THE YORKSHIREMAN, A RELIGIOUS AND LITERARY JOURNAL BY A FRIEND. PRO PATRIÂ. No. XIX. SECOND DAY, 15th FOURTH Mo. 1833. PRICE 40. ART. I.-The Sabbath: its original institution; its obligation, and right observance. IN writing of Church discipline, in my last number, I stated it as my opinion that, where parents and heads of families were found deficient, in the duty of admonition and restraint towards those under their care, such persons should not be neglected by the ministers of the Christian religion-that the gospel should be preached to them at all hazards-and that a Christian government may provide that this shall be done. I find it right here, to explain myself further, with reference to the part which I conceive Governments may take in the matter. A Christian government may provide-what? Not the power from on high, which is God's exclusive gift. Nor the knowledge to be imparted by the instruction given: this is in God's own treasury, accessible to every individual who has the key. Nor yet the prudence and conduct necessary for the right discharge of the service: these must be found in the minister himself. Or should they be wanting, he is himself in the first place responsible; and Government (or the Church) only secondarily, in having neglected the due examination and proof of the individual; or in forcing him, thus unprepared and unfit, upon the hearers. It is an easy question to solve, what governments may do for the benefit of the people, with the universal consent of the latter the answer is-any thing practicable and expedient But the very idea of a government includes the over-ruling of some measure of dissent and : disapprobation and care must be taken, here, that no injustice be done to the dissidents; that their liberty be not needlessly curtailed or invaded, under a pretence of advancing the common good. Governments may furnish, at the public expence, the outward means of promoting the knowledge and practice of religion in the land: and they may protect its professors, and teachers, from such outward inconveniences, and defend them against such outward losses and dangers, as might otherwise disable them from the discharge of their duty. But what is that religion", some of my readers may ask, "which governments are thus to protect and promote ?" I will take at once the broadest ground, and reply, RELIGION IS THE PRACTICE OF EVERY DUTY WHICH WE OWE TO GOD AND MAN. With this definition the objector may conclude, if he pleases, that it is as much a part of his religion to pay his debts, and do no harm to his neighbour, as to go to church and say his prayers. Should he even find that, in the estimation of many pious persons, he has erred in his divinity in thus placing the matter, this will not hinder his reaping, at least, some profit from it in his ethics. For myself, I have long been inclined to take this view of religion; having met with things, in the course of my experience, which obliged me to rate that sort of piety without honesty, which sits so easy on some professors, at very little in the account. is not easy, reasoning thus and acting accordingly, to get quietly along in the world. For it has happened, much to the prejudice of pure and undefiled religion, that religious persons have placed it more in observance than in act, more in profession than in conduct, more in that which is easily derived from others, and put on by imitation, than in that which flows from a living spring of truth and righteousness within us. And this has happened, both from the deceitfulness of the human heart, and because it was the interest of a numerous and powerful body of men that it should be so; since in this way nothing can go on in religion without their agency, for which they receive honour and pay. He who should practise and teach a religion which enabled men to be devout beyond forms, to pray without a priest, and to confess their sins to Almighty God and (where that reparation was needed) to each other, who should do what he knew to be right, and still cherish a willingness to learn more of his dutysuch an one would run greater risk of odium and persecution, from the multitude of the religious world, than the most flagrant evil doer. Even a moderate degree of zeal in enforcing the observance of God's day of rest, and that by clergymen, is stated to have procured to its author the heavy displeasure of some of high rank, who found themselves involved in the censure consequent on the profanation. In the Record' paper, dated May 13th, 1830,' I found mention of a 'Letter on the present Neglect of the Lord's Day, addressed to the inhabitants of London and Westminster, by C. J. Blomfield, D.D. Bishop of London.' "It could hardly have been anticipated," says the Editor, "that such a letter would have drawn down on the writer such a torrent of abuse, as that with which Dr. Blomfield has been assailed." Yet, along with his justification of the Bishop, he has delivered an implied censure on the strain of argument employed in his publication; as partaking more of the doctrine of expediency, than of the plainness and severity of truth and Holy Scripture. It is well known that the subject has now attracted an increased share of public attention, and that a Bill "for the better observance of the Sabbath” has been introduced into Parliament. If our great men are not disposed to receive the Institution of a weekly day of rest as a blessing conferred on them by Almighty God; as a positive good, to be enjoyed alike by themselves and by those who serve them,-by themselves as bringing before them, and in measure forcing upon them, an interval of quiet, and of serious reflection-by the ministers of their convenience and their enjoyment, as their CHARTER OF REPOSE, issued in their favour by the Creator at the beginning, on what ground can we hope to induce them to regard it at all? If we proceed far in our censure towards these, they may very possibly incline to throw back upon us the charge of oppression, and of disturbing our neighbours, and demand to know by what law we thus impose on such as are gentiles by extraction the keeping of this Jewish ordinance. They are indeed grossly mistaken, who suppose that the Sabbath is a mere Jewish ordinance. It is said indeed in the Exodus, Chap. xx, v. 10. The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shall not do any work-and so forth. Note, reader, the text is not "Thou shalt keep the seventh day as a day of rest,' but, it is the sabbath OF THE LORD THY GOD;' and the reason given, in the next verse, for its being thus recognized, leads us directly to the history of its original institution; which is thus, Gen. ii, 2, 3. On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and HE rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. For whose sake did God bless this day, and for whose use sanctify it, if not for Adam's with his whole posterity? This was 2000 years before Abraham was called, or God had marked out the children of Israel as a people for himself. Nor can we doubt that in the line of families of the Patriarchs, through whom this friend of God, with David and Christ (as to the flesh) derived their descent, the seventh day was observed as a day of rest; or that its being found thus in observance was the immediate cause of its being comprehended in the Mosaical Law. The Sabbath, then, is God's holy day; on which, by his own example as well as by positive institution, he has made it incumbent on us (if we will pay any regard to religion at all) to cease from worldly business, and from exacting the labour of others; and devote ourselves to such employments as may become that portion of our time, which God hath sanctified, or set apart for our use in reference to himself. It is thus of universal and perpetual obligation; universal, as derived through Adam our common parent; perpetual, inasmuch as God himself, who alone hath the right to alter or abrogate his own institutions, in establishing the new covenant made no further change in this, than to modify its outward strictness and exalt its use. Our Lord (I say our, taking it for granted that my reader is a Christian) among various remarks which he made upon it, in the course of his ministry, hath this very expressive one, recorded in John v. 17. