ere is one more point worthy of our attention, that is, the teaching
and example of Jesus. I have been told by one that is looked up to as a
strong believer in the second coming of the Lord this fall, that Jesus
broke the Sabbath. Jesus says, I have kept my Father's commandments. It
is said that he "broke the Sabbath," because he allowed his disciples to
pluck the corn and eat it on that day, and the Pharisees condemned them.
He says, "If ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not
sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the _guiltless_." Then they were
not _guilty_. See Deut. xxiii: 25. He immediately cites them to David
and his men, shewing that it was lawful and right when hungry, even to
eat the shoe bread that belonged only to the priests, and told them that
he was Lord of the Sabbath day. Here he shows too, that he was with his
disciples passing to the synagogue to teach; they ask him if it is
lawful to teach on the Sabbath day. He asks them if they had a sheep
fall into the ditch on the Sabbath, if they would not haul him out? How
much better then is a man than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do
well on the Sabbath days; and immediately healed the man with the
withered hand. Matt. xii: 1-13. On another Sabbath day, while he was
teaching, he healed a woman that had been bound of satan eighteen years;
and when the ruler of the synagogue began to find fault, he called him a
hypocrite, and said "doth not each one of you on the Sabbath [42]day
loose his ox or his ass from the stall and lead him away to watering;
and all his adversaries were _ashamed_." Luke xiii: 10-17. The xiv.
chapter of Luke is quoted to prove that he broke the Sabbath because he
went into the Pharisee's house with many others on the Sabbath day to
eat bread. Here he saw a man with the dropsy and he asked them if it was
lawful to heal on the Sabbath day. 'And they held their peace, and he
took him and healed him,' and asked them 'which of them having an ox or
an ass fall into the pit, would not straightway pull him out on the
Sabbath day; and they could not answer him again.' 1-6 v. And 'he
continued to teach them, by showing them when they made a feast to call
the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and then they should be
blessed.' Read the chapter, and you will readily see that he took this
occasion, as the most befitting, to teach them by parables, what their
duty was at weddings and feasts, in the same manner as he taught them