26 ' ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Application of the word " work." An explicit command violated. 



pears to give some color of justice to tlie charge. We find 

 that the word '^work'^ was used^ in the fourth commandment, 

 with a remarkable latitude of application. The lighting of a 

 fire, the gathering of grain or food, the picking of sticks, un- 

 necessary walking, even the carrying of the slightest hurden, 

 all fell within the legal construction of the prohibition. Thus 

 in Jer. xvii. 21 : '^ Take heed to yourselves, and bear no hurden 

 on the Sabbath day.'' Now in the very face of this express 

 interdict, -wheu Jesus had, on the Sabbath day, restored the 

 impotent man at the pool of Bethesda, he " saith unto him, 

 arise, take up thy hed and walk.^' (John v. 8.) Considering 

 how entirely superfluous this command was, either to the 

 miracle, or to its manifestation (the '^ arising" and " walking'' 

 being everything, the " carrying' ' nothing), it is impossible 

 not to regard this — as his contemporaries regarded it — as a 

 glaring and " studious yiolation'' of the Jewish law. He 

 could scarcely have exhibited to his startled countrymen a 

 more striking practical affirmation that their venerated Sab- 

 bath was but "a shadow of things to come'' (Col ii. 17), 

 having in itself no moral sanctity. I think it would puzzle 

 even my ingenious and respected friend J. N. B. to show how 

 this infraction of the literal statute can be resolved into ''a 

 work of necessity, mercy, and piety," or into one " lawful to 

 be done on the Sabbath;" and I hope he will have the candor 

 to acknowledge that the Proposition under review cannot, with 

 justice, be stigmatized as either " false" or '^ calumnious." 



Again, when the disciples gathered grain on the Sabbath 

 day, they evidently did that which under the fourth command- 

 ment required extenuation, and for which extenuation was 

 given. " Have ye never read what David did when he had 

 need, and was an hungered," doing that "which was not law- 

 ful^" And by this very parallel, Jesus clearly teaches us that 

 the institution of the Sabbath, precisely like that of the show- 

 bread, was a "positive" one, for the breach of which hunger 

 was a sufficient justification. Thus we corroborate, by addi- 



