The seventh day, as hallowed by God in Eden, was not Jewish, but divine;
it was not the memorial of the flight of Israel from Egypt, but of
the Creator’s rest. Nor is it true that the most distinguished Jewish
writers deny the primeval origin of the Sabbath, or claim it as a Jewish
memorial We cite the historian Josephus and his learned cotemporary,
Philo Judæus. Josephus, whose “Antiquities of the Jews” run parallel with
the Bible from the beginning, when treating of the wilderness of Sin,
makes no allusion whatever to the Sabbath, a clear proof that he had no
idea that it originated in that wilderness. But when giving the account
of creation, he bears the following testimony:
“Moses says that in just six days the world and all that is
therein was made. And that the seventh day was a rest and a
release from the labor of such operations; WHENCE it is that we
celebrate a rest from our labor on that day, and call it the
Sabbath; which word denotes rest in the Hebrew tongue.”[35]
And Philo bears an emphatic testimony relative to the character of the
Sabbath as a memorial. Thus he says:
“But after the whole world had been completed according to the
perfect nature of the number six, the Father hallowed the day
following, the seventh, praising it and calling it holy. For
that day is the festival, not of one city or one country, but
of all the earth; a day which alone it is right to call the day
of festival for all people, and the birth-day of the world.”[36]
Nor was the rest-day of the Lord a shadow of man’s rest after his
recovery from the fall. God will ever be worshiped in an understanding
manner by his intelligent creatures. When therefore he set apart his
rest-day to a holy use, if it was not as a memorial of his work, but
as a shadow of man’s redemption from the fall, the real design of the
institution must have been stated, and, as a consequence, man in his
unfallen state could never observe the Sabbath as a delight, but ever
with deep distress, as reminding him that he was soon to apostatize from
God. Nor was the holy of the Lord and honorable, one of the “carnal
ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation;”[37] for there
could be no reformation with unfallen beings.
But man did not continue in his uprightness. Paradise was lost, and Adam
was excluded from the tree of life. The curse of God fell upon the earth,
and death entered by sin, and passed upon all men.[38] After this sad
apostasy, no further mention of the Sabbath occurs until Moses on the
sixth day said, “To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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