The Sabbath
................that Christ came to diminish our store of blessings during the present dispensation:- that He has narrowed instead of enlarging our privileges: as if He had made the announcement ,"Israel was blessed with a Sabbath, but I cancel that blessing: Israel had Sabbath privileges and Sabbath joys, I blot them out: Israel was called on to give the seventh of his time to God, but I set you free from all restraint, to do with your time just as you please ." Thus we have according to these men , fewer privileges, fewer blessings than Israel. And is this what Christ came to do.? Was it for this that the Son of God took flesh and died.?
If they shrink from this , then they must maintain that the Sabbath is not a blessing:- That it is an unwholesome , unnatural, intolerable restraint;- a weariness, a bondage ,a curse. And indeed this is the basis and drift of their reasoning's, if they have any meaning at all. These men ,evidently have the secret feeling , that the Sabbath is not a blessing, that it is a restraint,- a restraint on their worldliness, their follies , their gains , their business. Hence their eagerness to prove its non- existence, its abolition. The wish is father to the thought, the desire is father to the conclusion. They wish no Sabbath, and, with daring blasphemy, they ascribe its abolition to Him who came , not to destroy the law , but to fulfil it.. So that one of the chief benefits , according to them, which Christianity has conferred on our race is, that it has effaced the Sabbath..... Thus the chief thing for which the world has to praise the saviour is , that He first struck off its Sabbath chains, and bid it go free from Sabbath obligations :- nay , perhaps the only thing for which some of these men think they have to thank the Lord of the Sabbath is ,that He abolished it! Will they maintain this? Yet this they must, if they will honestly and consistently carry out their argument. To what extremity will not the hatred of the Sabbath drive a man.
If they shrink from this , then they must maintain that the Sabbath is not a blessing:- That it is an unwholesome , unnatural, intolerable restraint;- a weariness, a bondage ,a curse. And indeed this is the basis and drift of their reasoning's, if they have any meaning at all. These men ,evidently have the secret feeling , that the Sabbath is not a blessing, that it is a restraint,- a restraint on their worldliness, their follies , their gains , their business. Hence their eagerness to prove its non- existence, its abolition. The wish is father to the thought, the desire is father to the conclusion. They wish no Sabbath, and, with daring blasphemy, they ascribe its abolition to Him who came , not to destroy the law , but to fulfil it.. So that one of the chief benefits , according to them, which Christianity has conferred on our race is, that it has effaced the Sabbath..... Thus the chief thing for which the world has to praise the saviour is , that He first struck off its Sabbath chains, and bid it go free from Sabbath obligations :- nay , perhaps the only thing for which some of these men think they have to thank the Lord of the Sabbath is ,that He abolished it! Will they maintain this? Yet this they must, if they will honestly and consistently carry out their argument. To what extremity will not the hatred of the Sabbath drive a man.
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