implication, that the Christian labours here. The question then arises, in what respect the heavenly rest is to be considered a cessation from labour, which if it is suitable to the Christian here, must be in conformity with the will of God. The answer is, that the service of the Christian in heaven, will differ from his service on earth, only as it will involve no further conflicts with constitutional corruption, but consist in an obedience, easy, spontaneous, and delightful. It then becomes a matter of solemn consideration, how far we are now engaged in that service which is to discipline the soul for heaven. Do we know what Christian labours are? How else can we anticipate the Christian rest? Are we daily seeking a conformity with God's will, and consequently exercised in resisting the powers of hell? Are we labourers in the accomplishment of those works which are to go up as a sweet savour unto God at present, and will follow us as pledges of our security, and trophies of our triumphant entry when we die? If we are not so labouring, and have no mind to begin, we may not look to taste the rest of heaven. If we have no such works to follow us, and have no mind to set about them, where are the evidences to authenticate our oneness with the Saviour, or to regulate the amount of our eternal portion? Read the parable of the talents: does it not teach us what the religion of Christ claims from us-how our destiny will be in proportion to our personal labours, and how surely indolence and indifference involve guilt, and must entail punishment? In the august revelation, in our Lord's description of the final judgment, of the process by which the lot of each will be decided, who can fail to recognize a disclosure analagous to that of the text? What can be more emphatic than the reference there made to the personal labours, and works by which each has been distinguished? Or what can be more corroborative of the point in question, than the language of Paul in 2 Corinthians, v., where he declares, that "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad?"

We conceive that much is implied in the concluding words of the text; and that it is intimated in them, that the works which follow us, will not only establish in the celestial hierarchy our right to be amongst them, but also denote the very place we are to occupy in their graduated nobility. We know that among the principalities and powers that encircle the throne of God, there are gradations, and each rejoices in his station and degree. We should have gathered it from the analogy of nature, from the evidently purposed inequalities among men in the world, and from all we can conceive of the monarchical constitution of heaven: but it is a matter of express revelation; and we may infer from the arrangement of the angelic, and archangelic powers, that a like gradation will be observable in the ranks of "just men made perfect." We think there is nothing incompatible with evangelical doctrine in this view of the subject, and it furnishes a motive to each candidate for heaven, for augmented diligence in his Christian work. It would be in no degree inconsistent with humility that there should be this holy ambition, this god-like rivalry, among the disciples of Jesus, that each one of us should endeavour to labour to obtain a more abundant entrance into the kingdom of God.

But while insisting further on this point, it is not to be denied, that the text establishes the everlasting importance of those fruits which come of faith, and

that, if we would like to be blest in death, we must labour now, that we may have works to follow when we die. Our interest in Christ will be our only title to enter heaven: it is only in his righteousness, put on us by faith, that we can appear in his courts; but his righteousness imputed to us, is only a plea for heaven, not a qualification for its enjoyment. The proof that we are justified, is, that we have the Spirit of Christ in our hearts, and this Spirit will sustain us in the labours, and help us in the works; which are to prove that we are his disciples. In doing so, the Spirit will mould us to the pattern of the heavenly household, and the works which are hereafter to appear as our witnesses in heaven, will be the means of fitting us to appear there ourselves.

Are you, my brethren, fellow-workers with God, and of the household of faith? Are you conscious of a desire to live to Christ, that in death you may sleep in him? And has your conscience condemned you of no allowed sin? Is it your endeavour to abound in good works, and that for God's glory, as well as your own advancement in holiness? Let the text, then, stimulate you to a continuance in well-doing: in due season you shall reap if you faint not. The duties, and the services, and the sacrifices with which you are at present conversant, are intimately connected with your final portion. In your present state, your discipleship involves much that is painful, and much constraint must you put on natural inclination, and many a conflict must you wage with your spiritual enemies: but from all that is painful will you be relieved when you rest from your labours in death, for present trials will work out "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;" and your works of faith, and your labours of love, will follow you to your great account. Therefore, be ye instant in season, and out of season, in doing good. Grudge not a few sacrifices and exertions in your Master's service; they will yield to you a plenteous harvest. You may sow in tears for a while, but you shall reap in joy: and, though you may now go on your way weeping, yet, if so be you bear precious seed, you shall doubtless come again with joy, bringing your sheaves with you.

