Sabbath-breaking

“ For taking the night after the Sabbath, which was the forerunner of our Lord’s resurrection, we begin from it to sing in the spirit hymns to God, leading our feast out of darkness into light, and thus during an entire day and night, we celebrate the Resurrection. ”

“ When I was about twenty-one years of age I left my home to avoid military conscription. Before I left I prepared myself for occupying a position among the Jews as a 'slaughterer' in connexion with the synagogue. I did not succeed in this, not being a good singer for conducting public prayers. Reaching London, there seemed only one [100] thing to do, viz., to learn a trade in order to maintain myself. Whilst learning a trade amongst my Jewish brethren I also learned 'Sabbath-breaking,' gradually gave up the morning and evening prayers, and went more and more into sin. ”

“ And why should it be thought unreasonable that persons in our employment, and our children, who early notice the character of our religion, might receive some good impression, as to the nature of the Sabbath, by seeing us deny ourselves what on other days is innocent and right? I am not pleading that the Sabbath be made a day for afflicting our souls, but that we should not permit our sensual desires to interfere with our spiritual delight. ”

“ Are his, and all things that the earth contains,
And all above, through the Redeemer's pains,
And groans, and victory o'er death!
Glory to Him who willed
That man should live, not die! to Him who made
The Sabbath for our comfort, and who said
The soul on Christ its hopes should build!
[134]
SABBATH EVE.
On Sabbath eve, how sad,
Yet sweet, the thoughts that come into the mind,
Unbid, but not unwelcome, and which find
Communion there, and to its solace add.
The world seems bright no more;
Its witching charms are gone, its voice is dumb:
Vainly its pleasures to the soul say "Come!" ”

“ If I did so, I should be set down as little better than one of the wicked—as wicked as if I were to read the Weekly Dispatch on a Sunday, or spend an hour or two in a museum or a picture-gallery. When are we to realize that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath? ”

“ I do not love the Sabbath, The soapsuds and the starch, The troops of solemn people Who to Salvation march. I take my book, I take my stick On the Sabbath day, In woody nooks and valleys I hide myself away. To ponder there in quiet God's Universal Plan, Resolved that church and Sabbath Were never made for man. ”

“ But there are cases where it is not only necessary, but justifiable; when we are glad to feel the value of those Divine words, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.’ Fever has broken out again, and I shall make use of to-morrow to escape from it. ”

“ The Sabbath now becomes the cord that binds created man to the infinite Creator. It is the golden chain that links earth to Heaven, and man to God. Had he always observed the Sabbath, there could not have been an idolater nor an atheist. ”

“ It has lost its grasp on the affections of the good, and the fear of the bad. It is already beginning to indicate character and religion to withdraw from religious meetings. I have heard a devout person, who prized the Sabbath, say in bitterness of heart, ‘On Sunday it seems wicked to go to church.’ And the motive that holds the best there is now only a hope, and a waiting. ”

“ Doubts may flit around me, or seem to close their evil wings, and settle down; but so long as I imagine that the earth is hallowed, and the light of heaven retains its sanctity, on the Sabbath,—while that blessed sunshine lives within me,—never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith. If it have gone astray, it will return again.
I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths, from morning till night, behind the curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss? Every spot, so near the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple, should be deemed consecrated ground, to-day. ”

“ Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a 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.’ These were properly called Jewish sabbaths. Hosea says, ‘her sabbaths.’ But the Sabbath of which we are speaking, God calls ‘my Sabbath.’ Here is a clear distinction between the creation Sabbath and the ceremonial. The one is perpetual; the others were merely shadows of good things to come, and are limited in Christ.”—Miller’s Life and Views, pp. ”

“ The Sabbath was appointed before sin had entered the world, and defaced the divine image in man. If man, in his primitive state of rectitude, and when sin had found no place in his heart, needed a day of rest in God—or a seventh part of time to be consecrated to the great exercises of religious homage, how much more does he now, in his fallen state? ”

