CHAPTER VIL

APPLICATION OF PRECEDING PRINCIPLES AND FACTS IN PROOF OF THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE SABBATH.

"If this counsel or work be of man, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it."-GAMALIEL

FROM the principles and facts set forth in the immediately preceding part of this volume, it appears that a weekly holy day cannot be dispensed with, if health, intelligence, religion, virtue, and happiness be of importance to mankind. There are some, however, who accord to the institution no slight measure of the credit due to it as an instrument of good, without yielding up their minds to the faith of its Divine authority. Such persons, it seems to us, neglect to follow out the light of evidence to its legitimate conclusions, and thus subject themselves to the imputation of inconsistency. Let us, following that light, attempt to show, that the considerations which evince the excellence and utility of the weekly rest, concur with other things in attesting that it is the contrivance, appointment, and charge of Heaven.

"Paley has deduced an argument, for this world being the work of an intelligent cause, from the relation of sleep to night. He says, 'It appears to me to be a relation which was expressly intended. Two points are manifest; first, that the animal frame requires sleep; secondly, that night brings with it a silence, and a cessation of activity, which allows of sleep being taken without interruption, and without loss.' . . . But what the rest of sleep is to the body, the repose of the Sabbath is to the soul. An argument less apparently demonstrative, because more refined and intellectual, might be deduced from the appointment of the Sabbath, that God is the Author of revelation" [and of the Sabbath], "as well as that He is the Author of nature from the relation of sleep to

night. The body demands, by the necessity of its nature, a certain period of relaxation from toil; but the mind, ever active, though not always active to [good] purpose, requires a positive rest, prescribed to it, in order that, by interrupting the ordinary chain of its thoughts, it may profit by a cessation of its usual cares; and, since it cannot cease to think, may at least have a complete change of thought, at fixed intervals, which is its proper repose. Nor by this cessation or interchange of labour is the work which it is pursuing delayed. The mind reverts with a new energy to the object which for a season it has ceased to pursue. These pauses are common in the development of all organized beings."1

The Sabbath must have been the suggestion of infinite benevolence. Human beings are naturally selfish, but the selfish think only of themselves, and are neither inventive nor ready, neither exuberant nor painstaking, with expedients for relieving the misery or promoting the happiness of others. Many, indeed, of the race have become truly benevolent, but we have no evidence that they acquired the character in any other way than through the religion of the Sabbath. It is only in countries where that religion has existed that benevolent institutions have been known.2 It is in the lands, at least, in which the Sabbath flourishes that charity abounds. It is the classes and individuals of these lands who reverence the institution that are pre-eminent for beneficence. The selfishness of man would not originate the benignant arrangement; the benevolence of man came too late to contrive what already existed. But other considerations decide the matter not only against human, but against all creature claims. The Sabbath embraces in its provisions too large an extent of good for creatures to have imagined, evolves in its course beneficial tendencies which no finite mind could have foreseen, and attains its objects with an unfailing certainty which no dependent being could have commanded-proving itself to have had its source in the deep thoughts and warm feelings of a Divine heart.

The adaptations of the institution proclaim it to have been the device of Divine wisdom. The schemes and works of man, after

1 Address by Douglas of Cavers on Slavery, Sabbath Protection, etc., pp. 35-37.

2 China has been lately held to be an exception to the remark, but on grounds which require further elucidation.

the greatest care and labour have been expended on them, exhibit palpable marks of imperfection, but the Sabbath has never needed improvement. Human legislation, regulated as it is by endlessly diversified and continually changing peculiarities of place and time, must frequently be enlarged, modified, or abrogated, but the Sabbath has for ages stood out from week to week a reproach to all earthly ordinances-a glorious monument of unerring legislative skill. While other regular divisions of time-as day and night, the month and year-were made to man's hand in nature, there was nothing of this kind, nothing in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, to guide him to the adoption of the seventh day for any purpose, but, nevertheless, the week, including in not a few instances a sacred day, has prevailed in many parts of the world from a remote antiquity. No people without a Sabbath have ever of their own impulse introduced it. After a long-continued experience of its value in some countries, there are numerous instances in which persons show sometimes by their language, more frequently by their conduct, that they account it a burden and a curse. Notwithstanding all the regard which many have ever entertained for it, its excellence is still far from being fully understood and appreciated even by the wise and good. How much light has but lately been thrown on its importance to the welfare of society! That a seventh day of sacred rest renders the labour of six days more remunerative than would be that of seven under a system of unremitting toil, and that it interposes a barrier against the enslaving of mankind, are proofs of the profound wisdom of the institution which it was reserved for recent times to bring into clearer view, if not entirely to discover. It is one thing, moreover, to see and unfold the merits of a discovery, and altogether another thing to make it. To the origination, in short, of an institution, proved to be adapted to the whole constitution and circumstances of mankind, there was indispensable so large a measure of knowledge, as to make it manifest that the claim by the Author of the Sabbath to omniscience itself would be no arrogance, and His exercise of the attribute no difficulty. The sanctity of the Sabbath is a further evidence of its Divine original. The ordinance is too sacred for human beings to desire or even to think of. They could have imagined and wished a

