3rd cousins Rosemary Dobbs Perticari and William Theodore Dobbs and Patricia Dobbs Berkley gathered at the home of Rosemary for a week long celebration of our family. We plowed through bins of old pictures and letters and swapped stories that we had heard about our ancient relatives. We visited our GGG Grandparents' graves in the Old Baltimore Cemetery. We found some additional Dobbs family members in the cemetery that we hadn't known about before. Today, June 4, 2010, we are taking old photographs and letters to Kinkos to make copies.
Bill provided a cassette tape of Willoughby Barrett Dobbs (1861-1931) and Hugh Barrett Dobbs (1885-1944) talking and singing during Hugh's radio show, The Ship of Joy. They sang Auld Lang Zyne in perfect harmony. What a treat to hear their long gone voices! Willoughby died a few months later after a mastoid operation. Hugh died in 1944 from a heart attack while eating dinner at the Yacht Club in Seattle.
Bill has provided many colorful stories of his grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt Dobbs, and his father Theodore Maxwell Dobbs. TRD took Bill to many baseball games at Yankee Stadium in New York. TMD was a larger than life flamboyant character with a big imagination. Bill will write more about them as we get to their generation in this blog.
Bill and I discovered that we are both INFP Myers-Briggs types and we have enjoyed talking about our life experiences and perspectives through the INFP veil.
Genealogy cousins are great! It makes this work all worthwhile. I love it.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
DAR Certificate
Our cousin, Eleanor Frances Dobbs Marler, daughter of Nelson Barrett Dobbs Sr., granddaughter of Gilbert Dobbs, great-granddaughter of Rev. Dr. C.E.W. Dobbs had done all of the hard work necessary to obtain DAR acceptance. She was inducted on May 19th. The posting below is a copy of her certificate. We all owe her a round of gratitude. Now, all of the females in our line are eligible for the DAR using Kedar as our ancestor.
The picture is a bit blurry. If you want the original, send me an email please.
The picture is a bit blurry. If you want the original, send me an email please.
Monday, February 8, 2010
DNA Project
"Genealogy has evolved tremendously in the last few decades. What was once the laborious reading through old Court House records (and other documents) became (in some cases) the reading of clean, published books. Beyond that, micro-fische became the preferred method of reading old records, as they could be reproduced and made available in multiple locations. However, nothing has had a greater impact on the efficiency of genealogy research as the new-fangled internet.
We can now view records, post questions, and review past conversations with the click of a wireless mouse. But that having been said, there may be even one greater advancement for family researchers than even the internet.
I'm talking about Genetic Genealogy, or DNA testing. In just the last few years, DNA testing has become an absolute main-stay for serious researchers. No amount of Archive or Library research can match the dead on certainty of a DNA match between DNA participants. As such, ANY serious family researcher will include this tool in their arsenal for breaking down brick walls and confirming family connections.
To some, DNA research may seem confusing, as the science involved is very technical. But in reality, the process is exceedingly simple. Fathers pass along their personal male DNA to their sons, and mothers pass along their female DNA to all children (although only daughters pass this along to the next generation). Mutations occur over several generations, which allow scientist to predict how closely two individuals are related.
So, anyone can be tested for their DIRECT maternal DNA (mother's mother's mother's mother, etc.) Only males can be tested for paternal DNA (father's father's father's, father, etc.). Because surnames are typically passed along from father to children, and because sons typically maintain the surname of their father, male DNA is usually passed from generation to generation along with the last name.
As such, we can use DNA testing to see if two men with the same last name share a direct male Common Ancestor. I am very pleased to announce the creation of the Dobbs DNA Project to absolutely prove the relatedness of each and every Dobbs family in the world. All we need are willing participants from each family.
Many researchers have spent years trying to prove whether or not they are related to another Dobbs family. With the right male descendants, this can be confirmed or refuted with a simple and painless test (no blood). The test results are irrefutable.
In America, we have long standing traditions of Dobbs connections back to Europe. These traditions were made back in the days when genealogy was far less exact than modern research allows. We need a broad spectrum of Dobbs DNA participants to sort out which families are related to which. Hence, the Dobbs DNA Project was just started this past week.
If ANYBODY knows a man still carrying the Dobbs name, then I'd like to talk to you to see if your line needs to be included in our study. If ANYBODY has any questions or concerns about the DNA testing process or ramifications, I'd love to address these privately or publicly.
Genetic Genealogy is the solution to many historic brick walls. I could site hundreds of examples, but I don't wish to become more tedious than I've already been. Suffice to say, no modern family researcher can say they've exhausted all resources until they've taken advantage of DNA testing.
Please contact me directly with any questions, especially if you know a living male Dobbs.
Stan Bevers scbevers@comcast.net
We can now view records, post questions, and review past conversations with the click of a wireless mouse. But that having been said, there may be even one greater advancement for family researchers than even the internet.
I'm talking about Genetic Genealogy, or DNA testing. In just the last few years, DNA testing has become an absolute main-stay for serious researchers. No amount of Archive or Library research can match the dead on certainty of a DNA match between DNA participants. As such, ANY serious family researcher will include this tool in their arsenal for breaking down brick walls and confirming family connections.
To some, DNA research may seem confusing, as the science involved is very technical. But in reality, the process is exceedingly simple. Fathers pass along their personal male DNA to their sons, and mothers pass along their female DNA to all children (although only daughters pass this along to the next generation). Mutations occur over several generations, which allow scientist to predict how closely two individuals are related.
So, anyone can be tested for their DIRECT maternal DNA (mother's mother's mother's mother, etc.) Only males can be tested for paternal DNA (father's father's father's, father, etc.). Because surnames are typically passed along from father to children, and because sons typically maintain the surname of their father, male DNA is usually passed from generation to generation along with the last name.
As such, we can use DNA testing to see if two men with the same last name share a direct male Common Ancestor. I am very pleased to announce the creation of the Dobbs DNA Project to absolutely prove the relatedness of each and every Dobbs family in the world. All we need are willing participants from each family.
Many researchers have spent years trying to prove whether or not they are related to another Dobbs family. With the right male descendants, this can be confirmed or refuted with a simple and painless test (no blood). The test results are irrefutable.
In America, we have long standing traditions of Dobbs connections back to Europe. These traditions were made back in the days when genealogy was far less exact than modern research allows. We need a broad spectrum of Dobbs DNA participants to sort out which families are related to which. Hence, the Dobbs DNA Project was just started this past week.
If ANYBODY knows a man still carrying the Dobbs name, then I'd like to talk to you to see if your line needs to be included in our study. If ANYBODY has any questions or concerns about the DNA testing process or ramifications, I'd love to address these privately or publicly.
Genetic Genealogy is the solution to many historic brick walls. I could site hundreds of examples, but I don't wish to become more tedious than I've already been. Suffice to say, no modern family researcher can say they've exhausted all resources until they've taken advantage of DNA testing.
Please contact me directly with any questions, especially if you know a living male Dobbs.
Stan Bevers scbevers@comcast.net
C.E.W. Dobbs wrote Intro to Rev. Teasdale's book
Our cousin, Bill Dobbs, from Salt Lake City sent this one to me. I often wondered why CEW decided to become a minister. This introduction that he wrote for Rev. Teasdale's biography tells a part of the story. CEW wrote this in 1887 at the age of 47. I have highlighted a few sentences at the end of the piece that gives us some insight into his thinking.
INTRODUCTION written by Rev. C.E.W. Dobbs
to Reminiscences & Incidents of a Long Life By Thomas Cox Teasdale
The world is greatly indebted to biography. The records of lives lived before us are sources of knowledge and warning, encouragement and hope to ourselves and to those who come after us. Very much of the Bible is biography, and no inconsiderable portion is autobiography. God would have us learn wisdom from the examples of others; from their deeds and words; their successes and their failures. Most of ancient history, if not indeed, of all history, is but the recital of the acts of individuals, who have prominently figured in the events which have shaped the destinies of the race. While it is true that principles, rather than men, are the prime factors in the outworking of human progress, still the world naturally looks to the individuals through whom those principles have been embodied in deeds. While causes, long antedating the birth of those who figure on the historic page, may have produced the circumstances which made their lives possible, yet the fascination of that page gathers round the actor, rather than the precedent causes. So it is that biography has a charm for the average mind, which will eagerly and readily suffer itself to be moulded and led by principles and doctrines exemplified by a life, when those same principles and doctrines would prove uninteresting and barren if presented in abstract form. Herein is found the wonderful power of those life-pictures drawn by our Lord in his parables. The truth embodied in the story of the man, the woman, the steward, the householder, the shepherd, the king— ah! how it reaches and thrills and sways! Our modern teachers of religious and moral duties recognize that for the great mass of men, this is the most efficient method of inculcating truth. Weaving the truth into the threads of the story, either of a real, or an ideal life—this is the open door to the soul. And the story, with the truth incidentally taught, is effective in proportion to the verisimilitude characterizing the production.
Dr. Pendleton, in reviewing Dr. Hatcher's "Life of Dr. Jeter," says that "works of biography are not generally popular," and he instances the fact that second editions of many works of this kind have not been called for. But there are biographies and biographies. One need not wonder that biographies such as once composed the bulk of the volumes burdening (yes, literally) the shelves of Sunday-school libraries, should have been distasteful to the dear souls forced to peruse them. Let us hope that that style of biography, with its fitting companion—the canting "diary" of too self-conscious piety—has gone forever into its deserved oblivion! But no one, who is capable of enjoying a really instructive and entertaining book, can read, for example, that "Life of Dr. Jeter" without pleasure and profit. It may be that the prejudice against books of biography has arisen from the experience of the past.
This work of Dr. Teasdale, though autobiographical, will be found to be anything but prosy and dull. Its pages, so full of incidents and reminiscences of the long life of one of God's honored servants, will be read with unflagging interest by multitudes who have known and revered him. It is not the work of sudden and late impulse; it is the growth of years of experience and labor. The busy life of the author, so varied in its spheres of usefulness, has necessarily brought him into relations and associations more or less intimate with widely-scattered thousands of God's children. Nearly three score years of ministerial service, —as pastor, as secretary, as professor, as evangelist, as author,—have made Dr. Teasdale a household name among Baptists North and South, East and West, Those who have known him in any of his many fields of labor will welcome this volume, and will be glad to put before their families this vivid narrative of a life so consecrated to duty and so useful to the cause of the Master. Urgent calls from many of those friends have had much to do in persuading Dr. Teasdale to write the book.
Dr. Teasdale's character as a man, no less than his eminent service as a minister of the Gospel, entitles him to regard and esteem. The proverb tells us that "the hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness." Since early manhood, he has been numbered among the soldiers of Christ, and has borne no small part in the struggles and victories which have been fought and achieved by the church in the present century. Born almost in its beginning, he has lived to share the marvelous activities and gratifying successes characterizing its last quarter. The writer heard him make an impromptu talk in one of the morning half hours of prayer, at the State Convention of Mississippi Baptists, recently held in Oxford, in which he said : "For more than half a century have I tried to serve God in preaching the precious Gospel of Christ. I have loved this blessed Savior and the work he has given me to do, and if I had to live my life over again I would cheerfully devote it all to the same delightful service." Such language is the utterance of profound conviction and earnest piety; it is the tribute which sincere love and self-sacrificing faithfulness would lay at the feet of saving Grace. Soon will his work be done on earth, and the servant shall go to his heavenly rewards. Soon will the warrior lay down his armor, and enter into his eternal victory. It is well that he should leave behind him this volume telling how the Lord has led him and blessed him as he has labored in the vineyard and fought the good fight.
Dr. Teasdale's long ministry has been many-sided in its spheres of usefulness. In this introduction it is unnecessary to dwell upon these in detail. The reader would more satisfactorily consult the pages which lie before him. Suffice it to say here that in all the positions he has occupied, he has given the best energies of his mind and heart to the duties of the hour. As pastor, the records which tell of laborious and successful years at New Haven, Pittsburg, Springfield, Washington and Columbus, testify to his faithfulness and efficiency. As Secretary, he can point with satisfaction to the energy with which he prosecuted the work of the Sunday-school Board of the Southern Baptist Convention during the trying and critical years when it was in his charge. As author, he has just reason to rejoice that his "Revival Discourses" and his work on "Baptism and Communion" have been greatly blessed to the edification, comfort and guidance of many souls. But it is as Evangelist perhaps, that he has clone his best work and been most signally owned of the Master. In this special field he has indeed made full proof of his ministry. The name "evangelist" is used in deference to common usage, though that usage has not wholly the sanction of the New Testament. The word is found three times in the New Testament. Philip, one of the seven, was known as "the evangelist," and Timothy was urged by Paul to "do the work of an evangelist," while among the "gifts" of the ascended Head of the Church, for the building up of the body of Christ, the evangelist is named. (Acts xxi. 8; 2 Tim. iv. 5; Eph. iv. 11). The Greek verbal form occurs frequently, usually rendered, "preach the Gospel"—literally "evangelize." An evangelist, then, in the Scripture sense, is one who preaches the Gospel, perhaps with an implication of itinerancy. The name indicates a work, rather than a distinct ministerial or dcr. The Apostles "evangelized," that is, they were "heralds of the good tidings." (Acts vm. 25 ; xiv. 7 : 1 Cor. i: 17). From the connection in which the word is found we may infer that the calling of the evangelist was the proclamation of the Gospel to those who had not known it, rather than the instruction and pastoral care of those already gathered into churches. In the early Christian centuries the term was applied to the writers of the four Gospels; and we yet so apply it. If we think of the modern evangelist as one whose special mission it is to preach the Gospel to the unconverted, there is a quasi-scriptural argument for the use. Perhaps, however, the modern foreign missionary, bearing the glad tidings for the first time to the heathen, is the nearest analogy to the evangelist of the New Testament. Using the term in its prevalent significance Dr. Teasdale must be considered a very successful evangelist.
He was, in the years of his evangelistic activity, admirably fitted for that work. When a youth of eighteen years, I first heard him, he was in the prime of manhood, one of the most impressive pulpit orators of our country. Though of small stature his appearance in the pulpit indicated a man of much larger build. His movements and gestures in the delivery of his sermons were exceedingly graceful. His elocution was fine, and his voice exceptionally clear and resonant. In prayer he was especially gifted. When he drew near the throne of grace his manner was reverent, and the earnest and pathetic tone of his petitions moved the soul to sincere attention and humble interest. His sermons displayed no inconsiderable analytical and logical thought. He preached the Word. In doctrine his sermons were always eminently Scriptural. While not ignoring the graces of rhetoric eloquence, they abound in the clear statements of fundamental Gospel truth as of paramount importance in winning souls. It may be well to refer here to those admirable sermons on "Self righteousness," the "Agency of the Holy Spirit," and the "Sin against the Holy Spirit," found in his "Revival Discourses." These proclaim in no uncertain terms the plan of salvation, while his discourse on "God's Controversy with the Sinner," sets forth with such vividness the depravity and guilt of the ungodly as to make the conscience tremble under a sense of the need of Divine mercy.
As an evangelist, Dr. Teasdale never played the clown; he was no buffoon; he never descended to "court a smile when he should woo a soul." Boorish jokes and .vulgar slang found no place in his message from God. Impressed with the awful danger of men, and the solemnity of his vocation, he discarded alike the jesting and the tricks of the mountebank, which, alas, have come to play so sad a part in the preaching and methods of many popular so-called "evangelists." Unlike them, Dr. Teasdale ever preached the Gospel as the only power of God unto salvation.
"He preached as tho' he ne'er might preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men."
Souls converted under such an evangelist come into the churches animated by the true idea of salvation by grace and prepared to "run the race set before them." Intelligently led to Christ they continue to "serve God with reverence and Godly fear."
It need scarcely be added that in his work as an evangelist Dr. Teasdale aimed to strengthen the pastors in. the esteem and affection of the churches. He did not pose before the people as some "higher life" saint who had attained unto some peculiar spiritual aristocracy in the kingdom of Heaven. He did not begin his meetings by abusing the ministry as lacking in faith and faithfulness, or devoid of earnestness in preaching the Gospel. Many "evangelists" seem to think it necessary to hold up the average pastor as wanting in knowledge of the Word and lacking in zeal for the salvation of their flocks. Not so with this Father in Israel. He fully recognized the work of the ordinary ministry in their faithful seed-sowing and oversight of the churches, and came to their aid as a fellow-worker with them in the Lord's harvest field.
In the Baptist ministry of to-day stand many honored men of God who, through Dr. Teasdale's preaching, were either led to the Savior, or induced to enter the ministry. Among them may be mentioned Drs. Lorimer and Hawthorne. Never can I cease to thank God for the providence that led me to hear a series of sermons by Dr. Teasdale in Portsmouth, Va. some thirty years ago. That series of sermons under God saved me from what might have been a life-long groping amid the shadows of Universalism, and turned my feet into the path which ultimately led me to the "truth as it is in Jesus." And now, as this venerable servant of Jesus is Hearing his crown, I desire to lay before the world this tribute to his work and worth.