“ The Sabbath was meant to lift to a share in His rest, to bring eternity into time, to renew wasted strength 'by a wise passiveness,' and to draw hearts dissipated by contact with fleeting tasks back into the stillness where they can find themselves in fellowship with God.
We have not the Jewish Sabbath, nor is it binding on us. But as men we ought to rest, and resting, to worship, on one day in the week. ”

“ It is the Sabbath day, with its calm and elevated duties and holy repose, that subdues animosity, lays the restless spirit of vanity, checks habitual vice, and awakens all the charities and sweet courtesies of life. ”

“ The Sabbath, thanks be to God! brings with it, if we will, a sweet, a tranquil, a refreshing rest: it repairs and renews the languishing, the broken powers of body and of mind; it sends us forth again to our duties on the following day with new strength, and a new spirit, more adequate to the performance of them; cheerfulness sits upon our brow, instead of a perpetual gloom; health, instead of the sad hue of a thousand maladies, which never-ending, never-pausing labour must have necessarily produced. ”

“ The two following verses show that keeping or restoring the Sabbath is the special work. Jesus says, "they shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven, that do and teach the commandments." That there will yet be a mighty struggle about the restoring and keeping the seventh day Sabbath, that will test every living soul that enters the gates of the city, cannot be disputed. It is evident the Devil is making war on all such. ”

“ Here we see the state of the Sabbath characterized by man's "not doing his own ways, nor finding his own pleasure, nor speaking his own words," meaning that in the Sabbath of the soul, in the state of full regeneration, man acts wholly from the Lord, and not at all from self: and the same is meant by doing no work on the Sabbath-day. ”

“ It is in the heart, within us; for many are idle with their limbs, while they are disturbed in conscience....That very joy in the tranquillity of our hope, is our Sabbath. This is the subject of praise and of song in this Psalm, how a Christian man is in the Sabbath of his own heart, that is, in the quiet, tranquillity, and serenity of his conscience, undisturbed; hence he tells us here, whence men are wont to be disturbed, and he teaches thee to keep Sabbath in thine own heart. ”

“ Watch over your thoughts. The Sabbath is a season when Satan is exceedingly busy in diverting our thoughts from holy things. Evil thoughts also {108}proceed from our own depraved hearts. But the Lord's day is as really profaned by vain and worldly thoughts, as by the labor of our bodies. O, if we could realize this, how much food should we find for bitter repentance in the thoughts of a single Sabbath! Strive, then, to "bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." "I hate vain thoughts," says the Psalmist; "but thy law do I love." ”

“ Such is the estimate which the Scriptures place upon the work of creation as evincing the eternal power and Godhead of the Creator. The Sabbath stands as the memorial of this great work. Its observance is an act of grateful acknowledgment on the part of his intelligent creatures that he is their Creator, and that they owe all to him; and that for his pleasure they are and were created. How appropriate this observance for Adam! And when man had fallen, how important for his well-being that he should “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” ”

“ Christians, let heaven have more share in your Sabbaths, where you must shortly keep your everlasting Sabbath. Use your Sabbaths as steps to glory, till you have passed them all, and are there arrived. Especially you that are poor, and cannot take time in the week as you desire, see that you well improve this day; as your bodies rest from their labors, let your spirits seek after rest from God. ”

“ He has been especially disturbed as they have plead for the restoration of the Sabbath, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. If the people be taught that God is testing them upon the Sabbath, and that they should listen to the testimony of Jesus, in the spirit of prophecy, which reproves their sins, and calls on them to consecrate themselves and what they possess to the Lord, we may depend upon it, the ire of the dragon will be stirred. ”

