SABBATH, The, Sylvester Hassell On the seventh day, as Moses informs us (Gen. 2:1-3), God ended and rested from his work of creation, and, therefore, blessed and sanctified that day. Science confirms this statement, and declares that no new species of vegetable or animal has appeared on earth since the introduction of man. In saying that God “rested,” the historian does not mean that “the everlasting Creator” was “weary” (Isa. 40:23), but that he simply ceased from the work of the material creation on earth.
That cessation, or divine Sabbath, yet continues; God still, however, carries on his Sabbath-day’s work of providence and redemption (John 5:17, Heb. 1:3). “His resources are infinite; not baffled by the fall of man, he proceeds, according to his eternal purpose, to work out the grand plan of redemption. After a dark evening and night of 4000 years, the Sun of Righteousness at length arose, and began to dispel the gloom; but, after the lapse of nearly nineteen centuries, we still see but the grey dawn of God’s Sabbath morning, which we yet firmly believe will brighten into a glorious day that shall know no succeeding night” (Rev. 11:15, 21:25).
As man was made in the image of his Creator, he, too, was, according to the divine arrangement, to work six days, and then rest from his ordinary bodily and mental labors on the seventh day, (Gen. 1:28, 2:15), Exo. 16:22-26, 20: 8-11), and to “sanctify” or set apart that day from a common to a sacred use by devoting it especially to the worship of his Maker (Lev. 10:11, 19:30, 23:3, Deut. 33:10, Luke 4:16, Acts 13:14,15,27, 15:21).
“The Sabbath was made for man,” says the Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:27); if properly observed, it would be a blessing to the whole human race. Man needs, not only the night for rest, but one-seventh of his days also for rest. As proved by both physiology and history, this rest exercises a most beneficial influence on man’s physical, mental and moral nature. A change of employment is a rest; as God devotes his Sabbath to the work of providence and redemption, so it is a great blessing to man to have a frequently and regularly occurring day for solemn reflections upon his relations and obligations to his Creator and fellow-creatures, and upon his eternal interests.
Still, “man was not made for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:17); he is not to idolize the Sabbath, or observe it in the oldness of the letter, with pharisaical rigidity, and hypocrisy (Isa. 1:13, Matt. 12:1-14, Mark 2:23-28, Luke 13:11-17, John 7:22-24, Rom. 15:5,6, Col. 2:16, Gal. 4:9-11). The Christian is especially to remember that the Sabbath is but a shadow or type, of which Christ is the substance (Col. 2:17, Heb. 3 and 4),who ended the work of his eternal redemption by rising from the dead on the Lord’s Day (Matt. 28:1-6, Heb. 9:12, Rev. 1:10); and as a “holy priest” should he evermore offer up to his adorable Redeemer the spiritual sacrifices of heartfelt thanksgiving and praise (I Pet. 2:5, Psa. 103:1-5, 108:1-32, I Thess. 5:16-18)
Christ particularly honored the first day of the week, not only by rising from the dead on that day, but also by repeatedly visiting his disciples, after his resurrection, on that day (John 20:19,26). The apostles, too, it would seem habitually assembled on that day (Acts 20:7, I Cor. 16:1,2, Acts 2:1). The day of Pentecost was the first day of the week, because it was the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Christ, the Christian church, delighting to honor their Lord has observed the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, as the Sabbath, or Holy Convocation, Day of the New Dispensation; but Christian forbearance on this subject is inculcated in Rom. 14:5,6, and Col. 2:16,17.” (Hassell’s History ppg 44-46)
Sylvester Hassell: Servants and domestic animals were also to be allowed to rest (Exo. 20:10, Deut. 5:14). Only the covetous and carnal were impatient of the Sabbath restraints (Amos 8:4-12). Works of necessity and mercy and religious service were in full accordance with the spirit and design of the Sabbath day (Matt. 12:1-13, Luke 4:5).
The formalistic, self-righteous Pharisees, substituting an ostentatious ritualism for spiritual piety, held to a multitude of so-called “traditions of the elders,” which they pretended to have derived, by oral transmission, from Moses himself, and to which they attributed a higher authority than even to the written law. They resolved all religion into manifold and burdensome law. “Upon the single topic of the observance of the Sabbath, their Mishna (or second law) contains thirty-nine general rules, under each of which are numerous subordinate precepts, each with specified exceptions. Their labyrinth of casuistry, like that of the Roman Catholic Jesuits, was an instrument for evading moral obligations, and for committing iniquity under the apparent sanction of law.”—G.P. Fisher.
