have ever fallen upon an expedient so barefaced, so insolent, and so clumsy. It sounds too much like the conscientious objections we might conceive wolves making to sheep-folds, and burglars to patent locks and salamander safes.

Despairing of success in this mode of attack, Infidelity has adopted another more ingenious, if not more effectual. Discovering that the religious feeling of the American people lies too deep to allow any institution that is rooted in it to be overturned, it has determined to assail the Sabbath through the very feeling that forms its strongest support. Accordingly it has exchanged the hoof and horns for the sheep's clothing, and in the wig and gown of criticism undertakes to show that there is no Divine warrant for keeping holy the first day of the week. Books and pamphlets advocating this view, with some show of argument, have been circulated extensively through the country; and in some instances laid in large numbers, by the hands of avowed infidels, on the desks of our legislative halls, for the purpose of procuring the obliteration of every recognition of the Lord's day that now appears on the statute-books of our States.

On the other hand, Christians, both in England and America, manifest with equal clearness a growing sense of the importance of the Sabbath, and their determination to cling to it as at once the hope, the privilege, and the right of the Christian world. Hence alliances and unions have been formed, conventions held, tracts written, premiums offered for dissertations on particular aspects of the subject, and a wide and active interest excited in the mind of the Church in favour of a better observance of the Sabbath.

It is not to be concealed, however, that in spite of the awakened intelligence of Christians to this subject, there is still much indistinctness of conception as to the real strength of the warrant on which we observe the first day of the week as the day of rest. With many, who are intelligent readers of the Bible, it is received as a matter of authority rather than a matter of argument; and they are unable to assign the same clear and satisfactory reason for their practice in this case, that they can in others.

We propose, therefore, to present some of the grounds on which we base the right and duty of observing the first day of the week, or the Lord's day, as the Christian Sabbath.

In order that the ground of discussion may be narrowed as much as possible, we premise that we do not intend to argue at length the moral nature and perpetual obligation of the law of the Sabbath. If it be true that our physical and moral powers demand its hallowed repose, as imperiously as they demand any other institution that God has given us-if without it those powers dete

riorate and suffer, and if this necessity is so great that "the Sabbath was made for man"-it were a most surprising thing if a benevolent Creator had left man without a Sabbath in any age of the Church. And so strong is this presumption, that we would demand clear assurance of so cruel and fatal a neglect. But if, instead of such assurance, we see its hallowed light resting in quiet beauty on the sinless scenes of Paradise; if we see it stand side by side with the marriage relation, a relic of Eden's purity and Eden's peace; if we see its traces, like gleams of sunshine, appear along the dim line of patriarchal history in the stated seasons of worship, and the hebdomadal division of time which appears repeatedly after the flood, in both sacred and profane records; if we find its observance restored from the universal prostration of ordinances and institutions in Egypt, before the giving of either the Decalogue or the Ceremonial Law; if we find it restored and appearing in the Sinaitic Law, in terms that evidently point back to a previous knowledge and observance of it; if we find it standing among nine other enactments in that sacred statute-book, whose enduring tablets were graven by the finger of the Eternal, and one jot or tittle of whose demands shall never pass away; if we find it afterward kept distinct from all ceremonial usages, and appearing in high and royal authority above every other institution, in the earnestness and frequency of its inculcation, in the variety of reasons urged for its reverent observance, in the garland of song wreathed around it in the Psalms, and in the girdling wall of menace and warning, promise and blessing, with which it is fenced in the prophecies; if when Christ came he recognized its obligation both by precept and example, vindicated it from Pharisaical superstitions, rescued it from an overlying mass of traditional bigotry, placed it on a higher basis of dignity and authority than before, and gave it submissive reverence in more than half a score of distinctly recorded instances in his ministry-if all these facts cluster around the history and law of the Sabbath, we are forced to regard it as an institution always existing, and always binding on the Church. Hence we assume this point without any farther argument. We also concede that no merely human power can alter the law of the Sabbath in any particular; and that, if altered at all, it must be by the same authority on which it was originally instituted. The only question then that remains is, Has God made a transfer of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week?

The evidence on which we are warranted to receive this transfer must be similar to that on which we receive other articles of our faith. God has declared his will by various modes of manifestation. Sometimes he has announced it in the most explicit terms;

at other times he has left it to be gathered by inference from several particulars. Thus, before the utterance of the fourth commandment, the Sabbath was binding on the patriarchs; but this obligation was with many of them not a matter of direct revelation, but an inference that such was the primitive revelation.

There are many things likewise in New Testament times, concerning which we are left to infer the will of God from differen facts, rather than informed of it by a formal statement. Thus, we infer the passing away of many Jewish rites and ceremonies; the right of women to the Lord's Supper; the duty of social and family prayer; and the discipline and worship of the house of God. It is thus, also, with the canonical authority of much of the Scriptures. Let the man who demands the will of God, in ipsissimus verbis, that the Sabbath shall be transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, furnish similar proof of the canonical authority of the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, or the Revelation, and we will comply with his demand. If, however, he receives these books as canonical, mainly, if not exclusively, because they were so received by the primitive Church during the continuance of inspired men, he could not fairly object if we furnished him with no other evidence than this in regard to the Lord's day. If, however, we can furnish him not only the same kind of proof in a stronger degree, but also independent evidence of this transfer, he surely cannot demur to the Divine authority of the Lord's day as the Christian Sabbath. Such evidence we think will be afforded by establishing a few propositions.

