press-addresses in the form of argument, and in the way of appeal and persuasion-short treatises must be widely diffused--the heart must be touched. Thus the circle of truth must be widened. The efforts of a false and spurious religion must be defeated, and God honored amongst the people. A national feeling in favor of the Lord's day, can only be expected from a revival, distinct and uncompromising, of the national conscience. Each one must use the talents entrusted to him by the great Householder. The artful sophistry which assails the divine authority of the Sabbath, must be detected; the false reasonings exposed. Truth must be manifested and sustained-not indeed with affected eloquence, not with artificial ornaments of speech, not with an overstrained or scrupulous pertinacity of debate; but in simplicity, in openness of heart; neither relaxing the spiritual demands of the Sabbath, nor overrating the rela tive magnitude of this particular branch of the public guilt. Thus will God bless our nation; thus will the holy day be re-established in its authority and grace.

4. PRINCES AND MAGISTRATES will not be long before they listen to the voice of faithful and enlightened ministers. Legislators and statesmen, and nobles, will hear the voice of truth. In the progress of a general revival, this has been God's method. He has raised up persons of authority, and guided their minds by the wisdom and counsels of well-informed and devoted ministers of Christ, in the affairs relating to the worship of God, and the souls of men. Instead of false teachers, corrupt ecclesiastics, proud and worldly-minded priests-men who have domineered, or fawned, as their interests and power permitted; and, surrounding princes and magistrates, have flattered them to their ruin; God blesses his servants with pious and simple hearted bishops and ministers, who understand the Scriptures, who know the value of the Sabbath, who distinguish the true welfare of government, who discern and admit the claims of God upon princes and rulers. With such aids, the secular magistrates will decree righteous statutes, the parliament will be swayed by sound religion, the measures needful for protecting the worship of God, will be taken, the oppression and insults of the profane will be redressed, the open and national violation of God's Sabbaths will be prohibited, the decent and devout order of a Christian land

will be preserved. These aids from without, conspiring with the influence of grace within the church, will produce the desired result. The nation will return to the Lord. The Sabbath will be again "the sign of God's covenant, that he is the Lord that doth sanctify us;" and all other Christian virtues and habits will follow.

5. But this cannot be expected to be brought about, in a world like ours, without much of THAT PREVIOUS REPROACH AND CONTUMELY, which have always attended the progress of a really spiritual reformation. Nothing disturbs and offends the world so much as the Lord's day strongly urged. The leaders must be content to receive the treatment which their Lord and Savior received before them. And this deters the merely well-disposed part of mankind: they shrink from decisive steps, for fear of shame and names of contempt. The term Lollard, at one period, of Wickliffite, Lutheran, Puritan, Methodist, Calvinist, at others, have been a successful instrument in Satan's hands, of alarming the timid, and securing his hold of the worldly. Against such opposition, (even if it were to rise to persecution,) the Christian minister and hero must be ready to stand. He must disregard the honor of men, that he may obtain the favor of God: he must be proof against these assaults: he must be willing to risk his name, his character, his reputation, for his Savior. The holy Sabbath must be dedicated, consecrated, reverenced, under whatever reproaches he may have to labor, who asserts its claims. As national reformation advances, these very men, once cast out and scorned, will become the objects of veneration, their counsels be prized, and their persons loved and esteemed.

6. Still much will remain unredressed, amidst the wrongs of the Sabbath-at least, for a considerable period-many great evils may be expected to survive and struggle-the spiritual church, if it gain, by the mercy of God, much, must reckon upon being discomfited in certain respects. -She must, then, PROTEST BOLDLY AND FEARLESSLY AGAINST THE SINS WHICH ARE PERSISTED IN. Nothing honors God more than the confession of his truth, which his faithful servants make, when they are unable to succeed fully in their honest endeavors. A body of devoted followers of Christ, allowed to preach his truth in the world, and entering their open protest against flagrant evils, is a

token for good in a country, of the most hopeful character. God never gives up a nation to his desolating judgments, when there is a considerable number of worshippers, thus averring their allegiance, and crying out aloud against the dishonor done unto his name and Sabbaths.

7. Lastly, HUMILIATION FOR PAST TRANSGRESSIONS,

AND HOPE IN THE DIVINE MERCY FOR FUTURE DELIV

ERANCE AND ULTIMATE TRIUMPH, are the dispositions of heart which we would most cultivate. After we have done all, we shall leave much, very much to be humbled and abased for before our God; and our hope must be reposed, not in man, but in his power, mercy, and grace. The holy Sabbath, which, as a nation and as individuals, we have abused in times past, the dishonor we have done to him and to God thereby, the loss to our own souls which has followed, the injury to the spiritual welfare of others which has been occasioned, the slight put upon the blessed Spirit of grace, are topics of deep sorrow and penitential confession before God. To humble ourselves under his awful majesty, to deprecate his wrath, to accept the punishment of our iniquity; this is the way to obtain mercy; this will bring back our people as the heart of one man, to the Lord; this will prepare us for all the holy duties of our Sundays, and all the communion with God which they bring with them.

