and comparing, think always of the command once given and
never repealed:

"He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
churches." [4]

For we call ourselves Christians,--that "people of laws divers from all
other people"; and now we are consulting our statute book.

You think, then,--says somebody,--that Christians are to do nothing but
work, work, from morning to night: that the Bible forbids all play and
all pleasure? No, I think nothing of the sort. But let us see what it
really does say. "To the law and to the testimony,"--and abide by them.

To begin then where most of all, perhaps, the old and the modern times
are like each other,--feasts have always been in vogue and always
permitted; only for Christians, like all else that concerns them, with a
special set of regulations as to time, manner, and behaviour. You do not
think of this when you dress for your dinner party: you did not suppose
the Bible meddled with such things. Nay, it "meddles" (if you call it
so) with the very smallest thing a Christian can do.

The feasts of old time were in all essentials so like the feasts of
to-day, that not all the changes of race, dress, and viands can much
confuse the likeness. There is the great baby celebration for Isaac,[5]
and the wedding feast for the daughter of Laban,[6] and the impromptu
set-out in Sodom wherewith Lot thought to entertain the angels.[7] There
are the great gatherings of young people over which Job was so
anxious;[8] and the yearly sacrifice at the house of Jesse "for all the
family," [9] reminding one of our Thanksgiving.

Then follow state dinners of amity between two contracting powers; as
when Isaac feasted Abimelech,[10] and David feasted Abner.[11] Then
court entertainments: the birthday feast of Pharaoh to all his servants,
when he lifted up one and hanged another, and the birthday feast of
Solomon which marked his entrance upon a new life of duty, opportunity,
and promise, and which he kept like a young heir coming of age.

These are all well known to us: and alas, so also are the feasts of
social excess, like those of Nabal;[12] and the idolatrous feasts of the
men of Shechem,[13] and of the king of Babylon;[14] wherein men praise
only "the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, and of iron, of wood and
of stone."

"And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their
feasts: but they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider th