the institution, is rest. The word sabbath means rest. The event to be commemorated was rest. The reason for selecting the seventh, was, that this had been to the Creator a day of rest. The chief method prescribed for sanctifying the day was rest. The distinctive character of the institution could not have been more clearly expressed. Whoever reads the fourth commandment, will see, that no mode of setting apart the day to God, is there prescribed, except an imitation of his rest. How far this constituted the sanctification of the sabbath, will be seen from such passages as the following. "You shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy unto you. Every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death. For whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.'* A still more remarkable proof, that the sanctificacation of the sabbath consisted in resting after the example of God, is furnished by Christ, who says, that on the sabbath days the priests in the Temple profane the sabbath.' So essential was rest to the hallowing of the day, that the work of offering victims, though prescribed by God himself, is said to profane it. There are indeed some expressions of Moses, indicating other methods of observing the day, for he calls it a holy convocation;' but whether this phrase applies to other places besides the Temple, is uncertain. It is not improbable, indeed, that the people resorted to the Levites and prophets on the sabbath rather than other days; but we find no precept to this effect; and it is well known that no synagogues or places of worship were built, through Judea, until after the captivity. Rest, then, was the great distinction of the day. This constituted it a memorial, and gave it its name; and we conceive that the chief stress was laid on this circumstance, because the sabbath was intended to answer a humane, as well as religious end; that is, to give relief to persons in servitude, and to inferior animals, a provision very much needed in an unrefined and semi-barbarous age, when slavery had no acknowledged rights, and when little mercy was shown to man or beast. In conformity to these views, we find the Jewish nation always regarding the sabbath as a joyful day, a festival. In the time of Christ we find him bidden to a feast on the sabbath day, and accepting the invitation, and our impression is, that now, as in past times, the Jews divide the day between the synagogue and social enjoyment.

The nature and end of the sabbath cannot be easily misunder stood. It was the seventh or last day of the week, set apart by God, who is incapable of fatigue, and whose almighty agency is unceasing, never rests. In finishing the work of creation, he did not sink into repose, or for a moment desist from the exercise of his omnipotence. A particular mode of his agency was discontinued; and, in accommodation to an uncultivated age, this discontinuance was called rest. It seems to us, that the sabbath bears one mark of a temporary institution, in the fact of its being founded on a representation of God, which is true only in a figurative or popular sense, and which gives something like a shock to a mind, which has exalted its conceptions of the Divinity. Such an institution does not carry the impress of a perpetual and universal † Matt. xii. 5.

aw.

* Exod. xxxi, 14, also Jer. xvii. 22.

Luke, xiv.

God as a day of rest, in imitation and in commemoration of his having rested on that day from the creation. That other religious observances were with great propriety introduced into the day, and that they were multiplied with the progress of the nation, we do not doubt. But the distinctive observance, and the only one expressly enjoined on the whole people, was rest. Now we ask, is the dedication of the seventh or last day of the week to rest, in remembrance of God's resting on that day, a part of the christian religion? The answer seems to us plain. We affirm, in the first place, what none will contradict, that this institution is not enjoined in the New Testament, even by the faintest hint or implication; and in the next place, we maintain that the christian world, so far from finding it there, have, by their practice, disowned its authority.

This last position may startle some of our readers. But it is not therefore less true. We maintain that the christian world have in practice disowned the obligation of the sabbath established by the fourth commandment. There is indeed a body of Christians, called Sabbatarians, who strictly and religiously observe the fourth commandment. But they are a handful; they are lost, swallowed up in the immense majority of Christians, who have for ages ceased to observe the sabbath prescribed from Sinai. True, Christians have their sacred day, which they call a sabbath. But is it in truth the ancient sabbath? We say, no; and we call attention to this point. The ancient sabbath, as we have seen, was the last day of the week, set apart for rest, in commemoration of God's resting on that day. And is the first, day of the week a day observed in remembrance of Christ's resurrection from the dead, the same institution with this? Can broader marks between two ordinances be conceived? Is it possible that they can be confounded? Is not the ancient sabbath renounced by the christian world? Have we not thus the testimony of the christian world to its having passed away? Who of us can consistently plead for it as a universal and perpetual law?

