our business to complete on the Saturday, or postpone to the Monday, what would intrench on the sabbath-rest. It is easy, it is delightful for the master of the family to do this. He will provide time for all his household to attend once, and if possible twice, the public worship. His domestic prayers will on that sacred day be extended. The more solemn reading and explaining of God's word, with prayers for a suitable state of mind for public services, will be the employ of the Sunday morning; and in the afternoon, or evening, as the case may be, he will catechise the young and give familiar and more detailed instruction to his servants. The head of every family has a charge of souls, as it were committed to him; he is a priest in his own house. He has to promote the sanctification of all under his roof. His order, his piety, his appearance, in public church and in his house, surrounded with his children, and dependants, is an acknowledgment and badge of the God whom he worships. He must not, like Eli, yield, from cowardice and a false indulgence, to the bad habits and inclinations of those around him; but like Abraham, "command his children and his household after him;" and, like Joshua, resolve, "As for me and my house we will serve the Lord."

3. THE PRIVATE AND PERSONAL DUTIES must prepare for, and succeed the public and domestic. For the Sabbath is for the sanctification of each individual. It is a barrier thrown in upon the current of worldly things, behind which, each one is to collect himself and stem the tide, and work himself back again to his God. More depends on the INTERVALS between the social and public exercises of the Lord's day, than we may at first imagine. Fill them up with vain conversations, idle visits, worldly reading, carelessness, indolence, sloth, and all the fruit of public and domestic worship is destroyed-the taste for them is lost-and the form of them will not be long persevered in. But let these interstices be duly occupied with earnest prayer and examination of the heart, communion with God, meditation, intercession for children, family, friends, reflections on the public instruction we have received,--and all will assume another complexion. In these secret musings, the heart is visited with grace, the sermons and lessons sink deep into the habit, the mind is calmed

and tranquillized, some additional power of interior devotion is acquired. And it is for these private duties, as well as for the more public, that the rest of the Sabbath is given. They are the cement, as it were, which binds together the separate materials of the sacred festival, which without it, fall to pieces, sink into decay, and lose all their plastic energy and force. How can we expect any breathings of grace, any communion with the Father of spirits, any quickening and elevation of the heart, if we draw near to God merely in the outward form and mock him with a pretence of service, the affections being left behind? A heart unprepared by private duties, is not likely to be benefited by public: and on the other hand, instructions and exercises in the house of God, not followed by secret meditation and prayer, are not likely to abide in the memory or influence the conduct.

4. But besides our immediate family, the duties of the Christian Sabbath extend to OUR DEPENDANTS-to "the stranger within our gates"—to all over whom we have any natural influence-and even to the irrational creatures who subserve our comfort, and whose repose is commanded both for their own sakes and to render more completely practical the duty of religious rest enjoined upon man, their lord. These provisions breathe all the mercy of the divine law: the terms are remarkable "That thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou"-"Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt."--"Thou knowest the heart of a stranger.'

How lamentably the spirit of these injunctions is violated, is but too manifest. The shops and warehouses of too many witness against them. The counting-houses and offices and counsel-rooms of too many are the destruction of souls. The negligence of masters as to the morals of the young, and their religious observance of the Sunday, merely on the plea that they are not domestics, will be no adequate defence at the tribunal of God. The workmen in manufactories are committed to the care of the persons whom they serve. Contrivance, management, order, are required of them. Influence is a talent for which an account must be rendered another day. All nature is to be hushed into repose on the blessed, hallowed season of rest -all the confusion of the world to cease-all the pursuits

of even lawful gain to be suspended--all the hurry of life to be calmed-not only the master and parent with his family, but the principals and conductors of professional or commercial concerns the statesman in his cabinet-the magistrate on the bench--the merchant in his house of affairs-the traveller on his journey-the lawyer in his office--the scholar in his study,-all must be interrupted and called aside, to honor the day which is the sign of the Christian covenant, and the means of Christian sanctification-man and beast are to recreate their wasted powers, the beast in the repose of which it is capable, man in the dignified and rational refreshment, for which God has peculiarly qualified him.