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." I believe few readers, for the want of the requisite help in our version, take into their minds the full import of this passage, as they recite it. It is my Father who hath worked hitherto, during the six days of the week, in administering his Providence to the outward creation; it is I who work now, on the Sabbath,-yet in the works of God still: even those of his grace and mercy to fallen man. And what had Jesus been doing? He had restored to a man, afflicted with a bodily infirmity of eight and thirty years' standing, his full health and strength. Shall we not derive to ourselves, we who make profession of his name, some incitement from this passage, not merely to refrain from imposing at such a season unnecessary labour on others, but to engage also in whatsoever work of mercy or beneficence, it may present to be done. Not however confining our care to the body: since it is manifest that the very end for which (beside and beyond the benefit of the individual) this miracle was wrought by Christ, was this, that they who witnessed it, might HEAR THE WORD OF THE SON OF GOD, and, believing on Him who sent him, have everlasting life, John, v. 24. 6 Christ's own position while defending his own practice was, • The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, Note, here again, he saith not, for Israel, or for the seed of Abraham (as he would have said of the rite of circumcision) but for MAN, for the whole family, for the kind at large. Again, Therefore the son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.' He who has come into Christ, and hath 'put on the new man, renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him' has the power, (because he hath also in him the right discretion) to dispense with the strictness of the ordinance of rest, and employ the time, to God's glory or of present need, in another way. And the instances, given by Christ, in which the Jews themselves lawfully dispensed with it, as the work done by the Levites in the temple, Matt. xii, 5, the necessary care of their cattle, Luke, xiii, 15, xiv, 5, with that act of the disciples of preparing their own food, by rubbing out the corn (by the Pharisees superciliously accounted labour) Luke vi, 2, fully justify the Christian in those ordinary acts (liable to be termed work by Pharisaical spirits) in which he dispenses with it, now. But to be blameless' even in these, the heart must be in heaven, in the proper occupations of the day-they must not be done without present need, or to take advantage of a neighbour by forestalling him in time, or in the covetous worldly mind, or merely to pass time away. The Sabbath, thus modified to the Christian, came in process of time to be observed on the First day of the week, probably from this circumstance; that the believers in any particular place or district, after having conformed to the practice of the Jews among whom they dwelt, of resting and frequenting the synagogue on the Sabbath, held their weekly meeting for the affairs of the church, early on the following morning. Comp. John x, 19: Acts xx, 7: 1 Cor. xvi, 2: Plinii Epist. x, 97, de Christianis. And here an objector may think that he has strong ground; and may refuse to admit that the observance of the first day of the week in this way is, in any sense, a Sabbath-that the day being changed, the institution was thus broken up. But surely the essence of the thing is a rest on the seventh day, or on one day in seven, recurring regularly and it matters not, as to the moral observance (which is our part) whether we call the sabbath the first day, or (as a friend of mine, a dissenter, once in great simplicity did to me in proposing an appointment) reckon "Monday" the first day of week, and "Sunday" the seventh. And were we more disposed to consult charity than pride, and to hold out kindness and conciliation than our political superiority towards him, there seems no very valid reason why we Christians should not on some seventh day (to be generally agreed on for the purpose, as for instance where it coincides with a "Christmas day") antedate our Sabbath, and make it run parallel for ever with that of the Jew. Should any such arrangement be hereafter come to, it would seem certainly more reasonable that our practice should accommodate itself to that of the Hebrews, than that they should be expected, on the subject of an institution which they so long preserved for us, to give up their own most ancient, and (as they account it) exact chronology for ours. The probable good effects of such an agreement on both parties, I need scarcely here insist on. The Christian would be freed from the interruption to which he is now liable from the recreations of the Jew, on the "Sunday;" he would have a day added to the week for commercial transactions with him: and the Jew, besides the same gain in time, would be put in the way of gratifying, in a more direct manner, any inclination which he might feel, to examine into Christian principles, and frequent Christian assemblies. I should hope that, whenever the time may arrive for a proposal of this nature, my own friends, the people called Quakers, will not be of the number of such as may exhibit a more than Jewish stiffness on the occasion. In an affair which concerns all mankind, which began with the world itself, and will probably end only with the winding up of all its concerns here, the elder brother (viewing them simply as God's children by creation) may be allowed methinks to take precedence of the younger. Such are the considerations of a moral and religious kind which 1 › would willingly be the means of offering to the notice of my countrymen in the legislature, and in the highest rank of society among us, respecting the observance of the sabbath-I have expressed in my Introduction, a hope that, through the hands of my fellow-members, "this work may reach the eyes of others who, though not united with us in religious fellowship, are yet esteemed by us fellow-citizens of no mean city, and equally intitled with ourselves to the practical benefit of such truths, as we may be endeavouring to draw out of the obscurity |