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I. Yield, then, Christian brethren, to these accumulated proofs. Open your hearts to the Lord Jesus, that he may re-establish there the authority of the day of his heavenly Father. Consider the many additional motives to its observance which flow from the grace and compassion of your Redeemer; mark his tenderness in asserting the day of rest for its proper spiritual purposes; observe his permission of those works of real necessity and mercy which render an attendance on them more practicable. You have not a Savior who allows the Sabbath to be buried under the rubbish of human commandments. You have not a Savior who, from indifference or cowardice, fears to put down the pharisaical imposers of austerities. No. Behold! he enters the synagogue on the holy Sabbath-he teaches; he applies to himself the divine prophecies concerning the Messiah; he heals the sick in confirmation of his doctrine; he rebukes devils, and they leave the possessed and proclaim his name and glory. It is the Sabbath: and it is in this way that the Messiah distinguishes and honors it. He vindicates his disciples plucking the ears of corn-he anoints the eyes of a blind man with clay-he bids the dropsy quit the frame of one patient, and bids another extend his withered arm-he commands the devout worshipper, bowed for eighteen years, and she raises herself to glorify God-he strengthens the impotent man, after thirty-eight years of hopeless dejection, to carry miraculously his couch, and in that act to prove his cure. Blessed Jesus! in all this we see thee to be a "merciful and faithful high priest." In all this we see thy pity in vindicating the day of rest to its proper purposes. In all this we see, not the lawgiver, not the prophet, not Moses, not Elias-but JESUS, the wise and merciful Savior of mankind. Hadst thou not, O Savior, thus cleared up the law of the Sabbath by this thine holy example and doctrine, how long might thy church have been perplexed with doubts-how much might superstition and tyranny over the conscience have prevailed! How little might have been left to man of the real design and consolation of the day of rest! But now thou hast vindicated the truth. Now thou hast taught not only that "THE SABBATH WAS MADE FOR MAN;" but that "MAN WAS NOT MADE FOR THE SABBATH. Now we have nothing to do under thy new dispensation, but drop the temporary

ceremonies of the Mosaic law, and return to the simplicity of the patriarchal worship, inspired and elevated with the grace of thy all-bountiful Spirit.

II. And here let us learn, Christian brethren, to shun the INGRATITUDE OF MAKING USE OF THE COMPASSION OF OUR SAVIOR, TO THE TACIT DISPARAGEMEnt of the SABBATH ITSELF, which our Lord, as we have seen, has honored by the very acts which were alleged as infringing its sanctity. If the intention of our Savior was, as I am fully convinced every fair and unprejudiced hearer will admit, to magnify his heavenly Father's institution-if every denunciation against the hypocrisy and severity of the Pharisees was so much of real dignity and authority added to the Sabbath; then let us beware of the guilt of abusing all this to unrighteousness and irreligion. What avails that God allows works of necessity and mercy to be done on the Sabbath, if your practice desecrates the whole day by works of folly and sin? What avails it that God will "have mercy and not sacrifice," when you give him neither? Surely no abuse of the divine goodness can be more criminal than to take occasion from a sympathy so exuberant, to rob God of his due, our souls of their best blessings, the poor of their season of repose, the church of the edification of our example. Surely this is a branch of that practical antinomianism which "turns the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ into lasciviousness." And be it well remembered, that if we once violate conscience in our search after truth, there is no telling whither we may wander. The calm examination of the question of the Sabbath is our bounden duty. I am endeavoring to assist you in the inquiry. At the points where mistakes may arise, I have put you on your guard. Time for settling the judgment I readily allow: differences on minor branches of the argument I cheerfully concede. But this I must remind you of; fear, reverence, faith, simple subjection of soul to the truth, are essential to all religious inquiries. Yield, then, to the call of grace. Abuse not the mercy of your Savior. Rather implore that spiritual influence of the grand Comforter, which may render the duties of the Christian Sabbath a delight and joy.

* Ogden.

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III. And this is our last point of application. The Jewish Sabbath is no more. It is for the Christian we plead--THAT CHRISTIAN SABBATH FOR WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT IS ESPECIALLY GIVEN. The yoke, not only of pharisaical impositions, but of ceremonial observances, is broken off your neck. The law of the Sabbath is now a law of love, a law of gratitude, a "LAW OF LIBERTY,' as the apostle James terms it, in common with the whole moral law. You must imbibe this filial and gracious spirit, in order to have the true conception of the importance of the institution, and the right feelings for rejoicing in it. The despite done to the Holy Spirit is one cause of the neglect of the sacred day. You seek not his influences to enlarge and purify the heart. You seek not his consolations to animate your devotion. You complain that the Sabbath is a heavy day, to be got over as well as you can. You have no taste for its spiritual duties, no joy at its return, no repose in its divine anticipations. What does this go to prove? That you are yet in the state of fallen natureand that, as such, you "receive not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto you, neither can you know them, because they are spiritually discerned?"* What does this prove, but that you want the love of God, the spiritual life, the vital perceptions of a soul quickened by the Holy Spirit? Proceed then no further. Persist not in a course which only condemns your state of heart. Seek the illuminating and sanctifying influence of the Spirit. Almost the first truth you will discover, will be the glory and majesty of the Sabbath; and the next, that the exercises of that day are the festival and nourishment and element of the renewed and holy heart. Yes, all the transport of the Psalmist, all his repose and joy in God, all his mourning when banished from his courts, all his longing, yea, fainting after his house, all his perception of satisfaction, and relief, and holy pleasure in his service, will be experienced, in proportion as the vivifying Spirit quickens your soul. Men who are formal in religion naturally betray an indifference to the means of grace. As these means have little practical influence upon them, a small matter induces them to dispense with the incumbrance; but the

* 1 Cor. ii. 14.

sincere Christian has his delight in the Sabbath, and in the public and private ordinances of religion; he is "planted in the house of the Lord;" HE IS AT HOME THERE; his best pleasures, his warmest hopes, his most tranquil repose, his plenary satisfaction of soul, his liveliest pledges and anticipations of a heavenly rest, are drawn from the sacred and most gracious institution, in the services of which he waits to be prepared and ripened for that upper temple, those heavenly mansions, where he "shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

SERMON IV.

THE SABBATH TRANSFERRED BY DIVINE AUTHORITY FROM THE SEVENTH TO THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK, OR LORD'S DAY.

REVELATION i. 10.

I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day.

WE have now completed all that is essential in the first division of our general subject. We have proved the divine authority and perpetual obligation of a weekly religious rest. We have traced it from its institution in Paradise to the time of the Mosaical dispensation. We have considered its insertion in the ten commandments, and the dignity assigned to it by Moses and the prophets, as of essential moral obligation. We have also shown that it was vindicated by our Lord from the corruptions of the Scribes and Pharisees, and left in more than its primeval importance and authority. We might now pass on to the second or practical division of our subject, if we were not called on first to consider the transfer of the day on which the Sabbath under the gospel is kept, from the last to the first of the week. As the stress of the law has from the beginning been shown to lie on the proportion of time between the working days and the day of rest, the mere change of the particular period in the week when we celebrate our Sabbath, cannot in itself be considered important. So

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