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

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All the facts connected with the meeting could be expanded, and turned over and over, and exhibited from innumerable stand-points, so as to yield the largest amount of evidence possible. Having dwelt at large upon everything which was said and done at Bethany, he might return with the solemn procession to the great city. Having done this, he would not fail to call our attention to the fact that they did not conduct themselves in a manner such as men might have been expected to do under the circumstances on a common day, but that, on the contrary, impressed with the sacredness of the hours which had witnessed the glorious ascension of the Son of God, they immediately repaired to a place of assembly, manifestly for the purpose of continued worship. Again, scrutinizing with polemic eye every syllable of the history, in order to extract from it all the hidden testimony which it might contain, his attention would be arrested by these words, “A Sabbath day’s journey.” Immediately, he inquires, Why employ such an expression as this—one which occurs nowhere else in the sacred volume? Certainly it cannot be the result of accident. The Holy Spirit must have designed to signify something by such a use of the term in the connection under consideration. A Sabbath day’s journey! What importance could be attached to the fact that the particular point from which Christ ascended was no more than a Sabbath day’s journey from Jerusalem? The expression is not sufficiently definite to designate the precise spot, and must, therefore, have been employed to express some other idea. What was it? Undeniably, it was introduced into this connection because of the nature of the time on which the journey occurred. It was a Sabbath day, and, as such, it was important that succeeding generations should not be left to infer from the account given, that it was a matter of indifference to the Lord how far travel should be carried on such an occasion; but, on the contrary, that he was jealous on this point, and that the expression in question was employed to show that the procession of Christ’s followers, and Christ, himself, bowed reverently to the national regulation respecting the distance to which it was proper for one to depart from his home during the continuance of holy time.