28 Our Lord and the Sabbath Day

XXVIII OUR LORD AND THE SABBATH DAY

Luke 6:5 The Sabbath is the subject of constant and painful controversy in the Four Gospels. And therefore it is that I like so much to leave that controversy and to go back and look at our Lord as He observed and enjoyed the Sabbath long before that painful controversy began. Nothing is more sweet and beautiful to think of than the way the Holy Child would be "in the spirit" on the Sabbath day from His earliest childhood up to His perfect manhood. I like to picture to myself the child Jesus as He read these words for the first time in the first book of His mother’s household Bible :--"Then the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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." And then, as the Holy Child went on to learn the Ten Commandments, He came on this also :--"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 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." And then this commentary on the commandment--"Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe it throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel for ever; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed." And then this essence of it :--"Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, and keep My Sabbaths; I am the Lord your God. Ye shall keep My Sabbaths, and reverence My sanctuary; I am the Lord." And so on through all the prophets and psalmists, till He had His heart carried captive with the holy eloquence of the evangelical prophet whose magnificent passages on the sanctification of the Sabbath day, not only every devout heart, but every lover of our noblest literature knows so well. I delight to think of the coming Lord of the Sabbath preparing Himself and being prepared for His future lordship over the Sabbath and over everything else, as He found the places where these things were written, and laid them up in His heart, and practiced them in His life.

Never and nowhere since the best days of ancient Israel has the Sabbath day been so sanctified and so enjoyed as in our own Church and country of Scotland. The Scottish Sabbath is a proverb from very opposite poles. It is a proverb of the peace and the sweetness and the sanctity and the spiritual fruitfulness of the Christian Sabbath. And on the other hand, it is to other people a very proverb of gloom and weariness and burdensomeness, and what not. Which of these two poles best speak the truth is best decided by every man’s own experience. If my experience is of any interest to any one, here it is. I have had more than sixty years experience of a scrupulously kept Sabbath day, and it has all along been to me one of my chief blessings in a life full of blessings. I can testify with full honesty and entire integrity that from my childhood I loved the rest and the retirement and the reading and the church and the classes of the Sabbath day with all my heart. I did not know Wordsworth in those early days, but I can truthfully say that he has drawn my exact portrait in his two brothers, Leonard and James. The Sabbath books, few but the best, of those boyhood days of mine, abide with me to this day. And I wish your children and my children no better memories of your home and mine than I have of a good book at my mother’s fireside on a Saturday night and a whole Sabbath day. For with us the Sabbath day tidiness and the Sabbath day quiet always began early on the Saturday night. Nor did I make Jeremy Taylor’s notable acquaintance till long after those early days. But I subscribed to his testimony as soon as I read it. "he who keeps the day most strictly, and most religiously, he keeps it best, and most consonant to the designs of the Church, and the ends of religion, and the opportunity of the present leisure, and the interests of his own soul." Nor did I know William Law till far too long after, but I have never forgotten these weighty words of his on this same subject :--"If a man should oblige himself to abstain on the Lord’s day from any innocent and lawful things, as travelling, visiting, common conversation, and discoursing upon worldly matters, as trade, news, and the like; if he should devote the day, besides the public worship, to greater retirement, reading, devotion, instruction, and works of charity; it may seem but a small thing or a needless nicety, to require a man to abstain from such things as may be done without sin, yet whoever would try the benefit of such a rule, would perhaps thereby find such a change made in his spirit, and such a taste of piety raised in his mind, as he was an entire stranger to before." And your own forefathers were wont to rise at six o’clock on the Sabbath morning in this city to hear Edward Irving, our Scottish Hooker, discoursing on this subject in this way :--"All letters of business, all messages of business, and all conversation of business, and all books which treat of business, we should exclude. We should not encourage any traffic, nor employ any Sabbath vehicles. I have no ascetic views of the Sabbath, and grudge not to the people or to myself whatever may refresh and comfort the body or the mind. And if they find that end to be served by walking abroad to meditate and muse upon the works of God, I commend them to that or any other method which they find best for fulfilling the purposes of God. But sure I am, a crowded vehicle, a public inn, a crowded garden, a bustling highway, a park parade, are not the places most fitting for repose and refreshment; and they who so spend the Sabbath, and call it keeping the commandment, do but lie unto the Lord, and to their own soul." But among all the Sabbath testimonies of our greatest and best men, there is no testimony that more impresses me and remains more with me, than that of Dr. Johnson. Boswell tells us that Dr. Johnson, in his forty-sixth year, wrote in his Journal this scheme of life for the Lord’s day :--"Having lived not without an habitual reverence for the Sabbath, yet without that attention to its religious duties which Christianity requires; I resolve henceforth-- (1) To rise early, and in order to that, to go to sleep early on Saturday.

(2) To use some extraordinary devotion in the morning.

(3) To examine the tenor of my life, and particularly the last week; and to mark my advances in religion, or recessions from it.

(4) To read the Scriptures methodically with such helps as are at hand.

(5) To go to Church twice.

(6) To read books of divinity, either speculative or practical.

(7) To instruct my family.

(8) To wear off by meditation any worldly soil contracted in the week."

Now, that, to my mind, is a perfect plan and program of a true Scottish Sabbath. Look well at it.

