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Among the memoirs of John Russell Hutchison (1807-1878), published as Reminiscences, Sketches and Addresses Selected From My Papers During a Ministry of Forty-Five Years in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas (1874), is a sermon preached just over 150 years ago at Hempstead, Texas in October 1869 titled simply The Sabbath.
“Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” — Exodus 20:8. The observance of the Sabbath is essential to the spread of Christianity, and to its transmission from one age to another. The Sabbath is the centre of the system, the keystone of the arch. Without it, the Gospel would have no opportunity of exerting its benign influences upon the masses, of giving forth, in public assemblies, its loud and solemn utterances of warning and instruction.
After showing the antiquity of the Sabbath institution, and that it precedes the birth of the Jewish nation, Hutchison goes on to explain further why the Sabbath is of universal and binding application, and not merely a ceremonial and obsolete law.
We base the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath, not merely upon its institution in Paradise, its recognition among all the nations of antiquity, and its incorporation into the Jewish economy, but mainly on the fact of its constituting a prominent part of the ten commandments. Hence, all who admit the universal and perpetual obligation of the Decalogue, must admit the equally binding nature of the Sabbath.
For if the Sabbath was merely ceremonial, serving a temporary purpose, and then passing away, like other temporary rites of the old dispensation, why should it occupy such a prominent place in that code of laws designed by God to be binding on the whole human race? Why is it found there at all? Why select it from the number of the merely temporary ordinances of the Mosaic economy, and place it so conspicuously in the very centre of that eternal compendium of moral duties, given for the government of the whole world? The fact of its being found where it is decides the question. And there is something in the peculiar position which this command occupies in the Decalogue, and the language in which it is couched, which renders it the most remarkable precept of the entire ten. It is the longest commandment. It is the most minute and specific in its language, carefully enumerating a large number of particulars. It is located in the very heart of the code, between the two tables of the law — the first embracing our duties to God, the second our duties to man. And because this precept partakes of the nature of both tables, and enjoins duties to both God and man, it is placed between both. It is the golden clasp which binds the two tables together; and whoever would take it away, breaks the clasp and mars the whole. For he robs God of his worship and man of his rest. The fact, then, of the law of the Sabbath being found in the Decalogue, settles the question under discussion. And mankind have no more right to violate or ignore its requirements, than they have to set aside the law respecting idolatry, or murder, or theft, or filial insubordination, or conjugal infidelity.
There are civil and temporal benefits to adhering to the day of rest, which God has commanded, and great troubles follow when the day of rest is not kept, as Hutchison tells us. The Sabbath is truly intended as a mercy to mankind, and the means by which both bodies and souls are cared for in accordance with the design of God.
Be entreated then, to “Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.” This is the day the Lord hath made. He calls the hours his own. Remember it, for it comes to rest the weary laborer, to calm the fevered brow of the anxious merchant. Remember it, for it is the type of heaven—of that rest which remaineth for the people of God. Remember it, for God wrote it with his own finger upon tables of stone, and proclaimed it, amid thunderings and lightning and earthquakes, from the summit of Mount Sinai.
The Sabbath rest is both a command and a blessing, which reminds us of that which our Lord and Savior tells his disciples, ie., that his yoke is easy and his burden is light (Matt. 11:30). The command to keep the Sabbath day holy, far from being a burden, is truly a delight (Isa. 58:13). Read Hutchison’s full sermon here, and may the words of a 150-year old sermon remind us that the day of rest remains for the people of God.
