the Jewish polity brought to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. The friends of Job were divinely instructed to offer up for themselves a burnt-offering of seven bullocks and of seven rams. Instruction, too, was communicated in the assemblies for worship. Job had "instructed many and strengthened the weak hands," and where though not exclusively he had done so is intimated in his words, "I stood up and I cried in the congregation." Noah was a preacher of righteousness. We read also of the sacraments of circumcision and the passover-and of a priesthood with tithes for its maintenance. As there was a law for the consecration of property and of a certain proportion of it to the service of God, it is to be presumed that there would be one for the consecration of a certain amount of time to the same purpose. For all this worship understood places of convocation were requisite. Cain and Abel "came together into one place." It is chiefly the scene of public ordinances that is favoured with the presence of the Lord, from which Satan is said twice to have gone forth, and Cain once and for ever. And even more necessary must have been appointed places of worship when men began on a large scale to call upon the name of the Lord. But set times were also indispensable. Order and fixed places demanded them. If the sons of Job had their days for feasting, we cannot reasonably doubt that the sons of God had their days for worship. And it was so. "There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord." It was "in process of time," or rather, in the end of days, that Cain and Abel brought their offerings unto the Lord. We might plead that the time, like the age of a very young child, "an infant of days," admitted of reckoning not by years, months, or weeks, but by days. But it is sufficient for our purpose that the language unquestionably means an appointed season. We are informed in the Epistle to the Hebrews that Abel was accepted because he offered in faith, consulting the Divine will in regard to the matter, circumstances, and principle of the service. Cain was blamed, not for error as to the time or place, but for the state of his mind, and the bloodless nature of his offering. We can conceive him overawed by the appointed day of rest and worship, and induced by the customary

1 Isa. lxv. 20.

suspension of labour into a compliance with the law and the custom, but we cannot conceive of so secular a character leaving his farm on working days for the purpose of appearing at the altar of God. And the historian here again has warranted the conclusion that the time of these offerings was the seventh day. He has recorded the consecration of that day to rest and holy use, and must have known that, in proceeding soon after to mention the first case of social worship, nothing was more natural than for his readers to take for granted that on this occasion the day so set apart would be applied to its appropriate purpose. Aware that such was the inference which would be drawn from his manner of writing, has he not sanctioned that inference?

Our position is confirmed by the remarkable instances of piety and virtue which distinguished the period under review. Is it requisite to name Enoch, Noah, Melchizedek, Job, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Aaron? It was by the grace of God, and in the observance of religious institutions, that they became what they were. That the Sabbath must have been a principal means in fostering the faith, by which those "elders obtained a good report," appears from the felt and proved necsesity of a periodical day of rest and worship to the religion of present days. We have already cited the acknowledgment of one of the best men whom our age has produced-Edward Bickersteth-that, but for a weekly day given as entirely as possible to God, religion would soon have abandoned him. And all who in any measure resemble that excellent individual will readily indorse the remark. To conceive that the patriarchs, who were men of like passions, men exposed to like temptations, toils, and sufferings, with others, could maintain for centuries a holy and happy life, without the stimulus and refreshment of the Sabbath, is to suppose a case which, if true, would prove the uselessness of the institution in any circumstances, but which, in fact, is a simple impossibility and a mere dream.

The long life and prosperity attained by good men in primitive times utter the same language. It was the arrangement of Pro vidence, for important ends, that those men should live "many days," and "see good." But we have no reason to believe that

their longevity was miraculous, or their success achieved independently of their own efforts. Both blessings were bestowed in connexion with their diligence, temperance, and care—both are divinely pledged to a race yet to come, and to them as sacredly observant of the weekly rest. What has been said in this volume of the necessity of the institution to health, prosperity, to mental, moral, and religious culture, while it applies to the present and the future, must have been equally true of the remote past.

Once more there are incidents in the history of Israel in Egypt which give indication of a pre-existing Sabbatism. Moses and Aaron, by the direction and in the name of Jehovah, asked of Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go, that they might hold a feast unto God in the wilderness. What the feast was appears from the answer of the King of Egypt to their demand: "Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works? Get you unto your burdens. Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest [sabbatize] from their burdens ;" and more decisively from the fact, that no sooner had the people gained their liberty than they celebrated "the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord," feasting on the bread of heaven. Before this time, and on the very eve of the Exode, the Passover was instituted, where the Sabbatic circumstances of "seven days," "resting from all manner of work," and "holy convocations,' are all mentioned as matters with which it is taken for granted that they were well acquainted.

The doctrine of a paradisiacal and patriarchal Sabbath does not depend on the circumstances now reviewed, but however imperfectly they may have been stated, we venture to call for this verdict from our readers, that but for the antecedent institution and continued observance of a sacred seventh day, these circumstances could not have existed.

CHAPTER II.

THE SABBATH PROMULGATED FROM SINAI AS ONE OF THE COMMANDMENTS OF THE MORAL LAW.

"Remember the Sabbath-Day to keep it holy."

WHEN we pass from the Patriarchal to the Jewish dispensation of religion, we discover increasing evidence that the Sabbath was designed to be a law and blessing to mankind. That under an economy so different in many respects from that which preceded it, and providing so many additional seasons for worship, the aboriginal holy day was not superseded, but retained with superadded tokens of respect, was a circumstance which gave promise of its continuing to hold a place among the laws and ordinances of heaven while the world itself should last.

THIRD PROPOSITION. THE SABBATH, AS INSTITUTED AT THE CREATION, HAD A PLACE ASSIGNED TO IT IN THE MORAL LAW GIVEN FROM SINAI.

When the Almighty gave forth the Law of the Decalogue with his own voice from Sinai, one of the utterances was, "Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, 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."1

1 Ex. xx. 9-11.

That the Decalogue was not even as a code prescribed to the Jews only, or abrogated along with the other laws of Moses, but epitomizes the duty of human beings in all places and times, appears from the distinction conferred in Scripture on its precepts above the other commandments delivered to the Jewish peoplefrom the catholic nature of the precepts themselves, and from their declared obligation on mankind.

1. The Scriptures have in various and unequivocal forms done special honour to the law of the ten commandments.

"Moses

Its promulgation was heralded by solemn preparations. went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain." He is instructed to inform Israel of the Divine condescension and kindness about to be shown to them in the covenant to be established between God and them, and the necessity of holy obedience on their part, that they might be a peculiar treasure unto him above all people. He intimates these things to the people, and "returns their words unto the Lord." For two days they must sanctify themselves, that they might be ready on the third day, on which Jehovah was to come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai. Death was to be the penalty of going up into the mount, or touching the border of it. "And it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, so that all the people trembled. And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly."1

In these circumstances of glory, grandeur, and terrible majesty, which made Moses himself say, "I exceedingly fear and quake," did Jehovah proclaim with his own lips the ten commandments. And thus, not only by priority of promulgation, but by the august solemnities attending it, did he distinguish these commandments above the civil and ceremonial statutes which were afterwards privately communicated to Moses. "These words the Lord spake

Ex. xix. 16-18.