the present time. Thus far, then, the language of Christ and of Isaiah has held true. The ordinance, indeed, has not been universal, and only by some maintained in its purity, but its preservation and true observance among any and so many in all ages, establish the truth of the foregoing promises respecting it, and thus its own Divine authority. Nor are the instances in which the Sabbath is abolished or lost unavailing as evidence on its behalf. They are adducible to establish its Divine authority, as they are the fulfilment of another class of predictions—those, we mean, which have foretold its withdrawal as the result of its abuse. But the fulfilment of prophecy does more than prove the truth of the Divine Word as respects the promised continuance of the institution. It enables us, we conceive, to decide between contending theories on the subject, and it is to this point that we are now to call the attention of our readers. First of all, the accomplishment of prophecy settles the questions that have been raised respecting the proportion of time and the particular day of the Christian Sabbath. The words lately quoted from the prophecies of Isaiah stand connected with his glowing descriptions of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow, both in His own exaltation and in His benignant reign over the earth. Of the happy times of the new heavens and the new earth, or the Christian dispensation, when the Gentiles should be brought for an offering unto the Lord out of all nations, it is declared, "And it shall come to pass, that from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord" (Isa. lxvi. 23). Then, again, when the prophet Ezekiel had his vision of the Temple-a vision, which, as we have already shown, applying neither to the Jewish dispensation, nor literally to the Christian, must be considered as a figurative representation of the latter; he was inspired to utter these words : "And it shall be, that upon the eighth day, and so forward, the priests shall make your burnt-offerings upon the altar, and your peace-offerings; and I will accept you, saith the Lord God (Ezek. xliii. 27). Here we have a day, a weekly day, and the eighth day, not the eighth day of a week of eight days, but the eighth day in reference to the ancient, then common, and still prevalent week, the day after its seventh day; in other words, the first day of the week. Two facts are unquestionable : first, that the seventh day of the Jews has never been the generally recognised day of rest and worship among Christians; and, second, that the first day of the week, frequently by the Fathers called the eighth day, has ever been the Christian Sabbath. The theories, therefore, which propound respectively an "every-day Sabbath," a "no-day Sabbath," "the seventh-day Sabbath," "a half-day, or a two-or-three-hours' Sabbath each week," do not agree with the predictions to which we have referred, and are on this, as they are on other grounds, excluded from the right to compete for the honour of being Divine institutions. Further, Prophecy defines the engagements of its promised weekly holy day. That holy day is not merely named a Sabbath, a rest; but has concomitants of duty which are incompatible alike with idleness and with secular pursuits. It was to be a day of worship. They "shall come and worship before me ;" "I will make them joyful in my house of prayer;" "It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem (Isa. ii. 2, 3). Here, again, the every-day Sabbath is shown to be contrary to Scripture prediction, as it is to Scripture rule. A Sabbath of worldly pleasure and amusement has no place assigned to it under Christianity. A Sabbath devoted in whole or in part to the study of science and art is not provided for. Christians were to be made joyful, but it was to be in the house of prayer, and were not to do their own pleasure on God's holy day. They were to be occupied in studying nobler and more important things than science or art. Popery has fulfilled the Sabbatic predictions of Scripture in some respects, but not in the amount of time, not in intelligent devotion, not in religious instruction. The Scripture is fulfilled by those only who devote the weekly holy day, with the exception of so much time as is due to the objects of necessity and mercy, entirely to rest and religion. Prophecy, which indicates the means, indicates also the manner, of worship in Christian times. A blessing is pronounced on the man who should not only keep the Sabbath from polluting it, "but keep his hand from doing any evil” (Isa. lvi. 2). In the same chapter, promises of better blessings and higher honours than those of this world are made to those who should keep God's Sabbaths, and choose the things that please Him, among which things are "loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth" for "in these things," He declares, "I delight ;" and to "the sons of the stranger," the Gentiles, "that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of his covenant," it is pledged that they should be made joyful, and be accepted in their worship, by Jehovah. In another chapter (Iviii.) we are informed that the observance of the Sabbath was to consist not only in turning away the foot from the Sabbath, from doing one's pleasure on God's holy day, but in calling the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable. The doctrines of an every-day Sabbath," of "the Sabbath as an ecclesiastical or political arrangement," or of the Sabbath as a day that may be given partly to pleasure or business, and partly to religion, are utterly irreconcilable with the standard of excellence thus presented. It is only the doctrine of a solemn and yet benignant statute, of a careful, conscientious, and yet