by the Gentiles, but they did not enjoin any positive ceremonial observance connected with the older Covenant, not even the Sabbath. And to this it should be added, that St. Paul in writing to the Colossians (ii. 16), to the effect, that" the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us," was "blotted out by Christ," "taken out of the way by Him," and "nailed by Him to His cross," subjoins this remarkable exemplification of his meaning: "Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of an 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." In writing to the Galatians (iv. 9, 10), he says in like manner, "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." No testimony can be more decisive than this to the fact that the Sabbath was of obligation no longer.

88

It has been urged here, that St. Paul is speaking only of the Sabbath as it existed among the Jews, or of their Sabbatical observances, of which the Sabbath was only one, but that he did not intend to annul a Sabbath of more venerable antiquity, whose origin dates from the Creation. This is of course to assume a point which will be discussed hereafter, that the Sabbath existed as a practical ordinance before the time of Moses, and has claims upon us anterior to the Mosaical Law, and is not abolished with that law's abolition. At present I will merely say, this is only an assumption.

89

It has been urged again, that among the things to come was the Lord's Day, and that the Sabbath, the shadow of it, virtually subsists in the Lord's Day. This is to assume the whole point at issue, and, as we shall show hereafter by the authority of Scripture and by other great though subordinate authorities, to mistake the typical object of the Sabbath.

It has been urged thirdly, that to adduce these passages is to prove too much; that they make the observance of all days, whether Christian or Jewish, either to be directly wrong, or to be a matter of indifference. This will be

discussed also in its proper place.

90

Many passages, no doubt, occur in the Acts of the Apostles in which mention is made of the Sabbath. SS. Paul and Barnabas enter into the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia on the Sabbath Day. St. Paul speaks there of the prophets being read every Sabbath Day, in the course of his address to the people. He is asked to preach the same words to them on the next Sabbath. On the next Sabbath 91 he complies with this request. At Corinth he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath. At Philippi he resorted on the Sabbath to a Proseucha or Synagogue-chapel by the river-side. At Thessalonica he reasoned three Sabbath Days out of the Scriptures. But why was the Sabbath thus selected ?92 Simply because the persons to be converted in the first instance were Jews; because the Jews assembled on the Sabbath Day; and because, being assembled, they had those Scriptures before them out of which the preachers of the Gospel were to prove that He had come which should come. The Sabbath is only mentioned naturally and in the course of the narrative as the Day on which the Jews could be approached and were approached in masses. Not one word is said by St. Paul or by any the Apostles in honor of the day, or in commendation of its observance. It is curious too that though at the Council of Jerusalem St. James used the expression," Moses is read in the Synagogue every Sabbath Day," and thus incidentally brought the subject before it, it was not thought desirable to place the observance of that Day even among the matters which should be conceded to Jewish prepossessions. Accordingly, though the Jewish converts still observed it, though even St. Paul, perhaps, observed it

of

occasionally, following the same rule of charitable allowance for his brethren's scruples that he did when he purified himself after the Jewish manner, and even circumcised Timothy, the son of a Jewish mother, and though, as we shall see presently, it dragged on a lingering existence for some time by the side of the Lord's Day, I think that the following propositions are at least tolerably clear;

That the Lord's Day, (a festival on the first day in each week), is indicated in the New Testament, and was observed by the Apostles and their immediate followers as distinct from the Sabbath, (a Jewish festival on the seventh day in each week), the obligation to observe which is denied both expressly and by implication in the New Testament. That being so acknowledged and observed by the Apostles and their immediate followers, it is of Divine institution, and so, in its essence, and in the circumstantials of it mentioned in Scripture, binding on the Church for

ever.

I have said, that these propositions are tolerably clear. They will, I think, be proved to demonstration by notices. to be found in writers of the next two centuries. 93 From these it will appear that, as a matter of fact, in all places where Christianity was known, the same doctrine prevailed on this subject, not as requiring proof, but as a point which no one so much as thought of disputing.

Whether some moral consideration, which the Mosaical Law did not furnish for the first time, and which therefore survived its abolition, did not, from the nature of the case, constitute a reason for the institution of the Lord's Day which we are justified in finding if we can; and whether again the Mosaic Law, as one development of that moral consideration, was not, as in other matters, so in this, suggestive of something connected with it, are points which I reserve for the present. So far as we have gone, the

external character of the Lord's Day at the close of the first century appears to be that of a positive institution of the New Dispensation. It is a day of Christian assembling at short periodic intervals of time, on which certain duties to God, to a man's self, and to his neighbours were performed. This positive institution would seem, both in its essence and in the circumstantials which we have found attached to it, to possess whatever of Divine sanction origination by inspired Apostles can bestow. As a matter of fact the interval between one Lord's Day and another is of the same length as that between one Sabbath and another. But nothing Sabbatical, either in the sense of commanded rest, (though rest to a certain extent would be a necessary condition to the fulfilment of its duties, and indeed, as we shall show hereafter, is implied in the very idea of the Lord's Day), or in the way of implication that the whole of it is to be employed in directly religious observances, or that such religious observances as are employed should be cast in a particular mould, or that such and such acts are prohibited during its continuance; nothing, I say, of this sort is to be found in what we may call the Charter deed of the institution of the Lord's Day. Whatever of this sort afterwards formally belonged to it, is of Ecclesiastical ruling in the lower sense of the term-is obligatory in a secondary degree only, in deference to the voice of the ancient Church, or to that of our own-or as suggested by the nature of the case, or by Christian charity, or by, (what no good man will disregard), considerations of public utility.

94

Let us now see in what manner the Lord's Day was spoken of in the second and third centuries, both absolutely and in reference to the Sabbath. Other points, (which I reserve for future discussion), will be exhibited incidentally. Such for instance as the opinion of early writers on the question of the existence of the Sabbath before the

days of Moses, and on the question of what the Sabbath was typical.

Ignatius, the disciple of St. John, is the first writer whom I shall quote.95 Here is a passage from his Epistle to the Magnesians, containing, as you will observe, a contrast between Judaism and Christianity, and, as an exemplification of it, an opposition between Sabbatizing and living the life of the Lord, (Kupiaкnv Conv. I do not think it necessary to reject, with Cotelerius, the word wn). "Be not deceived with heterodox opinions, nor old unprofitable fables. For if we still live according to Judaism, we confess that we have not received grace. For even the most holy prophets lived according to Jesus Christ. For this they were persecuted, being inspired by His grace, to assure the disobedient that there is one God, who manifested Himself by Jesus Christ, His Son, who is His Eternal Word. If they then who were concerned in old things, arrived at a newness of hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living according to the Lord's life," by which our life sprung up by Him and by His death, (whom certain persons deny,). . . how can we live without Him, whose disciples even the prophets were, and in spirit waited for Him as their Teacher? Wherefore, He whom they justly waited for, when He came, raised them up from the dead... We have been made His disciples, let us live according to Christianity."

97

Here is a passage from the Epistle ascribed to St. Barnabas, which, though certainly not written by that Apostle, was in existence in the early part of the second century. The writer says, in his explanation of Isaiah i. 13, (I do not defend this critically, but those whose exegesis of Scripture is indifferent may be admitted as witnesses to matter of fact), something to the following * μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες.

ὺ ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν Κυριακὴν ζωὴν ζῶντες.