“After the exile and in the hands of the Pharisees the Sabbath became a legal bondage rather than a privilege and benediction. Christ, as the Lord of the Sabbath, opposed this mechanical ceremonialism, and restored the true spirit and benevolent aim of the institution. When the slavish, superstitious, and self-righteous sabbatarianism of the Pharisees crept into the Galatian churches and was made a condition of justification, Paul rebuked it as a relapse into Judaism.
In the gospel dispensation the Sabbath is not a legal ceremonial bondage, but rather a precious gift of grace, a privilege, a holy rest in God in the midst of the unrest of the world, a day of spiritual refreshing in communion with God and in the fellowship of the saints, a foretaste and pledge of the never-ending Sabbath in heaven. The due observance of it in England, Scotland and America is, under God, a safeguard of the public morality and religion, a bulwark against infidelity, and a source of immeasurable blessing to the church, the state, and the family.”— P. Schaff.
It must be stated, however, that in no passage of the New Testament is the first day of the week called “the Sabbath.”
Neither the New Testament nor the literature of the early centuries mention any explicit appointment of the first day of the week as a day of Christian worship, or of the Lord’s Day, or Sunday, as a substitute for Saturday, the Old Testament Sabbath enjoined in the decalogue.
But the New Testament shows that the special religious commemoration of the Lord’s Day was a spontaneous exhibition of Christian feeling that sprang up under the eye of the apostles, and with their approval. Any formal decree abolishing the old, and substituting a new, Sabbath, would only have offended the weak Jewish Christians. The Sabbath and marriage were instituted by God himself in Paradise, not for the Jews only, but for the whole human race.
The penalty of death for the violation of the Sabbath was not threatened at its institution in Eden, nor even written in the decalogue, or moral law, on the tables of stone; but it was a peculiar feature of the Hebrew judicial or civil law (Exo. 31:14, Num. 15:31-36), typifying the spiritual death of those who, while professing to have entered into the true Sabbath or rest by believing in the finished redemption of Christ, yet really depend upon their own works for salvation (Heb. 3:4).
The Sabbath was instituted by God to commemorate both his first or natural and his second or spiritual creation (Gen. 2:3, Exo. 20:11, Deut. 5:15); to remind men of him, their Creator and Redeemer; to turn their thoughts from the seen and temporal to the unseen and spiritual; to afford time for religious instruction and for the public and special worship of God; to give recuperative rest to sinful, toiling humanity; to be a type of that rest which remains for the people of God; and to be a sign of the covenant between God and his people (Exo 31:13,16,17, Ezek. 20:12). It is thought that nine-tenths of the people derive the greater part of their religious knowledge from the services of the sanctuary.
The Roman Emperor Constantine, 321 A.D., made Sunday a legal holiday, allowing only necessary agriculture labors on that day. Leo VI, about 900 A.D. repealed the agricultural exemption, thus thoroughly establishing Sunday as a day of rest. Alfred the Great, about the same time, forbade work, trade and legal proceedings on Sunday in England. “Calvin’s view of the fourth commandment was stricter than Luther’s, Knox’s view stricter than Calvin’s, and the Puritan view stricter than Knox’s. The Puritan practice in Scotland and New England often runs into Judaizing excesses.
About the year 1600 a strong Sabbath movement traveled from England to Scotland, and from both these countries to North America, the chief impulse being given in 1595 by a book entitled The Sabbath of the Old and New Testament, written by Nicolas Bound, a learned Puritan clergyman of Suffolk. Archbishop Whitgift and Chief Justice Popham attempted to suppress the book, but in vain—considering the Puritan Sabbath theory a cunningly concealed attack on the Church of England, by substituting the Jewish Sabbath for the Christian Sunday and all the Church festivals.
At last King James I brought his royal authority to bear against the Puritan Sabbatarianism, and issued his famous Book of Sports in 1618, afterwards republished by his son, Charles I, with the advice of Archbishop Laud, in 1633.
