all the laws of interpretation, and to supply a necessity which, after all, is found not to exist. Such a conduct is portentous.

Let us cleave, then, to the foundation of all faith in the various other facts of revelation, by adhering to this; and let us cultivate more and more that humility, that submission of heart to God, that restraint of human curiosity and presumption, in which the essence of faith so much consists. It is the wrong state of heart which is the hot-bed where these pernicious notions are generated. Let the heart delight in the divine worship; let the heart meditate on the divine perfections in Christ Jesus with holy complacency; let the heart rejoice in God as its happiness, and such errors will not readily find entertainment. I vindicate the first Sabbath, that I may lead you to celebrate with more devotion every other. I resist with indignation the attempt to sap the institution of it in paradise, that I may lead you to due contemplation on the glories of creation, as often as the day of grace returns.

II. Yes, come with me, before we close this discourse, and LET US ADORE AND PRAISE THE ALMIGHTY FATHER OF ALL, FOR THE DISTINCT GLORIES SHED UPON the day of religious repose. Come and praise him for condescending to imprint its first enactment, and the reasons on which it is grounded, on the six days creative wonders. I am persuaded, that the first Sabbath is not enough magnified. We are familiar with the tenor of the simple and sublime narrative from our infancy. Our hearts are cold to devotion; objections poison our first feelings. Enter more into the dignity of that day, for the institution of which all days were formed. Imbibe the exalted spirit of that portion of time, to encircle and ennoble which all other portions took their place, as courtiers around the queen and mistress of days. No other command of God has the peculiarity of this; no other institution, no other service, no other ordinance of religion has, or can have, the majesty blazing around it, which illuminates the day of God. Come, glorify your God and Father. He bids you rest, but it is after his own example. He bids you labor, but it is after his pattern. Imitate the supreme Architect. Work in the order in which he worked, cease when he was pleased to cease. Let the day of religion, after each six days' toil, be to you

a blessed and a sanctified season. Plead the promise at`tached to the Sabbath: it is blessed of God, it is sanctified of God, it is hallowed of God. Implore forgiveness of your past neglect. Let no Sabbath henceforth leave you, without having sought the blessing promised, and performed the duties to which it is dedicated. Let your devout meditation on the glories of creation swell the choir of your Maker's praise. Join "the sons of God" in their joys and songs at the birth of the universe.* Adore the kindness and benevolence of the Almighty, in interposing one day's repose after every six, between the toil, and confusion, and passions, and secularity of this world's duties. Bless your Redeemer and Savior for preserving some traces of this most ancient of institutions amidst the patriarchal ages, to remind us of our greater privileges, (as we shall see in the subsequent discourses,) now that we have had the ten commandments again promulgating its divine obligation; the prophets enforcing its observance; the blessed Jesus vindicating its gracious simplicity; the Apostles and the universal church handing down to us its sacred obligations. Yes, let the brighter day of the gospel guide our feet to that sacred temple and that sacred season, which were first erected and consecrated in paradise, which were then surrounded with the garb of ceremonies; then left in the beautiful and merciful mantle of the Savior; and, lastly, committed to us as a pledge and foretaste of the heavenly state. Yes, the Sabbath stretches through all ages; affects all men in every period of time; distinguishes the true servants of God from the wicked more than any other ordinance; upholds the visible profession of religion before the eyes of mankind; keeps up the face and aspect of Christianity in the world; is the most direct honor that a man can pay to the name and will of the ever-blessed God; and will never cease in its authority here till our Sabbaths on earth give place to that eternal Sabbath of which they are the pledge, the preparation, the end.

Prov. viii. 23-31.

SERMON II.

THE AUTHORITY AND DIGNITY OF THE SABBATH UNDER THE LAW OF MOSES.

