Page:Sermons on the Ten Commandments.djvu/80

 violation of the Sabbath. The account thus reads: "While the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath-day. And those that found him gathering sticks, brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the Lord said to Moses, The man shall surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died, as the Lord commanded Moses." The cause of so severe a punishment was probably this. The term here rendered "sticks" signifies properly "trees," or the branches of trees: now a tree signifies perception: hence to gather trees, or branches of trees, represented to gather up or frame in the mind perceptions or views of truth from the proprium or from one's own reasonings, and not from the Lord. He who does this, falls into deadly falsities. Now stoning to death, in the Jewish Church, represented spiritual death from falsities; for a stone represents truth, or, in the opposite sense, the false. Thus, the punishment inflicted upon this man represents, it may be said, the state of unbelievers, who, despising the Divine Word, wish to gather together and frame principles and doctrines from their own minds. They will perish in their falsities.

We have thus presented a brief sketch of the manner in which the Sabbath was required to be kept under the Jewish Dispensation, and shown, also, the ground