24 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



The Sabbath a " sign ;" and thus peculiar to Israel. 



throu^liout Genesis, we shall not find one syllable concerning 

 a"Sabbath-day/' 



The passages in JExod. xxxi. 13, 17, and Fzek. xx. 12, 

 characterizing the Sabbath as an especial " sign" between G-od 

 and the children of Israel, " prove nothing" (says your corre- 

 spondent), as to its " strictly Jewish'' character. " Now it 

 does not seem easy," as Paley has well observed (J/or. Philos. 

 B. v. chap. ^), " to understand how the Sabbath could be a 

 sign between Grod and the people of Israel, unless the observ- 

 ance of it was peculiar to that people, and designed to be so." 



Bishop Warburton admirably argues that ^' nothing but 

 a rite, by institution of a positive law, could serve for a ' sign' 

 or token of a covenant, between God and a particular selected 

 people ; for, besides its use for a remembrance of the covenant, 

 it was to serve as a ^ partition wall* to separate them from other 

 nations. But a natural duty has no capacity of being thus 

 employed; because a practice observed by all nations would 

 obliterate every trace of a ' sign' or token of a covenant made 

 with 07ie." {Divine Legation, B. iv. sec. 6, note " rrrr.") 



That the Sabbath law is not a moral one is apparent from 

 the fact that it actually was ^' peculiar to the Jew." Through- 

 out all historyj we discover no trace of a Sabbath among the 

 nations of antiquity. This is incompatible with the notion of 

 its being a natural duty. Again, a "moral" law, being 

 founded on the natural and universal relations existing between 

 man and his Creator, and between man and man, must be as 

 immutable as those relations. Now the Sabbath has been 

 changed in its period, changed in the reasons for its observance, 

 changed in the character of its requirements, and changed in 

 its sanction. How can that which has been so completely 

 superseded now be or ever have been a moral law ? 



But, in addition to all this overwhelming evidence, we are 

 not without the direct and explicit testimony of the Scriptures 

 upon this point. " The Sabbath-days," says Paul, in Col ii. 

 16, 17, " are a shadow of good things to come." This, apart 