We know, that it is said, that the ancient sabbath remains untouched; that Christianity has only removed it from the last to the first day of the week, and that this is a slight, unessential change, leaving the old institution whole and unbroken. To this we have several replies. In the first place this change of days, which Christianity is supposed to make, is not unessential, but vital, and subversive of the ancient institution. The end of the ancient sabbath was the commemoration of God's resting from his work, and for this end, the very day of the week on which he rested, was most wisely selected. Now we maintain, that to select the first day of the week, the very day on which he began his works, and to select and separate this in commemoration of another event, of Christ's resurrection, is wholly to set aside the ancient sabbath. We cannot conceive of a more essential departure from the original ordiThis substitution, as it is called, is a literal as well as vir

nance.

tual abolition. Such is our first remark. We say secondly, that not a word is uttered in the New Testament of the first day being substituted for the seventh. Surely so striking a change would not have been made in a universal and perpetual law of God, without some warning. We ask for some hint of this modification of the fourth commandment. We find not a syllable. We say thirdly, that the first Christians knew nothing of this substitution. Our evidence here is complete. The first converts to Christianity were Jews, and these converts had at first no conception of the design of Christianity to supersede the law of Moses. This law they continued to observe for years, and to observe it as rigorously as ever. When Paul visited Jerusalem, after many labors among the Gentiles, the elders 'said unto him, thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous of the law.** Of course they all observed the Jewish sabbath, or seventh day of rest, the greatest of Jewish festivals, whilst, as we all believe, they honored also the first day, the remembrancer of Christ's resurrection. This state of things existed for years in the primitive church. The two days were observed together. Nothing more seems necessary to disprove unanswerably the common doctrine, that the apostles enjoined the substitution of the first tor the seventh day. We will add one more argument. Paul commands the Colossian Christians to disregard the censures of those who judged or condemned them for not observing the sabbath. 'Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.' This passage is very plain. It is evaded, however, by the plea, that the word 'sabbath,' was used to express not only the seventh day, but other festivals or days of rest. But when we recollect that the word is used by Paul, in this place, without any exception or limitation, and that it was employed at that time, most frequently and almost wholly, to express the seventh day, or weekly sabbath, we shall see, that we have the strongest reason for supposing this institution to be intended by the apostle. That a Christian, after reading this passage, should 'judge,' or condemn his brethren, for questioning or rejecting his particular notion of the sabbath, is a striking proof of the slow progress of tolerant and liberal principles among men. We need not add, after these remarks, how unjustifiable we deem it to enforce particular modes of observing this day, by an array of Associations.

Having thus stated what seem to us strong reasons against the perpetuity of the ancient sabbath, perhaps some of our readers may wish to know our views of the Lord's-day, and although the subject may seem foreign to the present article, we will give our opinion in a few words. We believe, that the first day of the week is to be set apart for the public worship of God, and for the promotion † Col. ii. 16.

*Acts, xxi. 20.

