it could lose, therefore, none of its sanctity by the abrogation of it. The same respect would be due to it as before that intervening dispensation. Whatever the Sabbath was when it entered the Mosaic ritual, that would it be when it came from it. The cessation of the ceremonial law would no more release the worshipper of God from the observation of a weekly rest, than it would cancel the injunction of filial piety, or the prohibition of theft, murder, adultery, false witness, or concupiscence. The importance of all we have been considering is in this view very material. We have shown its divine institution in paradise, the traces of its observance during the patriarchal ages, its re-enactment in the wilderness before the Mosaical economy, at the miraculous fall of manna. We have also noticed its solemn incorporation in the ten commandments-the awful glories of that promulgation-its dignity above all the ceremonies of the Jewish religion-its essential and perpetual obligation as inculcated by the prophets, and destined to form a part of the gospel age. It comes forth, therefore, from the hand of Moses with all its pristine authority, which it had, in fact, never lost as to any portion of the human race, except as the corruption of man had perverted or forgotten the original institution.

Nay, it enters the gospel dispensation with more than its patriarchal majesty and obligation. It has been accumulating, not diminishing, its claims upon men, by all the testimonies to its essential importance which Moses and the prophets gave. It has acquired new force, new evidence, new illustration, by its position under an economy which, if it had been merely a ceremony, would have buried it amid a thousand surrounding rites.

The gospel will, therefore, we may conclude, secure to the original institution of the Sabbath more ample scope, higher obligations, and a more elevated position of dignity and importance. The gospel is the last and most perfect dispensation, the completion of all the preceding, the time of enlarged privilege, of superabundant grace! If, therefore, a weekly day of repose and religious worship was granted to the saints of the patriarchal dispensations -and if even under the law of bondage this blessing was continued to the Jew, much more will it be vouchsafed to the Christian, much more will it accompany "the law of

liberty." We may be sure that the boon is not revoked; we may be sure that man is not doomed now to seven days' labor instead of six; we may be sure that his time for worshipping God is not abridged, nor the pledge of the covenant of grace lessened and restrained.

But this is not all. The Sabbath had been increasing in its moral influence upon man from the first institution. Every fresh motive to the love of God, every ray of glory from Mount Sinai, every prophecy of a future Savior, had been augmenting proportionably his duty, by affording him more copious aids in fulfilling it. Christians, then, being favored with a clearer knowledge of the divine will, having more motives to love and serve God, having a more abundant effusion of the Holy Spirit, than under any preceding period, we may be sure that their character will be superior, their delight in the worship of God more warm, their celebration of God's praises in creation and redemption proportionably more fervent. Yet, if a sabbatical institution is not binding upon Christians, we must reverse the supposition. We must forget the devotion of the patriarchs, the spiritual fervor of the psalmist, the zeal for the Sabbath which animated Nehemiah and Ezra, the delight in its duties foretold by Isaiah as marking the gospel age; and the Christian must take his station below the Jew in spirituality and love. But this can never be the case. We may conclude that if one day in seven was the measure under more imperfect dispensations, a less term cannot suffice under the influence of so many motives and inducements to a higher degree of love in the worship of God.*

We shall want, therefore, no enactment, no express command in the New Testament. Things will go on as they did before the Mosaic economy, except as a richer effusion of grace will render the Sabbath a more delightful season of repose than in the preceding ages. The worship of the New Testament will be, we may conclude, a restoration of the patriarchal in its primitive simplicity and purity, dropping the incumbrances imposed during the time of the law, and acquiring all the new influence and obligations which the infinite benefits of the gospel confer.

* Archdeacon Pott.

And thus, as the patriarchal sacrifices passed on into the passover and numerous offerings of the law during the term of that intervening dispensation, and then emerged in the simple evangelical supper of our Lord-as the patriarchal circumcision reserved its rites during the same economy, and then yielded to the sacrament of baptism—as the patriarchal institution of marriage, suspended on account of the hardness of the people's hearts during the Jewish age, was re-established and came to its full effect in the Christian law of marriage,-so the patriarchal day of rest, with its worship of God, its celebration of the wonders of creation, and its provision for the religious repose of man, after having been annexed for a period to the national covenant of the Jews, was restored to its first design in the Christian Sabbath.

A re-enactinent in the New Testament would be a denial, by implication, of its previous institution and authority. Nothing is re-enacted in the gospel. The moral law, the essential duties of religion, the relations of man to his Maker and Benefactor, the necessity of a season for divine worship, the proportion of time destined for it from the creation, all the precepts of the decalogue-remain unchanged. They are not again formally promulgated. Creation and Mount Sinai suffice. They go on of course, and the Sabbath with them, if no express and formal abrogation of it be found in the gospel.

