Page:Collier's New Encyclopedia v. 08.djvu/209

LEFT SABATIER 165 SABELLIANISM probably the sovereign of this people who paid the celebrated visit to Solomon. The Sabzeans were a powerful and wealthy people, who from long before the days of Solomon down to the beginning of the Christian era controlled the sea and cara- van traffic in gold, sweet spices, ivory, ebony, and valuable tissues that came from India and Africa and were dis- patched N. to Syria. To protect and watch oyer this trade they had stations or colonies in northern Arabia and in Ethiopia. The capital of their country was Mariaba (Marib), the ruins of which, including vast dams, lie N. E. of Sanaa. Their religion included the worship of the sun and moon, and a number of other deities. Their language is intermediate between Arabic and Ethiopian, but nearer akin to the former. SABATIER, PAUL, a French writer. He was born at St. Michel de Chabril- lanoux, in the Cevennes, in 1858, and was educated at the Faculte de Theologie, Paris, becoming in 1885 vicar of the St. Nicolas Church of Strasbourg. In 1885 he published the Greek text of the Di- dache, but it was his "Vie de St. Fran- cois" which made his name well-known, and the work was translated into several languages. After that appeared: "Col- lection d'etudes et des documents sur l'his- toire litteraire et religieuse du moyen age"; "Speculum Perfectionis seu sancti Francisci Assisiensis Legenda Antiquis- sima, auctore fr. Leone"; "Modernism." SABBATARIAN, in the 16th century, a sect who considered that the Christian Sabbath should be kept on the seventh day (Saturday). In modern times the word^ means one who holds that the Lord's day is to be observed among the Chris- tians in exactly the same manner as the Jews were enjoined to keep the Sabbath; one who holds rigid views of Sabbath observance. 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 solis]. 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. SABBATICAL YEAR, in Judaism, the name given to every seventh year, during which the Hebrews were not to sow their fields or prune their vineyards (Exod. xxiii. 10, 11; Lev. xxv. 2-7; Deut. xv. 1-11; xxxi. 10-13). SABELLIANISM, in Church history, the name given to any form of doctrine which denies a real distinction between the Persons of the Trinity; the same as