SABIN. 



417 



short of the experience which the world has since j 

 hail of its intrinsic relation to all practical morality j 

 and piety could ever have solved the wonder of its 

 introduction into such a place. Then, when the 

 ancient preface to the code asserts with unexampled 

 formality and solemnity that God himself both ! 

 framed and uttered it, and the subsequent narrative 

 recites that God by a miracle recorded it, the cotem- 

 poraneous assertion of a divine intent in the exalta- ; 

 lion of the Sabbath law becomes complete. To this 

 showing, however, response has been made, as by 

 Paley in the statement: "That there are various 

 passages in Scripture in wliich duties of a political, : 

 or ceremonial, or positive nature, and confessedly , 

 of partial obligation, are enumerated, and without 

 any mark of discrimination, along with others which 

 are natural and universal." He gives an example 

 out of Ezekiel and another out of The Acts (Moral 

 7 Vii'/< i./>%, Book V., Chap. 7). The offer of such 

 nn offset to the force of a document organized with 

 the unexampled symmetry, precision, and solemn 

 majesty of the Decalogue is held by the believers in 

 a divine and enduring Sabbath law to be trivial. 



In the time of Christ the Sabbath had come to be 

 encumbered with such formalistic additions as to 

 give great value to the example and instructions by 

 which he swept them away. He taught that " The 

 Sabbath was made for man and not man for the 

 Sabbath," a saying which could never have been 

 fully understood, but for the world's continuous and 

 enlarging experience of those adaptations to hu- 

 manity that lie in the Sabbath usage. 



In harmony with this lesson of their Master, the 

 apostles were careful to relieve all Christians, both 

 Jewish and Gentile, from every element of Sabbath 

 observance that savored cither of Jewish formalism 

 as later times had developed it, or of Jewish cere- 

 mony as it had unquestionably entered into the 

 -M '- lie appointment. The ceremonial seventh day, 

 wlictli-T of Pharisaism or of Judaism, manifestly 

 maintains no warrant under the explicit words of 

 Paul, Rom. xiv. 5, 0, " Let every man be fully 

 persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the 

 day" (evidently the seventh day still kept suprrsti- 

 tiously by Judaizing Christians), " regardeth it unto 

 the Lord ; and he that re^ardi-th m.t the day, to the 

 Lord he doth not regard it. " No more did that cere- 

 monial sac-redness pass into any other day ; but the 

 "Sabbath made for man" the ordinance of the 

 weekly day of rest and worship wliich was never' 

 abolished, not even when side by side the seventh 

 day of Judaism and the Lord's" day of Christians j 

 respectively waned and waxed stands to this day, \ 

 sustained by these consistent and abiding sanctions : I 

 of God's first appointment of the Sabbath after the 

 creation (afterward sufficiently, though incidentally, 

 attested in patriarchal history); of his reinstate- 

 ment of the ordinance aller the abode in Egypt, 

 first by the miracle of the manna, and then by his 

 own voice and linger from Sinai ; of the example of ! 

 Christ in behalf of the Sabbath, so long as the 

 Jewish institutions Lasted, and of Christ and his 

 apostles in behalf of the weekly Lord's da)', so soon 

 as by his accomplished atonement Jewish ceremonies ! 

 were all stripped away, leaving the indestructible 

 substance of God's law for the race proclaimed in 

 the Ten Commandments. In the double light of 

 that law and of experience the Sabbath is a positive j 

 appointment of God, beyond invention by natural j 

 conscience, but binding to duty which is found to | 

 be so related to men's highest advantage of every 

 sort that the appointment is a special attestation of 

 God's rightful and loving government, and the obli- 

 gation to obey is not formal but moral. 



For the Jewish nation the Sabbath law was civil 

 as well as religious. In Christian times the first 

 civil recognition of the weekly rest-day was made 

 by the Emperor Constantino, A. V. 321. To his 



first statute additions were made by himself, and by 

 Theodosius, A. D. 386. These laws prohibited such 

 work as was not thought to be necessary, arrested 

 military spectacles and heathen shows, and closed 

 the courts. Additions were still made to them in 

 the sixth century by the Eastern emperors. As 

 early as the close of the seventh century similar laws 

 began to be enacted by the Saxon kings in Britain. 

 These met with additions and modifications under 

 successive monarchs, until in 1676 was enacted 

 under Charles II. the statute which, in substance, 

 continues to be English law. From this sprang the 

 laws of the several American colonies ; out of which 

 In turn have grown the present laws of the several 

 American States. These, avoiding the mistake of 

 requiring acts of worship, into which the spirit of 

 their day led some of the colonial legislatures, are 

 intent chiefly on forbidding unnecessary labor and 

 traffic and the noisy amusements which would dis- 

 turb public worship. In addition to these things, 

 however, these American legislatures, especially, 

 have given very noticeable attention to the oppor- 

 tunity which a weekly arrest of work offers to those 

 businesses which supply temptation to dangerous 

 appetites. Of the thirty-eight States now consti- 

 tuting the American Union thirty-six have Sunday 

 laws. While all these provide against the sale of 

 intoxicating drinks in so far as they are kinds of 

 merchandise sold in shops, twenty-seven States 

 make further express provision against the Sunday 

 sale of intoxicants. The constitutionality of the so- 

 called "Sunday laws" has been abundantly estab- 

 lished in British courts and American. 



Some protection of the weekly day of rest has 

 been offered by French law, especially under the 

 early emperors and by a statute of 1814, repealed in 

 1880. 



The rest-day of Christendom is variously desig- 

 nated. In civil legislation and in such discussions 

 and recitals as concern the civil and secular aspects 

 of the observance it is commonly known as " Sun- 

 day," or " the first day of the week. " Some Chris- 

 tians, notably the members of the Society of Friends, 

 prefer to call it " First day." The New Testament 

 lias attached to it a name of obvious and peculiar 

 significance "the Lord's day" (Rev. i. 10) a 

 name which forbids all superstition or legalism, but 

 doubly binds to essential duty. Since the enduring 

 observance with its priceless advantages is to bo 

 traced straight back to the unchanging purpose and 

 law of God, the ancient nnme lasts as long as the 

 law, and now that the Judaizing superstitions that 

 troubled the early Church have perished, the "Lord's 

 day" is with all propriety called the "Sabbath." 



(ir. D. o.) 



(For fuller discussion of the relations of the Sab- 

 bath to the Petitateuchal worship and institutions, 

 sec TABEUNACXE.) 



SABIN, JOSEPH (1821-1881), bibliophile, was 

 horn at Braunston, Northamptonshire, England, 

 Dec. 9, 1821. He was for some years a bookseller 

 in Oxford, but in 1848 he came to the United States, 

 and ultimately settled in New York as nn antiqua- 

 rian bookseller and publisher. From 1856 to 1861 

 he pursued his culling in Philadelphia, but at the out- 

 break of the civil war returned to New York. As 

 a bibliographer he had scarcely an equal, and such 

 was his devotion to his specialty that he crossed the 

 ocean twenty-five times in his hunt after old and 

 rare works. "lie prepared catalogues of most of the 

 valuable libraries that were sold at auction in his 

 time in New York, among which may be specified 

 those of Dr. Samuel F. Jarvis (1851), E. B. Cnrrnn 

 (1856), G. 13. Ha/ewell (1850), AV. E. Burton (1861), 

 Edwin Forrest (1803), John Allan (1864), and T. "W. 

 Fields (1875). Sabin republished on large ppper 

 limited editions of various old works illustrative of 

 American history, and edited and published for sev- 



