14 OBLIGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Saturday not enjoined in the Decalogue. All the Commandments moral. 



B. T.'' assumes what can neither be granted nor proved ; 

 namely, that the Sabbath (or religious rest), enjoined in the 

 Decalogue^ is the Saturday Sabbath. The Decalogue knows 

 nothing of Saturday. It makes no designation of the day. 

 It fixes only the proportion of time, every seventh day for 

 devotional rest, but leaves the date of the reckoning, and of 

 course the day itself, to be determined by positive law, or some 

 other means. For the Jews this had been previously deter- 

 mined by the miracle of the Manna. (Uxod. xvi.) 



In Eden, the first Sabbath kept by man was the first day 

 after his own creation, a devotional rest with his Creator, to 

 prepare him for his six days' toil. The very revolution of the 

 earth on its axis forbids all mankind to observe precisely the 

 same moments. From the Decalogue alone, I repeat it, no 

 man could determine when the week should begin or end ; it 

 requires only a certain definite proportion of our days to be 

 observed religiously, and that proportion fixed by the Divine 

 example at the creation of the world. This idea of a Satur- 

 day Sabbath, being enjoined in the Decalogue, and the only 

 ene so enjoined, is a pure fancy of W. B. T. So serious a 

 blunder at the beginning should abate a little his tone of con- 

 fidence. 



Second. — "This Sabbath was strictly a ceremonial and 

 Jewish institution. {Levit. xxiii. ; Beut. v. 15.) An especial 

 *sign' between God and the ^children of Israel.' — {Exod. 

 xxxi. 13, 17; Ezeh. xx. 12.)" 



This Proposition, so far from being proved by the texts re- 

 ferred to, seems to me a glaring falsehood. Every other com- 

 mand in the Decalogue is acknowledged to be of a moral na- 

 ture. Ho w happens it that the fourih should be an exception ? 

 It is not an exception. So far from being "strictly ceremo- 

 nial,'' it is eminently moral. Like Marriage, it is founded in 

 the very constitution of man as a social being. He is no more 

 bound as a religious being to worship his Creator, than he is 

 bound as a social being to worship him in communities ) and 