But we are anticipating our next discourse. Our object is merely to bring up the sabbatical rest to the threshhold of the New Testament, and to leave it there, ready to

enter.

Let us then turn from these discussions to some practical points which may affect our hearts.

1. Let us learn to give to the holy day of rest that PROMINENCY IN OUR ESTEEM which Moses was instructed to give it in his dispensation. Christian brethren, let the gospel be as influential upon us to observe the day of rest and holy worship, as the law was of old. Let not the Sabbath be sunk amidst external observances, ordinary rites, an outward adherence to a national creed, the common decencies of religion. Let it be exalted and placed aloft as the Queen of days. Let the admiration of the Jew, blind as it often was, be a stimulus to the more en

lightened devotion of the Christian. Let the mercies of God in the redemption from the Egyptian captivity, which bound with additional motives the Sabbath upon the ancient people, teach us how the mercies of a spiritual redemption from sin and death should bind on us the sanctification of that day when they are especially celebrated. Let the perpetual inculcation of this duty by Moses, on all occasions, in every connection, by every species of motive, lead us to urge it upon our children and households on every fit opportunity. Let the solemn promulgation of it in "The Ten Commandments" be the rallying point of all our arguments, and the brief and conclusive evidence of the perpetuity of the institution.

II. And to this end let us IMBIBE THE SPIRIT of LOVE AND DELIGHT in the worship of God, which the Psalms and Prophets display. We never can imitate the earnestness of Moses, nor place the Sabbath on the prominency where he exhibits it, unless we join to it the holy David's love to God, and the sublime Isaiah's spiritual joy in his service. O, how much are our Sabbaths, practically speaking, below those of the saints of old. How much is our repose of soul in God, our fainting of heart after his courts, our view of the happiness which religion communicates, inferior to the feelings which these holy men experienced! Let us pray, let us seek for such a spiritual state of heart, for such a real choice and preference of God in Christ Jesus, and such a delight in the contemplation of his glory in creation, providence, and redemption, as may enlarge our hearts and "lift them up in the ways of the Lord;" as may render the Sabbath a delight, as may surround it with the honor and esteem which are its due, and make "one day in God's courts better than a thousand." Then, then should we indeed sanctify our Sabbaths. Then would disputes soon cease. Then should we abstain naturally and with choice, from "doing our own ways, finding our own pleasure, or speaking our own words." And what, indeed, does the love of our Savior Christ, and the grace of the Holy Spirit do for us, if they do not raise us out of the world, and unite us with the spiritual church in religious adoration? This is the secret. of true religion. It reigns by love, it subdues by the sense of benefits, it calms and purifies the soul, it turns the cur

rent of the affections towards God, it pays cheerfully and with delight the tribute of one day in seven, as the Lord's portion and share out of man's time and efforts, and for the training and discipline of the soul for an eternity of worship in heaven.

III. But add to these motives THE AWFUL INDIGNATION of Almighty God against the contempt of his name and his day. Judge from the terrors of Mount Sinai and the denunciations of the prophets against the sin of polluting the Sabbath, what is the esteem in which the Lord holds it. I would urge upon my own conscience, and that of others, the guilt of that weariness in the service of God, that contempt and neglect of its spiritual benefits, that inward disgust and pride which harden the heart against penitence and a return to God, that conceit and self-reliance and self-satisfaction which engender dislike for divine worship and religious repose. I would urge the criminality, the peculiar criminality, under the spiritual dispensation of the New Testament, of those sins which Moses and the prophets condemned with so much vehemence under the less perfect economy of the law. The greater ease and liberty of the gospel and our freedom from the bond of ceremonies, only augment the guilt of that enmity against the holy nature and blessed will of God, from which contempt of his worship springs. We have now no multiplied festivals to observe, no difficult and expensive offerings to present, no perpetual oblations to go through with, no sabbatical years to observe. The simple and noble worship and repose of one day in seven is what God commands-or rather grants us as a boon-and only enjoins when we refuse thus to receive it.

Awaken, then, Christian brethren, from the torpor and lukewarmness which too much mark the age in which we live. A philosophic conceit, the pride of intellect, indifference to truth, a selfish calculating love of ease and indulgence, a blindness to the magnitude and dignity of the claims of our invisible Benefactor-these are our sins-and these were the sins of the days of Ezekiel and Malachi under the old dispensation. And from these sins, a readiness to listen to objections against the Sabbath springs. Who would ever have endured the fiction of an anticipation in