"Adam as man's representative, was "of perpetual obligation upon the "whole human race, Jew and Gentile, "barbarian and Scythian, bond and "free; upon men degraded, sinful, and

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subject to every infirmity; on men, "who, if heathen, never heard of it, "and who, if Christian, were under "the covenant of grace." "Of such "arguments and conclusions," you add, you "will not trust yourself to 66 say what you think, should they be "a hundred times stronger than they "are." I confess to no small amazement in reading these words. Throughout your speech there is a frequent vacillating between the idea that the ancient Sabbath was a priviThis lege and that it was a burden. uncertainty colours your language throughout and not unfrequently vitiates your argument. In the passage I have just quoted, the paradisaic Sabbath, if it existed at all, must be regarded as a burden, something which the shoulders of unfallen Adam might bear, but which would have been utterly oppressive to his fallen and scattered posterity; at least involving obligations which the sinless forefather might discharge in paradise, but which the sinful children could not discharge in the world's wide wilderness. What, we ask, might be these obligations? To separate every seventh day from other days, to rest from ordinary work on that day, and to appropriate it to holy uses. Is this a burden too heavy to be borne by "men, degraded, sinful, "and subject to every infirmity?" Talk of the heathen having never heard of the Sabbath! They have never heard of the only living and true God. Shall we therefore doubt His existence, or their obligation to

serve Him? As to Christians being under the covenant of grace, I may have something to say at another time. At present I only remark that if Christians are renewed after the image of God, they are thereby made morally like Adam before his fall. What then becomes of the marvellous absurdity which you seem to see in the idea that a law given to Adam before his fall should be a law for them as well? Partakers of his holiness by their second birth, why should they not be subject to the same law?

But besides, in this argument of yours, what, dear sir, becomes of your own idea of "the necessities of man's

spiritual nature," which, you admit, render a primeval Sabbath "highly "probable"? Were these less after the fall than before? If the fact of a paradisaic Sabbath be proved, and if that Sabbath had any relation to the necessities of man's spiritual nature, does it not follow a fortiori that there must have been a Sabbath for fallen man outside the gates of paradise-unless, indeed, God withdrew the boon in judgment? Our first parents went forth from their primeval home under the frown of their offended God, but still under the sunshine of a promise of mercy. And there is no reason to suppose that the precious gift of a weekly rest was withdrawn. Certain it is that it was now a thousand times more needful than ever.

Nothing in all the seventy-four pages of your pamphlet surprises me so much as your "not trusting yourself "to say what you think" of this argument. It does not need to be made" a hundred times stronger than it is to justify an expression of

opinion upon it. Were it a hundred times weaker than it is, its soundness could be justified on your own premises. If the "necessities" to which you appeal in support of a "Lord's“day," be the necessities of our nature simply considered as a created and dependent nature, they were greatly increased by the fall, and in proportion to that increase was the probability that a Sabbath law, if already existing, should be perpetuated. If the "necessities," of which you make so much, be the peculiar necessities of our fallen estate, they were never more urgent than when our fallen parents went forth from paradise, and during the ages which followed it. You believe in "the goodness of "God in ever revealing what man "required to know for his present "and eternal well-being." Why, then, need arguments strengthened a hundredfold to induce you even to entertain the idea that the "proved" existence of a Sabbath in paradise draws after it, as a logical conclusion, the existence of a Sabbath when paradise was lost?

To bring this matter to a point. You introduce your direct argument for a Lord's-day drawn from the example of the Apostles and early Church, by an appeal to the physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual advantages of such a day. You thus, and by your acknowledgment of the necessities of our nature, create a presumption in favour of the existence of a Lord's-day-a presumption without which I shall have occasion to show, your direct argument for a Lord's-day would not bear all that you build upon it. Now those who entertain a belief in the existence of a primeval Sabbath are entitled to

avail themselves of the full force of this presumption. The necessities of our nature are not modern, nor are the advantages which you describe so well. And we may appeal to them in support of the antecedent probability of a "Sabbath for man."

We now come to the only historical record of early times that we possess. And to this record I venture to say, that both you and Professor Plumptre do great injustice. The Professor contents himself with saying, "There is no trace of such a "law in the paradise state of Gen. ii. " and iii. The one command which "constitutes the trial of Adam is that "which forbids him to eat of the "fruit of the 'tree of knowledge of

even that the Divine Sabbath was "revealed to the new-created man." Does Mr. Plumptre mean to say that because no "command is 66 re"corded" but that which forbad the eating of the fruit of one tree, therefore no other command was given to Adam, directly or indirectly? And that in all other respects he was in a state of absolute liberty and selfgovernment? There is no "record"

of a command to Adam to love God, or to love his wife. Shall we conIclude that he was under no Divine obligation to love either? As to there being "nothing to show that "the Divine Sabbath was revealed to "the new-created man," why there is "nothing to show" that it was "revealed to him that he was himself God's creature, or that the world

which he trod was God's workman

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ship. Shall we therefore conclude that he was ignorant of both? one thing that is "recorded," with reference to the subject now in dispute, is the historical fact of the separation of the seventh day from other days for holy uses-and this is enough.

