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on other days," and "the spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy;" and that it forbids, as "profanations" of the Sabbath," idleness" (which must mean neglect to perform religious exercises, and works of necessity or mercy, from morning to night), and "unnecessary thoughts or words about worldly employments or recreations"?

The answer of course will be, that all these modes of sanctification and profanation are implied,-1. In the command to "keep holy the sabbath-day;" 2. In the description of it as "the sabbath of the Lord thy God" 3. In the statement that "God blessed the sabbath-day and hallowed it," because, after creating the universe in six days, “he rested the seventh day" from his labours; and, 4. In the passages quoted in the Catechism, notes (1), (0), and (9), ante, p. 488.

The third of these reasons being now defunct, the others alone require to be considered.

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As to the Hebrew word translated "keep holy," hallow," and "sanctify," every scholar will admit that in the Fourth Commandment it has no such meaning as the Sabbatarians imagine. Its primary signification is simply "to set apart;" while that of the adjective translated " holy," is set apart," "separated from the mass,' "" unused for ordinary purposes;" the purposes for which the thing or person is set apart, being always implied to be more honourable or agreeable than those which would otherwise have continued to be served. Of the adjective, the secondary meaning is "clean" (which, however, is by some thought to be the primary sense, and "set apart" the secondary); and all agree that "pure in mind" is a figurative signification, of later origin than the others. Throughout the Pentateuch, the usual meanings are "set apart,” and “clean." Thus, Exod. xix. 6, " Ye shall be to me an holy nation," means, "Ye shall be to me a nation set apart from all others;" or, as ver. 5 has it, "Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people :" so also Exod. xxxi. 13, "I am the Lord that sanctify you." In Lev. xxvii. 30, the tithe of the land is said to be "holy unto the Lord;" set apart or appropriated to Him. And the epithet "holy," when joined, as it frequently is in Scripture, to God's name JEHOVAH, seems to be so applied because the word was not to be from the sanctification by which it was created. According to Hengstenberg's way of reasoning, we must infer from Neh. viii. 10-12 (ante, p. 434), that feasting and making great mirth was the mode of sanctifying the day there mentioned as "holy unto the Lord;" not the mere way of fitly occupying the day which was already holy. He refers also to the "holy convocation" above noticed, and urges out of the Hebrew Scriptures other considerations which might easily be met, were it needful to do so in a country where it is a received doctrine that the Ten Commandments are the only portions of the Jewish law which retain their force.--Holden writes with perfect candour on this question, and concludes that "on the whole, the phrase 'an holy convocation' is of very doubtful interpretation: yet," says he, "it is the only one which seems to sanction the practice of sabbatical public worship; and as it cannot be supposed that the Deity, if he had intended to enjoin such a practice among the Israelites, would have done it in ambiguous terms, it may safely be concluded that they were left at liberty by the Mosaic law as to the mode by which they were individually to sanctify the Sabbath" (The Christian Sabbath, p. 132); by which last expression Holden must surely mean, to spend the time, appointed to be sanctified by rest from labour." The italics are his own.

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spoken except on most solemn occasions; in other words, it was to be set apart from ordinary use. In Exod. xix. 12, Moses is ordered to "set bounds unto the people round about [Sinai], saying, Take heed to yourselves that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it; whosoever toucheth the mount, shall be surely put to death." That is to say, he was to fix limits within which the ground should be regarded as holy—set apart-secured from intrusion. The correctness of this interpretation is evident from ver. 23, where the setting of the bounds by Moses is expressly referred to as a sanctification" of the mount: "The people," says he to the Lord, "cannot come up to Mount Sinai; for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it." As the last three words do not occur in the command, ver. 12, they must either refer to the warning to the people not to break through, or merely repeat the idea expressed by the words which immediately precede them.

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In the injunction to keep the camp holy, that " the Lord, who walketh in the midst of it, may see no unclean thing in thee" (Deut. xxiii. 14), the only possible meaning of the word is clean; as is the case also in Exod. xix. 10, "Go unto the people and sanctify them to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their clothes." That to "sanctify the sabbath-day" means simply to set it apart from other days, so that, as the Israelites were not to intrude upon Mount Sinai, so the labours of the six days should not intrude upon the seventh, is so fully admitted by the learned advocates of the Christian Sabbath, that the fact may be considered indisputable. Thus Horsley, speaking of the Fourth Commandment, says plainly, "Set it apart is the true import of the word hallowed it ;'" and again, with reference to Gen. ii. 3, "He hallowed it,'-that is, God distinguished this particular day, and set it apart from the rest." In like manner Dr Wardlaw says, "The primary import of the word holy is, that the day is set apart."§ And Dr Chalmers, commenting upon Rom. i. 1, where Paul describes himself as "an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God," explains "separated unto" as meaning "set apart to a particular work," and then proceeds as follows:-" You know that holiness, in its original meaning, just signifies separation from the mass. It is thus that the vessels of the temple are holy,-it is thus that the terms common and unclean, are held, in the language of the ceremonial law, to be synonymous. And it is thus that the devoting or setting apart of an apostle to his office, is expressed by the consecration of him to it; and even, in one part of the New Testament, by the sanctifying of him to it. This explains a passage that might be otherwise difficult, John xvii. 17-19, 'Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.' To sanctify here is not applied to the personal but the official character. It is not to moralize the heart, but merely to set apart to an employment; and thus bears

† Sermon xxii.

