for an entirely Christian institute. The apostles, in their mention of the first day of the week, say nothing of its design and observance beyond those of public worship, and contributions of our substance to the poor; nothing of further rest from secular labour; nothing, in short, of the way in which the greater part of a whole day, and that "the Lord's day," is to be spent. Whether, then, we consider the Divine manner of clearly defining the purposes and duties of religious ordinances, or the uselessness of any law that is indefinite and doubtful, we are shut up to the conclusion, which other considerations no less demand, that we must seek in the Old Testament as well as in the New-in primitive institution and in Mosaic legislation, as well as in Apostolic instruction and example-for the obligations and characters that complete the Christian Sabbath. It is well for the institution and for mankind that few of the best friends of both have adopted a theory which rejects the Divine and only adequate security for a periodical day of rest to man and beast, and secularizes all but a few hours in the week, thus frustrating both the moral and physical ends of sacred time, and exposing its tiny spark to extinction on an ocean of worldly business, pleasures, and cares.

Their

Those who call in question the primæval origin of the Sabbath are chargeable with doing an injury and a wrong to the institution. They would remove one of its main pillars—the evidence, afforded by its appointment at so early a period, to prove its destination for the race. They would take away from its venerableness; they would disprove, if they could, its necessity. theory says, "The patriarchs lived and died without a Sabbath, attaining long life and high measures of moral excellence independently of its aid; and what they could dispense with so may we.” And who would care to contend for a Jewish ceremony which the experience of the patriarchs has proved to be a local and tem-. porary expedient, useless to men in general,—nay, if useless, an encumbrance and an evil?

To refer to one more opinion: certain theorists, by grounding the institution on human authority, ecclesiastical or civil, place it on a foundation of sand. The conscience is not reached; the law must vary with every latitude and every reign. Independence and caprice, allowed exemption from the immediate control of a

Supreme Being, declare "that they will not be trammelled where the Creator has left man free." The love of pleasure or of gain says, "I will take such a law into my own hands, and spurn enactments which stand in the way of my interest and gratification." Thus made supreme in a matter in which the feelings are opposed to restraint, how can it be conceived that man's submission to Sabbatic law can be either hearty or lasting, or that the law itself can stand?

CHAPTER II.

THEORIES TRIED BY SCRIPTURE IN ITS OBVIOUS
MEANING AND GENERAL SCOPE.

SECOND TEST OF OPINIONS.

PART I.

THE theories held on the subject of the Sabbath, while they are to be estimated, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, by their harmony or discordance with certain principles of the Divine government, as these are clearly enunciated in the sacred oracles, admit of being tried by the infallible standard of truth and excellence, in another form. If the hypotheses on which they are based, and the arguments by which they are supported, be irreconcilable with the testimony of Revelation, a further proof must be afforded that they themselves are untenable. If the foundations and battlements of the city be not the Lord's, it is not entitled to be "called a city of truth." It is the object of this chapter to show that all theories but one are disproved by this test.

The Word of God, as designed to convey the most important information to mankind, must be capable of being understood by them, and being a Divine writing must excel all human compositions in adaptedness to its end. Holy men, speaking as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, could not utter what was unintelligible, or express one thing when they meant another. To many, indeed, their words must be translated; but there are those who are able to repair to the fountain-heads, and the true meaning may, in all that concerns salvation and duty, be ascertained by every sincere inquirer. With this view, it is plain that Scripture must be interpreted according to the ordinary meaning of language, except in cases of poetical or prophetic diction, which it is not

difficult to discriminate. With this view, also, the whole Book must be kept in view, and spiritual things compared with spiritual, for, though a single sentence in many cases conveys its own meaning, there are subjects on which it would be impossible to form enlarged or even just views without such a process of induction, less or more, as is due even to the humblest of writers. As none, we presume, will dispute the truth of these remarks, we forbear the easy task of confirming them.

But to all theories, saving one, it is a fatal objection that they are dependent for their support on the violation of the two principles now indicated.

First, they cannot be maintained without a departure from the obvious or commonly understood meaning of terms.

One of the most remarkable instances of the bold freedom with which certain writers have treated the sacred text, is furnished in the attempt to set aside the idea of a primitive Sabbath, by the notion that the mention of it in Genesis ante-dates the insti

tution by thousands of years. Let us again present the beautifully simple and clear words of the record :-" Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."1

It might be presumed that no one could come to the perusal of this earliest notice of the Sabbath, with the view of transferring the meaning of the words to his mind, rather than of imparting his own previous impressions to the words, without learning that the consecration and observance of the seventh day were immediate consequences of the Divine rest. So plain a matter is this to all who read only for instruction, that one would feel as if an apology were needed for the apparent childishness of elevating into a formal proposition so obvious a truism. But certain writers have so insulted the understandings of mankind, and so trifled with the sacred page, as to affirm that a space of 2500 years intervened between the day of rest, and the actual appointment of the

Gen. ii. 1-3.

institution by which it was to be commemorated, the order of time being departed from for the sake of the connexion of subject; and have on this mere assertion, so gratuitous and wild, built theories and systems for guiding the faith and conduct of the world in some of the most important duties and concerns of men. The view which the words as clearly indicate as language ever expressed thought or fact, and which has commended itself to the common sense of the generality of readers, is to the effect that the seventh day on which God rested, was the identical day which he blessed and sanctified, its transactions being as immediately consecutive to those of the sixth day as these were to the proceedings of the fifth. What is the conclusion to which the other interpretation would shut us up? It is, as already remarked, that a sacred writer has expressed himself in such terms as necessarily to lead us into error. How low those conceptions of the character of holy writ, which could inspire the proleptic dream, or how forlorn the hopes of a cause which has driven its friends to an expedient so allied to the irreverent and profane !

Let us offer a second example of the forced and unnatural construction which has been perpetrated on the narrative of creation. We refer to the interpretation which makes the six days of the Creator's working denote periods of long duration. The good sense of its most ingenious defender, Faber, led him ultimately to discard an opinion, which, however, unintentionally on the part of its supporters, is in reality a libel on the simplest and most perfect style of historical writing. It is true that the term "day," is employed in Scripture in different meanings, some of which occur within the compass of a few sentences in the account of the creation, but in none of the cases is the sense at all obscure. "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." Each of the days of creation being defined to include the light and the darkness must therefore have been a period of twenty-four hours, the time on which the earth performs one revolution upon its axis. The seventh day, though wanting the definition given of the others, yet as belonging to a numbered series having the same common name of day, must, as nothing is said to the contrary, have been of the same duration as its predecessors. And