EXODUS XX. 8-11.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

HAVING proved that the Sabbath was instituted in paradise by adhering simply to the inspired record, and having silenced the objection raised on the supposed absence of any vestiges of its observance till the time of Moses; we come now to consider the position which it held under the ceremonial dispensation. And here the objection to its divine authority and obligation rests on its being merely a ceremonial and temporary appointment, which lost its force with the economy which gave it birth. This difficulty has already been virtually removed. For if the narration in the book of Genesis is correctly given; if the patriarchs cannot be proved to have neglected the divine command; and if at the

deliverance from Egypt, Moses clearly referred to it as not effaced from the memory of the people; then the Sabbath did not owe its birth to the ceremonial law, and cannot have ceased by the abrogation of it. But this is little. As we not only answered the objection advanced against the patriarchal Sabbath, but triumphantly established its essential dignity and perpetuity from the glory cast upon it by the order of creation; so we hope, not merely to refute the present objection, but to draw from the law of Moses copious materials for confirming all our preceding arguments, and for placing in a yet stronger light the immutable obligation of a day of weekly rest.

We assert, then, that from the very commencement of the Mosaical economy, the fourth command was incorporated in the moral law-that when the ceremonial usages were in their greatest vigor, the Sabbath appeared high and distinct above them-and that in the latter ages of the Jewish church it was insisted on by the prophets as of essential moral obligation, and as about to form a part of the gospel dispensation.

I. The insertion of the law of the Sabbath into the decalogue confirms all we have already advanced, and affords the most decisive proof of its perpetual force. If there were nothing else in the whole Bible, this would be enough to satisfy the humble Christian. The fourth com

mandment is just as binding as any of the remaining nine. There it is, a part of the moral law of God! If the attempt to feign an anticipated history was proved to be an invasion on the first principles of faith; the endeavor to displace the fourth commandment is AN OPEN INVASION

OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLES BOTH OF FAITH AND OBE

DIENCE. For every thing conspires to cast an importance around the ten commandments peculiar to themselves.

Consider the BROAD LINE OF DEMARCATION between them and the ceremonial usages. The decalogue is a summary of all those dictates of the love of God and man, which were written upon the heart of Adam before the fall. These commands were kept, in substance, by the patriarchs before they were reduced into a code. They are the eternal rules of right and wrong, resting on the authoritative will of God, and arising from the essential relations in which man stands to his Creator and his fellow-creatures.

They are the standard of human obedience, the transcript of the divine holiness. The unchanging authority of these precepts is the foundation of the Christian religion, the rule of domestic life, the bond of civil government, the grand tie and security of all human society. Between these and the ceremonial usages there is a vast interval. The judicial and ceremonial law was temporary, of positive enactment, for a time and for certain purposes only; had no existence before its express appointment; derived all its force from something substantial and glorious, of which it was the shadow; and was swept away and abrogated when the more perfect dispensation appeared. All its enactments were without the boundary of the moral law. Within that boundary nothing was abolished when Christ came; without it, every thing. Within the boundary all was eternal and immutable; without it, all was temporary and changeable. No confusion was ever made by any considerate Christian on this subject. The conscience of man, when duly informed, responds to every one of the moral commands. The additional motives appended to some of them, arising from the circumstances of the Jews, affect not their universal authority. The particular redemption from Egypt, the length of days attached to filial obedience, the punishment of idolatry visited on the third and fourth generation, and the mercies to thousands promised to the keepers of the divine law, in no respect change the main, grand, distinctive foundations of moral obligation on which the commandments repose. These constitute a code, a book, which stands distinct and separate from all others, which is divided into two tables, and has been known in all ages as the "Ten Commandments," or "The Decalogue;" just as the books of Scripture are distinguished from other books by the name of "The Bible."

Now, of these ten commands THE LAW OF THE SABBATH IS ONE. Whatever authority any have, that authority is possessed by this. Whatever obligation the first, the second, the third, or any others carry with them, that same obligation carries with it the fourth. If men are

* Even these are, in their comprehensive and typical import, of perpetual force-in the redemption of Christ, the spiritual blessing on filial obedience, &c,