The Seventh Day Sabbath | Page 2

is that which the Lord hath said, to-morrow is the REST
of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." Exod. xvi: 23.
Then we understand that God established the seventh day Sabbath in
Paradise, on the very day when he rested from all his work, and not one
week, nor one year, nor two thousand five hundred and fourteen years
afterwards, as some would have it. Is it not plain that the Sabbath was
instituted to commemorate the stupendous work of creation, and
designed by God to be celebrated by his worshipers as a weekly
Sabbath, in the same manner as the Israelites were commanded to
celebrate the Passover, from the very night of their deliverance till the
resurrection of Jesus from the dead; or as we, as a nation, annually
celebrate our national independence; or as type answers to antetype, so
we believe this must run down, to the "keeping of the Sabbath to the
people of God" in the immortal state.
It is argued by some, that because no mention is made of the Sabbath
from its institution in Paradise till the falling of the manna in the
wilderness, mentioned in Exo. xvi: 15, that it was therefore here
instituted for the Jews, but [4]we think there is bible argument
sufficient to sustain the reply of Jesus to the Pharisees, "that the
Sabbath was made for MAN and not man for the Sabbath." If it was
made for any one exclusively it must have been for Adam, the father of
us all, two thousand years before Abraham (who is claimed as the
father of the Jews) was born. John says, the old commandment was
from the beginning--1: ii: 7.
There is pretty strong inference that the antideluvians measured time by
weeks from the account given by Noah, when the waters of the deluge
began to subside. He "sent out a dove which soon returned." At the end

of seven days he sent her out again; and at the end of seven days more,
he sent her out a third time. Now why this preference for the number
seven? why not five or ten days, or any other number? Can it be
supposed that his fixing on upon seven was accidental? How much
more natural to conclude that it was in obedience to the authority of
God, as expressed in the 2d chap. of Gen. A similar division of time is
incidentally mentioned in Gen. xxix:--"fulfill her week and we will give
thee this also; and Jacob did so and fulfilled her week." Now the word
week is every where used in Scripture as we use it; it never means more
nor less than seven days (except as symbols of years) and one of them
was in all other cases the Sabbath. But now suppose there had been an
entire silence on the subject of the Sabbath for this twenty-five hundred
years, would that be sufficient evidence that there was none. If so, we
have the same evidence that there was no Sabbath from the reign of
Joshua till the reign of David, four hundred and six years, as no
mention is made of it in the history of that period. But who can be
persuaded that Samuel and the pious Judges of Israel did not regard the
Sabbath. What does God say of Abraham? that he "obeyed my voice,
and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws."
(See what he calls them in Exo. xvi: 27, 30.) This, of course, includes
the whole. Then Abraham reverenced God's Sabbath. Once more, there
is no mention of the circumcision from the days of Joshua till the days
of Jeremiah, a period of more than eight hundred years. Will it be
believed that Samuel and David, and all those pious worthies with the
whole Jewish nation, neglected that essential seal of the covenant for
eight hundred years? It cannot be admitted for a moment. How [5]then
can any one suppose from the alleged silence of the sacred history that
Adam, Enoch, Noah and Abraham, kept no Sabbath, because the fact
was not stated? If we turn to Jer. ix: 25, 26, we find that they had not
neglected this right of circumcision, only they had not circumcised
their hearts; so that the proof is clear, that silence respecting the
keeping any positive command of God, is no evidence that it is not in
full force.
Again, if the Sabbath was not instituted in Paradise, why did Moses
mention it in connection with the creation of the world? Why not
reserve this fact for two or three thousand years in his history, until the

manna fell in the wilderness, (see Exo. xvi: 23) and then state that the
seventh day Sabbath commenced, as some will have it? I answer, for
the very