C. E. W. DOBBS. Columbus, Miss., Sept. 1, '87.
INTRODUCTION written by Rev. C.E.W. Dobbs
to Reminiscences & Incidents of a Long Life By Thomas Cox Teasdale
The world is greatly indebted to biography. The records of lives lived before us are sources of knowledge and warning, encouragement and hope to ourselves and to those who come after us. Very much of the Bible is biography, and no inconsiderable portion is autobiography. God would have us learn wisdom from the examples of others; from their deeds and words; their successes and their failures. Most of ancient history, if not indeed, of all history, is but the recital of the acts of individuals, who have prominently figured in the events which have shaped the destinies of the race. While it is true that principles, rather than men, are the prime factors in the outworking of human progress, still the world naturally looks to the individuals through whom those principles have been embodied in deeds. While causes, long antedating the birth of those who figure on the historic page, may have produced the circumstances which made their lives possible, yet the fascination of that page gathers round the actor, rather than the precedent causes. So it is that biography has a charm for the average mind, which will eagerly and readily suffer itself to be moulded and led by principles and doctrines exemplified by a life, when those same principles and doctrines would prove uninteresting and barren if presented in abstract form. Herein is found the wonderful power of those life-pictures drawn by our Lord in his parables. The truth embodied in the story of the man, the woman, the steward, the householder, the shepherd, the king— ah! how it reaches and thrills and sways! Our modern teachers of religious and moral duties recognize that for the great mass of men, this is the most efficient method of inculcating truth. Weaving the truth into the threads of the story, either of a real, or an ideal life—this is the open door to the soul. And the story, with the truth incidentally taught, is effective in proportion to the verisimilitude characterizing the production.
Dr. Pendleton, in reviewing Dr. Hatcher's "Life of Dr. Jeter," says that "works of biography are not generally popular," and he instances the fact that second editions of many works of this kind have not been called for. But there are biographies and biographies. One need not wonder that biographies such as once composed the bulk of the volumes burdening (yes, literally) the shelves of Sunday-school libraries, should have been distasteful to the dear souls forced to peruse them. Let us hope that that style of biography, with its fitting companion—the canting "diary" of too self-conscious piety—has gone forever into its deserved oblivion! But no one, who is capable of enjoying a really instructive and entertaining book, can read, for example, that "Life of Dr. Jeter" without pleasure and profit. It may be that the prejudice against books of biography has arisen from the experience of the past.
This work of Dr. Teasdale, though autobiographical, will be found to be anything but prosy and dull. Its pages, so full of incidents and reminiscences of the long life of one of God's honored servants, will be read with unflagging interest by multitudes who have known and revered him. It is not the work of sudden and late impulse; it is the growth of years of experience and labor. The busy life of the author, so varied in its spheres of usefulness, has necessarily brought him into relations and associations more or less intimate with widely-scattered thousands of God's children. Nearly three score years of ministerial service, —as pastor, as secretary, as professor, as evangelist, as author,—have made Dr. Teasdale a household name among Baptists North and South, East and West, Those who have known him in any of his many fields of labor will welcome this volume, and will be glad to put before their families this vivid narrative of a life so consecrated to duty and so useful to the cause of the Master. Urgent calls from many of those friends have had much to do in persuading Dr. Teasdale to write the book.
Dr. Teasdale's character as a man, no less than his eminent service as a minister of the Gospel, entitles him to regard and esteem. The proverb tells us that "the hoary head is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness." Since early manhood, he has been numbered among the soldiers of Christ, and has borne no small part in the struggles and victories which have been fought and achieved by the church in the present century. Born almost in its beginning, he has lived to share the marvelous activities and gratifying successes characterizing its last quarter. The writer heard him make an impromptu talk in one of the morning half hours of prayer, at the State Convention of Mississippi Baptists, recently held in Oxford, in which he said : "For more than half a century have I tried to serve God in preaching the precious Gospel of Christ. I have loved this blessed Savior and the work he has given me to do, and if I had to live my life over again I would cheerfully devote it all to the same delightful service." Such language is the utterance of profound conviction and earnest piety; it is the tribute which sincere love and self-sacrificing faithfulness would lay at the feet of saving Grace. Soon will his work be done on earth, and the servant shall go to his heavenly rewards. Soon will the warrior lay down his armor, and enter into his eternal victory. It is well that he should leave behind him this volume telling how the Lord has led him and blessed him as he has labored in the vineyard and fought the good fight.
Dr. Teasdale's long ministry has been many-sided in its spheres of usefulness. In this introduction it is unnecessary to dwell upon these in detail. The reader would more satisfactorily consult the pages which lie before him. Suffice it to say here that in all the positions he has occupied, he has given the best energies of his mind and heart to the duties of the hour. As pastor, the records which tell of laborious and successful years at New Haven, Pittsburg, Springfield, Washington and Columbus, testify to his faithfulness and efficiency. As Secretary, he can point with satisfaction to the energy with which he prosecuted the work of the Sunday-school Board of the Southern Baptist Convention during the trying and critical years when it was in his charge. As author, he has just reason to rejoice that his "Revival Discourses" and his work on "Baptism and Communion" have been greatly blessed to the edification, comfort and guidance of many souls. But it is as Evangelist perhaps, that he has clone his best work and been most signally owned of the Master. In this special field he has indeed made full proof of his ministry. The name "evangelist" is used in deference to common usage, though that usage has not wholly the sanction of the New Testament. The word is found three times in the New Testament. Philip, one of the seven, was known as "the evangelist," and Timothy was urged by Paul to "do the work of an evangelist," while among the "gifts" of the ascended Head of the Church, for the building up of the body of Christ, the evangelist is named. (Acts xxi. 8; 2 Tim. iv. 5; Eph. iv. 11). The Greek verbal form occurs frequently, usually rendered, "preach the Gospel"—literally "evangelize." An evangelist, then, in the Scripture sense, is one who preaches the Gospel, perhaps with an implication of itinerancy. The name indicates a work, rather than a distinct ministerial or dcr. The Apostles "evangelized," that is, they were "heralds of the good tidings." (Acts vm. 25 ; xiv. 7 : 1 Cor. i: 17). From the connection in which the word is found we may infer that the calling of the evangelist was the proclamation of the Gospel to those who had not known it, rather than the instruction and pastoral care of those already gathered into churches. In the early Christian centuries the term was applied to the writers of the four Gospels; and we yet so apply it. If we think of the modern evangelist as one whose special mission it is to preach the Gospel to the unconverted, there is a quasi-scriptural argument for the use. Perhaps, however, the modern foreign missionary, bearing the glad tidings for the first time to the heathen, is the nearest analogy to the evangelist of the New Testament. Using the term in its prevalent significance Dr. Teasdale must be considered a very successful evangelist.
He was, in the years of his evangelistic activity, admirably fitted for that work. When a youth of eighteen years, I first heard him, he was in the prime of manhood, one of the most impressive pulpit orators of our country. Though of small stature his appearance in the pulpit indicated a man of much larger build. His movements and gestures in the delivery of his sermons were exceedingly graceful. His elocution was fine, and his voice exceptionally clear and resonant. In prayer he was especially gifted. When he drew near the throne of grace his manner was reverent, and the earnest and pathetic tone of his petitions moved the soul to sincere attention and humble interest. His sermons displayed no inconsiderable analytical and logical thought. He preached the Word. In doctrine his sermons were always eminently Scriptural. While not ignoring the graces of rhetoric eloquence, they abound in the clear statements of fundamental Gospel truth as of paramount importance in winning souls. It may be well to refer here to those admirable sermons on "Self righteousness," the "Agency of the Holy Spirit," and the "Sin against the Holy Spirit," found in his "Revival Discourses." These proclaim in no uncertain terms the plan of salvation, while his discourse on "God's Controversy with the Sinner," sets forth with such vividness the depravity and guilt of the ungodly as to make the conscience tremble under a sense of the need of Divine mercy.
As an evangelist, Dr. Teasdale never played the clown; he was no buffoon; he never descended to "court a smile when he should woo a soul." Boorish jokes and .vulgar slang found no place in his message from God. Impressed with the awful danger of men, and the solemnity of his vocation, he discarded alike the jesting and the tricks of the mountebank, which, alas, have come to play so sad a part in the preaching and methods of many popular so-called "evangelists." Unlike them, Dr. Teasdale ever preached the Gospel as the only power of God unto salvation.
"He preached as tho' he ne'er might preach again,
And as a dying man to dying men."
Souls converted under such an evangelist come into the churches animated by the true idea of salvation by grace and prepared to "run the race set before them." Intelligently led to Christ they continue to "serve God with reverence and Godly fear."
It need scarcely be added that in his work as an evangelist Dr. Teasdale aimed to strengthen the pastors in. the esteem and affection of the churches. He did not pose before the people as some "higher life" saint who had attained unto some peculiar spiritual aristocracy in the kingdom of Heaven. He did not begin his meetings by abusing the ministry as lacking in faith and faithfulness, or devoid of earnestness in preaching the Gospel. Many "evangelists" seem to think it necessary to hold up the average pastor as wanting in knowledge of the Word and lacking in zeal for the salvation of their flocks. Not so with this Father in Israel. He fully recognized the work of the ordinary ministry in their faithful seed-sowing and oversight of the churches, and came to their aid as a fellow-worker with them in the Lord's harvest field.
In the Baptist ministry of to-day stand many honored men of God who, through Dr. Teasdale's preaching, were either led to the Savior, or induced to enter the ministry. Among them may be mentioned Drs. Lorimer and Hawthorne. Never can I cease to thank God for the providence that led me to hear a series of sermons by Dr. Teasdale in Portsmouth, Va. some thirty years ago. That series of sermons under God saved me from what might have been a life-long groping amid the shadows of Universalism, and turned my feet into the path which ultimately led me to the "truth as it is in Jesus." And now, as this venerable servant of Jesus is Hearing his crown, I desire to lay before the world this tribute to his work and worth.
C. E. W. DOBBS. Columbus, Miss., Sept. 1, '87.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
C.E.W. Dobbs - Letter to Century Illustrated
CENTURY ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY MAGAZINE
Nov 1885 - April 1886
page 478
A Brave Candidate.
I have just seen in the October Century your reference to the position of Colonel W. C. P. Breckinricfge in regard to the negro problem. Your remarks recall a speech I heard from this gentleman in 1867-8. It was while I was pastor of the Baptist church in Richmond, Kentucky. He was a candidate for commonwealth attorney in that judicial district, and his opponents had used against him the fact that he was in favor of granting the negro the right to testify in the courts of justice. Prejudice was very high and feeling was very bitter on that question, and it was a most effective argument against Colonel Breckinridge. Before a crowded and inflamed audience the wily gentlemen had denounced Colonel Breckinridge for his emphatic approval of the hated measure. With eloquence he replied :
"Fellow-citizens, the charge my opponents urge against me is true. I am aware that this avowal will most likely defeat me in this canvass, for you are not ready to view this question calmly and dispassionately. Your prejudices blind your judgment. Nevertheless, the measure is one not only of justice to a down-trodden race, but also of an enlightened public policy. As chivalrous white men, we should be ashamed of our delay in granting this boon to the black man for his protection. In the after days, when the passions of this hour shall have been cooled, when reason shall assert her sway, when the nobler feelings of your nature shall rule your hearts and judgment,— in that hour you will approve though now you condemn me."
The effect was electrical. The vast crowd broke out with the wildest applause, as the bold and eloquent speaker gazed earnestly in their faces. He was warmly complimented on every side, even by the most determined opponents of the measure. Yet prejudice was too strong in the opposite direction, and Colonel Breckinridge (fortunately for him) was defeated.
Yery truly yours, Columbus, Mississippi. C. E. W. Dobbs.
Nov 1885 - April 1886
page 478
A Brave Candidate.
I have just seen in the October Century your reference to the position of Colonel W. C. P. Breckinricfge in regard to the negro problem. Your remarks recall a speech I heard from this gentleman in 1867-8. It was while I was pastor of the Baptist church in Richmond, Kentucky. He was a candidate for commonwealth attorney in that judicial district, and his opponents had used against him the fact that he was in favor of granting the negro the right to testify in the courts of justice. Prejudice was very high and feeling was very bitter on that question, and it was a most effective argument against Colonel Breckinridge. Before a crowded and inflamed audience the wily gentlemen had denounced Colonel Breckinridge for his emphatic approval of the hated measure. With eloquence he replied :
"Fellow-citizens, the charge my opponents urge against me is true. I am aware that this avowal will most likely defeat me in this canvass, for you are not ready to view this question calmly and dispassionately. Your prejudices blind your judgment. Nevertheless, the measure is one not only of justice to a down-trodden race, but also of an enlightened public policy. As chivalrous white men, we should be ashamed of our delay in granting this boon to the black man for his protection. In the after days, when the passions of this hour shall have been cooled, when reason shall assert her sway, when the nobler feelings of your nature shall rule your hearts and judgment,— in that hour you will approve though now you condemn me."
The effect was electrical. The vast crowd broke out with the wildest applause, as the bold and eloquent speaker gazed earnestly in their faces. He was warmly complimented on every side, even by the most determined opponents of the measure. Yet prejudice was too strong in the opposite direction, and Colonel Breckinridge (fortunately for him) was defeated.
Yery truly yours, Columbus, Mississippi. C. E. W. Dobbs.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Photos to Share
I have been collecting pictures of as many Dobbs's as I can get my hands on, living and dead. I have posted only a few to this blog so far. Many of them have to be scanned in order to share them. I would appreciate some help. If you are a Dobbs cousin and have some photos already on your computer that you could email to me, it would be absolutely wonderful.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
C.E.W. Dobbs performs funeral
Cobb County GaArchives Obituaries.....Stephens, Dorothy August 1904
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The Marietta Journal, August 11, 1904
Mrs Dorothy STEPHENS, widow of the late Ex-Sheriff W P STEPHENS, died suddenly
at her home in this city on last Saturday night, about 9 o'clock, of heart
failure. She was 67 years old, and had resided in Marietta many years. She was
a member of the Baptist Church and a most estimable woman, greatly beloved by
all who knew her. She leaves six children to mourn her departure - Mr John T
STEPHENS, Mr Will STEPHENS, Mr Ed STEPHENS, Mr Charlie STEPHENS, Mrs Charles
SPRINGER and Miss Ina STEPHENS. The funeral took place Monday afternoon at 4
o'clock at the Baptist church, Rev C E W DOBBS officiated. Interment in city
cemetery.
The pall bearers were Messrs W J HUDSON, M R LYON, A B GILBERT, T H SHOCKLEY, C
T CARNES and A M DOBBS.
The casket was covered with a profusion of beautiful flowers.
The bereaved have our profound sympathy.
File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/cobb/obits/s/stephens1435nob.txt
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M Little http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006458 January 13, 2010, 6:15 pm
The Marietta Journal, August 11, 1904
Mrs Dorothy STEPHENS, widow of the late Ex-Sheriff W P STEPHENS, died suddenly
at her home in this city on last Saturday night, about 9 o'clock, of heart
failure. She was 67 years old, and had resided in Marietta many years. She was
a member of the Baptist Church and a most estimable woman, greatly beloved by
all who knew her. She leaves six children to mourn her departure - Mr John T
STEPHENS, Mr Will STEPHENS, Mr Ed STEPHENS, Mr Charlie STEPHENS, Mrs Charles
SPRINGER and Miss Ina STEPHENS. The funeral took place Monday afternoon at 4
o'clock at the Baptist church, Rev C E W DOBBS officiated. Interment in city
cemetery.
The pall bearers were Messrs W J HUDSON, M R LYON, A B GILBERT, T H SHOCKLEY, C
T CARNES and A M DOBBS.
The casket was covered with a profusion of beautiful flowers.
The bereaved have our profound sympathy.
File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/cobb/obits/s/stephens1435nob.txt
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C.E.W.Dobbs performs wedding in 1904
Cobb-Bartow County GaArchives Marriages.....Springer, Mamie - Hudson, Rev J E February 24, 1904
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The Marietta Journal February 25, 1904
The marriage of Rev J E HUDSON of Adairsville, Ga., and Miss Mamie SPRINGER of
this place took place Wednesday, February 24th, at one o'clock, at the residence
of Mr and Mrs A M DOBBS. Rev C E W DOBBS performed the ceremony. The bride is
a most amiable and estimable young lady and will make happy the life of the most
excellent gentleman with whom she has linked her destiny. The groom is a
Baptist minister at Adairsville and stands deservedly high in the esteem of the
people. After the ceremony a most excellent repast was served. The happy
couple left Wednesday evening for the home of the groom in Adairsville. Our
best wishes attend them.
File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/cobb/vitals/marriages/springer226nmr.txt
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The Marietta Journal February 25, 1904
The marriage of Rev J E HUDSON of Adairsville, Ga., and Miss Mamie SPRINGER of
this place took place Wednesday, February 24th, at one o'clock, at the residence
of Mr and Mrs A M DOBBS. Rev C E W DOBBS performed the ceremony. The bride is
a most amiable and estimable young lady and will make happy the life of the most
excellent gentleman with whom she has linked her destiny. The groom is a
Baptist minister at Adairsville and stands deservedly high in the esteem of the
people. After the ceremony a most excellent repast was served. The happy
couple left Wednesday evening for the home of the groom in Adairsville. Our
best wishes attend them.
File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/cobb/vitals/marriages/springer226nmr.txt
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Monday, January 25, 2010
Dobbs DNA Project - Kedar's line - R1a1 Haplotype
My brother, John Dobbs, and our 3rd cousin, Willoughby Dobbs, have taken the DNA testing for the Dobbs DNA project. Their alleles are an exact match for 37 markers. This test also identified their haplotype as R1a1.
I found the information below on Wikipedia. I copied this excerpt to paste in this blog because it was the easiest to read. Feel free to find more information if you like.
I'm curious how Vikings got into our blood - was it by birth or by force? I'm hoping it was the former because I wouldn't want to be a product of Viking raping and pillaging!!!
Genetic legacy
Studies of genetic diversity provide some indication of the origin and expansion of the Viking population. The Haplogroup I1 (defined by specific genetic markers on the Y-chomosome) is sometimes referred to as the "Viking haplogroup". This mutation occurs with the greatest frequency among Scandinavian males: 35 percent in Norway, Denmark and Sweden, and peaking at 40 percent within western Finland. It is also common near the southern Baltic and North Sea coasts, and then successively decreases the further south geographically.
