Three Sermons

By Patrick Henry Greenleaf

"Three Sermons" by Patrick Henry Greenleaf is a collection of three sermons by the well-known American churchman of the mid-19th century, and includes:

• Sunday, a Christian Festival. A Sermon Delivered in St. Paul's Church, November 14, 1

• Language: English
• Publisher: Full Well Ventures
• Release date: Jan 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9781628345261

Book preview

PART I

SUNDAY, A CHRISTIAN FESTIVAL.

A SERMON DELIVERED IN ST. PAUL’S CHURCH, NOVEMBER 14, 1858.

The following Sermon, prepared in the ordinary course of duty, with no reference to its publication, is now printed for the use of the Congregation, to correct some misrepresentations. A few notes have been added, more fully to explain the meaning of its text. And the Author sends it forth, with all its imperfections, desiring for himself and the cause he represents, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

SERMON

And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.

MARK 2:27, 28.

Our subject this morning is the Law of the Christian Sabbath. Its obligation rests not upon Jewish appointment. Its duties are not to be regulated by Jewish example. ¹ It is a Christian day, founded upon the authority of Christ, celebrating the Resurrection of Christ, and is a Holy Day to be kept sacred in all its hours. It is a festival and not a fast—the feast of the resurrection of Jesus, and not a commemoration of Jewish history—a day consecrated by its duties—to holiness and therefore to happiness; and the rule of its observance is expressed by its Lord, in the words we have selected as our text, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

The true sanctification of the Lord’s day, is in nowise promoted by severity and stringency in the mode of its observance. In the delicate relations of the affections and interior emotions of the soul, specially in matters of religion, it is unsafe to legislate. Indeed, it seems to me that much of the desecration of the day—much of the laxity and carelessness—nay, infidelity of men in its personal obedience, can be traced to the overstraining of its prescribed duties, the Puritanic and legal severity of its law, and the mistaken view of its true nature and character, derived from considering it as a Jewish rather than a Christian institution; and on this subject, and with a view to correct some misapprehensions, I desire to say a few words.

At the time when the Lord spake the words of the text, He was in the fields of Judea. This divine man in no other temple than they afforded him, with no other dome above him than the sky, and no music around him but the songs of the birds and the whispering sighs of the trees, was fulfilling his great mission, and about His Father’s business. It was the Sabbath. Wherever else he had worshiped he was then in the temple of nature. His morning sacrifice had not been neglected. But his first duty to His Father having been performed, he was now in the open air and the green fields, walking with His Disciples. In their hunger they gathered the grains of corn as they passed, and did eat. The observant Pharisees complained of this, as a violation of the law forbidding servile work, and held it to be a species of reaping. Our Lord repelled the idea of elevating an institution for man's benefit and comfort, above considerations of both; and referred to the case of David, who, in his necessities, did not scruple to take the consecrated Bread of the Sanctuary, as rightfully employed, if need be, in the sustenance of life. And then, calling their attention to the institution itself, as only means to an end, he rebuked their Pharisaic interpretation of the sacred Canon, by declaring that the Sabbath was made for man, for his benefit, for his interests, for his comfort, for the higher necessities of his spiritual nature, and not to bind the man to the iron rule of any exterior law whatsoever. He intimates very broadly that no positive institution of the law was valuable unless it subserved the object for which it was given, and that in the new dispensation which he came to enact, He, in his official