“ The Sabbath returns on which, in the little kirk among the hills, we saw thee baptized. Then comes a wavering glimmer of seven sweet years, that to Thee, in all their varieties, were but as one delightful season, one blessed life—and, finally, that other Sabbath, on which, at thy own dying request—between services thou wert buried!
How mysterious are all thy ways and workings, O gracious Nature! Thou [pg 124] who art but a name given by our souls, seeing and hearing through the senses, to the Being in whom all things are and have life! ”

“ Nothing proves this better than their truly shocking way of keeping holy the Sabbath day, which is the very reverse of holy, inasmuch as it paves the way to the heaviest boredom and slackness of spirit. ”

“ As they have beheld the streams of our church-going people crowding along the streets of our cities to our numerous temples, they have failed to reflect how even the best gifts of heaven, the Sabbath and the sunlight, are the most ready to be abused, and that, at that very moment, there were thousands loitering at home in indolence, and even not a few, perhaps, rioting in intemperance. ”

“ The testimony of the Bible on this point is very explicit. Thus we read: “Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.” Ex. 23:12. To be without fire in the severity of winter would cause the Sabbath to be a curse and not a refreshment. It would ruin the health of those who should thus expose themselves, and render the Sabbath anything but a source of refreshment. ”

“ The Sabbath, as a memorial of what the Creator did during the first week of time, is now seen in its dignity and importance. It is the memorial of the living God. Man is to rest on the day of the week on which the Creator ceased to create.
But those who belittle the grand Sabbatic institution to only serve man’s physical wants of a day of rest, and to provide for him a day of public worship, and see no higher design in it, are satisfied with a change of the day of the Sabbath. They think that a day on which the Creator did not rest, will do quite as well as the day on which he did rest. ”

“ You apply the law about the Sabbath rest wrongly. It does not apply to God the Father, who is ever active since the days of creation; neither does it apply to me, His Son. The Sabbath is made for man, and applies to human, not divine works; as you can see at the pool of Bethsaida, where my Father works miracles on the Sabbath. ”

“ I should define the Sabbath as a divine and fatherly gift to man,—a day expressly set apart for the cultivation of his moral nature. Its object is not merely physical rest and recreation, but moral improvement. ”

“ But the seventh day, then, if we will use it thus, is ours as well as his; it is ours more than all the six which go before: it is ours in its own sublime, peculiar sense, to give us a foretaste of eternity by withdrawing us from temporal things; in short, it is one of the best gifts of God to man. O taste and see how gracious the Lord is! The Sabbath is to his own glory; but what would man be without it? The most wretched of beings in every way ”

“ What matters it even if the preparation for this blessed work remains hard to our last Sabbath? Let it be the best we know, and on that last Sabbath, if God has given us the knowledge that even one soul has been turned to the supreme happiness by all our toil, we shall deem it rich reward. ”

“ But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a holier brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices on the Exchange nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd nor business anywhere but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the figure of the casement on my chamber floor, still I recognize the Sabbath sunshine. ”

“ In fact, brethren, it is of this that God admonishes us, when He commends the Sabbath to our notice: “Thou shalt do no servile work.” [19] These are God’s words when commending the Sabbath, “Thou shalt do no servile work.” ”

“ It is our duty and our privilege, then, to comfort ourselves with the expectation of yet enjoying an eternal Sabbath, where there are no temptations to profane it, no despisers of religion to interfere with its quiet sanctification—no ignorance, through which we may fall into sin, and thus impair our enjoyment,—no disinclination of mind to hold communion with God,—where no weariness in duty, or languor in devotion can make the season appear too long. ”

“ The scene now before us on Mount Olivet forms a miniature picture of what takes place Sabbath after Sabbath in every meeting of Christian disciples. As we are assembled like the apostles in our Sanctuary—looking upwards to Heaven, there are glorious Spirits, we may well believe, clustering around us—hovering in silence over our assembly—engaged, it may be, in unseen conflict with the emissaries of evil—assisting us in our prayers—joining with us in our praises—waiting to waft these upwards, and get them perfumed with the incense of the Saviour’s merits. ”