Genetic studies in the British Isles of the Y-DNA Haplogroup R1a1, seen also across Scandinavia, have demonstrated that the Vikings settled in the British Isles as well as raiding there. Both male and female descent studies show evidence of Norwegian descent in areas closest to Scandinavia, such as the Shetland and Orkney Islands. Inhabitants of lands farther away show most Norse descent in the male Y chromosome lines.[27]
A specialized surname study in Liverpool demonstrated marked Norse heritage, up to 50 percent of males who belonged to original families, those who lived there before the years of industrialization and population expansion.[28] High percentages of Norse inheritance – tracked through R1a1 haplotype signatures – were also found among males in Wirral and West Lancashire.[29] This was similar to the percentage of Norse inheritance found among males in the Orkney Islands. [30]
Recent research has revealed that the Scottish warrior Somerled, who drove the Vikings out of Scotland and was the progenitor of Clan Donald, was himself of Viking descent – a member of Haplogroup R1a1.
I found the information below on Wikipedia. I copied this excerpt to paste in this blog because it was the easiest to read. Feel free to find more information if you like.
I'm curious how Vikings got into our blood - was it by birth or by force? I'm hoping it was the former because I wouldn't want to be a product of Viking raping and pillaging!!!
Genetic legacy
Studies of genetic diversity provide some indication of the origin and expansion of the Viking population. The Haplogroup I1 (defined by specific genetic markers on the Y-chomosome) is sometimes referred to as the "Viking haplogroup". This mutation occurs with the greatest frequency among Scandinavian males: 35 percent in Norway, Denmark and Sweden, and peaking at 40 percent within western Finland. It is also common near the southern Baltic and North Sea coasts, and then successively decreases the further south geographically.
Genetic studies in the British Isles of the Y-DNA Haplogroup R1a1, seen also across Scandinavia, have demonstrated that the Vikings settled in the British Isles as well as raiding there. Both male and female descent studies show evidence of Norwegian descent in areas closest to Scandinavia, such as the Shetland and Orkney Islands. Inhabitants of lands farther away show most Norse descent in the male Y chromosome lines.[27]
A specialized surname study in Liverpool demonstrated marked Norse heritage, up to 50 percent of males who belonged to original families, those who lived there before the years of industrialization and population expansion.[28] High percentages of Norse inheritance – tracked through R1a1 haplotype signatures – were also found among males in Wirral and West Lancashire.[29] This was similar to the percentage of Norse inheritance found among males in the Orkney Islands. [30]
Recent research has revealed that the Scottish warrior Somerled, who drove the Vikings out of Scotland and was the progenitor of Clan Donald, was himself of Viking descent – a member of Haplogroup R1a1.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Going Home by Mary Fahl
This is a very beautiful song with a Confederate Civil War theme. It makes me think about that horrible war and that our ancestor, Rev. C.E.W. Dobbs, was directly involved in many ways. To us, the war is a distant whisper from the past. To him, it was the sound of loud cannons.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
First Half Century of Madison Baptist Association by CEW Dobbs
The first half century of the Madison Baptist Association : a discourse delivered at Hebron Church, Jefferson Co., Ind, Sept. 5, 1883
Dobbs, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Willoughy), 1840-
Publisher: Indiana Baptist,
Pub date: 1883.
Pages: 45 p. ;
Item info: 1 copy available at A.W. Roberts Library.
Holdings
A.W. Roberts Library Copies Material Location
BX6461.4.I5 D6 1 Book Standard shelving location
Dobbs, C. E. W. (Charles Edwin Willoughy), 1840-
Publisher: Indiana Baptist,
Pub date: 1883.
Pages: 45 p. ;
Item info: 1 copy available at A.W. Roberts Library.
Holdings
A.W. Roberts Library Copies Material Location
BX6461.4.I5 D6 1 Book Standard shelving location
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The Relation of the Believer to Christ by CEW Dobbs
This is another article that I would like us to find and post to this blog.
C.E.W. Dobbs, "The Relation of the Believer to Christ", Baptist Review & Expositor 2 (1905): 371-370.
http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/articles_rande_01.php.
C.E.W. Dobbs, "The Relation of the Believer to Christ", Baptist Review & Expositor 2 (1905): 371-370.
http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/articles_rande_01.php.
CEW Dobbs on faculty of Mercer University
Comprehensive Faculty Roster for Mercer University
The history of The Roberts Department of Christianity includes a number of variations in our name. Variously we have been a Department of Christianity, School of Christianity, and even a Theological Seminary. Depending upon the name of the department or school, there have been chairs and deans.
This roster of faculty names all who have taught in the department. Faculty are entered on the roster by first date of joining the faculty. Service as chair or dean is indicated in parentheses. Where appropriate the year in which a faculty member ceased teaching in the department is noted.
Adiel Sherwood 1840-1841
John L. Dagg 1844-1855
J. L. Reynolds 1845-1846
Nathaniel M. Crawford 1846-1856; 1858-1865
William Williams 1856-1859
Shaler G. Hillyer 1859-1862
Henry Holcombe Tucker 1868-1870
Archibald J. Battle 1872-1880
Sylvanus Landrum 1880-1881
James G. Ryals 1883-1892
George R. McCall 1892-1893 (Lecturer)
C. E. W. Dobbs 1892-1893 (Lecturer)
The history of The Roberts Department of Christianity includes a number of variations in our name. Variously we have been a Department of Christianity, School of Christianity, and even a Theological Seminary. Depending upon the name of the department or school, there have been chairs and deans.
This roster of faculty names all who have taught in the department. Faculty are entered on the roster by first date of joining the faculty. Service as chair or dean is indicated in parentheses. Where appropriate the year in which a faculty member ceased teaching in the department is noted.
Adiel Sherwood 1840-1841
John L. Dagg 1844-1855
J. L. Reynolds 1845-1846
Nathaniel M. Crawford 1846-1856; 1858-1865
William Williams 1856-1859
Shaler G. Hillyer 1859-1862
Henry Holcombe Tucker 1868-1870
Archibald J. Battle 1872-1880
Sylvanus Landrum 1880-1881
James G. Ryals 1883-1892
George R. McCall 1892-1893 (Lecturer)
C. E. W. Dobbs 1892-1893 (Lecturer)
The Hero of Truth by CEW Dobbs
I found a reference to this book written by CEW Dobbs. I hope to find an actual copy of it somewhere. Perhaps some of you reading it could aid in the search.
The hero of truth: A prize book, on leading children to Jesus
by C. E. W Dobbs
Unknown Binding, 96 Pages, Published 1871
The hero of truth: A prize book, on leading children to Jesus
by C. E. W Dobbs
Unknown Binding, 96 Pages, Published 1871
The Sin Unto Death and Prayer by CEW Dobbs
ARTICLE VIT.
THE SIN UNTO DEATH AND PRAYER.
BY C. E. W. DOBBS, D. D.
IN the first epistle of John (v, 16) we read: "If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.,.' Assuming that the "sin unto death" is that sin against the Holy Spirit, concerning which the Lord uttered words so fearful (Matthew xii, 31, 32; Mark iii, 28-30), let us endeavor to understand the apostle's teaching as to the relation of that sin to the intercessory prayer of the Christian. Does this passage authorize him to pass judgment upon his sinning brother, and to "avoid prayer for him?"
Concerning the nature of the "sin unto death" a few sentences will suffice. Dogmatic utterance is ill suited to a theme so pregnant with fearful thought. The general opinion seems to be that this sin consists in "that persistent rejection of the Holy Spirit which, in the end, silences his striving voice and drives him from the door of the heart." This is the point everywhere urged by the noted evangelist Dr. A. B. Earlc, in his sermon on the "Unpardonable Sin." Probably the large majority of sermons on the subject run in this exegetical groove. But our Lord's language shows (so it appears to me) that that sin was a definite act of the mind and heart, whereas the current opinion regards it as a gradual development of depravity— as a series of sins.
The context of Matthew xii, 31, if carefully studied, will reveal a peculiar mental and moral state of the captious Pharisees environing Jesus, in the depths of which we are to look for those elements which constituted the "blasphemy against the Spirit." The warning words of the Lord are connected with, and are seen to grow out of, that context by the significant "therefore." What had those Pharisees done ? They had said : '' This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils." Against the verity of the miracles they utter no word. The overwhelming testimony to their reality had compelled their reluctant admission. They knew that "mighty works" were done by him ; yet they were resolved not to admit the claim of the Mighty Worker. They had prejudged the case. So inveterate were their malevolent feelings towards Jesus, that they derided the supposition of a divine presence and energy in the miracles. Instead of candidly saying, as did Nicodemus, "We know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these signs that thou doest except God be with him," they explained those signs by assuming demoniacal agency. "Therefore" Jesus charged upon them this awful sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Clearly this blasphemy was that perverse attributing to the power of Satan those unquestionable miracles which Jesus performed by the "finger of God" and the power of the Holy Spirit. This was done in the face of evidence which had undoubtedly convinced their minds. It was no sin of ignorance. It was the deliberate and malicious rejection of the known truth! Mark gives us the key to the mystery when he adds to his account of this interview, "Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit." (Mark iii, 30.)
In the beginning of this article it was assumed that the blasphemy against the Spirit and the sin unto death were identical. This position is not, indeed, admitted by all expositors, nor is it altogether free from difficulty; yet, upon the whole, it is most probably the correct view. Advancing, then, from the immediate circumstances calling forth
the words of our Lord, the question meets us, What were the circumstances which made this sin possible when John wrote? It may be answered: 1. That the same miracle- working power was with the apostles, ever evidencing the divine authority of their mission and teaching. 2. The same "evil heart of unbelief" led Jew and Gentile to "do despite to the Spirit." Many "antichrists" were with fiendish hate resisting the. unmistakable "witness that God had borne concerning his Son." Thus there was virtually the same combination of light in the head and malice in the heart, which led the Pharisees into the awful pit of hopeless condemnation. This state of mind and heart was indicative of a moral character in which the soul was wholly out of sympathy with good, and persistently intent only upon evil. To such a soul there was "no opening for repentance, and therefore none for forgiveness." The soul so lost to good was incapable of receiving those sweet impressions and melting influences which constrain to penitence. "Guilty of eternal sin," no note of warning could alarm, no message of grace could persuade. "The capacity for goodness in any form was destroyed by this kind of antagonism."*
From this view of the subject it will be reasonably concluded that the "sin unto death" is rarely committed at the present time; if indeed it was not, by its very nature, necessarily confined to the age of miracles, by which was divinely attested the verity of the Gospel. If this sin has passed the limits of that age, and does even now bring its irrevocable curse upon the soul of any sinner, we must look for it (in the language of the distinguished expositor last quoted) "in the ultimate stage of antagonism to God and to his truth, when the clearest proofs of divine power and goodness are (knowingly and maliciously) distorted into evidence that the power is evil. The human nature in that extremest debasement has identified itself with the devil nature, and must share its doom."
SOME INTERESTING FACTS
"In the Early History of Providence Baptist
Church Taken from the Records—Oldest
Church in the County.
"The early history of this church seems to be hid in the depths of antiquity. The first definite information we can gather from the records now in our possession goes back to December, 1780. At this early date we find a church composed of forty-five members, stopping for a while on Holston river, with Robert Elkin as pastor.
"Tradition tells us that Daniel Boone, on his second trip to Kentucky, was accompanied by Captain William Bush, of Orange county, Virginia. The said William Bush when on his return gave such glowing descriptions of the then wilds of Kentucky that a colony, composed mainly of Baptists, were induced to start for Boonesboro, near or on the Kentucky river. He went forward to locate lands while the colony was in preparation to start. The colony having made ready and started, proceeded as far as Holston, which is near the line between Kentucky and Virginia, arriving there in December, 1780. There they received intelligence from Captain William Bush, who was then in the fort, not to proceed any farther.
"The troubles with the Indians at that time rendered it impolitic and unwise to proceed farther. This body arrived at Holston, December, 1780, and having learned that they could not go any farther, held a church meeting for the purpose of exercising discipline the following January, 1781.
"They continued at Holston till September. 1783, with Robert Elkin as pastor, at which time they moved from Holston to Cragg's Station, south side of the Kentucky river, and carried the constitution of the church with them. And now, having arrived in Kentucky and settling on the south side of the river, near Cragg's Station, but through the badness of the weather nothing of importance was done till April 3, 1784.
"They remained at Cragg's Station till November I, 1785, at which time they moved to the north side of the Kentucky river. They appointed a church meeting at Brother William Bush's, November 27, 1785, at which time and place they elected a new clerk and transacted other business.
"The first house of worship built by the church was a log house erected in 1787 on the grounds now occupied by the old stone church, and in the year 1800 the stone church was built on its present site, on Howard's Lower Creek, near this place. The old stone church is still in a fair state of preservation, and is now occupied by the colored Baptists.
"Our present house of worship was built in the year 1873. Providence church has had thirty-two pastors.
"The first, Robert Elkin, began in 1780 and closed his labors in 1822, serving the church forty-two years.
"The next was Richard Morton. He was called in March, 1822, and closed his pastoral work in 1828.
"George C. Boone was called in March, 1828, and served the church five years. Robert Elrod was called in 1833 and continued till 1834, at which time Abner D. Landrum was called and served the church four years: at the close of which time, February 17, 1838, Thomas German was called and served the church till 1842. B. E. Allen was next called and served as pastor till September, 1847, tnen Edward Darnby was called and continued till October 4, 1848.
"At this point several ministers were called but declined to accept and the church had no regular preaching till September 1849, when B. E. Allen was again called and accepted, but resigned in October, 1850, and the church was without a pastor for one .year.
"B. E. Allen was again called in 1851, accepted and preached one year. In January, 1852, P. T. Gentry was called and served the church till September, 1855. Then B. E. Allen was again called and continued with the church until his death, in 1861.
"The church next called R. T. Dillard, and he began his labors January, 1862, and continued till February, 1865. H. McDonald entered the pastorate in May, 1865, and left the church the following November. R. T. Dillard was again called, and preached for them one month, but then declined the call. In June, 1866, C. E. W. Dobbs entered the pastoral care and continued till October, 1867. W. B. Ar- vin accepted a call in 1868 and labored till 1874. In April, 1874, G. T. Stansbury accepted a call and preached six months. George Yeizer supplied the church till March. 1875. In June, 1875, A. F. Baker accepted a call to the pastorate and served the church till May, 1880. In June, 1880, J. Pike Powers accepted a call and preached for one year. In June, 1881, J. Dallas Simmons entered the pastorate care and continued till December, 1887. In January, 1888, J. Pike Powers was again called and served as pastor of the church till December, 1889.
"In April, 1890, A. H. Anthony was called and continued till July, 1891. In November, 1891, A. H. Hunt was called and continued with the church till July, 1894. when I. T, Creek was called and served as pastor two years. In January* 1897, H. F. Searcy entered the pastorate and continued till May, 1898. I. N. Yohannon supplied as pastor from June, 1898, till the following October. In November, 1898, J. S. Wilson accepted a call and labored with the church till January, 1903. E. F. Music supplied the church till December, 1903. T. C. Ecton was called and entered the pastoral care in January, 1904, and continued with the church two years. In January, 1906, A. R. Willett was called and served as pastor till December, 1907. In January, 1908, B. J. Davis accepted a call to the pastorate and is serving us at this time. We hope to keep him with us for a long time to come.
"Up to this time one thousand, two hundred and eighty members have been received by experience and baptism, and three hundred and seven by letter, making the total number received one thousand, five hundred and eighty- seven. Three churches have been constituted out of this church. On August 5, 1790, the church was the subject of a serious difficulty, growing out of a misunderstanding between Robert Elkin and Andrew Tribble. The membership being pretty nearly equally divided, the matter was finally settled by allowing Tribble and his brethren to take letters and constitute a new church, which was called Unity. This church (Unity) was afterwards divided, and a part constituted Indian Creek- church, and in the course of time Unity and Indian Creek united and formed what is now called Mt. Olive church.
"In April, 1812, the church called Bogg'.s Fork was constituted out of this church. This church (Bogg's Fork), was located near Athens, in Fayette county, and afterward was merged in Boone's Creek church at Athens. In 1859 the church at Winchester was constituted mainly out of members of this church. August n, 1830, many members having become displeased with the rules and regulations of this church, withdrew themselves and are no more of this body. Fifty-four was the number that withdrew. They built them a house of worship now known as Forest Grove.
"In reading over the old records I find many interesting instances. The church had its seasons of refreshing and its troubles then as we do now. March 12, 1796, Robert Grimes was excluded 'for singing vain and worldly songs.' August 13, 1796. John Lile was excluded for 'unhappily drinking too much licker.' July 9, 1803, Mrs. Mary George was excluded for 'scolding her husband.' August 12, 1809. Robert Elkin, Thomas Berry and Robert Didlake were appointed 'Messingers to the Association and authorized to draw from the church fund Six Shillings to assist defraying the expenses of the Association.' July 31,
1842, a protracted meeting was begun and lasted till September 3rd. They had seventy- eight conversions. Brother E. J. M. Elkin was one of them, and is the only one that is now living.
"The above is a synopsis of the history of Providence Baptist church taken from the records.
"W. P. Hieatt,
"Clerk of Providence Church."
THE SIN UNTO DEATH AND PRAYER.
BY C. E. W. DOBBS, D. D.
IN the first epistle of John (v, 16) we read: "If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.,.' Assuming that the "sin unto death" is that sin against the Holy Spirit, concerning which the Lord uttered words so fearful (Matthew xii, 31, 32; Mark iii, 28-30), let us endeavor to understand the apostle's teaching as to the relation of that sin to the intercessory prayer of the Christian. Does this passage authorize him to pass judgment upon his sinning brother, and to "avoid prayer for him?"