of the knowledge and practice of Christianity, and that it was selected for this end in honor of the resurrection of Christ. To this view we are led by the following considerations. Wherever the gospel was preached, its professors were formed into churches or congregations, and ministers were appointed for their instruction or edification. Wherever Christianity was planted, societies for joint religious acts and improvement were instituted, as the chief means of establishing and diffusing it. Now it is plain, that for these purposes regular times must have been prescribed, and accordingly we find that it was the custom of the primitive Christians to hold their religious assemblies on the first day of the week, the day of Christ's resurrection. This we learn from the New Testament, and from the universal testimony of the earliest ages of the church. Whereever Christianity was spread, the first day was established as the season of Christian worship and instruction. Such are the grounds on which this institution rests. We regard it as altogether a christian institution; as having its origin in the gospel, as peculiar to the new dispensation; and we conceive that the proper observation of it is to be determined wholly by the spirit of Christianity. We meet in the New Testament no precise rules as to the mode of spending the Lord's-day, as to the mode of worship and teaching, as to the distribution of the time not given to public services. And this is just what might be expected; for the gospel is not a religion of precise rules. It differs from Judaism in nothing more than in its free character. It gives great principles, broad views, general, prolific, all-comprehensive precepts, and entrusts the application of them to the individual. It sets before us the perfection of our nature, the spirit which we should cherish, the virtues which constitute the kingdom of heaven within us,' and leaves us to determine for ourselves, in a great measure, the discipline by which these noble ends are to be secured. Let not man, then, bind what Christ has left free. The modes of worship and teaching on the Lord's-day are not prescribed, and who will say that they cannot be improved? One reason of the neglect and limited influence of this institution, is, that, as now observed, it does not correspond sufficiently to the wants of our times; and we fear that it might even fall into contempt among the cultivated, should attempts be prosecuted to carry it back to the superstitious rigor by which it was degraded in a former age.

The Associations for promoting the Observance of the Sabbath, propose several objects, in which, to a certain extent, we heartily concur, but which, from their nature, are not susceptible of precise definition or regulation, and which, therefore, ought to be left, where Christianity has left them, to the consciences of individuals. They undoubtedly intend to discountenance labor on Sunday. Now, generally speaking, abstinence from labor seems to us a plain duty of the day; for we see not how its ends can otherwise be accomplished to any considerable extent. We do not believe, indeed, that this absti

ence was rigidly practised by the first Christians at Jerusalem who, as we have seen, gave up the seventh day to entire rest, and whose social duties could hardly have admitted the same appropriation of the following day. Neither do we believe that the converts who were made among the class of slaves in heathen countries, abstained from labor on the first day of the week; for, in so doing, they would have exposed themselves to the severest punishments, even to death, and we have no intimation that this portion of believers were regularly cut off by manyrdom. We know, however, that the early Christians, in proportion as they were relieved from the restrictions of Heathenis and Judaism, made the Lord's-day a season of abstinence from labor; and the arguments for so doing are so obvious and strong, that later Christians have concurred with them with hardly a dissenting voice. On this point there is, and can be, no difference. The change of Sunday into a working day, we should condemn as earnestly as any of our brethren. At the same time, we feel, that in this particular a Jewish rigor is not to be imposed upon Christians, and that there are exigences justifying toil on the first day, which must be left to individual judgment. The great purposes of this festival may certainly be accomplished without that scrupulous anxious shunning of every kind of work, which marked a Jewish sabbath, and which, however proper under a servile dispensation and in an age of darkness, would in us be superstition. We do not, for example, think Christians bound to prepare on Saturday every meal for the following day, or to study through the week how to remove the necessity of every bodily exertion on the approaching Sunday. We think, too, that cases may occur, which justify severe toil on this day; and we should judge a man unfaithful to himself and family, ungrateful to Providence, and superstitious, who should lose a crop rather than harvest it during the portion of time ordinarily set apart for christian worship. On these points Christianity has left us free. The individual must be his own judge, and we deprecate the attempts of Societies to legislate on this indefinite subject, for their fellow Christians.

Another purpose of the Associations of which we speak, is, to stop the mail on Sunday. On this point a great difference of opinion prevails among the most conscientious men. It may be remembered that, in a former number of this work, there was an article on the sabbath, discouraging this attempt to interrupt the mail. We think it right to say, that among the contributors to this work, and among its best friends, a diversity of sentiment exists in regard to this difficult question. In one respect, however, we all agree; and that is, in the inexpediency of organizing, in opposition to the Sunday mail, a vast Association, which may be easily perverted to political purposes, which, from its very object, will be tempted to meddle with government, and which, by setting up a concerted and joint cry, may overpower, and load with reproach, the most conscientious men in the community.

2*