Page:Sermons on the Ten Commandments.djvu/73

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the Divine guidance, and even the very knowledges in his memory are made use of to serve the Lord and his fellow-men. That such is the signification of the rest of the Sabbath, is plain from the following passage in Isaiah:[1] "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and shall call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, to be honored; and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words,—then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob, thy father." Here we see the state of the Sabbath characterized by man's "not doing his own ways, nor finding his own pleasure, nor speaking his own words," meaning that in the Sabbath of the soul, in the state of full regeneration, man acts wholly from the Lord, and not at all from self: and the same is meant by doing no work on the Sabbath-day.

In the conclusion of the Commandment, a reason is given for man's keeping the Sabbath, thus:—"For in six days the Lord made the heavens, and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath-day and hallowed it." Now, every reflecting mind sees that this is not to be taken literally,—that the Almighty, the Infinite Creator, should have made the universe in just six days, and then was tired and needed rest;—when it is expressly declared in another place that

  1. lviii. 13, 14.