accountable being, on the footing of its own divine institution and authority.

Truth cannot be trifled with. Men may turn away from any statement of it. They may cavil. They may object to this or that particular argument. They may set up the sophisms of controversialists. But conscience cannot be thus silenced. The broad undeniable truth is, that a day of weekly rest has ever accompanied revealed religion under every dispensation of it. A Sabbath was celebrated even before the fall. A Sabbath forms a part of God's moral law. A Sabbath is insisted upon by the prophets. A Sabbath was observed by our Lord and his apostles. A Sabbath has been kept in every church, in every part of the world, in every age since. To cavil, then, at minute. omissions in the history of it, or petty difficulties in the details of its progress, is worse than folly; it is dishonesty to truth. Nor can we escape the responsibility which attaches to knowledge proffered and sat before us. There stands the institution. Great efforts have been made to impress its obligation upon the public mind. Discussions, sermons, treatises, tracts, have been circulated. Public meetings have been convened, and resolutions passed to enforce the better observance of the day. The public conscience has been aroused. God has given us a call, a special call to repent. If we refuse the call, "if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven," if we "stop our ears," if "we harden our hearts," what can we expect but to be given up to a reprobate mind, and left to our own folly and presumption? With conscience, then, is the case left to this inward vicegerent of the Almighty is our appeal. At its tribunal stands our cause to be adjudged. Let every one, then, yield to its sentence. Let every one bow to the voice and decree of this witness, judge, avenger. Let conscience stimulate us to hallow the Christian Sabbath, that coming within the sphere of the means of grace, we may actually learn the value of our souls, and the way of salvation for ourselves.

But, lastly, we have pleaded for the Sabbath, because it is an indispensable preparation for THE HEAVENLY BLESSEDNESS. Its appeal to the human conscience terminates here. Heaven or hell is at stake. We all profess to look for a heavenly rest. There are few, perhaps none,

Still a

who do not desire and expect to pass to a happy eternity when they die. Their ideas of its nature may be obscure, their preparations for it may be most defective. vague hope of it, as opposed to eternal misery, and under the idea of a state of repose and felicity, occupies most minds. But let us consider the strict connection which subsists between the employments and delights of the Sabbath upon earth, and those of that endless and beatific Sabbath which "remains for the people of God" at last. Do we recollect the descriptions given in the Bible, of the company, the praises, the spiritual and unceasing employs of that exalted place? Is it a carnal repose which it offers? Is it bodily indulgence? Is it mere cessation from toil and sorrow? Is it not the eternal presence, the eternal enjoyment, the eternal paises of our God, and the Redeemer? Open the heavenly gates. You see the worshippers. You hear their hymns. What do they chaunt? The praises of "the Lamb that was slain;" "the love of him who died for them;" the majesty, and wisdom, and power, and glory, of their Father and Lord. And what is the temper of mind, what the habits, the notions of happiness, what the moral condition which can derive felicity from such an employ? It is an employ of continual holiness, ceaseless adoration, perpetual activity in the service of God. The loose ideas formed of heaven, as an exemption from suffering merely, as standing only in opposition to fatigue and weariness, as being contrasted with misery and condemnation are most delusive. It is holiness-it is the love of God-it is the worship of the Lamb that was slain-it is the resting not day nor night in the praises of the Almighty-it is felicity derived from the completion of the divine faculties and habits acquired in this world.

Observe, then, the connection of the Sabbath-duties here on earth, with these ultimate and consummated duties of the eternal Sabbath above. The employments of the day here are holiness, the adoration of God in Christ, the praises of creating, redeeming love. The Sabbath is the day of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit; that is, it is the very same in essence with the heavenly Sabbath; has the same objects, the same joys, the same praises, the same gratitude, the same sources of happiness.

He that would prepare for heaven, must honor the Sabbath upon earth. He that would hope for the spiritual joys there, must acquire a taste and aptitude for them here.

All is connected in the divine plan. The Sabbath of the church militant is the pledge and foretaste of the Sabbath of the church triumphant. Were we in heaven without a new nature, a change of heart, a delight in the worship of God, an earnest longing after Christ, an acquiescence in holiness-we should neither derive happiness from it, nor be capable of its employments. They who argue against our feeble, preparatory Sabbaths; they who object, cavil, contemn; they who prefer every other employment to the worship of God; they who complain of weariness and satiety in the services of Christ--have an evidence in their own breasts of their unfitness for a heavenly world--they are condemned out of their own mouths. The louder they exclaim against our Lord's day and its duties, the more decidedly do they exclude themselves from the Christian character and the Christian hope.

Let us, then, awake to the truth of the case. The day of Sabbath made and constituted for man, is essential to all his moral duties and hopes-it seals his evidence for a heavenly world-it prepares him for its joys and its employments-it forms its harbinger and foretaste.

The Sabbath will, therefore, never cease till it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. As other figures and emblems terminated not till the substance of them came; so will not this grand type and foretaste of the ultimate repose of eternity, be determined, till earth gives place to heaven. Let it again be remembered that we disclaim every thing harsh, uncommanded, ceremonial-we disclaim the Jewish, and much more the Pharisaical observances---we say with our Savior, "not man for the Sabbath;" we follow also with delight the change of the day of celebration, authorized by "the Lord of the Sabbath." But all this only leaves the grand, fundamental principle more strong and clear."The Sabbath was made for man," to give him repose and religious peace, to give him time for the worship and adoration of God on earth; to be the solemn guarantee and type of his last rest; and to prepare and introduce him to the joy and ceaseless adorations of that glorious state. The Sabbath is man's privilege, interest, duty. The Sab

bath is the glory of his religion, the highest exercise of his rational nature, the bond and link which connects him with all that is spiritual, all that is holy, all that is divine on earth; and which then transmits him to that exalted scene of eternal, and perfect, and uninterrupted spirituality, holiness, and blessedness in heaven, for which he was created -and to which, may God be pleased to bring the writer and every reader of these pages through his infinite mercy in Jesus Christ our Lord!

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