THE SABBATH. 251 



absorbed, and the amount of bad blood it has generated. Further 

 reflection, however, reconciles us to the fact that waste in intellect 

 may be as much an incident of growth as waste in nature. 



When the various passages of the Pentateuch which relate to the 

 observance of the Sabbath are brought together, as they are in the 

 excellent work of Mr. Cox, and when we pass from them to the simi- 

 larly collected utterances of the New Testament, we are immediately 

 exhilarated by a freer atmosphere and a vaster sky. Christ found the 

 religions of the world oppressed almost to suflFocation by the load of 

 formulas piled upon them by the priesthood. He removed the load, 

 and rendered respiration free. He cared little for forms and ceremo- 

 nies, which had ceased to be the raiment of man's spiritual life. To 

 that life he looked, and it he sought to restore. It was remarked by 

 Martin Luther that Jesus broke the Sabbath deliberately, and even 

 ostentatiously, for a purpose. He walked in the fields ; he plucked, 

 shelled, and ate the corn ; he treated the sick, and his spirit may be 

 detected in the alleged imposition upon the restored cripple of the 

 labor of carrying his bed on the Sabbath-day. He crowned his 

 protest against a sterile formalism by the enunciation of a principle 

 which applies to us to-day as much as to the world in the time of 

 Christ : " The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the 

 Sabbath." 



Though the Jews, to their detriment, kept themselves as a nation 

 intellectually isolated, the minds of individuals were frequently colored 

 by Greek thought and culture. The learned and celebrated Philo, who 

 was contemporary with Josephus, was thus influenced. Philo expanded 

 the uses of the seventh day by including in its proper observance studies 

 which might be called secular. " Moreover," he says, " the seventh 

 day is also an example from which you may learn the propriety of 

 studying philosophy. As on that day it is said God beheld the works 

 that he had made, so you also may yourself contemplate the works of 

 Nature." Permission to do this is exactly what the members of the 

 Sunday Society humbly claim. The Jew, Philo, would grant them 

 this permission, but our straiter Christians will not. Where shall we 

 find such samples of those works of Nature which Philo commended to 

 the Sunday contemplation of his countrymen as in the British Muse- 

 um ? Within those walls we have, as it were, epochs disentombed 

 ages of divine energy illustrated. But the efiicient authorities among 

 whom I would include a short-sighted portion of the public resolutely 

 close the doors, and exclude from the contemplation of these things 

 the multitudes who have only Sunday to devote to them. Taking 

 them on their own ground, we ask, are the authorities logical in doing 

 so ? Do they who thus stand between them and us really believe those 

 treasures to be the work of God ? Do they or do they not hold, with 

 Paul, that " the eternal power and Godhead" may be clearly seen from 

 " the things that are made " ? If they do and they dare not affirm 



