STAND YE IN THE WAYS, AND SEE, AND ASK FOR THE OLD PATHS, Στῆτε ἐπὶ ταῖς ὁδοῖς καὶ ἴδετε, καὶ ἐρωτήσατε τρίβους Κυρίου αἰωνίους· καὶ ἴδετε ποία ἐστιν ἡ ὁδὸς ἡ ἀγαθὴ, καὶ βαδίσατε ἐν αὐτῇ, καὶ εὑρήσετε ἁγνισμὸν (v. 7. ἁγιασμὸν) ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὑμῶν. Ex Vers. LXX. (Conf. Matt. xi. 29, καὶ εὑρήσετε ἀνάπαυσιν ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὑμῶν.) (Delivered June 17, 1860.) Αὕτη ἡ ἡμέρα ἣν ἐποίησεν ὁ Κύριος ἀγαλλιασώμεθα καὶ εὐφρανθῶμεν ἐν LECTURE I. MARK XVI. 1, 2, 5, 6. AND WHEN THE SABBATH WAS PAST, MARY MAGDALENE, AND MARY THE MOTHER OF JAMES, AND SALOME, HAD BOUGHT SWEET SPICES, THAT THEY MIGHT COME AND ANOINT HIM. AND VERY EARLY IN THE MORNING THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK, THEY CAME UNTO THE SEPULCHRE AT THE RISING OF THE SUN. AND ENTERING INTO THE SEPULCHRE, THEY SAW A YOUNG MAN SITTING ON THE RIGHT SIDE, CLOTHED IN A LONG WHITE GARMENT, AND THEY WERE AFFRIGHTED. AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, BE NOT AFFRIGHTED: YE SEEK JESUS OF NAZARETH WHICH WAS CRUCIFIED HE IS RISEN. Καὶ διαγενομένου τοῦ σαββάτου, Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰακώβου καὶ Σαλώμη ἠγόρασαν ἀρώματα, ἵνα ἐλθοῦσαι ἀλείψωσιν αὐτόν. Καὶ λίαν πρωὶ τῆς μιᾶς σαββάτων ἔρχονται ἐπὶ τὸ μνημεῖον, ἀνατέλλοντος (v. Ι. ἀνατείλαντος) τοῦ ἡλίου. Καὶ εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον, εἶδον νεανίσκον καθήμενον ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς περιβεβλημένον στολὴν λευκήν· καὶ ἐξεθαμβήθησαν. ̔Ο δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς, Μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε· Ἰησοῦν ζητεῖτε τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον· ἠγέρθη. THE intelligent visitor of a cathedral, whether in England or on the continent, is often surprised and puzzled by the traditions which he finds attached to it. He is assured with great earnestness, or at any rate with sufficient gravity, by his attendant, that this or that part of the structure is due to such a person's piety, that at such a shrine some notable worthy paid his devotions, or that it was through that pictured window, now perhaps illumined by a glorious B sunset, that the same sun looked down mournfully on the passion of such a martyr. And here, adds the narrator, is the pillar before which he fell. Our visitor, we say, is perplexed-he is unwilling entirely to disbelieve the account -he has a sort of general notion that some building, which may have resembled this in many respects, existed on this site or near to it from a very remote date. The names of which he is told are those of historical personages connected more or less with the scene. But then he has some architectural knowledge, and this more than half convinces him that his informant is either mistaken in his facts or incorrect in his chronology. On consulting his books he discovers, that though the facts have a foundation in truth, they are connected with an older edifice whose associations have been transferred to one of a later age, perhaps through mere inadvertence, perhaps through a not unnatural wish to advance pretensions to antiquity for what one admires and reverences, perhaps through other motives not altogether so excusable.1 As it is with particular buildings, so it is with cities. Rome was "the City of Seven Hills," even when more were taken into its circuit than the Festival Septimontium 2 indicated. The line, "3 2 Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces, how true soever of the infant settlement, was true only by accommodation of Rome in its maturer days. Still piety, or poetry, or both, tenaciously clung to the old name. But I speak not of edifices or cities, except so far as the popular handling of their legends may illustrate certain points which are my more immediate concern. I dismiss them with the further remarks, that inquiry into the real state of their case is never objected to in the archæologist ; that he is allowed, if he does it with candour, to sift their annals to the uttermost; and that nothing of real value is ever destroyed by his investigations. And now I pass on to observe that this tendency of the human mind to invest comparatively modern things with the sanctions and associations of the past, is discoverable in its treatment of institutions; in its treatment especially of that Divine and Apostolical Institution, I mean "the Lord's Day," which, (I trust not rashly, but rather as one treading on holy ground), I have undertaken to examine in such a place and before such an assembly. My excuse for doing so will be found in the following considerations. I believe that great confusion of thought exists on this deeply important subject, and that the institution in question, though sufficiently venerable in itself, has been regarded as identical with, instead of at the most analogous to, one of greater antiquity indeed, but of more limited application, the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment. I believe that from this confusion have arisen not merely misapprehensions of a speculative nature, but errors affecting practice, and productive of misunderstandings among brethren. I see that the result has been, on the part of the more learned Clergy, an avoidance of a topic which they cannot treat of logically and historically without being exposed to obloquy, and which they cannot treat of popularly without apologizing to their self-respect and sense of duty: on the part of the better informed Laity, a distaste for a doctrine, which, treated, (as it generally is), illogically and with want of historical precision, they condemn together with its advocates, and dismiss summarily, either as a clumsy artifice or as a burthen too heavy to be borne. But I see, further, that this was not always so; that there was a time when Κυριακὴ and Σάββατον respectively had their meanings accurately and sharply defined. Hence I venture to hope that an attempt to restate those meanings, and to clear up certain difficulties connected with them, may not be altogether in vain. I will only make two requests; the first, that the liberty of candid inquiry, so readily allowed in other matters, may be as readily allowed here; the second, that my audience will carefully discriminate between two things, which, though essentially distinct, are often confounded in popular nomenclature, a respectful desire to set an institution on its true basis, and a disrespectful desire to undermine it. I hold this institution to be, in a spiritual sense of the words, "The day which the Lord hath made;" "I rejoice and am glad in it:"4 and I believe the way in which it is regarded to be no uncertain index of Christian stedfastness or decline, "signum aut stantis aut cadentis Christiani." The terms of my subject are these: "The origin, history, and present obligation of the Lord's Day or Sunday." Philosophically speaking, these terms embrace the whole reason of that day, its past history, its present state, its transition to that state, its destination. Of the method in which I shall treat of it, and of the date to be assumed for its commencement, I shall speak presently. But, before doing so, as controversy on the subject has existed chiefly in, and on the borders of, the English Church, I would mention a few of the theories which have been propounded in England concerning it since the Reformation, an acquaintance with which may be useful to us in the discussion which is to follow. Their diversity will at any rate justify an attempt to exhibit some view which shall bind the conscience as scriptural, and satisfy the historical inquirer as consistent with early antiquity; which shall leave a law under Christianity, and yet involve no Jewish legality. I do not at this moment enter at length on their comparative merits or defects. These will appear as we proceed. I do little more than state the theories themselves as concisely but as fairly as I can, giving not the exact words, but what appears to be the spirit of the several theorists. Here then is the first view.5 |