8

INSTITUTION AND END OF THE SABBATH.

REV. J. H. EVANS, A.M.

JOHN STREET CHAPEL, KING'S ROAD, NOVEMBER 25, 1827.

"And on the seventh day God ended 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 sanctified it; because that in it. he had rested from all his work which God created and made."-GENESIS, ii. 2, 3.

ALTHOUGH wise, and good, and holy men, are, with very few exceptions, agreed, touching the obligation of the Lord's day, yet there does exist, notwithstanding, a great variety of opinion among us. Some appear, almost to legalize the Sabbath-they consider it in a Jewish point of view, and seem to rise no higher than the consideration of the fourth commandinent. There are some who appear to go to something of an opposite extreme, and, as they are convinced the Jewish dispensation is null and void-that we are no longer under it-that we are free from that yoke of bondage, and yet, not only are we free, but have cause to rejoice in our liberty-so they appear to think, that every day is to the Christian a Sabbath, and that there is no command in the present day to God's saints, higher than the example that the Apostle gives in the Acts. There are some who ask us, What proof have you for the alteration of the day? And with regard to the obligation of that sort of service, which a Christian man is constrained to give it, there exists no small difference.

That this is a subject of much importance, must be evident to every thinking mind; because, a conscientious regard of this day, is connected with the instituion itself. And if we look to the Sabbath on no higher grounds, than its Deing an institution of our country-of its being right and suitable in itself, without any express command of the Lord concerning it, then are we most certainly at issue on the subject: so that, the subject contains in it a vast body of truth. And when so many of God's people have differed about it-and immediately after the reformation, it was a subject that excited no little inquiry, and there was a long and severe controversy carried on by God's people on the point-remembering all this, how great need do I stand in, of the support and illumination of the Holy Spirit, that I may be kept from any fond and foolish conceits of my own knowledge; but that with all meekness, and yet, with all decision of mind, I may speak to you the things that I assuredly believe, and see recorded in God's sacred word.

Certainly, the fact is, there never was a period in which, while the saints of God are called upon to meet together from day to day, and express their allegiance to Him whom they allow to be their Lord and Master-never was a period in which greater profanation did take place, than at the present day. We have

had, at least, that evil brought over to us from the Continent-that is plain to any man who has resided in London ten years: he may see, every Lord's day, a great and increasing profanation of that day: he will see it in the unwillingly half-closed shutter: he will see it in the labour that men take to evidence this as their principle, "If shame did not prevent, this day should be to me as nothing; but because I am under some restraint of law and character, therefore I dare not do it." Who will not go through the streets and make this reflection as he goes? What man that has his eye on the Gospel view of the Sabbathwho that looks at Jesus as the great substance of this day, its beginning, its middle, its end, to whom the eye should be specially and peculiarly directed in his great work wherein he resteth-who that so regarded the cross of Immanuel, will not feel this, and suffer this persuasion to enter his mind as he passes our streets? I earnestly implore your prayers that God may give you and me a right and just spirit with regard to the subject.

Consider, first, who it was instituted the Sabbath; secondly, the continuation of that institution up to the present moment; thirdly, the great end and object of the Sabbath; and fourthly, what is that sort of obedience to it, which a Christian ought, under the spirit of liberty and adoption, to desire to give to it.