Thus our hope will be placed in the unmerited grace of God, for deliverance and triumph; we shall wait his holy will; we shall expect and look for his powerful succor, we shall despair of nothing under his mighty protection; we shall rejoice in the sanctification of his day, the conversion of souls, the consolation and edification of his faithful servants, the pledge and anticipation of heaven.

Having now completed our original design in these sermons; having established the divine obligation of a weekly Sabbath in the first four, and the practical duties arising from it in the last three of the series;

Let us in conclusion of the whole, remark,

I. That it is not for the Sabbath in itself that we have been pleading in the course of this work, but THE SABBATH AS A MEANS TO CERTAIN ENDS, as the channel and conveyance of the waters of life, as the standing institution for the declaration of God's glory, of the Savior's resurrection,

the rest of heaven; as the moment of calm granted for rational and irrational creatures to breathe from toil, and recruit their exhausted powers; as the needful interval of repose and cessation to a feeble creature like man; as the appointed period for the instruction and salvation of souls; as the most visible representation of our faith in our Maker and Benefactor, and the grand peculiarity of revealed religion.

Let then this thought ever be present with us. It is for no inferior matter we have pleaded; it is for no external and formal point; no ceremony; no superstition-we teach not that "man was made for the Sabbath"-we should never be contented with any observation of it which was merely decorous, constrained, reluctant. We plead for the simplest and noblest institution of the religion of the Bible, which includes and embraces within its range every other. We plead for the most important means of grace and instruction, which is the platform upon which every other is erected. We plead for the highest testimony man can bear to the glory of God; in which the praise of creation, of redemption, of eternal happiness is united. We plead for the most merciful of all the divine appointments, which suspends the struggle of nature, and bids all creation repose, and refresh itself from its labor and toil.

Let us not, then, undervalue, or misunderstand the subject we have been treating. We have not been drivelling about a questionable, an indifferent, a secondary duty. We have pleaded the cause of God, the interests of man, the peace of the world, the instruction of the poor, the knowledge of Christ, the doctrine of salvation, the hope of heaven. We have treated the greatest question in all the compass of practical theology, because it provides for every other duty, lies at the foundation of every other duty, gives space and time for every other duty, derives the divine blessing upon every other duty.

II. We have been pleading, in the next place, for these ends of the Christian Sabbath, because of THE UNSPEAKABLE VALUE OF THE SOUL OF MAN. For what is the gist of all we have argued?—that the soul of man is so noble, so precious, so inestimable in the eyes of God, so endless in its future state of happiness or misery, that a seventh portion of all man's time is taken out from ordin

ary employments to be dedicated to this his immortal part. Yes, the Sabbath proclaims the responsibility of man, the unfathomable and inexpressible value of his soul, the price put upon it by the Father of spirits, the dignity and capacities which it possesses. The Sabbath unites man with spiritual objects, connects him with his invisible Creator, Redeemer, Friend; teaches him what he is, and whither he is going. It is for the soul, then, that we have been pleading, that it may be blessed with the salutary knowledge of its fall and its recovery, of its sin and its remedy, of its guilt and condemnation in the first Adam, and its pardon and acceptance in the second.

Let the importance of our subject be measured by this standard. Let all the souls of all the race of men be brought before our view, and let all the unutterable happiness of each of those souls be weighed and balanced; and then let the value of that DAY be estimated, when the means of the repose, consolation, guidance, illumination, pardon, holiness, salvation, of all these immortal minds are congregated and concentrated-when all the love of God our heavenly Father, all the grace of God the Son, and all the operations of God the Holy Ghost, are poured forth and brought into effect. It is this sublime thought which elevates the topic we have been considering. The violation of the Sabbath sinks, degrades, materializes, destroys the soul of man; the observation of it raises, honors, spiritualizes, saves it. If the Lord's day be annihilated, religion fades away, secular pursuits bewilder man, the bodily appetites prevail, the knowledge of salvation is lost, the soul wanders wretched and ignorant, wayward and distressed, without a teacher, without a hope, without a refuge. The holy day sheds its gentle rays upon the lost traveller, sends religion to his succor, interrupts the din of false alarms, recals him from the clamor of passion to the soft voice of conscience, gives him the knowledge of salvation, satisfies all his doubts, soothes his distresses, becomes his comforter and guide to a heavenly and eternal rest.

III. But we have pleaded, further, for the Christian Sabbath-thus valuable from its combination of means bearing upon the welfare of the soul of man-because it

APPEALS PLAINLY AND FULLY ΤΟ THE HUMAN CON

SCIENCE, and puts in its claims upon every reasonable and