day of rest, but judging from the views and feelings of those who slight or scorn the present Sabbath (and the formation of a different character is one of the results and triumphs of the institution), there is in it, as a day of worship and holy rest, a class of qualities the reverse of those which man esteems and loves. But "of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble-bush gather they grapes. An evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil." The Sabbath was evidently made for man, but not by man. Its author must have been divinely holy, as well as divinely benignant, intelligent, and wise.

Our position is established also by the justice of an arrangement which shows no respect of persons, prescribing the same duties and securing the same privileges alike to rich and poor, kings and subjects.

The preceding proofs respect the Sabbath as a contrivance, to the conception and origination of which, as has been shown, only a Divine being was competent. But to be of any avail, the institution must be adopted and employed by those for whose benefit it was designed. That they would never have appropriated the gift in its full extent without an external and controlling influence exerted on their minds and hearts, is manifest not only from the dislike which men feel to a holy day, but from the ignorance and pride by which they are led into the greatest divergences of opinion and practice on all sorts of subjects. The Sabbath

must be socially as well as personally received and observed. And what but Divine power could bring so many various individuals, with all their supposed conflict of interests as masters and servants, employers and employed, sovereigns and subjects, to agreement respecting the propriety, the time, and the engagements of such an institution, or what but Divine authority could secure for it an unquestioning submission? Without that commanding influence, the discrepancy of sentiment on the matter must have produced a Sabbath of so endless a diversity of season and observance as to contain the elements of its speedy dissolution, or rather must have prevented the introduction of a Sabbath altogether. The remarkable harmony, however, among men of many ages and countries with respect to the proportion of time, the day, and the duties of a periodical rest-a harmony which has frequently awed

its enemies into respect-points not only to Divine wisdom as contriving the institute, but to Divine power and authority as giving it establishment. Since writing these remarks we are happy to find that we can confirm and adorn the views expressed in them by the eloquent words of Dr. Croly. "The divine origin of the Sabbath might almost be proved from its opposition to the lower propensities of mankind. In no age of the world, since labour was known, would any master of the serf, the slave, or the cattle, have spontaneously given up a seventh part of their toil. No human legislator would have proposed such a law of property, or, if he had, no nation would have endured it. . . . The Sabbath in its whole character is so strongly opposed to the avarice, the heartlessness, and the irreligion of man, that, except in the days of Moses and Joshua, it has probably never been observed with due reverence by any nation of the world."1

In the awe with which, as just remarked, the institution inspires the hearts of its enemies, we discover another testimony to its superhuman ordination and character. The inconsistency is not in our statement, but in the person's own mind, when we say that the same individual may feel a consciousness, and utter a confession of the excellence of an object to which he once had, and may still have a dislike. Ovid has described no uncommon

case:

"I see the good, and I approve it too

Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue."

There are many, indeed, who profess a superiority to the fears and convictions which haunt evil-doers, and especially Sabbathbreakers, affecting to regard such feelings as mere superstition, and who in the midst of their pleasures would seem to be at ease as respects responsibility to a superior Power. But certain facts indicate that an inward disquiet lies at the root of their apparent indifference or joy. It has been said, that the disasters which frequently befall the profaners of the Lord's day, are owing in part to a sense of guilt, which so enervates and confounds them in the hour of danger as to deprive them of their usual power.to employ the means of escape. Not unfrequently, too, persons who have lived in the neglect of religious ordinances and laws change 1 Divine Origin and Ooligation of the Sabbath (1850), p. 17.