First, WHO WAS IT INSTITUTED THE SABBATH? When was it instituted? I said in the commencement, there are many who rise no higher than the consideration of the fourth commandment. Therein I think, with all affection and remembrance of my own weakness, therein I think they err. If that were so (though there were an argument springing out of that,) one might be led to consider, as we are not under the Jewish dispensation, how it is we know it to be the Lord's will, that that should be continued to us? But we find the early institution of the Sabbath in my text, before the fall of man. As the Lord ended his work on the seventh day (not that he worked, or completed his work, on the seventh day-it was finished on the sixth day-he had actually finished his work on the sixth day) as the Lord ended his work on the seventh day, he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: he caused it to be a day to which he had a peculiar favour, and he set it apart for a holy use, not to be used by him, but to be used for him, and set apart for all his creatures, for his own purpose, and for his own worship. Exodus, xxxi. 16, 17, "The children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sabbath throughout her generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days," &c. It sets forth the divine complacencyhow he looked back on the work he had finished, and how he was refreshed with the contemplation of it. And this gives us the true idea of the first Sabbath, when the Lord rested from his work: he set it apart, that his creatures might rest also; that they might rest in Him who accomplished it; that they might be taken from the work to the Worker, from the gift to the Giver, from the creation to the Creator, and from all the vast display it made of his perfections, to the contemplation of those perfections. He set it apart; it was his own act. If this be not the institution of the Lord's, whose is it? And if it be not his, we are as wrong as we should be, were we to blow the trumpet. It would be quite as absurd, quite an act of will-worship, for all the churches to acknowledge any obligation to meet once in seven days, or to abstain from any

work on the seventh day—it would be quite as much an act of will-worship, as to blow the trumpet in our pulpits. For, no one has a right, no, not the Apostles, to make laws-they were not legislators-we have but one legislator -not Paul, not Peter: we regard but one legislator, and that is, the Lord Jesus Christ. If we have merely, the institution of our country, or if it merely springs from a consciousness of its usefulness and propriety, we seem to be as a ship without a compass. Without a personal demand on it, it would cease to be observed altogether. It seems evident to me, that the same God that rested on that day, took complacency in it. And although Adam had not then laboured, there was a delight in God, in the contemplation of the works of God -of that God whose work it was. Therefore, there was a great end of the Sabbath in him: for the cessation of bodily labour, is but a means to gain an end; which end is, contemplation, our rest in God, our admiration of the divine perfections, our complacency in him who had great complacency in his work.

It does appear a marvellous thing how any one can trace up the institution from Exodus, and not see that here it stands, laid down in man's state of primeval innocency. In that chapter, in which we read of the promised seed, there is as clear declaration of the institution of the Sabbath, as there is of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. If the promise of the coming seed is not clear, then this is not clear: if the one is clear, the other is quite as clear. God set it apart for himself, for a holy use, for the contemplation of, or the resting in that work in which God rested. And I desire you once more to remember the passing observation, that if the Sabbath had not the God of heaven for its institutor, we, at the present day, should be left without a clear precept; and all our observation of it would be but will-worship-the command of men, and not the command of God. It would be man's duty to oppose it, and to acknowledge, that there is no lawgiver but the great God of heaven and earth.

It was

Secondly, observe, THE CONTINUATION OF THE INSTITUTION. instituted before man's transgression: and I have endeavoured to point out, what was the intention of it then. I do not say that the Christian Sabbath is not a more spiritual and sublime one. Many hints are thrown out, which prove that the patriarchs lived in the observation of it. When one has plain truth, it seems waste of time to go to a mere probable truth. From Exodus, xvi. 25, it is clear enough, that before the giving of the Law from Mount Sinai, the Jews were living in obedience to that command. "And Moses said, Eat that to-day; for to-day is a Sabbath unto the Lord: to-day ye shall not find it in the field." Here was the gathering of the manna, and they were commanded not to gather it on the Sabbath day, because that was a Sabbath unto the Lord.

I need not remind you of its renewal in Exodus, xx., and how it is renewed, And there is one remarkable thing with regard to it-How comes it to be placed among the ten commandments? The commands are either positive or moral. A positive command is that which has nothing in itself that marks it to be right, but merely because God declares it to be so: but a moral precept is that which has its own suitableness within its own bosom. Now, see how that first commandment begins: "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me." Did the Lord bring his people out of the land of