SABBATH, a sacred day of rest (the word being derived from shabath, Hebrew, to rest), the institution of which is first mentioned in Gen. ii. 2-3: "And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made, And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it: because that in it he rested from all his work which God had created and made."—"Re vised Version." The prevailing interpretation of these verses is that the Sabbath was instituted at the creation for mankind in general, and that septenary institutions may there fore be expected in all nations. Prior to the giving of the law from Mount Sinai, the Sabbath is mentioned in connection with the descent of manna (Exod. xvi.
5, 22-30). The keeping holy of the Sab bath is enjoined in the fourth command ment in Exodus, because of God's having rested after the creation (Exod. xx. 8 11) ; in Deuteronomy because of the de liverance of the Hebrew bondsmen from Egypt (Deut. v. 12-15). Two lambs in stead of one were offered when it came (Num. xxviii. 3-4, 9). Isaiah (lvi. 2, lviii. 13) strongly advocated its obser vance.
Always in the Gospels, and, as a rule, in the other books, Sabbath means the seventh day of the week. By this time its observance had become very rigid and punctilious, and Jesus Himself was con stantly denounced by the Pharisees and others as a Sabbath-breaker (Matt. xii. 1-2; Mark iii. 2-3). In self-defense he laid down this principle: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath" (Matt. xii. 8,
with Mark ii. 28).
For the first three centuries of Church history, the Christian fathers in general drew a distinction between the Sabbath and the Sunday or Lord's day, regarding the former as Jewish and obsolete, and the latter as a divinely instituted day, joyous in its character as commemorating Christ's resurrection. But from the days of the first and ambiguous edict of Con stantine on the subject: "Let all judges, inhabitants of the cities, and artificers, rest on the venerable Sun day [dies sons]. But husbandmen may freely and at their pleasure apply to the business of agriculture," there was an increasing tendency to trans fer to the Sunday, and, in a less degree, to saints' days and minor festivals the restrictions of the Jewish Sabbath. The third Council of Orleans (A. D. 538) strove to check this tendency, but in the same century we find legends of miraculous judgments on those who worked on the Sunday. The idea of the "Christian Sab bath" seems to be enunciated for the first time in Alcuin. The Reformers generally were opposed to Sabbatarian views, which, however, more or less modified, found a place in Protestant churches generally, and reached their height in the Puritan period.