been meant, the command would have been to keep a sabbath on the seventh day; but the law enjoining to keep the seventh DAY holy, designates the whole, and not a part. Nor is there any hint in the sacred writings from which it can be gathered, that the Almighty will be satisfied with the separation of less than a seventh part of our time to his service; while, on the contrary, the law, both according to the letter and the spirit of it, demands the appropriation of so much time as constitutes an entire day.

Assuming the contrary, and maintaining that a cessation from labour on the first day of the week is not enjoined in the Christian Scriptures, Dr. Paley endeavours to prove that such a reserve was necessary in the primitive condition of Christianity. "During Christ's personal ministry," says he, "his religion was preached to the Jews alone. They already had a sabbath, which, as citizens and subjects of that economy, they were obliged to keep, and did keep. It was not, therefore, probable that Christ would enjoin another day of rest in conjunction with this. When the new religion came forth into the Gentile world, converts to it were, for the most part, made from those classes of society who have not their time and labour at their own disposal; and it was scarcely to be expected, that unbelieving masters and magistrates, and they who directed the em

ployment of others, would permit their slaves and labourers to rest from their work every seventh day; or that civil government, indeed, would have submitted to the loss of the seventh part of the public industry, and that too in addition to the numerous festivals which the national religion indulged to the people; at least, this would have been an incumbrance which might have greatly retarded the reception of Christianity in the world. In reality, the institution of a weekly sabbath is so connected with the functions of civil life, and requires so much of the concurrence of civil law, in its regulation and support, that it cannot, perhaps, properly be made the ordinance of any religion, till that religion be received as the religion of the state."

This reasoning, however specious, is altogether hypothetical; and of all arguments those are the most fallacious which reason upon the divine proceedings from our notions of fitness and propriety. But allowing Christ and his apostles in the sabbatical appointment to have acted in some respects in accommodation to the primitive state of the gospel, a point which I feel no disposition to dispute, it does not seem fair to draw from it the conclusion which Dr. Paley labours to establish. If, in conformity with the then situation of the world, they maintained a reserve with respect to this institution, is it justifiable to infer from this circum

stance, that they did not intend it to consist of an entire day? It would be more just to infer the contrary; for, if they did not speak out plainly, this silence implies that the whole truth could not, from prudential considerations, be then delivered; for which reason, if, as Dr. Paley supposes, they really used a reserve in the institution of the sabbath, it imports that there was something more than they chose at that time to communicate. They must have intended to establish either the whole of the seventh day, or a part of it, for the Christian sabbath. If they had designed the latter, they might, according to Dr. Paley's argument, have done so with propriety; and their not doing so, is presumptive evidence that such was not their design: but if they intended to enjoin the consecration of the whole day, some caution in announcing it might be requisite, considering the prejudices both of Jews and Pagans in that age. The reasoning, then, of Dr. Paley in the above passage, whatever weight it may possess, ought in reality to be placed in the opposite scale to that for which it was meant. It is, likewise, undeniably plain that Christ and the apostles did sanction the dedication of a weekly day to religion; and as they did not, at the same time, either expressly or indirectly, limit it to any given portion of that period, they meant, we may fairly presume, an entire day. Combin

ing this with the reasons before adduced for believing this to be the actual fact, it would be unreasonable to doubt that we are bound to devote one whole day in the week to the observance of the Christian sabbath.

But clearly as this seems to be established, the mode of computing the day is left altogether indefinite. This, like other matters, respecting which no explicit directions are recorded in the sacred writings, must be left to the determination of every national church. As neither the epoch from which the hebdomadal rotation is to be counted, nor the mode of computing the diurnal divisions of it, are declared, they must be regarded as subjects upon which the word of God lays no stress; and therefore to be reckoned by all nations according to their customary methods of measuring time. To debate fiercely about the sabbath's beginning and ending, is to contend about that which is of little consequence, and upon which we have no adequate scriptural data for a decision. Remembering that the sacred oracles were not given to satisfy the scruples of those who are inclined to cavil, but to supply

• The various opinions as to the time of beginning and ending the holy rest of the sabbath, are discussed, in a curious and amusing manner, by Shepard, Theses Sabbaticæ, P. 3. See also Ironside, Seven Questions of the Sabbath, cap. xiv-xvi. ; Chafie, Tract on the Fourth Commandment, cap. i-viii.

general directions to the conscience, we should, in all cases of such a description, exercise a discreet sobriety and forbearance. We ought to accept with all thankfulness the light, whether it be little or much, which the Almighty has been pleased to communicate on points affecting the moral conduct of man, without presuming to dictate authoritatively where it shines with less than its wonted splendour.

Having now arrived at the end of our investigation of the sabbath under the Christian dispensation, it may be well to pause awhile, and to recall to our recollection the evidence which has been produced for the appropriation of a weekly day to the service of our God. It is surprising how it can be asserted, in opposition to testimony so ample and overpowering, that, under the gospel economy, every day is alike, and that, in this period of religious liberty, we are bound to the observance of no times or seasons. For the refutation of so dangerous an error, a body of evidence has been reviewed, which those may contemn who, in the littleness of human vanity, idolize human reason, but which it will ill become the devout believer in the gospel to scorn or reject. The original command of the sabbath has been shewn to be coeval with the world, which command having never been annulled by the same divine authority by which it was imposed, must