fulfil all righteousness.” [211:4] He is at pains to shew that the acts of which the Pharisees complained as breaches of the Sabbath could be vindicated by Old Testament authority; [211:5] and that these formalists “condemned the guiltless," [211:6] when they denounced the disciples as doing that which was unlawful.  Jesus never transgressed either the letter or the spirit of any commandment pertaining to the holy rest; but superstition had added to the written law a multitude of minute observances; and every Israelite was at perfect liberty to neglect any or all of these frivolous regulations.

The Great Teacher never intimated that the Sabbath was a ceremonial ordinance which was to cease with the Mosaic ritual.  It was instituted when our first parents were in Paradise; [211:7] and the precept enjoining its remembrance, being a portion of the Decalogue, [212:1] is of perpetual obligation.  Hence, instead of regarding it as a merely Jewish institution, Christ declares that it “was made for MAN,” [212:2] or, in other words, that it was designed for the benefit of the whole human family.  Instead of anticipating its extinction along with the ceremonial law, He speaks of its existence after the downfal of Jerusalem.  When He announces the calamities connected with the ruin of the holy city, He instructs His followers to pray that the urgency of the catastrophe may not deprive them of the comfort of the ordinances of the sacred rest.  “Pray ye,” said he, “that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath-day.” [212:3] And the prophet Isaiah, when describing the ingathering of the Gentiles and the glory of the Church in the times of the gospel, mentions the keeping of the Sabbath as characteristic of the children of God.  “The sons of the stranger,” says he, “that join themselves to the Lord to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant—­even them I will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar:  [212:4] for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.” [212:5]

But when Jesus declared that “the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath,” [212:6] He unquestionably asserted His right to alter the circumstantials of its observance.  He accordingly abolished its ceremonial worship, gave it a new name, and changed the day of its celebration.  He signalised the first day of the week by then appearing once and again to His disciples after His resurrection, [212:7] and by that Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit [213:1] which marks the commencement of a new era in the history of redemption.  As the Lord’s day was consecrated to the Lord’s service, [213:2] the disciples did not now neglect the assembling of themselves together; [213:3] and the apostle commanded them at this holy