Sermon xxiii.

*See ante, p. 490. § Discourses on the Sabbath, p. 185. Dr Wardlaw puts more meaning than this primary one into it in the Fourth Commandment; but he must allow that it may mean only this, and that the additional meaning may be quite fanciful.

application to the Apostle Christ, as to the apostles whom He was addressing."

The analogy between the physically-enclosed Mount Sinai, upon which the Israelites were forbidden to intrude, and the legally-enclosed Sabbath-day, upon which the labourer was forbidden to intrude, is well shewn in the phraseology of Isaiah lviii. 13, "If thou shalt turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day," &c. On this Dr Wardlaw observes: "In order to a simple and satisfactory explanation of this somewhat singular form of speech, we ought, I should suppose, to conceive of a person as, during the preceding days of the week, following a particular course,-going forward in the prosecution of his worldly engagements, and, when the Sabbath arrives, as stopping in his course,-desisting from his ordinary occupations,- not intruding on its hallowed hours with the footstep of earthly and secular businesses, but waiting till it be over,— devoting it to its own proper employments and purposes, resting the Sabbath-day according to the commandment." "+

We thus see with what large abatement must be received the assertion of Dr Jennings in his Jewish Antiquities,‡ that "the word sanctify,' applied either to persons or things, usually imports, not only the separation of them from common use, but the dedication of them to the more immediate service of God;" and that "to sanctify the Sabbath therefore, according to the true import of the word, is not only to refrain from common business, but to spend the day in the peculiar service of God, or in religious exercises and acts of devotion."

Did the Israelites ever understand it to be their duty to spend the Sabbath in religious exercises and acts of devotion? Did the Pharisees? Did Jesus Christ or his apostles? Is it anywhere in Scripture charged against a Jew that he neglected to perform religious exercises and acts of devotion on the Sabbath? Is Sabbath-profanation ever represented in Scripture as any thing but the doing of work? To these questions the whole tenor of the Bible emphatically answers, No!

Lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. i., p. 46.-It is Coleridge, I think, who exclaims

46

How sweet to him who, all the week,

Through city crowds must push his way,

To stroll alone through fields and woods,
And hallow thus the Sabbath-day!"

Here the word "hallow" is as correctly as it is beautifully employed. Some even of those who think it their duty to spend the whole Sunday in religious exercises may applaud this use of the word: for although—

"Where mighty congregations throng amain,

And pulpit-thunders shake the astonished fane,
And through far roofs long-volumed organs peal,
There are, who then alone consent to feel.
Others, shy souls, whom silken crowds perplex,
Polemics tire, and actor-preachers vex,
Love more, like hermit near his cross of stone,
To pace, at eve, the silent turf alone,
And softly breathe, or inly muse, a prayer,
And find, not less, the general Father there."
Rhymed Plea for Tolerance, p. 112.
Edinburgh, 1808.
P. 327.

↑ Discourses on the Sabbath, p. 198.

+

"It is indeed particularly observable," says Dr Barrow, "that in this [the fourth] command there is not an express order concerning the natural or moral service of God (by prayer, or hearing God's Law) to be publicly performed on this day."* Or privately either, he might have added with equal truth; for the phrase "keep holy," it has been shewn, will by no means support the vast theological structure erected on it by the Puritans, whom for this reason I formerly charged with ultrajudaism. "There is here," says the Sabbath Alliance, "no room for equivocation. Holy must just mean holy; that is, sacred to God. IF IT DOES NOT MEAN THIS, IT MEANS NOTHING AT ALL. And if men will not understand words in their plain and obvious sense, let them at least be honest, and say so. Let them at once acknowledge that they wish it not to be so, and that therefore they hold it not to be so." The Alliance, in short, unable to imagine the possibility of any one interpreting a Hebrew word differently from themselves, or from the translators whom they slavishly follow, ace driven to the necessity of believing that whoever says that it means something else, is saying what he knows to be false, and endeavouring by self-deceit to smother his sense of sin. But allowing, as I can well afford to do, that the word means "holy," and that "holy" means "sacred to God"--still the question remains, What does "sacred to God" signify how were the Jews to keep the day sacred to God? The answer of the Sabbatarians is in the ultrajudaical responses to Questions 60 and 61 of the Catechism;§ while mine is wholly contained in the Mosaic injunction, "In it thou shalt not do any work." Assuming, with the Alliance, that "the Sabbath is not ours, but God's, and therefore we are not at liberty to spend it as we please, but as He directs," can any one find in the precept a farther direction than this prohibition of work-any direction about active duties? Can the Alliance produce from the Decalogue any justification of their averment, that miserably do those pervert and degrade the Sabbath, and with awful presumption sin against God, who would convert it into a day of amusement or healthful recreation"? Or can Dr Wardlaw, who says that "this command prescribes the proportions of time which are to be devoted to secular and to spiritual concerns, to the labours of the present world, and to the service of God, and preparation for the world to come,' "** refer to the words which demand other "service"

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*Exposition of the Decalogue, in Barrow's Works, vol. ii., p. 574–5, ed.