Works of real necessity and mercy may, indeed, be done on the sacred day, such as our Lord by his example authorised, and as the great moral ends of the institution persuade. We relieve the sick from present suffering, we satisfy the demands of hunger, we pull an ox or an ass from a pit, we give food to our cattle, we use the gentle labor of our domestic animals, so far as may be necessary for conveying us and our families to the public worship of God, when sickness or unavoidable distance compels. But we may not give a wider, or more lax construction to the fourth commandment, than what the intention of the great Legislator imports, and our Lord has determined. Such explanation, in opposition to the decrees of the Jewish doctors, as he judged necessary, he gave; but in all other respects, left the law just as he found it. Works of necessity and charity must not be multiplied without just cause; much less must works of vanity, sloth, carelessness, be performed under the cloke of them. No rule can be laid down for others. Conscience, and a sincere desire to glorify God, must determine. Let the main design of the day, our sanctification, and the practical duties of it, as it respects public and private, domestic and personal devotion, be performed in subserviency thereto, and WORKS OF NECESSARY CHARITY, (for such is the more accurate bearing of our Lord's example,)* will not be unduly undertaken.

And need I stop here to refute the mere evasion, which would allow the obligation of the Lord's day as to public

* Dr. Humphrey's Essays, p. 43.

worship, and deny it as to the remaining duties of the institution? What! is it enough merely to worship God for one meagre hour or two, and then resign ourselves to the world and its cares? What! can public worship be celebrated with any spirituality of mind, without preparatory and subsequent meditation and prayer? What! are the family devotions of other days to be discontinued on the day when they ought to be enlarged and multiplied? What! is it the Sabbath MORNING that we are to sanctify, or the Sabbath EVENING, only, and not the SABBATH-DAY,-the whole period from the close of the last working day till the dawn of the next? Yes; the whole day is not too long for God, for Christ, for the soul: if the entire command is not complied with, none is.

Or need I stop to enumerate those various secular works, which are unlawful on this day of the Lord? Need I ex-. pose the miserable sophistry, which substitutes a mere change of worldly engagements for the holy duties of divine. prayer and praise?-What, if I close my office or my shop, and open my drawer of accounts, and write letters of affairs, am I sanctifying the Sabbath? What, if I withdraw from the exchange, or the courts of law, into the chamber of consultation, or the secret room of settlements and bargains, is this keeping the Lord's day? What! I employ not my laborers on Sunday, but I pay them their wages, and almost oblige them to make their purchases on that sacred day; and is this to keep it holy? Or, I quit the hurry of the city or town, for the mere sensual indulgence of the suburban retreat-I "eat, and drink, and am merry;" I collect around me friends as thoughtless as myselfI employ my servants in the unnecessary toil of preparing luxurious meals--I go from the church to the ride, the garden, the park, the pleasure-ground, the river. I walk over my farm or my lands, I arrange for the business of the following week, I plunge into literary or scientific reading, I lose my devotional feelings in the abominations of a Sunday-newspaper--and this I call religion-this I designate as the sanctification of the Lord's day!

But indeed, Christian brethren, the duties of this holy season are so spiritual, so opposite to the carnal and earthly tendencies of human nature, so surrounded by temptations and suggestions on all hands, that there is not one of us

but may discern much to be amended, improved, omitted, supplied. Our order of engagements is incomplete, our care of our family wanting in vigilance, our forethought drowsy and treacherous, our interruptions of religious exercises too frequent and too long. There is much that admits of alteration. Let us look well into our family rules, family habits, family hours, family religion, family attendance on the public worship of God, and we shall discern lamentable marks of decay and lukewarmness, we shall discern many things, which, if not dishonorable to the Sabbath, are at least not so honorable to it as they might be. But this leads me to consider,

III. That in order to keep holy the Lord's day, we must carry THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION INTO THESE DUTIES. We must not celebrate a Jewish but a Christian festival. We must imbibe that spirit of rest and delight in God, that sense of refreshment and repose, in his more immediate service, which the liberty of the gospel breathes, and without some degree of which we can never discharge these duties aright.

The general habit of mind cannot be better described than in the words of the psalmist: "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts; my soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God—a day in thy courts is better than a thousand; I had rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.* Or again, "One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord, and inquire in his temple." Or again, "My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips."

This is the language of delight, of repose of soul in the duties of religion. Join to this the particular discoveries of the New Testament, as to the way of access in the blood of Christ, and by the influences of the Spirit, and we have the complete description of the devotional temper.

In like manner, the Holy prophets--"Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold of it -that chooseth the things that please me-that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of

* Ps. lxxxiv. 1, 2, 10.

† Ps. xxvii. 4.

+ Ps. Ixiii. 5.