Concerning the nature of the "sin unto death" a few sentences will suffice. Dogmatic utterance is ill suited to a theme so pregnant with fearful thought. The general opinion seems to be that this sin consists in "that persistent rejection of the Holy Spirit which, in the end, silences his striving voice and drives him from the door of the heart." This is the point everywhere urged by the noted evangelist Dr. A. B. Earlc, in his sermon on the "Unpardonable Sin." Probably the large majority of sermons on the subject run in this exegetical groove. But our Lord's language shows (so it appears to me) that that sin was a definite act of the mind and heart, whereas the current opinion regards it as a gradual development of depravity— as a series of sins.
The context of Matthew xii, 31, if carefully studied, will reveal a peculiar mental and moral state of the captious Pharisees environing Jesus, in the depths of which we are to look for those elements which constituted the "blasphemy against the Spirit." The warning words of the Lord are connected with, and are seen to grow out of, that context by the significant "therefore." What had those Pharisees done ? They had said : '' This fellow doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils." Against the verity of the miracles they utter no word. The overwhelming testimony to their reality had compelled their reluctant admission. They knew that "mighty works" were done by him ; yet they were resolved not to admit the claim of the Mighty Worker. They had prejudged the case. So inveterate were their malevolent feelings towards Jesus, that they derided the supposition of a divine presence and energy in the miracles. Instead of candidly saying, as did Nicodemus, "We know that thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these signs that thou doest except God be with him," they explained those signs by assuming demoniacal agency. "Therefore" Jesus charged upon them this awful sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Clearly this blasphemy was that perverse attributing to the power of Satan those unquestionable miracles which Jesus performed by the "finger of God" and the power of the Holy Spirit. This was done in the face of evidence which had undoubtedly convinced their minds. It was no sin of ignorance. It was the deliberate and malicious rejection of the known truth! Mark gives us the key to the mystery when he adds to his account of this interview, "Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit." (Mark iii, 30.)
In the beginning of this article it was assumed that the blasphemy against the Spirit and the sin unto death were identical. This position is not, indeed, admitted by all expositors, nor is it altogether free from difficulty; yet, upon the whole, it is most probably the correct view. Advancing, then, from the immediate circumstances calling forth
the words of our Lord, the question meets us, What were the circumstances which made this sin possible when John wrote? It may be answered: 1. That the same miracle- working power was with the apostles, ever evidencing the divine authority of their mission and teaching. 2. The same "evil heart of unbelief" led Jew and Gentile to "do despite to the Spirit." Many "antichrists" were with fiendish hate resisting the. unmistakable "witness that God had borne concerning his Son." Thus there was virtually the same combination of light in the head and malice in the heart, which led the Pharisees into the awful pit of hopeless condemnation. This state of mind and heart was indicative of a moral character in which the soul was wholly out of sympathy with good, and persistently intent only upon evil. To such a soul there was "no opening for repentance, and therefore none for forgiveness." The soul so lost to good was incapable of receiving those sweet impressions and melting influences which constrain to penitence. "Guilty of eternal sin," no note of warning could alarm, no message of grace could persuade. "The capacity for goodness in any form was destroyed by this kind of antagonism."*
From this view of the subject it will be reasonably concluded that the "sin unto death" is rarely committed at the present time; if indeed it was not, by its very nature, necessarily confined to the age of miracles, by which was divinely attested the verity of the Gospel. If this sin has passed the limits of that age, and does even now bring its irrevocable curse upon the soul of any sinner, we must look for it (in the language of the distinguished expositor last quoted) "in the ultimate stage of antagonism to God and to his truth, when the clearest proofs of divine power and goodness are (knowingly and maliciously) distorted into evidence that the power is evil. The human nature in that extremest debasement has identified itself with the devil nature, and must share its doom."
SOME INTERESTING FACTS
"In the Early History of Providence Baptist
Church Taken from the Records—Oldest
Church in the County.
"The early history of this church seems to be hid in the depths of antiquity. The first definite information we can gather from the records now in our possession goes back to December, 1780. At this early date we find a church composed of forty-five members, stopping for a while on Holston river, with Robert Elkin as pastor.
"Tradition tells us that Daniel Boone, on his second trip to Kentucky, was accompanied by Captain William Bush, of Orange county, Virginia. The said William Bush when on his return gave such glowing descriptions of the then wilds of Kentucky that a colony, composed mainly of Baptists, were induced to start for Boonesboro, near or on the Kentucky river. He went forward to locate lands while the colony was in preparation to start. The colony having made ready and started, proceeded as far as Holston, which is near the line between Kentucky and Virginia, arriving there in December, 1780. There they received intelligence from Captain William Bush, who was then in the fort, not to proceed any farther.
"The troubles with the Indians at that time rendered it impolitic and unwise to proceed farther. This body arrived at Holston, December, 1780, and having learned that they could not go any farther, held a church meeting for the purpose of exercising discipline the following January, 1781.
"They continued at Holston till September. 1783, with Robert Elkin as pastor, at which time they moved from Holston to Cragg's Station, south side of the Kentucky river, and carried the constitution of the church with them. And now, having arrived in Kentucky and settling on the south side of the river, near Cragg's Station, but through the badness of the weather nothing of importance was done till April 3, 1784.
"They remained at Cragg's Station till November I, 1785, at which time they moved to the north side of the Kentucky river. They appointed a church meeting at Brother William Bush's, November 27, 1785, at which time and place they elected a new clerk and transacted other business.
"The first house of worship built by the church was a log house erected in 1787 on the grounds now occupied by the old stone church, and in the year 1800 the stone church was built on its present site, on Howard's Lower Creek, near this place. The old stone church is still in a fair state of preservation, and is now occupied by the colored Baptists.
"Our present house of worship was built in the year 1873. Providence church has had thirty-two pastors.
"The first, Robert Elkin, began in 1780 and closed his labors in 1822, serving the church forty-two years.
"The next was Richard Morton. He was called in March, 1822, and closed his pastoral work in 1828.
"George C. Boone was called in March, 1828, and served the church five years. Robert Elrod was called in 1833 and continued till 1834, at which time Abner D. Landrum was called and served the church four years: at the close of which time, February 17, 1838, Thomas German was called and served the church till 1842. B. E. Allen was next called and served as pastor till September, 1847, tnen Edward Darnby was called and continued till October 4, 1848.
"At this point several ministers were called but declined to accept and the church had no regular preaching till September 1849, when B. E. Allen was again called and accepted, but resigned in October, 1850, and the church was without a pastor for one .year.
"B. E. Allen was again called in 1851, accepted and preached one year. In January, 1852, P. T. Gentry was called and served the church till September, 1855. Then B. E. Allen was again called and continued with the church until his death, in 1861.
"The church next called R. T. Dillard, and he began his labors January, 1862, and continued till February, 1865. H. McDonald entered the pastorate in May, 1865, and left the church the following November. R. T. Dillard was again called, and preached for them one month, but then declined the call. In June, 1866, C. E. W. Dobbs entered the pastoral care and continued till October, 1867. W. B. Ar- vin accepted a call in 1868 and labored till 1874. In April, 1874, G. T. Stansbury accepted a call and preached six months. George Yeizer supplied the church till March. 1875. In June, 1875, A. F. Baker accepted a call to the pastorate and served the church till May, 1880. In June, 1880, J. Pike Powers accepted a call and preached for one year. In June, 1881, J. Dallas Simmons entered the pastorate care and continued till December, 1887. In January, 1888, J. Pike Powers was again called and served as pastor of the church till December, 1889.
"In April, 1890, A. H. Anthony was called and continued till July, 1891. In November, 1891, A. H. Hunt was called and continued with the church till July, 1894. when I. T, Creek was called and served as pastor two years. In January* 1897, H. F. Searcy entered the pastorate and continued till May, 1898. I. N. Yohannon supplied as pastor from June, 1898, till the following October. In November, 1898, J. S. Wilson accepted a call and labored with the church till January, 1903. E. F. Music supplied the church till December, 1903. T. C. Ecton was called and entered the pastoral care in January, 1904, and continued with the church two years. In January, 1906, A. R. Willett was called and served as pastor till December, 1907. In January, 1908, B. J. Davis accepted a call to the pastorate and is serving us at this time. We hope to keep him with us for a long time to come.
"Up to this time one thousand, two hundred and eighty members have been received by experience and baptism, and three hundred and seven by letter, making the total number received one thousand, five hundred and eighty- seven. Three churches have been constituted out of this church. On August 5, 1790, the church was the subject of a serious difficulty, growing out of a misunderstanding between Robert Elkin and Andrew Tribble. The membership being pretty nearly equally divided, the matter was finally settled by allowing Tribble and his brethren to take letters and constitute a new church, which was called Unity. This church (Unity) was afterwards divided, and a part constituted Indian Creek- church, and in the course of time Unity and Indian Creek united and formed what is now called Mt. Olive church.
"In April, 1812, the church called Bogg'.s Fork was constituted out of this church. This church (Bogg's Fork), was located near Athens, in Fayette county, and afterward was merged in Boone's Creek church at Athens. In 1859 the church at Winchester was constituted mainly out of members of this church. August n, 1830, many members having become displeased with the rules and regulations of this church, withdrew themselves and are no more of this body. Fifty-four was the number that withdrew. They built them a house of worship now known as Forest Grove.
"In reading over the old records I find many interesting instances. The church had its seasons of refreshing and its troubles then as we do now. March 12, 1796, Robert Grimes was excluded 'for singing vain and worldly songs.' August 13, 1796. John Lile was excluded for 'unhappily drinking too much licker.' July 9, 1803, Mrs. Mary George was excluded for 'scolding her husband.' August 12, 1809. Robert Elkin, Thomas Berry and Robert Didlake were appointed 'Messingers to the Association and authorized to draw from the church fund Six Shillings to assist defraying the expenses of the Association.' July 31,
1842, a protracted meeting was begun and lasted till September 3rd. They had seventy- eight conversions. Brother E. J. M. Elkin was one of them, and is the only one that is now living.
"The above is a synopsis of the history of Providence Baptist church taken from the records.
"W. P. Hieatt,
"Clerk of Providence Church."
The Lord's Day by C.E.W. Dobbs
Baptist History Homepage
The Lord's Day: In Origin and Authority a Gospel Institution
By C. E. W. Dobbs
The Baptist Quarterly Review, 1886
PROBABLY at no time since the introduction, in the seventeenth century, of Sabbatarian views among English-speaking Protestants, has the Sabbath question commanded so thoughtful and so general consideration as during the past decade. Quite a number of books, pamphlets, review articles and tracts have issued from the press, treating of this many-sided subject. In the reactionary protest against the stern Sabbatarian regime of a generation or two past, there has been a degree of restless uncertainty of thought and practice which has boded no good to the Christian world. The purpose of the present article is to show the illogical and inconclusive nature of the argument, by which the sanctity of the holy Lord's Day is usually defended. It is exceedingly unfortunate that we find it difficult to approach any question of this moment with minds untrammelled by prejudice, and to make up our verdict solely upon the evidence adduced. And it is yet more to be regretted that one whose scholarly self-respect compels him to dissent from popular error, should not infrequently incur obloquy, or, at least, be misunderstood and sometimes misrepresented. Especially is there this danger to be incurred by those who antagonize the Sabbatarian view of the Lord's Day. It is hoped that we may see that this sacred day may be Scriptural and Divinely instituted, without such resort to Judaism as the New Testament writers and the church of the first centuries knew nothing of. If that institution has been inconsiderately placed in popular apprehension upon a false basis, surely it is desirable to remove that foundation that it may be rested
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upon the enduring rock. In philosophy and ethics false ground sooner or later gives way. We ever injure a good cause when we claim for it sanctions to which it is not entitled. Men lose faith even in that which is holy when they see it defended by arguments illogical, unscriptural, and unhistorical. By such defence the Lord's Day unquestionably has been weakened in its obligatory force upon the conscience of thoughtful souls. To rescue that day from what is regarded as a serious peril is the purpose of this writing. If the word and practice of the Apostles, recorded in the New Testament, and the early Christian testimony, are to weigh anything, then the Lord's Day is a Divine institution. We shall see also, it is hoped, that it is essentially and peculiarly an institution of the Gospel dispensation.
Perhaps there was a Patriarchal Sabbath in commemoration of the received view of the six (literal) days of the creative week. I purposely say perhaps, rather than certainly, or even probably. The argument which affirms such a Sabbath is exceedingly indefinite and inconclusive. It seems almost a pity to spoil the pretty conceit of Bickersteth, whose glowing lines tell us of
"The Sabbath,
That almost lonely rivulet, which flows
From Eden through the world's wide wastes of sand."
In sober prose, however, it must be said that no such rivulet flows. I am aware that many scholarly men find evidence of an Edenic Sabbath in Genesis ii., 3: "And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."
This is supposed to be the enactment of the Sabbatic law for the race. But it is an exceedingly frail support for such conclusion. It is only the historian's statement that the Sinaic Sabbath, instituted two thousand years afterwards, had a commemorative reference to the creation. It is mentioned by him proleptically, as giving the Divine determination to sanctify the seventh day, and to constitute it a religious rest
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day in the future ceremonial law. No one knows what part of the Mosaic history was first written, whether Genesis or Exodus, or whether they were committed to writing simultaneously. To make the passage of any value as proof in this matter, it must be assumed that Genesis was a historic book coming down from patriarchal times, and that the later law of Exodus and Deuteronomy referred to it in the word "remember." Nothing was more natural than for Moses, when writing (or collating, it matters not which), the history of the creative week, parenthetically to note the fact that the Sabbath, then recently given to Israel, had a reference to the event. The Rev. J. H. McIlvaine, D. D., (in the Presbyterian Review, April, 1883), argues the Edenic institution of the Sabbath, declaring that "we have abundant evidence that the division of time into weeks of seven days extensively prevailed in the earlier ages; that it was known, not only among the Hebrews and other Arabic or Semitic nations, but also among the Egyptians, Greeks, Africans, and Peruvians, and almost, or quite, all primitive peoples." The Doctor does not afford the anxious reader a glimpse at this "abundant evidence," nor does he even tell where it may be found, but he adds: "The Assyrian and Babylonian arrowhead inscriptions * * * * afford unequivocal evidence that the Sabbath itself was known and reverenced by the ancient Babylonians, and that they regarded it as having been established by God at the creation of the world." In proof of this assertion a note informs us that "on the fifth tablet of the Chaldean Account of the Creation, we find the words:
'On the seventh He [the Creator] appointed a holy day,
And to cease from all business He commanded.'
Also in the Babylonian Calendar the seventh day is designated as the 'Sabbath,' the word signifying 'a day on which it is unlawful to work.'"
According to Rawlinson, Smith, and others, these "Assyrian tablets in their original form are at least two centuries
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older than Abraham, and six centuries older than Moses, while the remarkable traditions they contain are older still." Of this Chaldean Account of the Creation far too much has been made. Professor J. L. Porter, of the Assembly's College, Dublin, in an elaborate paper printed in the Princeton Review some seven or eight years ago, tells us that "the tablets are unfortunately fragmentary;" that in some places they are "so obscure that the exact sense can scarcely be absolutely fixed," and that "the deciphering is attended with only a fair degree of certainty." Perhaps, too, it might be added, that Mr. Fox Talbot's quite poetic "translation" must be received with some allowance for the license usually accorded poets. At any rate, I shrink from the consequences to result from this feverish appeal to "Assyrian and Babylonian tablets" as verifying Scripture, especially when it is assumed that they antedate the Scripture record from six to twelve centuries. If these Assyrian tablets furnish an account of creation, in which the Genesis record is anticipated, a pertinent question arises, whence did the Assyrian chronicler obtain his information, so exactly giving the order of the creative week? Was he inspired, or did he guess? Maybe we shall yet have to admit that Ewald, Kuenen, and Robertson Smith are not so far wrong when they argue for the post-exilic origin of the Pentateuch! Perhaps, after all, Genesis was copied from Babylonian tablets!
Granting all that has been so unwarrantably claimed, about "all nations having traditions of a primitive week of seven days," it would not follow that a seventh-day Sabbath was instituted in Eden and had come down the centuries as the heritage of the race. Many reasons may be assigned for such septenary division of time; as, for example, the quartering of the lunar month, the seven primary planets known to ancient astrologers, the supposed perfection of the number seven, growing, perhaps, out of the traditions of the creation. Scholars inform us that the Jewish Talmud knows
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nothing of any Eden-ordained Sabbath. Their doctors universally date the institution from the Mosaic legislation, generally referring its commencement to Exodus xv: 25: "There he made statutes," etc. They regard the fourth commandment as perpetuating (as a Jewish ceremonial) the Sabbath, instituted, with other things, at Marah. And it may be added that, among the writings which have come down to us from the first three centuries, no Christian "father" bases the observance of the Lord's Day upon either the Decalogue or a primeval and patriarchal Sabbatic law. Indeed, they argued that the Sabbath was only a Jewish ceremonial from the fact that the patriarchs knew nothing of it. The apostles and primitive Christians were born too early to have the benefit of the modern interpretation of Genesis ii: 3, and the light of the wonderful Assyrian tablets!
Of an Edenic patriarchal Sabbath there is no trace in the history of God's people prior to Moses and the Wilderness. The first mention of the institution is in Exodus xvi: 23; "To-morrow is a rest of a holy Sabbath " (Revised Version). The first intimation of this day of rest is in verses 4 and 5, where Moses is told of the double rate of manna to be gathered on the sixth day. When the people do this the rulers of the congregation, apparently (strangely enough) not having heard, or at least not remembering, the injunction given in verse 5, come to Moses complaining. He tells them: "It is that which Jehovah hath spoken of, a rest — a holy Sabbath — to Jehovah is to-morrow." It is only when we reach verse 29 that we definitely have "the Sabbath." This record is conclusive that neither rulers nor people knew anything of the Sabbath prior to the event. Otherwise the double gathering would have been expected. The rulers would have applauded the pious remembrance of the people. But they seem wholly unaware of such an institution. The weight of critical exegesis and scholarly interpretation places the beginning of the institution just here. Thus
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Oehler, in the recently published Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, article "Sabbath": Moses introduced the Sabbath first in connection with the manna (Exodus xvi., 5, 23-30), in such a manner as indicated that the Sabbath was as yet unknown to the people. The people, by observing the Sabbath, having experienced its blessing, received then the commandment concerning that day on Sinai. The expression in Exodus xx., 8, "Remember the Sabbath day," is not intended to remind of the Sabbath as an ancient institution, but it rather means that the people should always remember the now existing order of the Sabbath.
