ABSTRACT
Let us, then, briefly inquire as to the nature of the Fourth Commandment. What is it? Under what obligations does it really place us, for the discharge of which we are responsible to God? As to its letter, it is clear, for example, that it authoritatively binds us to keep the seventh day holy. It is not a seventh—that is, in my opinion, not fair criticism. Indeed, I am not aware that this has ever been seriously questioned, except perhaps by those who, judging from their line of argument, fear that the elasticity of “a day” is required to make the commandment applicable to the whole world, while “the day” would seem to favour the conclusion to which they object, that it was for a limited portion of the globe only. Further, the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment was from evening to evening. It began upon—what we should call—the Friday evening, and ended upon the Saturday evening. This fact is of some importance as telling on social habits. You remember, doubtless, what Michaelis makes of this, shewing the much more favourable position in which the Jew was placed in the fine climate of Palestine, as compared with the Christian, especially the poor Christian, in the cold, damp climate of Northern Europe. The Jew, he reminds us, might, for example, have his hot dinner on the Friday afternoon before the Sabbath began. In the delicious climate of Palestine he might have on the Sabbath his milk, his grapes,—all, in fact, that he could desire in hot weather; and then, when the evening of Saturday closed, he might have his hot dinner again. This, as a fact, bears very materially upon the question of breaking the Fourth Commandment, as it has been hitherto explained in Scotland, where men seriously talk of the sin of cooking a hot dinner on Sunday!
