THE evidence of design is unmistakable proof of a master mind in construction. Whether in a building, a picture, or a poem, the design apparent in the work declares the power of the author. In the erection of a building many trades are called into service to carry out the scheme of the architect, and each of these trades―mason, carpenter, painter―is in turn governed by the mind of the foreman of the skilled hands who work under him; these various foremen work loyally together, each in his own department, and all fulfil the wishes of the master mind who has planned the whole structure. The Word of God bears upon it the evidence of design. All its parts relate to one another; great lines of thought run throughout the whole Book, and from the beginning to the end it forms a perfect construction. Various writers of various ages were called of God to carry out their part of the work, their own individuality being stamped upon that which each has done; but while this is the case, all of them have been governed by the impulse of the Master Mind of Him who has planned, and who, during the lapse of many hundreds of years, has perfected the entire structure.
The favorite notion of the popular form of infidelity which prevails today, is the refusal to see in the Word of God the evidence of design. Instead of perceiving that the mason did his work and placed it in the building where he was ordered, and that the carpenter fulfilled his calling as he was bidden―while the hand, the individual skill, of each workman marks his own special work―it is asserted that the whole erection grew up without a governing mind and without method. And that it stands before us a mere mass of evolution, held together or shored up by ages of ignorance. Thus the Bible is made to be devoid of those first elements of order and purpose which mark the toil of the humblest bird which ever built a nest
This sort of infidelity lays itself open to criticism on various grounds. It proclaims its own ignorance of the very idea of the Book. It attributes to the Jewish people and the Church generally the grossest ignorance. It suggests that all the learned men and all the great minds who searched the Scriptures for some thousands of years before this nineteenth century, were fools. According to this criticism, everyone, from the days of Moses downwards, who believed that Moses wrote the books attributed to him; who believed that the prophets of old stated what is over their names; and who believes that which the Lord Jesus Christ declared to be the case, is a deceiver or an ignoramus, These critics would have us accept on their own unproved testimony that much of the most solemn and practical instruction of the Old Testament is the work of forgers, who, for the aggrandizement of their class―that is, the priest-scribe class amongst the Jews―tampered with ancient fragmentary documents, and patched them up into their present shape. According to them, the writers of the New Testament, when quoting these forged parts of the Old, “followed cunningly devised fables.” We, on the contrary, in obedience to the apostle whose words we have just recorded, regard these critics, in the light of his prophetic words, as “false teachers,” “by reason of whom the way of truth” (is) “evil spoken of.” Faith in the spokesmen of God and faith in the higher critics cannot co-exist in the mind.
In reading the Bible as a whole, amongst the greatest of the truths which may be traced through both Old and New Testaments is that of the divine institution of the Sabbath. The story of the Sabbath, and the story of the dispensations that have passed over this world, with those that are yet to be, are inseparably connected together. The truth regarding the Sabbath may be regarded as
A PILLAR IN THE DIVINE EDIFICE
of the Scriptures. Upon this pillar much superstructure is supported; from its central arches relative truths spring, which in turn entwine themselves with other great truths―all holding together in perfect unity. Remove this pillar, and at once a considerable part of the building becomes a heap of shapeless confusion.
Our object is not to treat of the observance of the Sabbath by man, but of a subject which is deeper―namely, God’s purpose in making the Sabbath for man. At intervals in the world’s history peoples and nations have kept Sabbath. To keep it was regarded as a sacred duty in ancient Babylonia, before the time of Abraham. The Jewish nation was bidden to observe it as a holy day to Jehovah; but regarding mankind as a whole, the Sabbath has not been ever kept since it was instituted by God.
The first mention of the sacred seventh day occurs at the beginning of the Bible, the Creator “rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.”
The work being accomplished, the day was set apart for rest, and because God had so rested He blessed and sanctified the seventh day. Here is a primary thought, and with it a great purpose of God stamped upon the design of the Scriptures―
GOD, HAVING ACCOMPLISHED A PERFECT WORK, KEPT HOLY SABBATH.
Into the creation rest God had established He placed man to enjoy that rest with Himself, for “the Sabbath was made for man.” But “sin entered into the world, and death by sin,” and thus the rest was broken. Thenceforward the earth became the place of toil, and sorrow, and death for man. Nevertheless, Sabbath-keeping is a purpose of God, and one which shall be yet fulfilled. What was thus foreshadowed in creation shall be fully realized in a more glorious manner in redemption.
The writer of the Christian era who, in the epistle to the Hebrews, unfolds this divine purpose, thus speaks of
GOD’S REST:
“Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world”; although Israel coming out of Egypt did “not enter into His rest”; and although Joshua did not give it them; still “there remaineth a rest” a keeping of the Sabbath― “to the people of God.” Thus, from the record of creation to the promise of the fulness of redemption, the purpose of God as to Sabbath-keeping stands in unyielding excellence. The same Master Mind which instructed Moses concerning the ways of God at the beginning, instructed Paul concerning the ways of God at the end of time.
Some little while ago evidences respecting the belief of man long before the age of Moses, and prior to that of Abraham, came to light. The higher criticism would have us understand that a very great deal of that which we read in the Bible about the Sabbath could not have been held as a belief in the early days of our race, and that we have to look to the evolution of the ideas of religion, and to the handiwork of Ezra’s priests after Israel’s return from their captivity in Babylon, to account for the presence of these conceptions in the Bible. Accordingly we have to find in the progress of the mind of man the fountainhead of these teachings respecting God; we are not to find this fountain head in divine revelation It was impossible, it is asserted, that a very great many of the injunctions respecting the Sabbath could have had a place on the earth so early as the days of Moses, or that shortly after the Flood man could hold a sacred Sabbath. Now, one of the signs of our times is the way in which, in His providence, God is
DISCLOSING ANSWERS TO THIS POPULAR CRITICISM.
Books of clay buried in the ruins of ancient cities in Babylonia are continually being discovered. Many of these books are far older than Moses, and, indeed, than Abraham. They are read with comparative ease by scholars, and plain people may profit by the study of them. Some of these clay books are in the British Museum, and on them we read not only of a seventh day valued as a time measure, but of a seventh day regarded as sacred―we read of a Sabbath!
Let these
BOOKS FROM THE ANCIENT LIBRARIES OF LONG-BURIED CITIES SPEAK
for themselves.
“The seventh day is a resting day . . . . a holy day, a Sabbath. The shepherd of mighty nations must not eat flesh cooked at the fire or in the smoke. His clothes he changes not. A washing he must not make . . . . The king must not drive in his chariot. He must not issue royal decrees . . . .”
The very word “Sabattum” is found in some of these most ancient clay books, and is explained to signify “The day of the rest of the heart.” In another list of words “Sabbatu” occurs, and as a synonym of the word “gamaru,” “to complete, to finish.”
Further, “the Sabbaths of the Babylonian calendar do not appear to have been dedicated to any particular god, but rather to have embraced most of the pantheon”; hence the exceedingly ancient religious nature of the day to those early peoples is apparent.
Need we observe that the discovery of these old beliefs of the close descendants of the builders of the Tower of Babel is the complete overthrow of the system of higher criticism as applied to the Sabbath taught by Moses? The story of the Sabbath, as told in the Scriptures, is not a modern tale dating from Ezra’s time. The scribes of Ezra’s time were not forging over Moses’s name instruction which they had acquired in the Babylonish captivity, but Moses, inspired by God, was giving to man the divine account of that which had long been known on the earth. Moses supplied the true story upon which were based these primitive legends. We shall have more to say on this subject in our next issue.