Oehler has argued this question quite satisfactorily in his Old Testament Theology, recently issued in this country. So Hessey in his invaluable Bampton Lectures on Sunday, pages 110, 111. Beyond all question the almost unanimous opinion of the Protestant reformers, Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, and others, was against the existence of an ante-Mosaic Sabbatic law.
When on Sinai the law was promulgated, the Sabbath was constituted, designedly and essentially, a ceremonial institution of the Mosaic dispensation, confined to that people whom the Lord their God had "brought up out of the land of Egypt." It was to be a sign between Jehovah and Israel only. Exodus xx., 2; xxxi., 13, 17; Ezekiel xx., 12, 20. It is to be classed with the other rites of Judaism, and is no more spiritual or moral than are the Passover and new moon festival observances commanded in the law of Moses. It, as well as they, was but part of the " shadows" which were to "pass away" when the "body" should come. See particularly Colossians ii., 16, 17 ; 2 Corinthians iii., 7-13 ; Hebrews x., l ; xii., 27; Galatians iv., 9, to. Notwithstanding all that may be claimed about the "moral element" of the fourth commandment, the Sabbath is certainly a positive institution, and the observance of the "seventh day," as sanctified by God, rests solely on this positive law. It is therefore rightly called a "ceremonial institution." And this is true whether the phrase "seventh day" designates the special day of the week, or only sets
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apart one-seventh of time. I care not how others may decide this point; for me it has no authoritative bearing on the question of the observance of the Lord's Day.
I confess I find it hard to understand how careful students of the Sabbatic legislation can deny its essential Jewish nature. Turn to the decalogue as given in Exodus xx. The very words evidence it as a law for Israel: "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Surely this language cannot introduce a "moral code for all the race and for all time." But examine this decalogue as given by Moses in Deuteronomy v : "The Lord our God made a covenant with us in the land of Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us." In enforcing the keeping of the Sabbath, the commandment as here given (verses 13-15), says: "Remember thou wast a servant in Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence: therefore the Lord thy God commandeth thee to keep the Sabbath day." Passing strange that one can read these words and yet fail to see that the Sabbath was a "sign to a particular people." So the prophets treated the Sabbath. They caught the inspiration of the positive language of the lawgiver: "The Sabbath is a sign between me and the children of Israel." Exodus xxxi., 13-18; xxxv., 1-3. Hear Ezekiel (xx., 12, 29): "Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them." How could the Sabbath be a special "sign between Jehovah and Israel," if designed for all nations? And if for the race, is it not strange that the heathen, while censured for their many sins, are never charged with "Sabbath breaking?"
Being essentially and designedly part of the "old garment" and "old bottles" of Judaism, the Sabbath perished with the old dispensation when it was superseded by the "ministration of the Spirit" (Colossians ii., 14-17 ; 2 Corinthians in., 7-11). Some good brethren shrink from this proposition, and ask why the fourth commandment is declared to be peculiarly
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Judaic and temporary. They assume that the decalogue was given as the "moral law for all the race and for all time." I dissent from the assumption. The decalogue, so far as it forbids immorality, was based upon the universal moral law written in the conscience of humanity; but in its ethical prohibitions that decalogue is greatly inferior to the more glorious positive inculcations of Jesus and his Spirit-guided Apostles. Paul specially mentions the "law graven on stones" as part of that which was "done away." No part of the old law was graven on stone except the decalogue. With the blessed gospel of the New Testament we have no need of the crude and rudimentary moral code of Sinai. Let no one misunderstand me. It is freely admitted that most of the decalogue is of perpetual moral force, binding on all men always; not because that law was designed as the universal moral code, but only because the moral duties negatively enjoined in the ten commandments are essentially of the universal moral law "written in the heart" (Romans ii., 14, 15). They are not duties because in the decalogue; they are in the decalogue because they are moral duties. But the sanctification of the "seventh day" by the fourth commandment is a positive, not a moral, law. It was right for the Jews to obey it, not because it was obviously of an essentially moral character, but only because God commanded them to "remember" it. It is not denied that there was a "moral element" in the commandment. Of course it was morally right to gratefully remember God and to worship Him; there was not, however, any moral element designating the "seventh day" as specially fitted to express such remembrance. When God had given this law to the Jews then they were under moral obligation to observe it in its letter as well as its spirit; for when the lawgiver imposes a positive or ceremonial precept, it becomes a moral law in a secondary sense. For example, baptism and the Lord's Supper are positive ceremonial ordinances of the New Testament, but it is morally obligatory upon all who love Jesus to observe them in the
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letter of the commandments authorizing them. The "moral element" of the fourth commandment is eternally obligatory; that is to say, all souls will forever be under obligation to worship their Creator. But this is very far from saying that the decalogue was designed to be the law for the race and for all time; still less does it affirm the fourth commandment as the Sabbatic law of the new dispensation.
The Master's Sermon on the Mount — "that new system of morals," as Dean Howson calls it — lifted the believer's estimate of holiness and the moral virtues far above the decalogue prohibitions. When the Scribe came to Jesus with the weighty question: "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" He answered, not by quoting the decalogue, as if it were of supreme and peculiarly moral force, but the all-inclusive precepts: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second like unto it is this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew xxii. 35-40, cf. Deuteronomy vi., 5 ; Leviticus xix., 18.) Jesus taught us to regard the decalogue as beneath the purity of His ethical teaching, when He said: "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time * * * * but I say unto you." (Matthew v. 21, etc.) So in the teaching of the Apostles and other writers of the New Testament, we find every moral duty inculcated and enforced, not by urging the authority of the decalogue, but by the constraining love of Him who died for us and rose again. Not from Sinai, nor its tables of stone, but from Calvary and its cross of love they drew the inspiration to obedient holiness. Not Moses, but Jesus, is Lawgiver to the Gospel dispensation.
In his earnest protest against the tendency of the Galatians to return to the "weak and beggarly rudiments" of Judaism, Paul gives that remarkable allegorical interpretation of the two covenants, in which he affirms the deliverance of the
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citizens of the free Jerusalem from the Sinaic law (Galatains iv.). What law was that given till the Seed should come? The whole Mosaic legislation — decalogue and all. Thus the Apostle argues in a passage already referred to (2 Corinthians iii. 7-11): "If the ministration of death, written and engraven on stones, came with glory (so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face), which was passing away, how shall not rather the ministration of the Spirit be with glory? For if the ministration of condemnation hath glory, much rather does the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For verily that which hath been made glorious hath not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasseth. For if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory." I quote substantially from the Revised Version, but note the parenthesis and italics, which clearly bring out the sense. The passage has been obscured by the supplied words of the common version, as if it was the glory of "the face of Moses" which was to be "done away!" It is difficult to command patience sufficient to seriously consider so puerile an interpretation of the glowing language of the Apostle. No, that which passed away when the promised Seed came was the ministration of death and condemnation graven on stones; that which remaineth forever is the ministration of the Spirit and righteousness! So the writer to the Hebrews: "And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removal of those things that are shaken, that those things which are not shaken may remain." Hebrews xii., 27. A suggestive contrast between the temporary Sinaic law and the enduring liberty of the Gospel. The "passing away " of that "ministration of death " virtually abolished the Sabbath, along with all its other "shadows." When Jesus cried, " It is finished," He announced the abrogation of the old, and the ushering in of the new, dispensation. Then He "blotted out the bond written in ordinances, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross." Henceforth
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the Great Apostle to the Gentiles said: "Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day, or a new moon, or a Sabbath Day, which are a shadow of the things to come, but the body is Christ's " (Colossians ii. 14-17). It has been objected that the Greek is plural referring to the numerous Sabbath rests ordained in connection with the various fasts and feasts. It is enough to say in reply that the word is inclusive of the weekly Sabbath.
The interpretation of this passage here given is that which was universal among Gentile Christians during the first three centuries. Indeed, the period might be practically extended another century. Certainly it is the interpretation accepted by the ablest exegetical commentators and authors of modern times. It may be well to hear one who deservedly occupies a high place in exegetical criticism — the Rev. A. Barry, Principal of King's College, London. I quote from his article on the Sabbath in Smith's Christian Antiquities:
The idea embodied in the title, the "Christian Sabbath" was, so far as we can see, entirely unknown in the early centuries of Christianity. * * * * The Sabbath, whatever may be decided on the controversy as to the existence of a patriarchal Sabbath, had become part and parcel of the Jewish law. Like circumcision and distinction of meats, it had served its purpose as typical and preparatory. Now it passed away.
So Alford, Bengel, Meyer, and others. I content myself with recalling the words of one who, albeit decidedly "High Church" in his tendencies, has given us a valuable work in his Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology — John Henry Blunt:
Of more weight than all the arguments drawn from Genesis, is the fact that Ezekiel deals with the Sabbath as dating from Moses, and that St. Paul reckons Sabbaths among the weak and beggarly elements of the law (Galatians iv. 10) ; among the shadows of the things to come, the body of which is Christ (Colossians ii. 16). St. Paul could hardly have spoken thus had the Sabbath been a primeval institution, intended to run through all time.
And I cannot refrain from giving, before passing on, the conclusion of Hessey:
Therefore the Sabbath, the Sabbath of the fourth commandment,
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with everything contained under the word Sabbath, or akin to it, days, and times, and years, the strongholds, and yet the weaknesses of the law, is abolished.*
Up to this point I have tried to show: 1. That the evidence is not sufficient to establish the existence of a primeval Sabbath enacted in Eden; 2. That the Sabbath of the fourth commandment was a ceremonial institution of Judaism, confined to that people whom "the Lord their God had brought out of the land of Egypt;" 3. That the Sabbath, as part of the typical Jewish economy, passed away with the other Mosaic institutions, when the "ministration of death" gave place to the Gospel "ministration of the Spirit." It remains to consider the nature and obligatory force of the Lord's Day. It is confidently maintained that the Lord's Day is essentially and originally an institution of the new dispensation — as much so as are baptism and the supper. It is no more the perpetuation of the Sabbath than the other mentioned ordinances are the continued observance of circumcision and the passover. The "first day of the week" is never in the New Testament called the Sabbath. "The Lord's Day has an origin, a reason, an obligation of its own. It is something better than, and beyond, the Sabbath." It depends not for its sanctity upon the abrogated Sinaic legislation. At most
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* I find an interesting page in the Life of Judson, by his son, the Rev. Edward Judson, D. D. In the reminiscences of her husband, Mrs. Emily C. Judson says: "My impression, drawn from many a long talk, is that he considered the Old Testament as the Scriptures given to the Jews especially, and, as a whole, applicable to them, and to them only. He did not like the distinction commonly drawn between the moral and ceremonial law, and sometimes spoke, with an earnestness amounting to severity, of the constant use made of the ten commandments by Christians. He thought the Old Testament very important, as explanatory and corroborative of the New, but binding on Christians only so far as repeated in the New Testament. He used to speak of the Mosaic law as fulfilled in Christ, and so having no further power whatever. * * * Practically we had nothing to do with the Old Testament law. * * * Once when I introduced some lessons from the Old Testament into my Bible classes, he compared it to groping among shadows, when I might as well have the noonday sun."
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it may be said to be analogous to — certainly it is not identical with — the Sabbath of the decalogue. So Schaff:
The Lord's Day was not a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath, which was at first also observed [by Jewish Christians], but a substitute for it.
Or, more comprehensively, Dr. Hessey:
The Sabbath, a positive Jewish institution, ordained of God through Moses, as shown in Scripture, remained in right of its Divine authorship till the dispensation passed away to which it belonged; then prophecy being fulfilled, and express inspired declarations on the subject having been uttered, it passed away. The Lord's Day, a positive Christian institution, ordained of God through the Apostles, as indicated in Holy Scripture, remains in right of its Divine authorship until the dispensation to which it belongs shall pass away. (Page 142 )
In this direction only can be obtained solid ground on which to rest the Christian's observance of the first day of the week. In order to develop the argument let us glance at the New Testament references to the question. The most cursory reading of the gospels will reveal our Lord in frequent collision with the Jewish rulers in regard to His treatment of the Sabbath. It is scarcely necessary to refer in detail to the many passages. The impression gained by careful comparison and study of the texts is that Jesus purposely wrought many of His miracles on the Sabbath day — frequently seeming to seek the occasion — in order to precipitate the controversy. Notably is this the case in the healing of the impotent man by the pool of Bethesda (John v.), and of the man with the withered hand, in the synagogue, immediately after the dispute about the plucking of the corn by the disciples. (Matthew xii.; Mark ii.). It was on one of these occasions that our Lord gave expression to the memorable and pregnant words: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath day." (Mark ii. 29, 28.) It is true that neither Jesus nor the persons complained of had really violated the Sabbath law of the Scriptures; they had only come in conflict with the Pharisaic glosses upon that law. As the Seed of the woman, Jesus was made under the law.
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As such he faithfully fulfilled its righteousness, obeying all its obligations. To "remember the Sabbath day" was part of that law, and Jesus honored it. That law was in force till Calvary and the resurrection.
Till that time He observed the law. Circumcision, holy days, and Sabbaths, were a part of the ordinances to which He submitted Himself for awhile, though, as is evident from His practice and teaching, from His spiritualizing of the law, and from His proclaiming the "acceptable year," and announcing Himself as its introducer, He considered them to be things decaying and waxing old, and ready to vanish away. (Hessey, p. 125.)
Though seeming purposely to antagonize the Pharisees in the observance of the Sabbath, Jesus used these occasions to rebuke their misconceptions of that institution. He told them that it was a benevolent ordinance. God gave it for the good of His people — a day "in which man's welfare was to be wrought out in a different way, indeed, from that appropriated to other days, but still wrought out." "It was made for man," not a burdensome constraint, but a ministering mercy. Strangely enough these words of Jesus have been forced into the support of that view which perpetuates in the Christian dispensation the Sabbatic institution. It is argued that they affirm the perpetual and universal obligation of the Sabbath — "for man," i. e. the race. The context forbids this interpretation. It dissociates the two propositions, each of which supplements and explains the other. "The Sabbath was made for man — not man for the Sabbath." Clearly the negative clause limits and explains the positive. The question was not concerning the then obligation of the Sabbath; but, which is the more important, the Sabbath or man? "Which is the more precious in God's sight, the ordinance or the moral being?" They were not discussing the extent; rather the , of the Sabbatic law.
In claiming to be "Lord of the Sabbath," Jesus intimated the coming abrogation of the institution and substitution of the Lord's Day. To have positively announced that future abrogation would have been premature. By virtue of that
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Divine Lordship, in which all power in heaven and earth was given into His hands, the Sabbath, with all its kindred Mosaic ceremonial, was to be done away; the "shadows" were to vanish, the "body" only was to remain.
Having seen that the Sabbath passed away with the Jewish dispensation, to which it belonged, and also that the fourth commandment is no authority for the sanctification of the "first day of the week," it remains to be shown why Christians do and should honor this day as the Lord's Day. It cannot be too frequently emphasized that there is no Scripture authority for the transfer of the Sabbath obligation from the "seventh day" to the "first day." Of such "change of day," not only the New Testament, but also the Christian literature of the early centuries, is as silent as the grave. It was several hundred years after the establishment of Christianity before the Sabbath and the Lord's Day began to be identified, and the fourth commandment adduced in support of the sanctity of the latter. To say the least this is suggestive. We must look to the New Testament Scriptures, as interpreted in the teaching and practice of the churches immediately subsequent to the Apostolic age, to find the true authorization of the Lord's Day.
It is generally accepted by exegetical scholars and commentators that our Lord was buried before sunset, Friday evening of the Passover week, and that He rose "very early in the morning the first day of the week." Here and there may be found those who except to this opinion — erratic interpreters addicted to theological or ecclesiastical vagaries — but practically it universally obtains among sober and competent writers. On the evening of that Resurrection Sunday, as the bewildered yet hopefully-expectant disciples were assembled, their risen Lord appeared in the midst of them, and gave the assuring salutation, "Peace unto you." (John xx. 19.) Also on the following first day evening; for we must interpret John's "after eight days" as indicating one week, in accordance with a common Jewish method of computing
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time, a part of a day being taken for a whole day. (Compare Matthew xvii. 1, with Luke ix. 28.) In the Epistle of Barnabas Sunday is called the "eighth day." It cannot be urged that these appearances of Jesus to His disciples, of themselves, prove His authorization of the "first day" as the memorial of His resurrection. The most that can be said is that they suggestively harmonize with such an authorization, supposing it to be otherwise probable. Our Lord remained on earth forty days after His resurrection, "speaking the things concerning the Kingdom of God." The record is silent concerning the nature of most of those post-resurrection interviews with His disciples What He may have taught them concerning the Lord's Day is not a matter of legitimate assumption. Yet there are certainly good reasons to believe that so important an institution was not wholly ignored in His instructions. The practice of the Apostles, and the primitive churches, as intimated in Scripture references, would, to say the least, afford presumptive evidence of some definite directions in relation thereto. Whatever may be concluded as to the reasonableness of this suggestion, it is certain that our Lord commissioned His Apostles to teach the churches, promising His ever-present Spiritual Presence and guidance into all truth. "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you." What they delivered unto the churches, in the exercise of that Apostleship, has the sanction of Divine prescription.
