and his followers, and most anxiously sought out for opportunities of fastening some guilt upon them. It appears also that they were extremely unfortunate in these attempts, and compelled (as in the present instance) to have recourse to the silliest and most trivial charges; and even these turned out to be perfectly unfounded. From whence I think we may fairly draw this inference, that the character and conduct of our Lord and his disciples were perfectly blameless; since with all the industry of so many sharp-sighted observers, so extremely well disposed to discover guilt or to make it, they could find no real fault in him.

The pretence on this occasion was, that the disciples, by plucking a few ears of corn, and eating them as they passed through a corn-field on the sabbath-day, had violated the rest of that holy day, and thus transgressed the Mosaical law. But to this our Lord replied, that in cases of extreme necessity the severity of that law might be dispensed with and relaxed.

As

As a proof of this, he appealed first to the example of David, the man after God's own heart, who (as may be seen in 1 Samuel xxi. 6.) when he and his men were reduced to great straits for want of food, asked and obtained from Abimelech the priest a part of the consecrated bread which had been taken from the altar, and which it was not lawful for any but the priests to eat. The other instance he adduced was that of the priests themselves, who in the necessary service of the temple on the sabbath day were obliged to work with their own hands, by lighting the fires, killing the victims, offering up the sacrifices, &c. This in any other persons would have been considered as profanations of the sabbath; but in the priests who were engaged in the duties of religion it was not.

These arguments addressed to a Jew were in themselves unanswerable;

be

cause they appealed to the practice of persons whom the Jews held sacred, and

whose conduct they durst not condemn.

But

But they went still further than this; they went to establish this general principle, that there might be obligations of a force superior even to the law of Moses, and to which it ought in

way; as in the

certain cases to give

first instance to the pressing demands of necessity, in the other to the services of the temple.

If then in these cases the law might be dispensed with, still more might it be overruled by a Power paramount to every other Power, by Him who was far greater and holier than the temple itself, who was Lord even of the Sabbath, who was indeed supreme Lord over all, and might therefore authorize his disciples, in a case of real urgency, to depart a little from the rigour of the sabbatical rest. ;

It should be observed here, that where St. Matthew says, "the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath-day;" St. Mark in the parallel place, expresses himself thus: "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." That is, the sabbath was given to man for his

benefit,

benefit, for the improvement of his soul, as well as for the rest of his body; and the latter, when necessary, must be sacrificed to the former. For man was not made for the sabbath: was not made to be a slave to it, to be so servilely bound down to the strict Pharisaical observance of it, as to lose, by that rigorous adhe rence to the letter, opportunities of doing essential service to himself and his fellow creatures.

To this irresistible force of reasoning, our blessed Lord adds another argument of considerable weight: "If ye had known, says he, what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless." The quotation is from the prophet Hosea; the words are supposed to be those of God himself; and the meaning is, according to a well-known Jewish idiom, I prefer mercy to sacrifice: that is, when any ceremonial institution interferes with the execution of any charitable or pious design, the former must give place to the latter; VOL. I.

U

as

as in the present instance, a strict observance of the sabbath must not be suffered to deprive my disciples of that refreshment which is necessary to support them under the fatigue of following me, and dispensing to mankind the blessings of the Gospel. We see then with what superstitious rigour the Jews adhered to the letter of their law respecting the Jewish sabbath; and with what superior wisdom and dignity our Lord endeavoured to raise their minds above such trivial things to the true spirit of it, to the life and soul of religion.

The fault however here reproved and corrected is not one into which we of this country are likely to fall, nor is there any need to warn us against imitating the Jews in this instance. There is no danger that we should carry the observance of our sabbath too far, or that we should be too scrupulously nice in avoiding every the minutest infringement of the rest and sanctity of that holy day. The bent and tendency of the present times is too evidently