busy porter laid down his burdens. The plow rested in the half-finished furrow. No hand might drop the grain in the opened ground, or gather the ripened and waiting harvest. Not even a fire might be kindled beneath any roof in Palestine. A genuinely democratic day it was-the poor man's special charter of liberty. Mistress and maid claimed alike its privileges and felt alike its obligations. The veriest slave in all Palestine felt the shackles fall from his limbs. The very cattle breathed that day the air of unwonted freedom. The curse of the law, By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread, was lifted on this holy day from all the wearied toilers of the brier-bearing earth.*

This day of rest for the body was made available for the spiritual benefit of the soul. It was a day of holy convocation. The sacrifices of the Temple were doubled. The shew-bread was changed.§ The inner court of the Temple was opened for solemn services. The Levites took this occasion to instruct the people in the law. The prophets seized on this day of the people's rest for their day of most advantageous labor.** At the same time, the idea of rest, and even recreation in its true significance, was the prominent idea in the early Jewish observance. It was no day of burden and of bondage. A memorial of emancipation, it was itself an emancipator. It is true, it was kept holy to the Lord; but to the ancient Jew holy day and holiday were synonymous, and festal celebrations were enjoined as well as prayer and praise. On this day of joy and gladness both were commingled. The pious Jew welcomed its return with gladness.tt He reflected on the works of God with deep and earnest thankfulness. He gave utterance to his emotions not only in the song of praise in the sanctuary, but by festal

* Exod. xx., 8-11; xxiii., 12. ‡ Numb. xxviii., 9.

§ Levit. xxiv., 8.

† Exod. xii., 16; Isa. lxvi., 23. || Ezek. xlvi., 1-6. ¶ Compare Deut. xxxi., 11-12, with Acts xv., 21; xiii., 14, 15. ** See 2 Kings iv., 23.

++ Psalm cxxii., 1.

Psalm xcii. Title, A Psalm or Song for the Sabbath day.

.

scenes at home.* David remembered it as a day of joy and praise. Hezekiah reinstated it in the reformation, with the Passover, by a national feast of exuberant gladness. Nehemiah dissuaded the people from their tears, and commanded them to keep it as a day of joyous feasting.§ Hosea threatened the Jews with its deprivation as a judgment for their iniquities. And the later Jews, while setting apart some portion of the day to religious observances, spent the remainder "in festal cheerfulness, in receiving and returning the visits of friends, and in dances, and games, and juvenile exercises."

In the degeneracy of the nation this day fell into disuse. The industries of the world trenched upon it. Trade was reestablished. Business was resumed. The almost insuperable difficulties of observing the day while in Babylonish captivity obliterated it from the Jewish calendar, almost from the Jewish memory. This day, which God had established as a covenant sign between him and his people, perished when the covenant broken by them in reiterated transgression bound him no longer.

The Pharisaic party, protesting against the usurpations of heathendom, undertook to reinstate the Sabbath. In this respect they followed the example which had been set them by Hezekiah, Nehemiah, and the later prophets. The reform was timely. But they did more than reinstate it; they made it the object of an idolatrous regard, the central feature in a religion wholly ceremonial. The brazen serpent, which had saved Israel in the wilderness, served Israel in the promised land as an idol.** The Sabbath which Moses had established as a sign of covenant between God and his ancient people became more important in the estimation of the Pharisees than the covenant itself. They cared more for the tables of stone than for the law which was engraved thereon. "Re2 Chron. xxix.

*Levit. xxiii., 2, 3.

§ Neh. viii., 9-13.

¶ Priaulx, Quæs. Mos., p. 28.

|| Hosea ii., 11.

Psalm xlii., 4.

**2 Kings xviii.. 4.

member the Sabbath day to keep it holy;' this is the first and great command." Such was, in substance, their epitome of the Mosaic legislation. "The Sabbath," says the Talmud, "is in importance equal to the whole law." "He who shall duly observe all the rites and customs of the Sabbath shall obtain the pardon of all his sins, even though he hath been guilty of idolatry."*

Great as was the honor which they paid the Sabbath, they wholly failed to comprehend its import. Their literalism tainted its observance as it tainted all else. This memorial of emancipation became a day of bondage. On this hour of freedom redeemed from a life of toil the soul was manacled by the most puerile and petty regulations. One might not walk upon the grass because it would be bruised, which would be a kind of threshing; nor catch a flea, which would be a kind of hunting; nor wear nailed shoes, which would be bearing a sort of burden; nor, if he fed his chickens, suffer any corn to lie upon the ground, lest a kernel should germinate, which would be a kind of sowing. And from Moses's command to the encamped Israelites, "Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day,"* because, despite the divine command, they had gone forth from the camp to gather the manna, Dositheus drew the sage conclusion that a Jew must not move between sunrise and sunset, and established a sect whose observance of the Sabbath consisted in their retaining for the day whatever posture they happened to be in at the rising of the sun. Nor was his interpretation much more absurd than the more orthodox one that the Jews' place included a radius of 2000 cubits, and that a Sabbath-day's journey of that length was therefore exempt from the prohibition of the law.