In the New Testament there are intimations quite clear that they honored the "first day of the week" as the Christian's day of worship, in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus. True, these intimations are neither as numerous nor as definite as we might wish them to be, yet, when they are considered in the light shed upon their meaning and force from the testimony and practice of the writers and churches immediately succeeding the Apostles, they are amply sufficient to justify the significance accorded to them in Christian interpretation. Hessey argues that "if the Apostles be
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considered merely as uninspired persons, and in that capacity to have debated by what day they should mark their religion, and carry out what may be conceived to be a religious instinct, the duty of worshipping God specially on one day (the cycle of seven being suggested by the form of religion from which they were gradually emancipating themselves), they would have been likely to choose the day of the resurrection." The promised "baptism in the Holy Spirit" made those Apostles infallible teachers. That wonderful gift came on the Day of Pentecost, which, in that year, occurred on the first day of the week. Was it by accident that on that day "they were all with one accord in one place?" Would not that gracious descent of the Spirit most signally mark as holy that day which was already associated with the fulfillment of one of the Master's promises — His resurrection? Every suggestion of grateful sentiment and eminent propriety would naturally elevate that day into peculiar prominence.
Many years after that glorious Pentecost, the history in the Acts (Chapter xx. 7) brings Paul to Troas, by which time Christianity had assumed a comparatively fixed form. There Paul and his companions "tarried seven days, and upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached." Passing by all discussion of the phrase "breaking bread," and of some irrelevant matters which have been forced into the consideration of this passage, certainly we have here just such a record as one should naturally expect to read upon the supposition that the first day of the week was then the recognized stated day of Christian assembling. The matter-of-course way in which the circumstances are introduced seems to indicate an established order. There is a similar unstudied reference to the first day of the week in l Corinthians xvi. 1, 2, where Paul seems to allude to this day as one recognized for the celebration of religious worship. It is most natural to suppose that this "laying by" was in some general treasury, where the contributions of the faithful could be stored against the Apostle's arrival. The
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apostolic injunction was to provide against any such gathering of the sums from the several Christian homes as would have been necessitated if they had laid by their offerings each in "his own home," as some interpreters have suggested. The weekly assembling of the people on the first day of the week — "the day after the Sabbath" — would prove convenient for the storing up of their free-will gifts. "Do you sanctify your gifts by offering them on the day which you already reverence?"
It was not till late in the first century (not till John wrote the Apocalypse, A. D. 90-96) that we meet the name "Lord's Day" (Revelation i. 10). By that time it had become usual by that term to designate its Divine origin and institution. There is no sufficient reason for objecting to the application of the term to the first day of the week. It is so understood by the oldest Christian writers. The phrase "day of the Lord" was common in the apostolic age to denote the great day of the second coming of Christ — the judgment day. John used a different word for Lord in the Revelation. It is an adjective, not the noun usually rendered Lord. It is found only in Revelation i. 10, and I Corinthians xi. 20 — "the Lord's Supper." It is a peculiar New Testament word, perhaps coined by Paul for the purpose of describing the holy feast. From the Supper it came to be applied to the sacred day on which Christians met for its observance. Sunday is still called Kuptaxn in the Levant, just as in most of the continental languages of Europe it is known by terms signifying the Lord's Day.
This argument is confirmed by an appeal to the interpretation of these Apostolic precedents by the earliest Christian writers. Those who immediately succeeded the New Testament age, though not infallible teachers, are certainly entitled to regard as witnesses to the established order delivered by the Apostles unto the churches. Barry, in Smith's Christian Antiquities, summing up the testimony, assures us
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that "patristic usage from Ignatius downwards establishes the regular and technical use of the Lord's Day for the first day of the week." Ignatius was a disciple of the Apostle John, a fellow disciple with Polycarp, the renowned martyr. A very beautiful myth represents him as the little child whom the Lord placed in the midst of His disciples. This indicates the period when He is supposed to have been born and lived (A.D. 30-107). I quote from his Epistle to the Magnesians:
Be not deceived with strange doctrines, nor with old fables, which are unprofitable. For if we still live according to the Jewish law, we confess we have not received grace. * * * * If, therefore, those who were brought up on the old order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord's Day, etc.
I use the recently published edition of the Ante-Nicene Fathers under the supervision of Bishop A. C. Coxe. In the Epistle ascribed to Barnabas, which, though not written by that apostle, was certainly in existence in the early part of the second century, in explanation of Isaiah i. 13, we have:
Wherefore we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day on which Jesus rose from the dead.
Justin Martyr flourished A.D. 140. In his First Apology, he says:
On the day called Sunday, all who live in the cities or in the country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read. * * * * Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God dispelled the darkness and made the world ; and because Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. * * * He appeared to His apostles and taught them these things. (Coxe's edition, chapter 67.)
Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, A.D. 178, has several references to the question, and applies the name Lord's Day to Sunday, all the while carefully distinguishing it from the Sabbath. Others might be mentioned, but I shall content myself by referring to the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, of which so much has been written within the past few years.
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Whatever opinion may be entertained of the Didachc, it is certainly, in part, as early as the second or third century, and on this question may be cited. In Chapter 14, we read: "Coming together on the Lord's Day, break bread and give thanks," etc.
Thus with one voice these Christian "fathers" speak of the Lord's Day, just as they speak of baptism and the supper, and other matters of church order, which they received from the original promulgators of Christianity. As soon as the churches pass out of the Apostolic guidance into history, we find the first day of the week established and universally accepted as the divinely instituted (Gr.), on which the (Gr.) was celebrated. The Lord's Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the Lord's Day are originally and peculiarly of the Gospel, the "Ministration of the Spirit," and are alike of Divine institution and authority.
The argument seems conclusive. We rest content upon so convincing proof of the Divine origin of this Gospel institution. We would not dishonor our Redeemer, whose glorious resurrection it ever commemorates, by degrading the Lord's Day to the lower level of the Sabbath; nor would we lessen its Gospel significance by seeking authority and prescription for its observance in the effete Sinaic decalogue! Rather let us take our stand reverently by the open tomb, that could not hold the Prince of Life in bond, and rejoice in the day which our Lord hath made.
C. E. W. Dobbs.
Columbus, Miss.
===================
[From The Baptist Quarterly Review 1886, pp. 201-220. Document from Google Books. — jrd]
The Lord's Day: In Origin and Authority a Gospel Institution
By C. E. W. Dobbs
The Baptist Quarterly Review, 1886
PROBABLY at no time since the introduction, in the seventeenth century, of Sabbatarian views among English-speaking Protestants, has the Sabbath question commanded so thoughtful and so general consideration as during the past decade. Quite a number of books, pamphlets, review articles and tracts have issued from the press, treating of this many-sided subject. In the reactionary protest against the stern Sabbatarian regime of a generation or two past, there has been a degree of restless uncertainty of thought and practice which has boded no good to the Christian world. The purpose of the present article is to show the illogical and inconclusive nature of the argument, by which the sanctity of the holy Lord's Day is usually defended. It is exceedingly unfortunate that we find it difficult to approach any question of this moment with minds untrammelled by prejudice, and to make up our verdict solely upon the evidence adduced. And it is yet more to be regretted that one whose scholarly self-respect compels him to dissent from popular error, should not infrequently incur obloquy, or, at least, be misunderstood and sometimes misrepresented. Especially is there this danger to be incurred by those who antagonize the Sabbatarian view of the Lord's Day. It is hoped that we may see that this sacred day may be Scriptural and Divinely instituted, without such resort to Judaism as the New Testament writers and the church of the first centuries knew nothing of. If that institution has been inconsiderately placed in popular apprehension upon a false basis, surely it is desirable to remove that foundation that it may be rested
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upon the enduring rock. In philosophy and ethics false ground sooner or later gives way. We ever injure a good cause when we claim for it sanctions to which it is not entitled. Men lose faith even in that which is holy when they see it defended by arguments illogical, unscriptural, and unhistorical. By such defence the Lord's Day unquestionably has been weakened in its obligatory force upon the conscience of thoughtful souls. To rescue that day from what is regarded as a serious peril is the purpose of this writing. If the word and practice of the Apostles, recorded in the New Testament, and the early Christian testimony, are to weigh anything, then the Lord's Day is a Divine institution. We shall see also, it is hoped, that it is essentially and peculiarly an institution of the Gospel dispensation.
Perhaps there was a Patriarchal Sabbath in commemoration of the received view of the six (literal) days of the creative week. I purposely say perhaps, rather than certainly, or even probably. The argument which affirms such a Sabbath is exceedingly indefinite and inconclusive. It seems almost a pity to spoil the pretty conceit of Bickersteth, whose glowing lines tell us of
"The Sabbath,
That almost lonely rivulet, which flows
From Eden through the world's wide wastes of sand."
In sober prose, however, it must be said that no such rivulet flows. I am aware that many scholarly men find evidence of an Edenic Sabbath in Genesis ii., 3: "And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."
This is supposed to be the enactment of the Sabbatic law for the race. But it is an exceedingly frail support for such conclusion. It is only the historian's statement that the Sinaic Sabbath, instituted two thousand years afterwards, had a commemorative reference to the creation. It is mentioned by him proleptically, as giving the Divine determination to sanctify the seventh day, and to constitute it a religious rest
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day in the future ceremonial law. No one knows what part of the Mosaic history was first written, whether Genesis or Exodus, or whether they were committed to writing simultaneously. To make the passage of any value as proof in this matter, it must be assumed that Genesis was a historic book coming down from patriarchal times, and that the later law of Exodus and Deuteronomy referred to it in the word "remember." Nothing was more natural than for Moses, when writing (or collating, it matters not which), the history of the creative week, parenthetically to note the fact that the Sabbath, then recently given to Israel, had a reference to the event. The Rev. J. H. McIlvaine, D. D., (in the Presbyterian Review, April, 1883), argues the Edenic institution of the Sabbath, declaring that "we have abundant evidence that the division of time into weeks of seven days extensively prevailed in the earlier ages; that it was known, not only among the Hebrews and other Arabic or Semitic nations, but also among the Egyptians, Greeks, Africans, and Peruvians, and almost, or quite, all primitive peoples." The Doctor does not afford the anxious reader a glimpse at this "abundant evidence," nor does he even tell where it may be found, but he adds: "The Assyrian and Babylonian arrowhead inscriptions * * * * afford unequivocal evidence that the Sabbath itself was known and reverenced by the ancient Babylonians, and that they regarded it as having been established by God at the creation of the world." In proof of this assertion a note informs us that "on the fifth tablet of the Chaldean Account of the Creation, we find the words:
'On the seventh He [the Creator] appointed a holy day,
And to cease from all business He commanded.'
Also in the Babylonian Calendar the seventh day is designated as the 'Sabbath,' the word signifying 'a day on which it is unlawful to work.'"
According to Rawlinson, Smith, and others, these "Assyrian tablets in their original form are at least two centuries
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older than Abraham, and six centuries older than Moses, while the remarkable traditions they contain are older still." Of this Chaldean Account of the Creation far too much has been made. Professor J. L. Porter, of the Assembly's College, Dublin, in an elaborate paper printed in the Princeton Review some seven or eight years ago, tells us that "the tablets are unfortunately fragmentary;" that in some places they are "so obscure that the exact sense can scarcely be absolutely fixed," and that "the deciphering is attended with only a fair degree of certainty." Perhaps, too, it might be added, that Mr. Fox Talbot's quite poetic "translation" must be received with some allowance for the license usually accorded poets. At any rate, I shrink from the consequences to result from this feverish appeal to "Assyrian and Babylonian tablets" as verifying Scripture, especially when it is assumed that they antedate the Scripture record from six to twelve centuries. If these Assyrian tablets furnish an account of creation, in which the Genesis record is anticipated, a pertinent question arises, whence did the Assyrian chronicler obtain his information, so exactly giving the order of the creative week? Was he inspired, or did he guess? Maybe we shall yet have to admit that Ewald, Kuenen, and Robertson Smith are not so far wrong when they argue for the post-exilic origin of the Pentateuch! Perhaps, after all, Genesis was copied from Babylonian tablets!
Granting all that has been so unwarrantably claimed, about "all nations having traditions of a primitive week of seven days," it would not follow that a seventh-day Sabbath was instituted in Eden and had come down the centuries as the heritage of the race. Many reasons may be assigned for such septenary division of time; as, for example, the quartering of the lunar month, the seven primary planets known to ancient astrologers, the supposed perfection of the number seven, growing, perhaps, out of the traditions of the creation. Scholars inform us that the Jewish Talmud knows
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nothing of any Eden-ordained Sabbath. Their doctors universally date the institution from the Mosaic legislation, generally referring its commencement to Exodus xv: 25: "There he made statutes," etc. They regard the fourth commandment as perpetuating (as a Jewish ceremonial) the Sabbath, instituted, with other things, at Marah. And it may be added that, among the writings which have come down to us from the first three centuries, no Christian "father" bases the observance of the Lord's Day upon either the Decalogue or a primeval and patriarchal Sabbatic law. Indeed, they argued that the Sabbath was only a Jewish ceremonial from the fact that the patriarchs knew nothing of it. The apostles and primitive Christians were born too early to have the benefit of the modern interpretation of Genesis ii: 3, and the light of the wonderful Assyrian tablets!
Of an Edenic patriarchal Sabbath there is no trace in the history of God's people prior to Moses and the Wilderness. The first mention of the institution is in Exodus xvi: 23; "To-morrow is a rest of a holy Sabbath " (Revised Version). The first intimation of this day of rest is in verses 4 and 5, where Moses is told of the double rate of manna to be gathered on the sixth day. When the people do this the rulers of the congregation, apparently (strangely enough) not having heard, or at least not remembering, the injunction given in verse 5, come to Moses complaining. He tells them: "It is that which Jehovah hath spoken of, a rest — a holy Sabbath — to Jehovah is to-morrow." It is only when we reach verse 29 that we definitely have "the Sabbath." This record is conclusive that neither rulers nor people knew anything of the Sabbath prior to the event. Otherwise the double gathering would have been expected. The rulers would have applauded the pious remembrance of the people. But they seem wholly unaware of such an institution. The weight of critical exegesis and scholarly interpretation places the beginning of the institution just here. Thus
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Oehler, in the recently published Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, article "Sabbath": Moses introduced the Sabbath first in connection with the manna (Exodus xvi., 5, 23-30), in such a manner as indicated that the Sabbath was as yet unknown to the people. The people, by observing the Sabbath, having experienced its blessing, received then the commandment concerning that day on Sinai. The expression in Exodus xx., 8, "Remember the Sabbath day," is not intended to remind of the Sabbath as an ancient institution, but it rather means that the people should always remember the now existing order of the Sabbath.
Oehler has argued this question quite satisfactorily in his Old Testament Theology, recently issued in this country. So Hessey in his invaluable Bampton Lectures on Sunday, pages 110, 111. Beyond all question the almost unanimous opinion of the Protestant reformers, Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, and others, was against the existence of an ante-Mosaic Sabbatic law.
When on Sinai the law was promulgated, the Sabbath was constituted, designedly and essentially, a ceremonial institution of the Mosaic dispensation, confined to that people whom the Lord their God had "brought up out of the land of Egypt." It was to be a sign between Jehovah and Israel only. Exodus xx., 2; xxxi., 13, 17; Ezekiel xx., 12, 20. It is to be classed with the other rites of Judaism, and is no more spiritual or moral than are the Passover and new moon festival observances commanded in the law of Moses. It, as well as they, was but part of the " shadows" which were to "pass away" when the "body" should come. See particularly Colossians ii., 16, 17 ; 2 Corinthians iii., 7-13 ; Hebrews x., l ; xii., 27; Galatians iv., 9, to. Notwithstanding all that may be claimed about the "moral element" of the fourth commandment, the Sabbath is certainly a positive institution, and the observance of the "seventh day," as sanctified by God, rests solely on this positive law. It is therefore rightly called a "ceremonial institution." And this is true whether the phrase "seventh day" designates the special day of the week, or only sets
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apart one-seventh of time. I care not how others may decide this point; for me it has no authoritative bearing on the question of the observance of the Lord's Day.
I confess I find it hard to understand how careful students of the Sabbatic legislation can deny its essential Jewish nature. Turn to the decalogue as given in Exodus xx. The very words evidence it as a law for Israel: "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." Surely this language cannot introduce a "moral code for all the race and for all time." But examine this decalogue as given by Moses in Deuteronomy v : "The Lord our God made a covenant with us in the land of Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us." In enforcing the keeping of the Sabbath, the commandment as here given (verses 13-15), says: "Remember thou wast a servant in Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence: therefore the Lord thy God commandeth thee to keep the Sabbath day." Passing strange that one can read these words and yet fail to see that the Sabbath was a "sign to a particular people." So the prophets treated the Sabbath. They caught the inspiration of the positive language of the lawgiver: "The Sabbath is a sign between me and the children of Israel." Exodus xxxi., 13-18; xxxv., 1-3. Hear Ezekiel (xx., 12, 29): "Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign between me and them." How could the Sabbath be a special "sign between Jehovah and Israel," if designed for all nations? And if for the race, is it not strange that the heathen, while censured for their many sins, are never charged with "Sabbath breaking?"
