Читать книгу The Constitutional Amendment: or, The Sunday, the Sabbath, the Change, and Restitution онлайн

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Passing now to the other branches of the subject, we inquire, finally, What was there in the example of Christ and the apostles which in any way affects the question? If they are to be quoted at all upon this subject, it is but reasonable that their history should be examined with reference both to the seventh and the first day; for, if precedent, and not positive enactment, is to be the rule by which our faith is to be decided, in a point of this significance, it is at least presumable that the historic transactions by which this question is to be determined will be ample in number, and of a nature to meet and explain all the phases of the subject. That is, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles—covering, as their history does, a period of about thirty years—will afford numerous and conclusive evidences that both Christ and the apostles did actually dishonor the old, and invest with peculiar dignity and authority the new, Sabbath. First, we inquire then, Is there, in all the New Testament, the record of a single instance in which Jesus or his followers transacted, upon the seventh day of the week, matters incompatible with the notion of its original and continued sanctity? The answer is, of necessity, in the negative. The most careful and protracted search has failed to produce a single case in which the son of Joseph and Mary departed in this particular from the usages of his nation, or in which his immediate representatives, during the period of their canonical history, failed to follow, in the most scrupulous manner, the example of Him of whom it is said that, “as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read.” (Luke 4:16.) Nor is this all; it is a remarkable fact, and one well calculated to stagger the investigator at the very threshold of his researches into the data for the modern view, that, whereas the Sabbath is mentioned fifty-six times in the New Testament, it is in every instance, save one (where it refers to the annual Sabbaths of the Jews), applied to the last day of the week. So far, therefore, as the negative argument is concerned, which was based upon the presumption that the claims of the old day were constructively annulled by the appointment of a new one, its force is entirely broken by the record, which, as we have seen, instead of proving such an abolition, is rather suggestive of the perpetuity of the old order of things. Hence, we turn to the positive side of the subject.