he might carry. He must not bear the weight of a dried fig, but he might carry a locust's egg to cure ear-ache, or a fox's tooth to cure sleeplessness, or the nail of a crucified man for ague; he must not wear sandals with nails in them; and whether a cripple might go out on his wooden leg was a matter upon which the rabbis were not agreed. It was forbidden to set a broken bone; also to walk on the grass, because that was a kind of threshing; a tailor must not go out with his needle, nor a scribe with his pen near dusk on the eve of the sabbath. It was believed that the day was kept "in heaven and hell, and that even the tortured souls in Gehenna had rest.' Pious streams were known which only flowed on the seventh day, and yet more pious ones which then stopped, resuming their course on the first day.2 "1 Jesus did not deny the sacredness of the sabbath, or dispute the wisdom of a law designed to secure rest to toilworn man and beast, 1 Hausrath's New Test. Times, vol. i. p. IOI. but he loathed and scorned the plea that made it an excuse for refusing to do works of mercy and satisfy natural wants. In a sentence which is the essence of his views, he said, "The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath," and made therefore for man's good, man's service of his kind, for which all time and place is sacred, since the thing which it is wrong to do on that day it is wrong to do on any other day. Among the questions in dispute among the rabbis was the course to be taken when a sheep fell into a water-tank on the sabbath-should it be drawn out or given food and left there till the day was past? and it was with this that Jesus, when he and his disciples were charged with sabbath breaking, in quiet humour foiled his accusers by asking, "Which of you is there whose son or ox shall fall into a pit, and he will not straightway draw him up on the sabbath day?" And they could not answer him these things. 1 In the seventeenth century "Alexander Carnie was delaitit " before the Presbytery of Strathbogie "for brak of sabbath in bearing ane sheep upon his back from the pasture to his own house. The said Alexander compeirit and declarit that it was of necessitie, for saving of the beast's lyfe in tyme of storme. Was rebukit for the same and admonished not to do the lyke." I cannot pass in silence over the way in which his teaching on this matter has been perverted, to the grievous harm of many, and the filling of their hours with weariness. From the time of the apostles to beyond the fourth century, the first day of the week, which was observed as the day when Jesus was said to have risen from the dead, was not confounded with the Jewish sabbath, which it was held to have superseded, and the name of each day was kept distinct. Although the two days became by degrees more blended, it was not till long after the fourth century, when the Christian Church laid claim, like the rabbis, to power “to bind and to loose" the beliefs and actions of men, that the written and oral laws dealing with the sabbath were made to apply to the Sunday, and to be binding upon Christians. The extreme point was reached about three hundred years ago, in the days of the Puritans, who, repelled and shocked by the riotings throughout England on Sundays, rushed in the height of their power to excess of another sort, and enforced such a host of absurd and vexing rules for "keeping holy the sabbath day," that in obeying these men forgot or had scarcely time to be merciful one to another. To wash a dish, or cook a dinner, or take a long walk, or ring more than one bell to call people to church, were accounted as great sins as murder; and the Pilgrim Fathers, when they settled in America, with the same misled zeal forbade bed-making, room-sweeping, and other needful cleansings, and, if the account is to be trusted,1 enacted that "no woman shall kiss her child on the 'sabbath' day" or on "fasting days." It is well for us who live in freer and more joyous times to learn from what we are delivered, for although the influence of these men abides among us still, it is slowly yielding to common sense, and by-and-by the Christian Sunday will cease to be confounded with the Jewish sabbath, and to remain, as in so many households yet, a frown upon the children's ringing laughter, and a lock upon their story-books. 1 From a code said to have been drawn up by Governor Eaton for New Haven Colony in 1656, and embodied in the Blue Laws of Connecticut, the genuineness of which is doubted. VII. Miracles, The stir made by Jesus during his preaching tour had not only reached the ears of Jerusalem rabbis, but those of John the Baptist, still lingering in his prison at Machærus, and from him came two disciples to inquire into the truth of what he had heard, and to ask if the Messiah had appeared. "Art thou," they said, "the coming one, or must we look for another?" And he answered and said unto them, "Go and tell John what ye saw and heard, that blind receive sight, lame walk, lepers are cleansed, deaf hear, dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them, and blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me." 1 the con I cite this interview not to dwell upon trast which it led Jesus to draw between himself and the man from whom he had received the 1 Matt. xi. I-5. |