Being essentially and designedly part of the "old garment" and "old bottles" of Judaism, the Sabbath perished with the old dispensation when it was superseded by the "ministration of the Spirit" (Colossians ii., 14-17 ; 2 Corinthians in., 7-11). Some good brethren shrink from this proposition, and ask why the fourth commandment is declared to be peculiarly
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Judaic and temporary. They assume that the decalogue was given as the "moral law for all the race and for all time." I dissent from the assumption. The decalogue, so far as it forbids immorality, was based upon the universal moral law written in the conscience of humanity; but in its ethical prohibitions that decalogue is greatly inferior to the more glorious positive inculcations of Jesus and his Spirit-guided Apostles. Paul specially mentions the "law graven on stones" as part of that which was "done away." No part of the old law was graven on stone except the decalogue. With the blessed gospel of the New Testament we have no need of the crude and rudimentary moral code of Sinai. Let no one misunderstand me. It is freely admitted that most of the decalogue is of perpetual moral force, binding on all men always; not because that law was designed as the universal moral code, but only because the moral duties negatively enjoined in the ten commandments are essentially of the universal moral law "written in the heart" (Romans ii., 14, 15). They are not duties because in the decalogue; they are in the decalogue because they are moral duties. But the sanctification of the "seventh day" by the fourth commandment is a positive, not a moral, law. It was right for the Jews to obey it, not because it was obviously of an essentially moral character, but only because God commanded them to "remember" it. It is not denied that there was a "moral element" in the commandment. Of course it was morally right to gratefully remember God and to worship Him; there was not, however, any moral element designating the "seventh day" as specially fitted to express such remembrance. When God had given this law to the Jews then they were under moral obligation to observe it in its letter as well as its spirit; for when the lawgiver imposes a positive or ceremonial precept, it becomes a moral law in a secondary sense. For example, baptism and the Lord's Supper are positive ceremonial ordinances of the New Testament, but it is morally obligatory upon all who love Jesus to observe them in the
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letter of the commandments authorizing them. The "moral element" of the fourth commandment is eternally obligatory; that is to say, all souls will forever be under obligation to worship their Creator. But this is very far from saying that the decalogue was designed to be the law for the race and for all time; still less does it affirm the fourth commandment as the Sabbatic law of the new dispensation.
The Master's Sermon on the Mount — "that new system of morals," as Dean Howson calls it — lifted the believer's estimate of holiness and the moral virtues far above the decalogue prohibitions. When the Scribe came to Jesus with the weighty question: "Master, which is the great commandment in the law?" He answered, not by quoting the decalogue, as if it were of supreme and peculiarly moral force, but the all-inclusive precepts: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And a second like unto it is this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew xxii. 35-40, cf. Deuteronomy vi., 5 ; Leviticus xix., 18.) Jesus taught us to regard the decalogue as beneath the purity of His ethical teaching, when He said: "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time * * * * but I say unto you." (Matthew v. 21, etc.) So in the teaching of the Apostles and other writers of the New Testament, we find every moral duty inculcated and enforced, not by urging the authority of the decalogue, but by the constraining love of Him who died for us and rose again. Not from Sinai, nor its tables of stone, but from Calvary and its cross of love they drew the inspiration to obedient holiness. Not Moses, but Jesus, is Lawgiver to the Gospel dispensation.
In his earnest protest against the tendency of the Galatians to return to the "weak and beggarly rudiments" of Judaism, Paul gives that remarkable allegorical interpretation of the two covenants, in which he affirms the deliverance of the
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citizens of the free Jerusalem from the Sinaic law (Galatains iv.). What law was that given till the Seed should come? The whole Mosaic legislation — decalogue and all. Thus the Apostle argues in a passage already referred to (2 Corinthians iii. 7-11): "If the ministration of death, written and engraven on stones, came with glory (so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face), which was passing away, how shall not rather the ministration of the Spirit be with glory? For if the ministration of condemnation hath glory, much rather does the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For verily that which hath been made glorious hath not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasseth. For if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory." I quote substantially from the Revised Version, but note the parenthesis and italics, which clearly bring out the sense. The passage has been obscured by the supplied words of the common version, as if it was the glory of "the face of Moses" which was to be "done away!" It is difficult to command patience sufficient to seriously consider so puerile an interpretation of the glowing language of the Apostle. No, that which passed away when the promised Seed came was the ministration of death and condemnation graven on stones; that which remaineth forever is the ministration of the Spirit and righteousness! So the writer to the Hebrews: "And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removal of those things that are shaken, that those things which are not shaken may remain." Hebrews xii., 27. A suggestive contrast between the temporary Sinaic law and the enduring liberty of the Gospel. The "passing away " of that "ministration of death " virtually abolished the Sabbath, along with all its other "shadows." When Jesus cried, " It is finished," He announced the abrogation of the old, and the ushering in of the new, dispensation. Then He "blotted out the bond written in ordinances, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross." Henceforth
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the Great Apostle to the Gentiles said: "Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day, or a new moon, or a Sabbath Day, which are a shadow of the things to come, but the body is Christ's " (Colossians ii. 14-17). It has been objected that the Greek is plural referring to the numerous Sabbath rests ordained in connection with the various fasts and feasts. It is enough to say in reply that the word is inclusive of the weekly Sabbath.
The interpretation of this passage here given is that which was universal among Gentile Christians during the first three centuries. Indeed, the period might be practically extended another century. Certainly it is the interpretation accepted by the ablest exegetical commentators and authors of modern times. It may be well to hear one who deservedly occupies a high place in exegetical criticism — the Rev. A. Barry, Principal of King's College, London. I quote from his article on the Sabbath in Smith's Christian Antiquities:
The idea embodied in the title, the "Christian Sabbath" was, so far as we can see, entirely unknown in the early centuries of Christianity. * * * * The Sabbath, whatever may be decided on the controversy as to the existence of a patriarchal Sabbath, had become part and parcel of the Jewish law. Like circumcision and distinction of meats, it had served its purpose as typical and preparatory. Now it passed away.
So Alford, Bengel, Meyer, and others. I content myself with recalling the words of one who, albeit decidedly "High Church" in his tendencies, has given us a valuable work in his Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology — John Henry Blunt:
Of more weight than all the arguments drawn from Genesis, is the fact that Ezekiel deals with the Sabbath as dating from Moses, and that St. Paul reckons Sabbaths among the weak and beggarly elements of the law (Galatians iv. 10) ; among the shadows of the things to come, the body of which is Christ (Colossians ii. 16). St. Paul could hardly have spoken thus had the Sabbath been a primeval institution, intended to run through all time.
And I cannot refrain from giving, before passing on, the conclusion of Hessey:
Therefore the Sabbath, the Sabbath of the fourth commandment,
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with everything contained under the word Sabbath, or akin to it, days, and times, and years, the strongholds, and yet the weaknesses of the law, is abolished.*
Up to this point I have tried to show: 1. That the evidence is not sufficient to establish the existence of a primeval Sabbath enacted in Eden; 2. That the Sabbath of the fourth commandment was a ceremonial institution of Judaism, confined to that people whom "the Lord their God had brought out of the land of Egypt;" 3. That the Sabbath, as part of the typical Jewish economy, passed away with the other Mosaic institutions, when the "ministration of death" gave place to the Gospel "ministration of the Spirit." It remains to consider the nature and obligatory force of the Lord's Day. It is confidently maintained that the Lord's Day is essentially and originally an institution of the new dispensation — as much so as are baptism and the supper. It is no more the perpetuation of the Sabbath than the other mentioned ordinances are the continued observance of circumcision and the passover. The "first day of the week" is never in the New Testament called the Sabbath. "The Lord's Day has an origin, a reason, an obligation of its own. It is something better than, and beyond, the Sabbath." It depends not for its sanctity upon the abrogated Sinaic legislation. At most
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* I find an interesting page in the Life of Judson, by his son, the Rev. Edward Judson, D. D. In the reminiscences of her husband, Mrs. Emily C. Judson says: "My impression, drawn from many a long talk, is that he considered the Old Testament as the Scriptures given to the Jews especially, and, as a whole, applicable to them, and to them only. He did not like the distinction commonly drawn between the moral and ceremonial law, and sometimes spoke, with an earnestness amounting to severity, of the constant use made of the ten commandments by Christians. He thought the Old Testament very important, as explanatory and corroborative of the New, but binding on Christians only so far as repeated in the New Testament. He used to speak of the Mosaic law as fulfilled in Christ, and so having no further power whatever. * * * Practically we had nothing to do with the Old Testament law. * * * Once when I introduced some lessons from the Old Testament into my Bible classes, he compared it to groping among shadows, when I might as well have the noonday sun."
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it may be said to be analogous to — certainly it is not identical with — the Sabbath of the decalogue. So Schaff:
The Lord's Day was not a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath, which was at first also observed [by Jewish Christians], but a substitute for it.
Or, more comprehensively, Dr. Hessey:
The Sabbath, a positive Jewish institution, ordained of God through Moses, as shown in Scripture, remained in right of its Divine authorship till the dispensation passed away to which it belonged; then prophecy being fulfilled, and express inspired declarations on the subject having been uttered, it passed away. The Lord's Day, a positive Christian institution, ordained of God through the Apostles, as indicated in Holy Scripture, remains in right of its Divine authorship until the dispensation to which it belongs shall pass away. (Page 142 )
In this direction only can be obtained solid ground on which to rest the Christian's observance of the first day of the week. In order to develop the argument let us glance at the New Testament references to the question. The most cursory reading of the gospels will reveal our Lord in frequent collision with the Jewish rulers in regard to His treatment of the Sabbath. It is scarcely necessary to refer in detail to the many passages. The impression gained by careful comparison and study of the texts is that Jesus purposely wrought many of His miracles on the Sabbath day — frequently seeming to seek the occasion — in order to precipitate the controversy. Notably is this the case in the healing of the impotent man by the pool of Bethesda (John v.), and of the man with the withered hand, in the synagogue, immediately after the dispute about the plucking of the corn by the disciples. (Matthew xii.; Mark ii.). It was on one of these occasions that our Lord gave expression to the memorable and pregnant words: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath day." (Mark ii. 29, 28.) It is true that neither Jesus nor the persons complained of had really violated the Sabbath law of the Scriptures; they had only come in conflict with the Pharisaic glosses upon that law. As the Seed of the woman, Jesus was made under the law.
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As such he faithfully fulfilled its righteousness, obeying all its obligations. To "remember the Sabbath day" was part of that law, and Jesus honored it. That law was in force till Calvary and the resurrection.
Till that time He observed the law. Circumcision, holy days, and Sabbaths, were a part of the ordinances to which He submitted Himself for awhile, though, as is evident from His practice and teaching, from His spiritualizing of the law, and from His proclaiming the "acceptable year," and announcing Himself as its introducer, He considered them to be things decaying and waxing old, and ready to vanish away. (Hessey, p. 125.)
Though seeming purposely to antagonize the Pharisees in the observance of the Sabbath, Jesus used these occasions to rebuke their misconceptions of that institution. He told them that it was a benevolent ordinance. God gave it for the good of His people — a day "in which man's welfare was to be wrought out in a different way, indeed, from that appropriated to other days, but still wrought out." "It was made for man," not a burdensome constraint, but a ministering mercy. Strangely enough these words of Jesus have been forced into the support of that view which perpetuates in the Christian dispensation the Sabbatic institution. It is argued that they affirm the perpetual and universal obligation of the Sabbath — "for man," i. e. the race. The context forbids this interpretation. It dissociates the two propositions, each of which supplements and explains the other. "The Sabbath was made for man — not man for the Sabbath." Clearly the negative clause limits and explains the positive. The question was not concerning the then obligation of the Sabbath; but, which is the more important, the Sabbath or man? "Which is the more precious in God's sight, the ordinance or the moral being?" They were not discussing the extent; rather the , of the Sabbatic law.
In claiming to be "Lord of the Sabbath," Jesus intimated the coming abrogation of the institution and substitution of the Lord's Day. To have positively announced that future abrogation would have been premature. By virtue of that
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Divine Lordship, in which all power in heaven and earth was given into His hands, the Sabbath, with all its kindred Mosaic ceremonial, was to be done away; the "shadows" were to vanish, the "body" only was to remain.
Having seen that the Sabbath passed away with the Jewish dispensation, to which it belonged, and also that the fourth commandment is no authority for the sanctification of the "first day of the week," it remains to be shown why Christians do and should honor this day as the Lord's Day. It cannot be too frequently emphasized that there is no Scripture authority for the transfer of the Sabbath obligation from the "seventh day" to the "first day." Of such "change of day," not only the New Testament, but also the Christian literature of the early centuries, is as silent as the grave. It was several hundred years after the establishment of Christianity before the Sabbath and the Lord's Day began to be identified, and the fourth commandment adduced in support of the sanctity of the latter. To say the least this is suggestive. We must look to the New Testament Scriptures, as interpreted in the teaching and practice of the churches immediately subsequent to the Apostolic age, to find the true authorization of the Lord's Day.
It is generally accepted by exegetical scholars and commentators that our Lord was buried before sunset, Friday evening of the Passover week, and that He rose "very early in the morning the first day of the week." Here and there may be found those who except to this opinion — erratic interpreters addicted to theological or ecclesiastical vagaries — but practically it universally obtains among sober and competent writers. On the evening of that Resurrection Sunday, as the bewildered yet hopefully-expectant disciples were assembled, their risen Lord appeared in the midst of them, and gave the assuring salutation, "Peace unto you." (John xx. 19.) Also on the following first day evening; for we must interpret John's "after eight days" as indicating one week, in accordance with a common Jewish method of computing
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time, a part of a day being taken for a whole day. (Compare Matthew xvii. 1, with Luke ix. 28.) In the Epistle of Barnabas Sunday is called the "eighth day." It cannot be urged that these appearances of Jesus to His disciples, of themselves, prove His authorization of the "first day" as the memorial of His resurrection. The most that can be said is that they suggestively harmonize with such an authorization, supposing it to be otherwise probable. Our Lord remained on earth forty days after His resurrection, "speaking the things concerning the Kingdom of God." The record is silent concerning the nature of most of those post-resurrection interviews with His disciples What He may have taught them concerning the Lord's Day is not a matter of legitimate assumption. Yet there are certainly good reasons to believe that so important an institution was not wholly ignored in His instructions. The practice of the Apostles, and the primitive churches, as intimated in Scripture references, would, to say the least, afford presumptive evidence of some definite directions in relation thereto. Whatever may be concluded as to the reasonableness of this suggestion, it is certain that our Lord commissioned His Apostles to teach the churches, promising His ever-present Spiritual Presence and guidance into all truth. "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you." What they delivered unto the churches, in the exercise of that Apostleship, has the sanction of Divine prescription.
In the New Testament there are intimations quite clear that they honored the "first day of the week" as the Christian's day of worship, in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus. True, these intimations are neither as numerous nor as definite as we might wish them to be, yet, when they are considered in the light shed upon their meaning and force from the testimony and practice of the writers and churches immediately succeeding the Apostles, they are amply sufficient to justify the significance accorded to them in Christian interpretation. Hessey argues that "if the Apostles be
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considered merely as uninspired persons, and in that capacity to have debated by what day they should mark their religion, and carry out what may be conceived to be a religious instinct, the duty of worshipping God specially on one day (the cycle of seven being suggested by the form of religion from which they were gradually emancipating themselves), they would have been likely to choose the day of the resurrection." The promised "baptism in the Holy Spirit" made those Apostles infallible teachers. That wonderful gift came on the Day of Pentecost, which, in that year, occurred on the first day of the week. Was it by accident that on that day "they were all with one accord in one place?" Would not that gracious descent of the Spirit most signally mark as holy that day which was already associated with the fulfillment of one of the Master's promises — His resurrection? Every suggestion of grateful sentiment and eminent propriety would naturally elevate that day into peculiar prominence.
Many years after that glorious Pentecost, the history in the Acts (Chapter xx. 7) brings Paul to Troas, by which time Christianity had assumed a comparatively fixed form. There Paul and his companions "tarried seven days, and upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached." Passing by all discussion of the phrase "breaking bread," and of some irrelevant matters which have been forced into the consideration of this passage, certainly we have here just such a record as one should naturally expect to read upon the supposition that the first day of the week was then the recognized stated day of Christian assembling. The matter-of-course way in which the circumstances are introduced seems to indicate an established order. There is a similar unstudied reference to the first day of the week in l Corinthians xvi. 1, 2, where Paul seems to allude to this day as one recognized for the celebration of religious worship. It is most natural to suppose that this "laying by" was in some general treasury, where the contributions of the faithful could be stored against the Apostle's arrival. The
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apostolic injunction was to provide against any such gathering of the sums from the several Christian homes as would have been necessitated if they had laid by their offerings each in "his own home," as some interpreters have suggested. The weekly assembling of the people on the first day of the week — "the day after the Sabbath" — would prove convenient for the storing up of their free-will gifts. "Do you sanctify your gifts by offering them on the day which you already reverence?"
It was not till late in the first century (not till John wrote the Apocalypse, A. D. 90-96) that we meet the name "Lord's Day" (Revelation i. 10). By that time it had become usual by that term to designate its Divine origin and institution. There is no sufficient reason for objecting to the application of the term to the first day of the week. It is so understood by the oldest Christian writers. The phrase "day of the Lord" was common in the apostolic age to denote the great day of the second coming of Christ — the judgment day. John used a different word for Lord in the Revelation. It is an adjective, not the noun usually rendered Lord. It is found only in Revelation i. 10, and I Corinthians xi. 20 — "the Lord's Supper." It is a peculiar New Testament word, perhaps coined by Paul for the purpose of describing the holy feast. From the Supper it came to be applied to the sacred day on which Christians met for its observance. Sunday is still called Kuptaxn in the Levant, just as in most of the continental languages of Europe it is known by terms signifying the Lord's Day.
This argument is confirmed by an appeal to the interpretation of these Apostolic precedents by the earliest Christian writers. Those who immediately succeeded the New Testament age, though not infallible teachers, are certainly entitled to regard as witnesses to the established order delivered by the Apostles unto the churches. Barry, in Smith's Christian Antiquities, summing up the testimony, assures us
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that "patristic usage from Ignatius downwards establishes the regular and technical use of the Lord's Day for the first day of the week." Ignatius was a disciple of the Apostle John, a fellow disciple with Polycarp, the renowned martyr. A very beautiful myth represents him as the little child whom the Lord placed in the midst of His disciples. This indicates the period when He is supposed to have been born and lived (A.D. 30-107). I quote from his Epistle to the Magnesians:
Be not deceived with strange doctrines, nor with old fables, which are unprofitable. For if we still live according to the Jewish law, we confess we have not received grace. * * * * If, therefore, those who were brought up on the old order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord's Day, etc.