Your treatment of this part of the subject, dear sir, is not more satisfactory than Professor Plumptre's. In fact, he admits more force in the argument drawn from the traces of a hebdomadal division of time, to be found in the book of Genesis, than you see in them; and he confesses likewise that the narrative of the gathering of the manna in Exod. xvi., proves "that the seventh day was

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To this I reply, first of all, that the express words of Moses are against you. Language could not be more explicit than the historical statement which you have not quoted-"On the "seventh day God ended his work "which he had made; and he rested 66 on the seventh day from all his "work which he had made. And "God blessed the seventh day, and "sanctified it; because that on it "he had rested from all his work "which God created and made." Gen. ii. 2, 3. The "ending "resting," "blessing," and "sanctifying," are all in the same past; and unless the narrative is utterly deceptive, they are simultaneous. The most skilled master of language may be challenged to frame a sentence which should more clearly and unmistakeably describe the "resting" on the seventh day, and the "bless"ing" and and "sanctifying" it, as taking place at one and the same time, than do the words of Moses. Let there have been ten thousand years instead of three between the fact and the recording of the fact, it makes no difference. The record is that God rested on the Sabbath-day, and blessed and sanctified it because

that on that day He had rested. The words of the fourth commandment are equally explicit as to the historical fact-" 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 hal"lowed it." On your supposition that although the resting took place 2,700 years before the blessing and sanctifying took place now in the wilderness, the words of the law should have been-"Wherefore the Lord "blesseth the Sabbath-day, and hal"loweth it."

But further, if "the purpose of "sanctifying the seventh day,

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grounded on the rest after crea"tion," was not "actually carried "into effect," as you suppose, till the law was given on Sinai, what follows? That the Creator sanctified the day on which He rested from His work, in order that 2,700 years after the small Jewish nation should be placed under a Sabbatic law! You labour hard to limit the fourth commandment to the Jews; you find in it the first institution of a Sabbath, an institution which you hold to have died with the Mosaic dispensation. And with a view to this national and temporary institution, you think the Creator rested from the work of creation and sanctified the day of rest! I have heard a Christian minister maintain in a public assembly that the world now exists for the Jew. Your argument very nearly approaches to the idea that the world was made for the Jew.

As to God's resting on the seventh day having been, or having not been, "revealed to Adam," I have already said enough. If not revealed to

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Adam, then not to Enoch, or Noah, or Abraham-the first revelation of it having been to Moses. And we are to suppose that the holiest men of nearly three thousand years, who walked with God," were left in ignorance of God's resting on the seventh day, and were not invited to enter into His rest by Sabbatic communion and the commemoration of His great work of creative wisdom and love. And now that Judaism is no more, as a Divine ordinance, we are to suppose, moreover, that the nations of the earth in all ages from the coming of Christ to the end of the world have no interest, even as Enoch and Noah had none, in the Divine rest on the seventh day. The purpose of that rest was "carried "into effect" in the Sinaitic law, but the Sinaitic law was for the Jew and is law no more!

One word more and I have done for the present, and on this part of the subject. It is not easy, you say, "to "account for the marked silence of "2,700 years as to this primeval institution; nor for its neglect, "necessarily, by the slaves of Israel "in Egypt, for centuries, without a "word said as to its suspension." I deny a "marked silence" as to the primeval Sabbath. I find a distinct record of its institution, and traces of the division of time which was founded on it. The record is so very brief and succinct that I expect no more. Look at the ages which followed Moses, and in which the existence of the Sabbath is unquestioned. is no mention of it in Joshua, although the people were then fresh from the

There

wilderness in which they received the law. There is no mention of it in the book of Judges, although it in

cludes the history of 300 years. Nor do you find it named or referred to in the two books of Samuel, which comprehend a period of 150 years, with the entire life of Samuel, Saul, and David. It is in the history of Elijah you find the first mention of the Sabbath (with one exception) out of the Pentateuch: So utterly worthless is the argument from silence. As to "the slaves of "Israel in Egypt," the impossibility of their keeping the Sabbath is no

argument against the existence of a primeval Sabbatic institution, any more than is the impossibility of the Christian slaves of Roman heathen masters keeping the Lord's-day an argument against the existence of the Lord's-day in the primitive Church. And if there is no reference in the Old Testament to the former, neither is there any reference in the New Testament to the latter.

(TO BE CONTINUED IN OUR NEXT.)

practice in that country, when the females and children go to enjoy-by sitting in the open air-their beautiful summers, taking their knitting or embroidery, and thus usefully employing the hours of recreation. The spot chosen on this occasion was of singular formation. It might have been the lower part of a burnt-out volcano, the rocks being circular and lofty which encircled the small space of 100 feet, measuring from a point in the centre. There was an entrance on one side, which had either been produced by the effects of time wearing away the stone, or by artificial means. In the course of centuries the attrition of the rocks, and the gradual decomposition of vegetable matter, had formed a soil in which large poplars, ashes, and firs had raised their lofty heads, and grounded their deep roots. Coming out of the blazing sunshine of an afternoon in July, it was a delightfully cool and shady place for those who were strong and healthy, and feared no illness. But to me it appeared damp and

chill, and to possess an air of gloom that quite oppressed me. The fact was, that, excepting when the sun was ver- tical, and that in the height of summer, it never thoroughly shone down upon the soil of this deep hollow, and there being no second outlet, there was consequently no draught to carry a current of air through the deep dell. It looked the homestall of all noxious reptiles and unwholesome vapours.

I could not help thinking what a miserable place it must be, during the other nine or ten months when gradually the sun made shorter and shorter visits, and at length never shone on it at all; and then my thoughts turned, as they are wont to do, to seek an analogy with it in the spiritual world.

Have we not seen, and that, alas, too often, a heart so enclosed with the adamantine rocks of pride, covetousness, and love of ease and self-indulgence, as effectually to shut out the rays emanating from the sun of righteousness, as the mountains of which we have spoken? The bright beams cannot reach to the foundation of the heart to display the noxious weeds and reptiles, and unwholesome vapours that exhale from the untrodden and un