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THE KING’S BUSINESS
to groan over them, but what about the wrongs done by American employers to American employees, and done by some of you Christian men and women who are sitting in this audience this morning to other men and women that work for you. 2. Men also need a Sabbath, or Lord’s Day, for their highest and best intellectual development. No man can attain to his best intellect ually who does not take one day in the week off from his usual intellectual employment. 3. Man needs one holy day in the week to meet his moral and spiritual need. Here we touch the highest thought and purpose o f the Sabbath as regards man’s need. Not the highest thought and pur pose o f the Sabbath, for the Sabbath has a purpose, as we s,hall see later, as regards God and His interests and His glory, but the highest thought and purpose as regards man’s needs. Man has not only a body and an intellect, he has something infinitely higher, he has a spirit made in the likeness add image o f Him who is Spirit, and man’s highest needs are the needs o f his spirit, his moral and spiritual needs. The Sab bath, a holy day for rest from ordinary occupation and for holy occupation, meets man’s moral and spiritual necessity. Man cannot do without the Sabbath, or the Lord’s day, and attain to his moral and spiritual best, attain to what God created him to be, like Himself. It is all well enough to say that every day in the week should be a holy day, and so it should be in a sense, but as a matter o f hard, prac tical fact, no man or woman can make every day in the week a holy day in any sense, without making one day in the week a holy day in an altogether special sense. It is not that we “ regard one day above another,’’ but that we observe one day in a peculiar way in the interest o f all the days in the week. The failure to keep one day holy in an altogether special way leads surely and inevitably to the moral and spiritual deterioration o f the individual, the family, and the state. The nations that have been the most faithful in the observance o f the
holy day o f rest have attained to the highest and best morally and spiritually, and the decline o f Sabbath observation in any nation has always been followed by grave and gross moral deterioration. The col lapse o f Sabbath observance in America has resulted iti a collapse o f individual, domestic and social morals. The man who promotes Sabbath observance is the nation’s best friend. The man who in any way undermines Sabbath observance is one of the nation’s greatest enemies. II. Turning to our text again, “ The Sab bath was made for man / ’ i. e., not for a SINGLE RACE OF MEN, OS the JeWS, BUT FOR all races . -It meets not only the needs o f the Jew, but the needs o f the German, the Frenchman, the Englishman, and the Amer ican as well. It is true that in the precise form as observed in Israel as a seventh day o f the week observance in a particular way, with fixed precepts, it is Jewish, as Deut. 5:1-6, 15 plainly declares, and therefore Paul could well say in speaking o f Jewish institutions and ceremonies that were ful filled and so superseded and done away in' Christ, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect o f a feast day, or a new moon, or a Sabbath day.; which are a shadow o f the things to come; but the body is Christ’s.” (Col. 2:16, 17). But the idea o f one day’s rest and holy occupation that was embodied in the spe cific Mosaic precepts was not for the Jew ' alone, it went back to the creation o f the human race (Gen. 2:1-31) and continues until the Sabbath that remaineth for the children o f God breaks at our Lord’s return. As to the day o f the week to be kept, o f course not the seventh day that celebrates the finishing o f the old creation, but the first day o f the week, The Lord’s Day, that marks the dawn o f the new crea tion. But every man, woman and child o f who does not observe it. Any man or fam ily that does not keep one day in seven entirely different from the other six is a pitiable object. III. W hile the L ord said , “ T he S ab bath WAS MADE FOR MAN,” T he LORD DID
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