In

St. Mark, “ The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath," which imports that it was instituted, not for the benefit of this or that nation, but of man in general, or, in other words, of all mankind. If he had meant to designate it as a transitory institution, he would have said that it was made for the Jews alone, and as such of no obligation under the new covenant. reply to the question of the woman of Samaria about the proper place of worship, he openly asserts that the local worship of the Levitical ritual was to be done away"; and can we doubt that, if the obligation of the sabbath was to have ceased with the ceremonial law, he would have refrained from dropping some intimation of it? So far, however, is he from adopting this course of proceeding, that his argument is built upon the assumption of its perpetual sanctity'.

Our Lord being in a synagogue on the sabbath day, he there miraculously healed a man whose right hand was withered; and to the

John iv. 23.

1 See Bp. Porteus, Lect. 10. on St. Matthew. The expression "Son of man" in the passage cited above from St. Matthew, is thought by some to mean any man; (See Priestley, Notes, and Kuinoël, Comment. in loc.) but, as it is the phrase by which our Lord usually characterized himself, there is no ground for departing from this signification in the place referred to. See Storr, Opuscula, vol. iii. p. 32, et seq.

Scribes and Pharisees who watched him whether he would heal on that day, in order to accuse him, he said, “What man shall there be among you that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days. Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole as the other." Here is not a single hint of the sabbath being a ceremonial rite, or of a temporary nature; nothing which can be deemed in any way opposed to its proper observance; the conclusion, on the contrary, that " it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days" is stated as an universal truth, which it could not be, except the sabbath was, in its true spirit, to remain universally binding.

When accused by the ruler of the synagogue for having on the sabbath cured a woman who had been bowed down with an infirmity of eighteen years, his reply was, " Thou hypocrite! doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound,

* Matt. xii. 11—13. Compare Mark iii. 1-12. Luke vi.

6-11.

lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?" His answer was in substance the same when, upon another occasion, he cured a man of the dropsy on the sabbath day m In neither of these passages does our Saviour let fall the slightest intimation that the sabbath was to be abrogated, while, on the other hand, his argument shewing that it is lawful to do good on the sabbath day, implies its continuance.

Our Saviour, as we are informed by St. John, having cured a lame man at the Pool of Bethesda, was pronounced by the Jews to have profaned the sabbath, to which accusation he replies in these words: My Father worketh hitherto, and I work ";" viz. as the commentators are generally agreed, "Though my Father rested from the work of the creation on the seventh day, yet he worketh hitherto, continues to govern and preserve the universe on the seventh, as well as on other days, and I work, i. e. I do the same, having an equal right to work on every day." The charge being the profanation of the sabbath the answer must have some relation to

Luke xiii. 10–21.

m Ibid. xiv. 1-6.

John v. 17.

• See Origen, Homil. 23, in Numeros, vol. ii. p. 359. B. and Scripture Testimonies, cap. iii. § 17.

it; but it cannot well have any other bearing upon it than this, that, as the Father's invisible operation was equally active on the sabbath as at other times, the Son has the same right to work at all times; and that, if the sabbath is not profaned in the one case, neither is it in the other. Our Saviour argues from the Almighty's unceasing operation that every kind of work does not violate the sabbath, in which argument the sanctity of the institution is necessarily supposed. In rebutting the inference of the Jews he grants their premises, that the sabbath was to be kept holy; which it is very unlikely he would have done, if it were to be abrogated under the gospel. In reference, probably, to the same miracle at Bethesda, he says, "I have done one work, and ye all marvel. Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man. If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day? Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment "." Here he reasons with them on their own principles, asserting that, as the law of Moses allowed circumcision

John vii. 21-24.

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on the sabbath, it must also have allowed such a cure as he had been performing, since it was vastly more important than any ritual ordinance. Thus without any the most remote allusion to the repeal of the sabbatical appointment, he by explaining its true nature, ratifies and confirms it .

Such is the line of argument used by our Saviour in vindicating himself from the charge of violating the law of the sabbath. In no instance does he intimate, even in the most oblique manner, the abolition of the seventh day's sanctity, which would be an astonishing circumstance if all distinction of days had been to cease when Christianity should prevail in the world. The law of the sabbath was promulged amid every accompaniment of solemnity and grandeur calculated to awe the Israelites into obedience, and the abrogation, if that had been the design of the Deity, would certainly have been communicated in a manner the most clear and explicit. Divine wisdom might not deem it requisite that the abolition of the Sinaitic statutes should be attended with the same appalling visitations with which they were delivered; but it would undoubtedly have been effected in a way not to be mistaken by impartial inquirers. If the repeal of

↑ The narrative in John ix. 1, et seq. supplies nothing in regard to our present subject.