I use the recently published edition of the Ante-Nicene Fathers under the supervision of Bishop A. C. Coxe. In the Epistle ascribed to Barnabas, which, though not written by that apostle, was certainly in existence in the early part of the second century, in explanation of Isaiah i. 13, we have:
Wherefore we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, the day on which Jesus rose from the dead.
Justin Martyr flourished A.D. 140. In his First Apology, he says:
On the day called Sunday, all who live in the cities or in the country gather together in one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read. * * * * Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God dispelled the darkness and made the world ; and because Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. * * * He appeared to His apostles and taught them these things. (Coxe's edition, chapter 67.)
Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, A.D. 178, has several references to the question, and applies the name Lord's Day to Sunday, all the while carefully distinguishing it from the Sabbath. Others might be mentioned, but I shall content myself by referring to the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, of which so much has been written within the past few years.
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Whatever opinion may be entertained of the Didachc, it is certainly, in part, as early as the second or third century, and on this question may be cited. In Chapter 14, we read: "Coming together on the Lord's Day, break bread and give thanks," etc.
Thus with one voice these Christian "fathers" speak of the Lord's Day, just as they speak of baptism and the supper, and other matters of church order, which they received from the original promulgators of Christianity. As soon as the churches pass out of the Apostolic guidance into history, we find the first day of the week established and universally accepted as the divinely instituted (Gr.), on which the (Gr.) was celebrated. The Lord's Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the Lord's Day are originally and peculiarly of the Gospel, the "Ministration of the Spirit," and are alike of Divine institution and authority.
The argument seems conclusive. We rest content upon so convincing proof of the Divine origin of this Gospel institution. We would not dishonor our Redeemer, whose glorious resurrection it ever commemorates, by degrading the Lord's Day to the lower level of the Sabbath; nor would we lessen its Gospel significance by seeking authority and prescription for its observance in the effete Sinaic decalogue! Rather let us take our stand reverently by the open tomb, that could not hold the Prince of Life in bond, and rejoice in the day which our Lord hath made.
C. E. W. Dobbs.
Columbus, Miss.
===================
[From The Baptist Quarterly Review 1886, pp. 201-220. Document from Google Books. — jrd]
Rev. C.E.W. Dobbs Arrested in Portsmouth 1864
Introduction
C.E.W. Dobbs grew into adulthood in Portsmouth, Virginia just as the events leading to the Civil War were brewing. While doing a general internet search on him the other day, I found a small blurb that announced that he had been arrested by a general because he was considered to be a rebel preacher. I couldn’t get any more information from the internet because there was a warning sign below the entry that said the site was corrupted and could give my computer unwanted viruses.
Undaunted and with my curiosity peaked, I got on the phone and called the Court Street Baptist Church and told the receptionist that I was the great-great granddaughter of C.E.W. Dobbs, a former preacher there, and I wanted to know if they had a church historian. She said that there was no church historian but she could let me speak to the current pastor, Dr. Wilbur Kersey. Soon, a gentle southern voice appeared on the other end of the telephone line and I commenced to tell my story.
Dr. Kersey informed me that they had a history book for the church and he would look in it to see if there was a reference to C.E.W. Dobbs’ arrest. He put the phone down and I waited with baited breath to see if we could solve this new mystery.
Soon, he returned, and I heard him say, “Hmmm...we have it. It’s true!”
He gave me the gist of the article and agreed to send me a copy of it.
A few days later, I received a copy of pages 46 and 47 of this book. It is transcribed below.
All I can say, is our ancestor was quite a guy!
Transcript
When, in the spring of 1862, General George McClellan landed 100,000 troops on the Virginia Peninsula, and General Burnside occupied the Albemarle region, the position of 15,000 defenders of Portsmouth became perilous, and Norfolk and Portsmouth had to be abandoned. Six thousand Federal troops occupied Norfolk on May 10 and Portsmouth on the following day. The last Confederate soldiers left Portsmouth on May 10. Before leaving, they prepared to transport Navy Yard supplies to Charlotte, N.C., and they burned the Yard.
Martial law was imposed on Portsmouth, a city of less than 6,000 inhabitants. Some church meeting houses were seized. The Methodist Church was seized but accidentally burned before it could be put into use by the occupiers; Northern Methodist missionaries then took over St. John’s Episcopal for use by Methodists; and Trinity Episcopal became a hospital for Negroes. The Court Street Church was more fortunate for a time, having no pastor to be accused of Confederate sympathies.
Joseph F. Deans of the Shoulder’s Hill Church was engaged to supply the Baptist pulpit from August, 1861, but Deans said that he could not live in the town on the $33.33 per month being offered him. By September, the church offered him $500.00 for the coming year, but it insisted that he live in Portsmouth. Deans served the church as interim pastor until the end of February, 1862. The Shoulder’s Hill Church ordained Deans in January, 1862.
Until February 28, 1862, Elders Thomas Hume, Jr., Joseph F. Deans, and C.E.W. Dobbs supplied the pulpit of Court Street. Dobbs was a licentiate of the church who had spent two sessions at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Greenville, S.C. After the Confederate evacuation of the town, he continued to supply the pulpit alone. Elder I. B. Lake was called as pastor on February 23, 1862, but by June 6 he had responded by saying that he could not accept the pastoral office “owing to the uncertainty of the times,” but that he would preach regularly. In case the town should be evacuated by Confederate troops, he would feel constrained to leave since he was unwilling to remain under the Federal Government. The church accepted his conditional statement. Elder Lake continued in the town only about a month, for he left with the evacuating forces, as he had reserved the right to do, early in May, 1862.
C.E.W. Dobbs preached thereafter for the white members on Sunday mornings and for the Colored people on Sunday evenings, until the summer of 1863. A crisis then developed concerning the Colored people.
Relations between the races had deteriorated from September 11, 1862 when the Colored members had resolved to meet every Monday at 4:00 P.M., but the church conference had not concurred. Then, on May 10, 1863, Colored deacons had appeared at a church conference to ask for unlimited control of the lower floor of the meeting house. They had been denied the request. On July 5, the colored deacons had returned with a longer set of requests: that the Black people have exclusive right of the first floor until they should be able to build their own meeting house; that they be granted the privilege of choosing their own pastor and other officers; that the church restore into their hands the $250.00 to $300.00 they had raised to build their own church; and that definite answers to their requests be left at their Deacon William Elliott’s house by 9:00 A.M., July 2, 1863. The church did not act positively on their requests.
Thereupon, the Colored people wrote to Major General John A. Dix, Commander of the Seventh Army Corps, declaring that they had been excluded from the morning worship services of their church, that the $250.00 to $300.00 they had collected to build their own church was being withheld, although they had given to the church in the past as much as $500. On July 7, J.T. Borum, church clerk, was summoned before J.A. Bolles, Provost Judge at the Courthouse in Norfolk, to show cause that the requests of Black members had not been granted. In a letter to Bolles, Borum, Dobbs, and W.D. Robinson responded that the Colored members had the use of the first floor of the meeting house from sunrise to 8:00 A.M. (the Sunday school of the church used it after 8:30 A.M.); that after morning services the Colored people had use of the space until night; that pews were rented in the upper audience room, and only ten to twelve black members were attending morning services when the north gallery was assigned to the overflow congregation; that the privilege of electing their own officers had always been granted the Colored members, while they would have to withdraw membership to call their own pastor; that Court Street Church would have built a meeting house for its Black members had the war not interrupted their plans; and that only in the past two years had the Colored members given for the support of the pastor (about $90.00) and to build their own church ($217.00). The crisis in relations had developed suddenly, as it appeared to the writers, and the official summons had allowed little time for consultation.
The judge was absent when the committee went to see him, but Major Bolles replied to the letter that he found no cause for legal interference. The church would solve its own internal problems.
At a church conference of September 13, 1863, W.D. Robinson moved to employ as supply pastor Elder Watkinson, who had visited the town in the preceding July. A majority of the few men present seemed to favor the choice, and a committee was appointed to inform Watkinson of his election. Watkinson appears to have refused the call, and on September 27, 1863, a resolution that he was not the choice of the church was approved. At the same time, C.E.W. Dobbs resigned as supply and was chosen as pastor, with sixty-seven votes to three for Watkinson.
C.E.W. Dobbs was ordained to the ministry on March 6, 1864, Elders T.G. Jones, H.D. Chandler, John D. Elwell and Richard Allen serving as the examining presbytery.
Two days after the ordination of Elder Dobbs, the young minister was arrested and imprisoned in Camp Hamilton, near Fortress Monroe. He had been accused of being a rebel preacher. Liberated on August 12, 1864, he did not return to the Court Street Church, but he preached during 1865 for the Fourth Street Church. Later he served the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi. Still later, he had a long pastorate in Key West, Florida, celebrating his golden anniversary in 1914.Comment
I visited Texas in June 2009 and I met Eleanor Dobbs Marler, a great-granddaughter of C.E.W. Dobbs through his son, Gilbert. Among the Dobbs items she inherited was the handwritten offer made to C.E.W. Dobbs of the pastor’s position at Court Street Baptist Church. We didn’t copy it due to its size so I copied it by hand as best as I could all the while trying to imitate the 19th century handwriting. It reads…
Portsmouth VA
Sept 29th 1863
Rev. C.E.W. Dobbs
Dear Brother,
It has become my duty by a resolution of the Court St Baptist Church, to inform you that on Sabbath evening Sept 27th at a meeting of the male & Female Members of the church – You were duly elected Pastor of said church praying that God may in his wisdom may direct you to accept of its call.
I Remain, Your Brother, Jas T. Borum, Church Clerk
At the time I copied this on June 20, 2009, I didn’t understand its significance. I had no idea that eight months later, while fooling around on the internet that I would come across a small clue that would lead to yet another rich story of a Dobbs ancestor. I have learned that it is important to follow even the smallest clue because they lead to such rich wells of information that add to the history of our family. I am so happy that now, I can share this story with all of you.
C.E.W. Dobbs grew into adulthood in Portsmouth, Virginia just as the events leading to the Civil War were brewing. While doing a general internet search on him the other day, I found a small blurb that announced that he had been arrested by a general because he was considered to be a rebel preacher. I couldn’t get any more information from the internet because there was a warning sign below the entry that said the site was corrupted and could give my computer unwanted viruses.
Undaunted and with my curiosity peaked, I got on the phone and called the Court Street Baptist Church and told the receptionist that I was the great-great granddaughter of C.E.W. Dobbs, a former preacher there, and I wanted to know if they had a church historian. She said that there was no church historian but she could let me speak to the current pastor, Dr. Wilbur Kersey. Soon, a gentle southern voice appeared on the other end of the telephone line and I commenced to tell my story.
Dr. Kersey informed me that they had a history book for the church and he would look in it to see if there was a reference to C.E.W. Dobbs’ arrest. He put the phone down and I waited with baited breath to see if we could solve this new mystery.
Soon, he returned, and I heard him say, “Hmmm...we have it. It’s true!”
He gave me the gist of the article and agreed to send me a copy of it.
A few days later, I received a copy of pages 46 and 47 of this book. It is transcribed below.
All I can say, is our ancestor was quite a guy!
Transcript
When, in the spring of 1862, General George McClellan landed 100,000 troops on the Virginia Peninsula, and General Burnside occupied the Albemarle region, the position of 15,000 defenders of Portsmouth became perilous, and Norfolk and Portsmouth had to be abandoned. Six thousand Federal troops occupied Norfolk on May 10 and Portsmouth on the following day. The last Confederate soldiers left Portsmouth on May 10. Before leaving, they prepared to transport Navy Yard supplies to Charlotte, N.C., and they burned the Yard.
Martial law was imposed on Portsmouth, a city of less than 6,000 inhabitants. Some church meeting houses were seized. The Methodist Church was seized but accidentally burned before it could be put into use by the occupiers; Northern Methodist missionaries then took over St. John’s Episcopal for use by Methodists; and Trinity Episcopal became a hospital for Negroes. The Court Street Church was more fortunate for a time, having no pastor to be accused of Confederate sympathies.
Joseph F. Deans of the Shoulder’s Hill Church was engaged to supply the Baptist pulpit from August, 1861, but Deans said that he could not live in the town on the $33.33 per month being offered him. By September, the church offered him $500.00 for the coming year, but it insisted that he live in Portsmouth. Deans served the church as interim pastor until the end of February, 1862. The Shoulder’s Hill Church ordained Deans in January, 1862.
Until February 28, 1862, Elders Thomas Hume, Jr., Joseph F. Deans, and C.E.W. Dobbs supplied the pulpit of Court Street. Dobbs was a licentiate of the church who had spent two sessions at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Greenville, S.C. After the Confederate evacuation of the town, he continued to supply the pulpit alone. Elder I. B. Lake was called as pastor on February 23, 1862, but by June 6 he had responded by saying that he could not accept the pastoral office “owing to the uncertainty of the times,” but that he would preach regularly. In case the town should be evacuated by Confederate troops, he would feel constrained to leave since he was unwilling to remain under the Federal Government. The church accepted his conditional statement. Elder Lake continued in the town only about a month, for he left with the evacuating forces, as he had reserved the right to do, early in May, 1862.
C.E.W. Dobbs preached thereafter for the white members on Sunday mornings and for the Colored people on Sunday evenings, until the summer of 1863. A crisis then developed concerning the Colored people.
Relations between the races had deteriorated from September 11, 1862 when the Colored members had resolved to meet every Monday at 4:00 P.M., but the church conference had not concurred. Then, on May 10, 1863, Colored deacons had appeared at a church conference to ask for unlimited control of the lower floor of the meeting house. They had been denied the request. On July 5, the colored deacons had returned with a longer set of requests: that the Black people have exclusive right of the first floor until they should be able to build their own meeting house; that they be granted the privilege of choosing their own pastor and other officers; that the church restore into their hands the $250.00 to $300.00 they had raised to build their own church; and that definite answers to their requests be left at their Deacon William Elliott’s house by 9:00 A.M., July 2, 1863. The church did not act positively on their requests.
Thereupon, the Colored people wrote to Major General John A. Dix, Commander of the Seventh Army Corps, declaring that they had been excluded from the morning worship services of their church, that the $250.00 to $300.00 they had collected to build their own church was being withheld, although they had given to the church in the past as much as $500. On July 7, J.T. Borum, church clerk, was summoned before J.A. Bolles, Provost Judge at the Courthouse in Norfolk, to show cause that the requests of Black members had not been granted. In a letter to Bolles, Borum, Dobbs, and W.D. Robinson responded that the Colored members had the use of the first floor of the meeting house from sunrise to 8:00 A.M. (the Sunday school of the church used it after 8:30 A.M.); that after morning services the Colored people had use of the space until night; that pews were rented in the upper audience room, and only ten to twelve black members were attending morning services when the north gallery was assigned to the overflow congregation; that the privilege of electing their own officers had always been granted the Colored members, while they would have to withdraw membership to call their own pastor; that Court Street Church would have built a meeting house for its Black members had the war not interrupted their plans; and that only in the past two years had the Colored members given for the support of the pastor (about $90.00) and to build their own church ($217.00). The crisis in relations had developed suddenly, as it appeared to the writers, and the official summons had allowed little time for consultation.
The judge was absent when the committee went to see him, but Major Bolles replied to the letter that he found no cause for legal interference. The church would solve its own internal problems.
At a church conference of September 13, 1863, W.D. Robinson moved to employ as supply pastor Elder Watkinson, who had visited the town in the preceding July. A majority of the few men present seemed to favor the choice, and a committee was appointed to inform Watkinson of his election. Watkinson appears to have refused the call, and on September 27, 1863, a resolution that he was not the choice of the church was approved. At the same time, C.E.W. Dobbs resigned as supply and was chosen as pastor, with sixty-seven votes to three for Watkinson.
C.E.W. Dobbs was ordained to the ministry on March 6, 1864, Elders T.G. Jones, H.D. Chandler, John D. Elwell and Richard Allen serving as the examining presbytery.
Two days after the ordination of Elder Dobbs, the young minister was arrested and imprisoned in Camp Hamilton, near Fortress Monroe. He had been accused of being a rebel preacher. Liberated on August 12, 1864, he did not return to the Court Street Church, but he preached during 1865 for the Fourth Street Church. Later he served the First Baptist Church of Columbus, Mississippi. Still later, he had a long pastorate in Key West, Florida, celebrating his golden anniversary in 1914.Comment
I visited Texas in June 2009 and I met Eleanor Dobbs Marler, a great-granddaughter of C.E.W. Dobbs through his son, Gilbert. Among the Dobbs items she inherited was the handwritten offer made to C.E.W. Dobbs of the pastor’s position at Court Street Baptist Church. We didn’t copy it due to its size so I copied it by hand as best as I could all the while trying to imitate the 19th century handwriting. It reads…
Portsmouth VA
Sept 29th 1863
Rev. C.E.W. Dobbs
Dear Brother,
It has become my duty by a resolution of the Court St Baptist Church, to inform you that on Sabbath evening Sept 27th at a meeting of the male & Female Members of the church – You were duly elected Pastor of said church praying that God may in his wisdom may direct you to accept of its call.
I Remain, Your Brother, Jas T. Borum, Church Clerk
At the time I copied this on June 20, 2009, I didn’t understand its significance. I had no idea that eight months later, while fooling around on the internet that I would come across a small clue that would lead to yet another rich story of a Dobbs ancestor. I have learned that it is important to follow even the smallest clue because they lead to such rich wells of information that add to the history of our family. I am so happy that now, I can share this story with all of you.
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