This curious production formally authorizes and commends the desecration of the evening of the Lord’s Day by dancing, leaping, fencing and other “lawful recreations,” on condition of observing the earlier part of the day by strict outward conformity to the worship of the Church of England. The court set the example of desecration by balls, masquerades and plays on Sunday evening; the rustics repaired from the houses of worship to the ale-house or the village-green to dance around the May-pole and to shoot at the mark. To complete the folly, King James ordered the book to be read in every parish church, and threatened clergymen who refused to do so with severe punishment. King Charles repeated the order. The people not conforming with the King’s decree were to leave the country.
The popular conscience revolted against such an odious and despotic law, and Charles and Laud, for this among other causes, were overwhelmed in common ruin. The Puritan Sabbath theory triumphed throughout the British Isles and the American colonies, the citizens of which countries have never been willing to exchange it for the laxity of Sunday observance on the Continent of Europe, with its disastrous effects upon the attendance at public worship and the morals of the people.
The Sabbatic view of Sunday is incorporated in the Presbyterian, the Congregational and the Baptist Articles of Faith. In 1678 under Charles II, all labor or business, except works of necessity or charity were forbidden by a statute which may be regarded as the foundation of all the present law on the subject in England and the United States.
“The Old School Baptists,” says Elder S.H. Durand, of Pennsylvania, in the Signs of the Times, “do not observe the first day of the week of the Jewish Sabbath, for Christ and his apostles gave no such command; but they refrain, on that day, from all works except those of necessity, for these three reasons: 1st, the law of our country forbids unnecessary work on that day, and we are commanded to obey the higher powers (Rom. 13:1-5); 2nd, it is universally appointed for religious meetings, and it is a good thing that we can have one day in the week for the public worship of God without distraction from business; and 3rd, the apostles and early disciples appear to have met regularly on the first day of the week, though they also met on other days and from day to day. When the child of God believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, he ceases from his own works, as God did from his, and enters into rest, and all the remainder of his life is really God’s holy Sabbath with him, and all the days and nights of the week he should not do his own works or speak his own words (Isa. 58:13,14)”
The phrase, Lord’s Day occurs only once in the Bible—in Rev. 1:10; but the same Greek adjective for Lord’s, Kuriakos, occurs in 1Cor. 11:10, applied to “the Lord’s Supper,” a literal as well as a spiritual feast; and the phrase, the Lord’s Day, is used to designate the first day of the week by the following writers of the second century: Barnabas, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Melito, Dionysius of Corinth, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian.
At first both days were kept; the apostles, like Christ, worshiped with the Jews in their synagogues on the seventh day, until the Jews persecuted and prevented them (Matt. 12:9; 13:54; Luke 4:16,44: Acts 13:5,14-52; 14:1-7; 17:1-9,17; 18:4)
Christ particularly honored the first day of the week, Sunday, not only by rising from the dead on that day, but also by repeatedly visiting his disciples, after his resurrection, on that day (John 20:19,26). The apostles too, it would seem, habitually assembled on that day (Acts 20:7; I Cor. 16:1,2; Acts 2:1). The day of Pentecost was the first day of the week, because it was the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Christ, which took place on the first day of the week. Without any formal commandment in the New Testament, but no doubt by divine arrangement (Eph. 1:10-13) ever since the resurrection of Christ, the Christian Church, delighting to honor their Lord, has observed the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week, as the Sabbath, or Holy Convocation of the New Dispensation; but Christian forbearance on this subject is included in Rom. 14:5,6, and in Col. 2:16,17. (Hassell’s History ppg 44- 46)
R.H. Pittman: In remembrance of Christ’s resurrection the ancient church, like the apostolic church, observed the first day of the week (or Sunday) as a day of public joy and thanksgiving, of public worship of God, and of collections for the poor; but neither the ancient nor the apostolic church ever called that day the Sabbath. In the year 321 Constantine appointed the first day of the week, which he called “the venerable day of the Sun,” in reference both to the Roman sun-god, Apollo, and to Christ, the Sun of Right-eousness, as, in some respects, a day of rest. He forbade the sitting of courts and military exercises, and all secular labor in towns on that day; but allowed agricultural labor in the country.
Under Moses—the law dispensation, labor is first. Under Christ—the gospel dispensation—grace is first. Christ deserves the first of all things, even the first day of the week for special public worship of his matchless name.” (R.H. Pittman)