SIXTH PROPOSITION.

WHEN JUDAISM WAS ABROGATED THE ORIGINAL SABBATH REMAINED TO THE CHRIS

TIAN CHURCH.

The patriarchal Sabbath reviewed-Type and AntitypeThe Resurrection of Christ-Statements of Barnabas and Eusebius-Pentecost-The law of the Sabbath re-enacted by our Lord-He kept the first day after his resurrection-Argument of the apostle Paul-Example of the primitive Church conclusive.

As laid down in the Introduction of this Essay, the Sabbath is essential to the Christian religion; that is, without a suitable weekly observance of it, this religion could not long be maintained, in its purity, in the earth. The Church has not been, nor can it be, without the sacred day. Inasmuch, then, as the whole of the Jewish service was abrogated, and as there

was, from the beginning, a holy Sabbath set apart for the observance of all mankind, and as it does not appear that any other was provided for the Christian Church, or that this Church needed another differing from the first, the inference is reasonable, that the Church in its wisdom, even if uninspired, would have revived the original institution, especially as Christ arose from the dead on the day of its former observance. When it is remembered that this original Sabbath had been preserved throughout all antichristian ages by very special providential care, and that in a temporary system of types and shadows requiring another Sabbath, the former, and universal one, had been constantly kept in "remembrance," apparently with reference to a revival when the temporal economy should close, the probability of such a revival is greatly increased; and when it is considered that the Divine Mind, who sanctified the first Sabbath and preserved it ever after, was the inspirer of the apostles in founding the Christian Church,

and that these apostles and all the Church with them did religiously observe the first day of the week, that which in the first case was but a reasonable inference, in this assumes the nature of an axiom, it becomes certainty; namely, that this first day of the week, as appointed by God, is still preserved by him as a Sabbath of rest to all people.

It has been seen how the wave-offering commemorated the day of "rest," and prefigured the resurrection of Christ. On the morrow after the Sabbath of the Passover, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, while the “first-fruits" of the field were being offered in the Temple by the priest, the "first-fruits of them that slept" arose from the dead and entered into "rest," agreeable to the type. This, also, accords with the prophecy of David: “The stone which the builders rejected is become the head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice

and be glad in it." Psa. cxviii, 22-24. Christ became the head of the corner, after he was rejected, by his resurrection, on the day the Lord had made a sacred festival by Sabbatizing it in the beginning; the first day of the week, on which his Church, ever after its reconsecration by the resurrection of our Lord, should rejoice and be glad. Of this passage Henry says: “It may very fitly be understood of the Christian Sabbath, which we sanctify in remembrance of Christ's resurrection, when the rejected Stone began to be exalted." (Comp. Com., vol. iii, p. 93.) "Of the day on which Christ arose from the dead," observes Bishop Horne, “it may,

may, with more propriety than of any other day, be affirmed, 'This is the day which Jehovah hath made.' Then it was that the 'rejected stone' became the head of the corner. That the day of the resurrection of Christ is the one had especially in view by the inspiring mind is clear from the seventeenth verse of this Psalm: "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of

the Lord." (Horne on the Psalms, pp. 337, 338.) The Savior also applies this language directly to himself, as in the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

So Peter evidently understood this text when he said to the Jews-Acts iv, 10-12—“Be it known unto you all, . . . that Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, . . . is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which is become the head of the corner." Observe, he and his co-laborers had regarded that day as sacred on which he became the "head of the corner," from the transpiring of that event.

Barnabas, as already quoted, is explicit. He says: "We observe the eighth day in which Jesus arose from the dead with gladness," as David enjoins, and for the following reasons, to wit: because it is the very day-Sabbath-which the Lord had made that is "blessed," or "sanctified," by resting both from the work of creation and redemption. Speaking of the death and res