that finding its origin in the creative process, and the consecrated day by which the close of that process was signalized, the rest and sanctification of the Sabbath would form an essential and integral part of the very idea and practices of this measured, rotary period. Six days' work and one day's hallowed rest;—is not this the conception, the very ideal of the scriptural week? And if six days were to be given to labor after the divine pattern, surely the seventh would be assigned after the same exemplar to repose; and among the goodly seed it would not be wanting in its appropriate celebration and peculiar use. What, then, becomes of Paley's assertion, that there is not "even the obscurest allusion" to the rest of the seventh day in that section of the Scriptures which has thus passed under review? This cannot be maintained without impairing and dismembering the week, and viewing it in a light altogether different from that by and in which alone we can learn its true history, trace its rise, or even comprehend its nature and import. We have thus examined at some length, and with some care, the views of this celebrated writer upon the question of a primeval Sabbath, and, if we do not greatly mistake, their inconclusiveness becomes more evident the more closely they are investigated. It is the opinion of Hengstenberg also, that the Sabbath was first ordained in the wilderness, and that it was essentially a Jewish rite. But we are wholly at a loss to perceive the soundness of the foundation on which he has built this opinion. There is far too much of the a priori style of reasoning pervading this attempt to explode the doctrine of a primeval Sabbath. He says: "The rest to which, with adorable condescension, God invites us by his own example, presupposes work—hard, oppressive work—which tends to draw away from God. Rest is the remedy for the ills which are inseparable from this toil. If anything is clear the connection between the Sabbath and the fall undoubtedly is. The work which needs intermission, lest it should endanger the divine life, is not the cheerful and pleasant occupation of which we read in Gen. ii, 15, but the oppressive and degrading toil spoken of in the following chapter, work in the sweat of the brow upon the earth, which brings forth thorns and thistles." (See "The Lord's Day," by E. W. Hengstenberg, Doctor and Professor of Theology at Berlin.) It is in this unwarrantable manner that this writer endeavors to set aside the idea of a paradisiacal appointment of the Sabbath; and having done so, he then proceeds to make the language of Gen. ii, 3, speak of a future event, asserting that it "simply mentions the divine intention that the seventh day shall be sanctified." Now whatever indefiniteness there may be in the past tense of the Hebrew verb as to the precise time when the action terminated it will not be doubted by any one at all acquainted with the Hebrew language, that the conversive power of Vav* compells us to understand this passage as pointing to an act really and truly accomplished; nor are we at liberty thus to set aside well known and established grammatical laws, in accommodation to preconceived theories. With such arbitrary modes of procedure, we can have no sympathy. At what exact period Moses penned the narrative of the creation, we cannot determine with any precision, but in all probability, it was after the giving of the law: so that the fourth commandment would have its place on the table of stone, and set forth the fact of God's resting on the seventh day and sanctifying it before this most extended account of the creative process found its place on the page of inspiration. This has not been sufficiently considered, even by some of the ablest advocates of a primeval Sabbath. And hence we find Dr. Wardlaw, in speaking of the terms of the fourth commandment, adding, "It is as clear as day, that in the terms of the reason annexed, there is a reference to the terms of the history," and he proceeds in his essay on the Sabbath to argue apparently on the assumption that the narrative of the creation in its present authoritative, inspired form, had an existence prior to the promulgation of the decologue. This certainly cannot be maintained; nor is it at all necessary to take such a position. It is sufficient for our purpose to affirm that, at whatever date Moses wrote, he wrote with the view that his words should be interpreted according to the laws that determine the import of historic Hebrew records. But, without the total abandonment of such laws, we cannot understand these words as describing the future, although it is of course the future form of the verb which is employed; with the prefix, however, already referred to, changing this, as the other portions of the narrative, into past time. The only plausible mode in which the verbal criticism can be brought to favor this side of the question, is, that Moses, writing after the actual establishment of the Sabbath, as a Jewish ordinance, and having in his mind the reason assigned in the fourth commandment, might refer to the blessing and sanctification as having recently occurred, though grounded upon a transaction long anterior. Thus, as the Hebrew language had but one past tense, and this of necessity indefinite, the verse might be rendered, "God has blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made." The objection, however, to this mode of interpreting the passage, is strong. The sacred historian had just adverted, in the previous verse, to the fact of God's resting from all his work at the close of creation. Nothing, then, would seem more obvious and natural than that whatever human observance he had founded upon this, should exist from the beginning, instead of being introduced so many centuries afterwards; and besides, as thus incorporated with the story of creation, only that interpretation of the statement which recognized this historic and chronologic link of connection, could be deemed by the inspired writer, as likely to be one which would be permanently assigned to his words. Had he been writing merely for contemporaries, the supposition might have been allowed to have some weight; but in a document designed for the instruction of all future ages, it is not at all probable that he should have been permitted to adopt a style so calculated to mislead all but the few initiated into the special knowledge of the assumed Jewish origin of this sacred observance. We have to observe also that there is little consistency in the views advocated by Hengstenberg. He considers that the Sabbath law had strict relation to, and was needed by, man in his fallen state; and yet, according to the doctrine he supports, it was not established for ages after the race had come into the circumstances which demanded this weekly respite from oppressive toil. In this aspect of the question, what reason could there exist for the appointment at the period of the departure from Egypt, which did not exist from the time when the penalty of man's fall began to operate? To the silence, or the alleged silence, of the sacred writer as to any sabbatic observance before the exodus, upon which Hengstenberg as well as Paley fixes, allusion has been made. Nothing need here be added, unless that the absence of any specific reference is more easily understood when we remember that the history was written at so late a period, and rather, as it would seem, as a general introduction to the details of the economy now established, than as a professed account of the various institutes and customs of the earlier patriarchal eras of the world. In the analysis which this author has given us of the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, containing, as he believes, the first introduction of the Sabbath, we find not a little which appears arbitrary in interpretation. He assumes that the rulers could have felt no astonishment or perplexity at the double portion of manna on the sixth day, "if the Sabbath had been already known and observed." But is not their perplexity (their astonishment is nowhere either implied or expressed) sufficiently explained by the contrariety of the fact that they reported to the direction which their leader had so expressly given, and which made no exception whatever; and also by the universality of the event throughout the whole camp; which indicated, as we have ventured to suggest, a divine interposition in the circumstance? Nor do we think that much importance attaches to another point on which he founds his argument; namely, that "notwithstanding the instructions of Moses, some of the people went out on the Sabbath to gather, showing how difficult it was, at first to conform." Certainly if disobedience and rebellion could be any proof of the novelty of precepts and laws, few of those given to the Israelites could be deemed old, at any stage of their national career, however founded, too, they might be, upon principles coeval with the race; and the difficulty of conformity was felt, and manifested throughout every period of their history. It was the complaint of God in the days of Ezekiel, that the people had despised his holy things, and profaned his Sabbaths. Chap. xxii, 8. So that to build upon such a foundation as this, is to jeopardize, in no ordinary degree, the soundness and stability of the superstructure, more especially when we recall what has been already noticed, that the Most High rebuked the daring impiety of these Sabbath-breakers in the wilderness, by exclaiming, "How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?" On the whole, we are constrained to believe that had not this celebrated author been under the influence of a foregone conclusion, he would never have regarded the grounds he presents as sufficient to disprove the existence of a primeval Sabbath.