LECTURE VIII.

THE LORD OF THE SABBATH.

And he said unto them, That the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath.--ST. LUKE vi. 5.

THERE is one topic which each of the four Evangelists dwells upon; it would not be easy to say which dwells upon it most emphatically. That topic is the Sabbath Day. Evidently they regard our Lord's words respecting it as illustrating the whole course of His teaching and of His life. His difference with the Pharisees respecting it was not an external superficial difference. It did not concern certain cases which might be taken out of a general rule. It was radical and essential. If they were right in their maxims respecting the Sabbath, He was utterly wrong; He was a subverter of God's law, a blasphemer of His name. If He was

right, they were not carrying a true principle to excess. Their principle was false. And it infected their whole conduct; it compelled them to reject the Son of Man; to deny that a Son of Man could be the Son of God. There can be no doubt that this issue was involved in these controversies. All the Evangelists force it upon us. Read the report of the transactions which are recorded in this chapter as it is given in the twelfth chapter of St. Matthew, in the second and third chapters of St. Mark; read above all the fifth chapter and the ninth chapter of St. John; and you will feel, I am sure, that the battle was, in the judg

ment of the narrators, one of life and of death. So St. Luke tells us in the eleventh verse of this chapter, And they were filled with madness; and communed one with another what they might do to Jesus. On the other hand, St. Mark records that when Jesus healed the man with the withered hand, 'He looked round about them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.' There is no sentence exactly like that in all the gospels. Remember that Christ's anger was caused by the objections which were raised against Him for breaking the Sabbath, and then consider whether the whole subject must not demand the most serious attention which we can give to it. The particular errors of the Pharisees may not be ours. particular acts which Christ justified against them may not be acts with which we should find fault. But if it is a question of eternal truth, and of rebellion against that truth, we may be sure that the circumstances of our times will illustrate both the one and the other as much as the circumstances of that time.

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The words which I have chosen are the words upon which the whole controversy turns. The Pharisees stood upon what seemed to them impregnable ground. 'God has given us a law. By that law he has estab'lished an institution. He has allowed us six days in 'which we may do our own works. He has claimed 'one day for Himself. On that day He has com'manded us to abstain from our works. On that day 'our services are due expressly and exclusively to 'Him.' It was thus that they translated the words, 'Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter,

thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.' Was it not a most plausible interpretation? Will it not occur to some of us that there could not be any other? We might say so if another had not been given; if that other did not form a substantive part of the law itself; if that other was not the divine interpretation; if that other did not, in letter and in spirit, contradict the interpretation of the scribes. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.' What difference did these words make? They declared (1) that work was divine as well as rest. They declared (2) that work was appointed for man by God just as rest was appointed for man by God. They declared (3) that human work was the image of God's work, as human rest was the image of God's rest. They said to the Israelite, (4) The Sabbath day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, because He desires the manservant and the maidservant and the stranger in the gates to rest as well as to work; in other words, not to be excluded from any part of His blessedness. Set one of these statements against the other. Contemplate them in all possible lights, and see whether there can be two so utterly and absolutely contrasted in their meaning and in their effect. But yet observe how very naturally, how very easily, this amazing contrast may be obliterated; how confidently the words, 'It is the sabbath of the Lord thy God,' might be appealed to as establishing the doctrine that God insisted upon that day for His use ; how certainly this doctrine would drive out every other when men had made a God after their likeness-had supposed that He was as self-seeking as they were.

No doubt there had been many divine precautions against this abuse. In the book of Deuteronomy another sentence is substituted for the one respecting the six days of creation and the seventh day. 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. Here the redemption of the Israelite from a hard and cruel bondage to taskmasters who cared nothing for those upon whom they inflicted it, is directly connected with the institution. It is not only a sign to him that he is made in the image of the Creator; it is a sign that the Creator is, what He is proclaimed to be in the preamble to the commandments, the Deliverer. The Sabbath, so said the Divine lawgiver, is a witness of my will to make the nation and all the members of it free, to break off a yoke from their necks. The Pharisee simply reversed the maxim of his sacred books. He converted the Sabbath into a sign of bondage. A taskmaster more cruel and powerful than Pharaoh had imposed it under tremendous penalties upon His subjects. And it was therefore esteemed a great gift and mercy that for six days they might be exempt from the service of such a taskmaster. On those they might be their own masters or have the comfort of being only under the dominion of earthly masters. This had becomethere can be no doubt of it-the Pharisaic habit of mind. The Lord God, said that school, has enjoined upon us certain services, which must be punctually rendered. It is at our peril that we neglect them. The Sabbath day stands foremost in the list of obligations. It enters into the commandments themselves. Other

duties may be desirable. We may gain many rewards by performing them. But this belongs to the whole land. This must be enforced upon every Israelite.

I. The question how it should be enforced, of course introduced a multitude of regulations, refinements, inevitable yet dishonest indulgences. There might be debates without end about what was to be tolerated and what was to be prohibited; debates most tormenting and at the same time most enervating to the conscience, drawing the man at every step farther from the service of the Lord God. Who could break this yoke? It was far more galling, far more destructive of the true Jewish life, far more fatal to the true Jewish worship, than the government of the Romans. Can we wonder that the Christ, who came to set at liberty them that were bound, should at the very commencement of His ministry and throughout it wage war with this form of oppression?

The first case recorded in this chapter brings out one of the Pharisaical rules for keeping the Sabbath day. His disciples are walking through the cornfields. As they walk they pluck the ears of corn and rub them in their hands. They are asked how they can do that which is unlawful on the Sabbath day. The answer comes in the form of an example from their own history. Have ye not read so much as this, what David did, when himself was an hungred and they that were with him; how he went into the house of God, and did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him; which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone.' To be confronted by an act of David was startling to the worshippers of precedent. The precedent too had a wide application. institution of the shew bread had a purpose.

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