First: "To rise early, and in order to that, to go to sleep early on Saturday." The Psalms of David are full of early rising on the Sabbath morning. And all up and down the Bible; and all up and down those books of biography and autobiography that come next to the Bible, the same practice is everywhere exhibited and enjoined. And an English writer who was well known to Dr. Johnson must have both rebuked and directed him in this very matter. "I will begin with the last day of the week, and with the latter end of that day, I mean Saturday evening, on which I have fasted ever since I was a youth in Venice, for being delivered from a very great danger. And on Sunday morning I rise earlier than upon other days, to prepare myself for the sanctifying of it."

Second: "To use some extraordinary devotion in the morning." Dr. Johnson’s Sabbath day instructor just mentioned says this also on this subject :--"This year I use some extraordinary acts of devotion to usher in the Sunday in hymns and various prayers of my own devising on Saturday night before I go to bed." If any one is at a loss and wishes to be shown an example of an extraordinary act of devotion for a Sabbath morning, I know nothing better than Bishop Andrewes’s First Day of the Week. In his magnificent devotion for the First Day of the Week the devout Bishop is carried above himself. Here Andrewes is as good as Hooker is at his seraphic best; this, indeed, is simply Hooker’s immortal First Book set to temple music. It is such devotional work as this that justifies the saying that if once you begin to pray with Bishop Andrewes you will continue to pray with him all your days. If you would learn by heart an extraordinary devotion for a Sabbath morning, consult the devotional Bishop.

Third: "To examine my advances in religion, or my recessions from it, particularly the last week." To examine in what I have made some real progress last week. In what I have kept a command over myself. When and where I have spoken advisedly with my lips. When and where I held my peace under sore provocation to speak. And when and where I subdued and kept under any other of my besetting sins. As also, when and where I receded, and went back. Against what persons I sinned last week in my anger, in my moroseness, in my envy, in the malice of my heart, and in my evil speaking.

Fourth: "To read the Scriptures methodically with such helps as are at hand." Who nowadays reads the Scriptures methodically on the Lord’s day, or on any other day? Is there any other book in the whole world that is read so immethodically as the Scriptures? Any history, any biography, any philosophy, any poem, any novel? No, not one. Most men read the Bible just where it chances to open, and it is a bare chance if it opens some days at all. And yet what a divine opportunity it is to read the Book of all books methodically, if we only had Dr. Johnson’s noble mind about method in the Bible and on the Sabbath day. And with such helps as are at hand. Only, we must ourselves secure that the right helps in this matter are indeed at hand. The right helps will not come to our hand of their own accord. When you want to have any real help of any kind at hand for any purpose, if you do not already possess it, you go to where it is sold and buy it, and you bring it home and put it in a place set apart for it, so that you may be able to lay your hand on it the moment you need it. And if you are not able to buy it, you borrow it, or you beg it, as Dr. Johnson first borrowed and then begged The Appeal to All Who Doubt, from Miss Boothby."I return you Law’s Appeal, which, however, I entreat you to give me. Samuel Johnson, impransus."

Fifth: "To instruct my family." I wish he had taken time to tell us how he did it, and how he succeeded in it. For many of us who are quite good hands at instructing other men’s families are but poor hands at instructing our own. For my part, I think that just to make Dr. Johnson’s Sabbath-day resolutions, and not to recede from them, is the very best way of instructing both ourselves and our families. For it is a true proverb that example is much better than precept. To rise early on Sabbath morning, as Dr. Johnson did, and then to fill up the whole day as he did --that will impress and instruct your family as nothing else will. To select an interesting Sabbath book also, and to read it, a page each all round, is a tried and a sure way of instructing a Sabbath-day family. To give each member of your family a copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress, for instance, and the poorest father in the land can do that; and then to read all round a page each; and then to copy each into his own neat little notebook the happy expressions, and the striking names of the people and the places you have met with in your home reading, and then to index them all carefully; for my family and for myself I have never discovered any more delightful way of spending a Sabbath hour than something like that. As also to study so as to make the family worship as interesting and instructive as the wit of man can make it; as also the catechism and the hymn-book; what might we not overtake in our families in fifty-two such days every year. not to count many other days of more or less leisure and opportunity? "Father, is this a good book for Sabbath?" Judge for yourself. Six days shalt thou read Greek, and Latin, and history, and travels, and stories. But the Sabbath is the Sabbath, and it has its own special and proper books. Think for yourself who is the Lord of the Sabbath day, and what He has made the Sabbath day for, and then decide for yourself what books are proper and becoming for you to read on His day and under His eye." And lastly: "To wear off by meditation any worldly soil contracted in the week." If you are like me, you will need something much more pungent than mere meditation to do that. At the same time, much concentrated and uninterrupted meditation is absolutely necessary to begin with. And, among its many other priceless blessings, the Scottish Sabbath has always been cherished and loved for the opportunity and for the assistance it gives to true meditation, and to the washing away of worldly soil, and all other kinds of soil. And a favorite Scottish psalm expresses that purifying operation to perfection :- Do thou with hyssop sprinkle me, I shall be cleansed so;

Yea, wash Thou me, and then I shall Be whiter than the snow.