THE HEBREW SABBATH

     It will help us to understand more fully the grounds upon which the observance of the First-day Sabbath are justified if we now consider more particularly than we have done so far the character and significance of the Hebrew Sabbath.

     1. As we have already had occasion to observe, the Hebrew Sabbath was a changed Sabbath. That is, it was not observed on the same day of the week after the Mosaic law was given as that on which they had celebrated it before. This point is generally overlooked by opposers of the First-day Sabbath who hold that no change in the day for proper Sabbath observance has ever been divinely authorized. It has been shown in a preceding section that the primeval Sabbath day sanctified in Eden was generally observed among all nations, and particularly observed among the patriarchs and the covenant people, down to the time of the Exodus. It has also been shown that, at the Exodus, the Hebrew calendar was changed, and with it the day for celebrating the Sabbath festival or rest was changed, from Sun's day to Saturn's day, which was the seventh day of the week according to the Jewish calendar as changed by Moses under divine direction. It is certain therefore that one change in the day for celebrating the Sabbath has occurred since the primeval Sabbath was instituted, and that by divine appointment. And if one change has been divinely authorized, who shall say that another similar change could never have been made? If contenders for the Seventh-day Sabbath object to the First-day Sabbath as giving Sun's day -- the day of celebrating an ancient heathen festival -- too much prominence, we have only to remind them that the observers of the Seventh-day Sabbath are giving equal dignity and sanction to Saturn's day -- the day on which the corruptest of all heathen festivals was celebrated. The odds, therefore, in this case, is in favor of the First-day Sabbath.

     2. The particular day for celebrating the Hebrew Sabbath was chosen to memorialize events which had no practical significance to any but the Hebrew people.

     (1) It commemorated the covenant made with them in Horeb. "And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep and do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day" (Deut. 5:1-3). This formed part of the preface to the rehearsal of the Ten Commandments, in which Israel was enjoined to "Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God commanded thee" (v.13).

     (2) It was expressive of their separation from idolatrous nations. "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, Saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you" (Ex. 31:12, 13). Thus they were to be perpetually reminded that God had sanctified, set apart, or separated them, by special covenant relation, from all other peoples on the earth.

     (3) It memorialized their deliverance from Egypt. "And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day" (Deut. 5:15).

     These reasons for keeping the Hebrew Sabbath are such as could apply to no other people, and such as could have no practical significance or force after the Jewish dispensation was abolished. Hence we may reasonably infer that the observance of the Seventh-day Sabbath, as enjoined on Israel after the Exodus, was designed to be only a temporary arrangement, which should cease with the termination of the Jewish and the inauguration of the Christian dispensation.

     (4) The Hebrew Sabbath, so far as their particular day of observing sabbatic rest is concerned, was abrogated by the introduction of Christianity. In the foregoing section we barely stated this point, which we now proceed to consider more fully. If it be the case, as we have endeavored to show, that the enactment of the Seventh day as the period of sabbatic rest and devotion, was a part of that ceremonialism which was binding only upon the Hebrew people and during the Jewish age, then it follows, per consequence, that with the end of the Jewish dispensation came the abrogation of the Jewish Sabbath, so far as its exclusively Jewish aspects are concerned. But let us see what the scriptures say on this point. In writing to the Colossians St. Paul, after declaring the old Jewish ordinances to have been done away by Christ, says: "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ" (Chap. 2:16, 17). The whole system of exclusively Jewish "Sabbath days" is here shown to have pointed to Christ, to have been done away in Christ, and hence to have no binding authority upon Christians. Also in Galatians 4:10, the observance of Jewish "days [Sabbaths], and months, and times, and years" is declared to be a "turning again to the weak and beggarly elements" whereunto the backsliding Galatians "desired again to be in bondage." Too bad it is, that so much Galatian apostasy prevails even in the twentieth century, in this respect, and that so many simple souls are turned thereby from freedom in Christ to the bondage of what we believe these scriptures prove to be an abrogated Jewish law.