1847.

Tract No. II., p. 1.

↑ See ante, pp. 62, 355. § See ante, p. 487-8.-Or take the following dictum of Dr Bruce: "The most prominent and characteristic duty of the Sabbath, is the duty of attendance on the public worship of God in the sanctuary."-(The Duty and Privilege of Keeping the Sabbath, p. 57.) This is just as if one should say, "The principal character in the tragedy of Hamlet is Coriolanus." What right has Dr Bruce to degrade thus the only duty which the Fourth Commandment prescribes, and to thrust over its head another "duty" which is totally different, and has no title to be spoken of at all in connection with that precept, far less to be called the most prominent and characteristic duty of the Sabbath? Has he forgotten Deut. iv. 2?"Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you." Ibid.

Tract No. IV., P. 4.

** Discourses on the Sabbath, p. 82. See also pp. 45, 78 et seq, 89, 91–95,

than abstinence from labour; or can he shew us a single allusion in the Law of Moses to that world to come, for which he says the commandment prescribes time to prepare? And since, in the case of "cattle," the observance of the Sabbath has in it nothing "spiritual," whence does he infer that in the case of menservants and maidservants, for whom, precisely as for cattle, the commandment makes provision, "without doubt the principal meaning of the words that they may rest as well as thou,' is, that they should enjoy the full benefit of the spiritual rest of the Sabbath as well as their masters?"*

Professor Maurice observes: "The word 'holy,' which people in our day repeat as if they were quite sure that they knew what it means, and could assume that every one else knew what it means, must, it seems to me, be interpreted by the Scripture itself, and not by any notions or practices of ours."t

138, 155, 160, 179, 195, 198 et seq., 291; Baxter, vol. xiii., p. 422; The Quar. terly Review, vol. xxxviii., p. 523; Holden on the Sabbath, p. 85, 86, 396– 406, 414, 416; Hengstenberg, pp. 18, 35; Lorimer, p. 67; the Eclectic Review, June 1830, p. 500; and the Christian Sabbath considered in its Various Aspects, pp. 61, 75, 88, 104, 115, 136, 142, 147, 160, 174, 260, 289, 397, 423. * Wardlaw, p. 234. See ante, pp. 225-6, 420.

† Sermons on the Sabbath-day, &c., by Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, and Professor of Divinity in King's College, London. 1853. P. 8.-The promising sentence above quoted introduces a briefly-stated, and, as it seems (perhaps by reason of the brevity), somewhat fanciful theory of a connection of the holiness of the Sabbath with the holiness of the Israelitish nation. Had the limits of his sermon permitted him, surely so acute and well-informed a thinker as Mr Maurice could have given us a more satisfactory exposition of the meaning of "holy" than this. Moreover, I beg him to reconsider whether it is really the case that, in the Fourth Commandment, "work is enjoined just as much as rest is enjoined." Unquestionably God does enjoin work, and severely punishes idleness, in the course of his regular providence (see ante, p. 451, and Dr Combe's Physiology applied to Health); but in common with the generality of theologians, and, it is believed, the Jews themselves, I fail to discover any such injunction in the commandment-the entire scope of which appears to be contained in the opening words, "Keep the Sabbathday to sanctify it." The idea thus expressed pervades so thoroughly the rest of the commandment, and is so exclusively pointed at by the reason annexed, that the clause, "Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work,” should, I think, be held to signify merely, "In six days shall all thy work be done, so that no part of it may encroach upon the Sabbath." The only other writer by whom I have observed the notion of Professor Maurice to be advocated, is the author of the clever but somewhat eccentric article on the Sabbath, in the North British Review, vol. xviii., Feb. 1853, p. 420.

This reviewer, it may be mentioned by the by, attempts in vain a reconciliation of Genesis and Geology (p. 401); resuscitating the hypothesis that the heavenly bodies were not created on the fourth day, but then became visible, owing to the clearing away of thick vapours which had previously enveloped the earth. To the fertile brain of Whiston, I suppose, we are indebted for the main part of this theory (See his "Discourse concerning the Nature, Style, and Extent of the Mosaic History of the Creation," p. 13 et seq., prefixed to his New Theory of the Earth, Lond. 1696); and of no small service has it ever since been to the reconcilers of the Hebrew cosmogony with science. Thus, Bishop Newton, in his Dissertation on the "History of the Creation," coolly says, "On the first day God created the heavenly bodies and the earth,” but "it was not till the fourth day that the sun appeared in full lustre. The sun, moon, and stars are said to be then made, because they were then made visible and conspicuous upon earth."-(Works, ed. 1782, vol. ii., p. 60, 62.) He, however, admits that in the narrative of the creation and fall of man,

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