I. The change in question could be made without destroying the institution of the Sabbath.

The slightest inspection of the Sabbatic law will show us that it includes two things essentially distinct:-first, the Sabbath or rest itself; and, secondly, the day on which that Sabbath is placed. It is declared in the fourth commandment, that in six days the Lord created the heavens and the earth, and rested on the seventh; wherefore the Lord blessed, not the seventh day, as such, but the Sabbath day, and hallowed it. If, as is alleged in this controversy, the seventh day and the Sabbath are identical and therefore interchangeable terms, we reduce the fourth commandment to an absurdity. Let us make the substitution, and see the result: "Remember the seventh day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the seventh day of the Lord thy God," &c. This substitution converts the command into sheer nonsense, and proves unanswerably that the Sabbath is distinct from the day on which it is placed, and could originally, or at any subsequent time, have been placed on a different day without destroying the institution

The same thing appears from a fact in the Jewish history. We are told (2 Chron. xxxvi, 20, 21,) that the Jews were carried into captivity "to fulfil the word of the Lord by Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years." Here, then, is a specific instance of the transfer of the Sabbaths neglected by the Jews, to the days and years of their captivity in Babylon. Such a transfer, however, would be impossible, unless the Sabbath or rest were distinct from the period on which it was placed.

The same principle is recognized by men in similar observances. When our national Independence is celebrated on the third or fifth of July, in consequence of the fourth falling on the Sabbath, no one dreams that the celebration is vitiated, for the observance is distinct from the day.

An examination of the fourth commandment more narrowly will confirm this view. What is its main object? Plainly not to render sacred any particular day, because of its position in a numerical series, but to sanctify the Sabbath, and to state that one-seventh of our time shall constitute that Sabbath. It does not determine any order of enumeration, but commands simply that after labouring six days we shall rest on the seventh. Hence those who keep the Lord's day, obey the letter of the command; for they labour six days and rest on the seventh, in precise obedience to the law. It may be said, however, that we know that this enumeration began on a certain day. We grant it; but the fixing of this enumeration is something extraneous to the commandment itself, which does not contain within itself any particular series, but is adapted to whatever date it may please God to affix as the period of the weekly Sabbath.

But, more than this, it would be impossible for the command to prescribe any such definite time as the seventh-day theory demands, without involving an inextricable difficulty. If a particular set of hours is made sacred, and not one-seventh of our time, according to the common reckoning, those who are on opposite sides of the earth from the place where the command was first promulgated, will be involved in great embarrassment. It has been said, in extenuation of this difficulty, that as there was a first day in Eden, so there was a first day to its antipodes; and that the seventh day from that would be holy. But this does not reach the difficulty. It arises from the fact that in circumnavigating the globe a day is always lost or gained, according to the direction in which the voyager sails; so that two parties sailing in opposite directions and meeting on the other side of the globe, will find a day's difference in their reckoning. Nor is this an imaginary difficulty. When the English sailors FOURTH SERIES, VOL. 1.-2

first visited Pitcairn's Island they arrived on Saturday, according to their reckoning, but found the natives, with John Adams at their head, keeping the Sabbath, because they had reached the island from the opposite direction. This must occur with every band of missionaries or emigrants sailing in opposite directions. If, then, it be a particular set of hours, and not every seventh day that is made holy, whose reckoning must be adopted? This fact presents the very curious case of a theological dispute which would be completely destroyed by a voyage round the globe. If our brethren who keep Saturday were to sail to the Sandwich Islands by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and we who keep the Lord's day should sail thither by way of Cape Horn, on reaching the Sandwich Islands our dispute would be annihilated; for we should both be found keeping the same day. A principle which leads to such confusion and difficulty, cannot be embodied in a law of God. The difficulty does not press on the view we have taken of the commandment; for, according to that view, it only requires the setting apart of one-seventh of our time to holy purposes, according to the common reckoning.

For these reasons, we allege that the Sabbath is entirely distinct from the day on which it is placed; that it can be placed on any day, according to any series that God may determine, without affecting a letter of the fourth command; and that, should God see fit to place the hebdomadal season of rest on the eighth instead of the seventh day in the Jewish reckoning, it could be done not only without destroying the Sabbatic institution, but without affecting in the slightest degree the terms of the Sabbatic law; for still we should obey the law that says, "Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." This point, which is rightly made a vital one in the argument by the Sabbatarian, being clearly established, we are prepared for the next step in the proof.

II. There are strong reasons for such a change of the day, leading us to expect that it would be made.

The first reason is drawn from the nature of the Sabbath. The grand object of the Sabbatic institution is to afford a season of holy rest. In order that motives and recollections suitable for this purpose may be furnished, a day is selected which brings to our memory some of the wonderful works of God. During the Patriarchal dispensation, the work of Creation was selected, as the greatest with which the Church was then acquainted, and made the basis of Sabbath memories and meditations. But if any greater work than this should be wrought by God for his people, whether it was greater absolutely in itself, or relatively to the conceptions of the Church, it