cheerful, affectionate Sabbatism, that, according to the words of Scripture, fulfils the claims of the institution. It is the Puritan's and Covenanter's holy day, not the Continental holiday, that copies the Divine model, and it is just in proportion as this is done, that the man is happy. Pledges of happiness, prosperity, and honour, are given to the individual who thus hallows the day of rest. "Blessed is the man that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it." "Every one" that did so was to be "made joyful." "A place and a name" "better than of sons and daughters," "an everlasting name," were to be given to all such persons. He that delighted in the Sabbath, and honoured God, not doing his own ways, nor finding his own pleasure, nor speaking his own words, was to delight himself in the Lord. And we have found, accordingly, when pointing out “the advantages" of the institution, that it brings good in every form to the individual who duly observes it, good to his body and mind, to his moral and religious character, to his circumstances and name. The experience of the conscientious observers of the Lord's day, attests the faithfulness of Him who promises thus to reward his servants. Those certainly who have made frequent use of an instrument are competent to speak of its worth, and if, besides being men of known veracity, their evidence of its efficiency is such as every one may see in their case and try in his own, their testimony must be unexceptionable. Few have been more qualified by both character and profession to pronounce a correct judgment respecting the value of the Sabbath than the distinguished Sir Matthew Hale, whose views, besides, were the result of careful attention to the subject, and confirmed by the experience of a long life. "I have," are his words, "by long and sound experience found, that the due observance of this day, and of the duties of it, have been of singular comfort and advantage to me; and I doubt not but it will prove so to you. God Almighty is the Lord of our time, and lends it to us; and as it is but just that we should consecrate this part of that time to him, so I have found, by a strict and diligent observation, that a due observation of this day hath ever had joined to it a blessing upon the rest of my time, and the week that hath been so begun, hath been blessed and prosperous to me; and on the other side, when I have been negligent of the duties of this day, the rest of the week hath been unsuccessful and unhappy to my own secular employments; so that I could easily make an estimate of my successes in my own secular employments the week following, by the manner of my passing of this day and this I do not write lightly or inconsiderately, but upon a long and sound observation and experience.”1 Similar was the experience of a lawyer of great talents, who on his deathbed said to his friend, "Charge every young lawyer not to do anything in the business of his profession on the Sabbath. It will injure him, and lessen the prospect of his success. I have tried it. I do not know how it is, but there is something about it very striking. My Sabbath efforts have always failed."2 We find the same experience, in the medical profession, expressed by Dr. Farre, 1 Contemplations (Lond. 1676), pp. 480, 481. Mr. Hey, and, as has been said, by one of its brightest ornaments, Boerhaave. Persons invested with the sacred office have felt in the same way. "I never find it well," was the remark of Dr. Doddridge, "on common days, when it is not so on the Lord's." To the like conclusion, "that there was a special blessing vouchsafed to the keeping of that day devoted to spiritual purposes,” was Mr. Wilberforce led in his different field of labour;2 and he relates that he remained at home one Sabbath to write a letter to the Emperor Alexander on the abolition of the slave-trade, conceiving it to be his duty, and even supplicating the Divine blessing on the act, "yet it did not answer," he observes; "my mind felt a weight on it, a constraint which impeded the free and unfettered movements of the imagination or intellect; and I am sure that this last week I might have saved for that work four times as much time as I assigned to it on Sunday.' 3 The instances in which mercantile men, sailors, tradesmen, and mechanics, have been sensible of a connexion between their use of the day of rest, and their success in their several undertakings, are too numerous for detail. We select one. The learned and enterprising Captain Scoresby, in an account of one of his whaling expeditions, makes the following remarks: "It is worthy of observation, that in no instance, when on fishing stations, was our refraining from the ordinary duties of our profession on the Sunday ever supposed eventually to have been a loss to us, for we in general found, that if others who were less regardful, or had not the same view of the obligatory nature of the command respecting the Sabbath day, succeeded in their endeavours to promote the success of the voyage, we seldom failed to procure a decided advantage in the succeeding week. Independently, indeed, of the Divine blessing on honouring the Sabbath day, I found that the restraint put upon the natural inclinations of the men for pursuing the fishery at all opportunities, acted with some advantage, by proving an extraordinary stimulus to their exertions when they were next sent out after whales. Were it not out of place here, I could relate several instances, in which, after refraining to fish upon the Sabbath, while others were thus successfully employed, our subsequent labours succeeded under circumstances so striking, that there was not, I be1 Memoirs by Orton, 2d ed. p. 236, n. 2 Life, vol. ii. p. 202. 3 Life, vol. iv. p. 179. |