It is true that the Pharisees did not forget what in modern

Stehlin's Rabbinical Literature, p. 288.

+ The length of the cubit is variously estimated at from 17 to 21 inches. If the Greek standard-18.20 inches-be adopted, the Sabbath-day's journey would be something over half a mile.

days we sometimes fail to remember, that the Sabbath is a feast, not a fast. Isaiah had commanded that it be called a delight. To this command they yielded a cordial obedience. The day was one of festal rejoicing. Social entertainments were part of its religious observance. Every week the pious Jew repeated that Thanksgiving-day which New England enjoys but once a year. Walking, social visiting, even games and dancing, were part of the Pharisaic observance of the Sabbath day. But they wholly failed to comprehend that spirit of liberty which is the inspiration of all true joy. Their festivities, no less than their rest, were ceremonials. They lay late in bed by law. They put themselves under bonds to fare sumptuously. They were joyful as a matter of conscientious obligation. They accounted him the strictest Sabbatarian who set the most affluent table. In short, they caged the soul, and then commanded it to sing. They knew not that the way to a joyous song is an open door and a free air.

"Meet the Sabbath with a lively hunger; let thy table be covered with fish, flesh, and generous wine." "Let the seats be soft, and adorned with beautiful cushions, and let elegance smile in the furniture of the table." "Assume all thy sprightliness." "Utter nothing but what is provocative of mirth and good humor." "Walk leisurely, for the law requires it, as it does also longer sleep in the morning." "Be resolute and merry, though ruined in debt.”* Such are some of the Rabbinical precepts concerning the Sabbath. Whatever else may be said of them, they certainly do not sustain the popular conception of the Jewish Sabbath as a day of rigorous asceticism. On the contrary, if we may believe the not altogether impartial testimony of the early Christians, it was too often wasted in idleness, and degraded by sensuality and drunkenness.t

In brief, the Pharisaic Sabbath combined a strange inter*Stehlins's Rabbinical Literature, vol. i., p. 263.

+ Augustine, quoted in Cox's Sabbath Literature.

mingling of rigorous restraints in respect to labor with great freedom in social festivities.

Jesus never said or did any thing which a reasonable construction can interpret as indicating a desire to pluck away from a weary world its divinest institution, a weekly Sabbath. He distinctly asserted that he did not come to abrogate the Mosaic laws, but to fulfill them ;* and the Sabbath will never have its final fulfillment until the day when the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. He never, it is true, directly inculcated its observance upon his disciples. He never referred to it in the partial summary which he once or twice afforded of the Ten Commandments.† But this will not seem strange to any one who reflects that the Sabbatic law was the first and most characteristic feature of Judaism. Other nations had their temples, their feasts, their sacrifices, their priests, their prophets, their sacred writings. Even the rite of circumcision was not unknown among the Gentiles. The Jew alone knew and observed a Sabbath day. It needed, therefore, no inculcation from one who had come to turn the minds of men from the exterior observance to the interior spirit, from the temple to the God who sanctified the temple, from the literal observance of the Sabbath to the repose of soul which is found alone by those who dwell in the secret place of the Most High. Divine alike in its origin and its beatific character, it was none the less an institution and an observance. And Christ came not to build institutions, which are in their very nature transient, but to set forth principles, which are everlasting.

But there is no indication that Jesus engaged himself in secular work on the Sabbath, or encouraged his disciples to do so. If they had plied their customary labor, casting their

* Matt. v., 17.

Mark x., 19; Luke xviii, 20; Matt. xxii., 37-40.

The weekly division of time is to be found among all nations, but there is no adequate evidence that a hebdomadal day of rest was known out of Judea. See Smith's Bible Dictionary, arts. Week and the Lord's Day. See contra Dwight's Theology, vol. iii., serm. cvii., p. 255.