ventions of philosophy. Is it right, that the simple truths of the gospel should be so interwoven with questions of doubtful disputation, that plain Christians cannot separate the one from the other. Let us have the river of the water of life, as it comes to us, pure from the eternal fountain, unadulterated by mixtures of human philosophy."

THE DIVINE AUTHORITY AND PERPETUAL OBLIGATION OF THE LORD'S DAY, asserted in seven Sermons, delivered at the Parish Church of St. Mary, Islington, in the months of July and August, 1830. BY DANIEL WILSON, M. A., Author of Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity, &c. First American Edition, with a Recommendatory Preface, by Rev. L. WOODS, D. D. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 1831. pp. 212.

We are all bound to worship God, and attend to our spiritual and everlasting interests. But can these objects be secured, without devoting to them some definite portion of our time? Creatures of sense, drawn by a thousand allurements away from things unseen and eternal, how can the gospel, without a Sabbath, exert its full power on our own hearts, and diffuse its redeeming influences through the world? Will God be worshipped as he ought, or man prepare by repentance and faith for the joys of heaven, without a day expressly consecrated to these holy and exalted purposes?

Here then we perceive the grand design of the Sabbath. It does indeed furnish an indispensable season of rest for man and beast; but it was mainly intended to provide stated and sufficient opportunities for accomplishing the great purposes of religion. It arrests the current of worldly affairs, and lushes the din of business, and the revelry of pleasure, that in the stillness of its hallowed hours, the voice of God may be distinctly heard, and properly heeded. It spreads around us an air of sacredness and solemnity well fitted to prepare our minds for the worship of our Maker, and for meditation on the truths of the gospel. It recals to our memory the wonders of creation, providence and grace. It calls us to the study of God's word, to the examination of our own hearts, and the varied devotions of the closet and the family, of the social circle and the sanctuary. It turns our attention

awhile from time to eternity; it lifts our thoughts from earth to heaven, and bids us secure an everlasting inheritance there, by a timely acceptance of that gospel which promises pardon and salvation only to the penitent believer in Christ.

These remarks suggest the nature of the Sabbath. Its essential principle is that of devoting a definite part of our time to rest and devotion. The institution itself is quite distinct from the day on which it is observed. It must, indeed, be observed on some day; but the institution itself is one thing, and the day of its observance is another. The exact portion of time, or the particular day of the week, may not, in itself, be indispensable; but it is necessary that the portion of time should be fixed, and the same day be observed by all. Should one man devote to religious purposes one day in seven, and another one day in five or ten; or should one keep the first day of the week, another the fourth, and a third the sixth; how could there be any concert for the public worship of God, or for the ordinary concerns of life? One man's business would interfere with another man's devotion; the uproar of worldly pursuits and pleasures would disturb the quiet, solemn services of religion; and thus might society be thrown into such confusion as would threaten, ere long, to banish the peaceful spirit of piety from the world.

But who shall determine what portion of our time, and what day of the week, ought to be set apart for rest and devotion? There are obvious and urgent reasons why God, instead of leaving men to their own choice, should himself institute and enjoin the Sabbath. Jehovah is wiser than the blind, erring creatures of yesterday, and knows far better than we what portion of time, and what day of the week, will be most likely to meet the actual wants of mankind. The Maker of our bodies and the Father of our spirits, who built this fair and beauteous world for our residence, and spread over us the broad, blue canopy of heaven ;does not He know what Sabbath is demanded by our physical, moral, and religious necessities?

Only a divine lawgiver has authority sufficient to enforce a religious observance of one day instead of another. Had the day been selected by man, its expediency might have been called in question; its authority would have been resisted by many, as an encroachment on the rights of conscience; its character would have been divested of its sacredness, and its best influences entirely neutralized; every man would have felt at liberty either to keep no day at all, or to choose one for himself; as different persons would probably have observed different days, every day of the week might have been a Sabbath to some part of the same community; and thus would the wildest disorder have been introduced into all the concerns of business and religion. The very nature of the case, then, demands a divinely appointed day. No views of expediency, no civil legislation, no ecclesiastical de

cree, no voluntary agreement among men, would be sufficient to bind their consciences, and control their conduct. Who generally disregard the Sabbath? Those who acknowledge its expediency, but deny its divine origin and authority. Who perform its duties the most faithfully, and secure the largest share of its spiritual benefits? Those who revere it as an appointment of heaven for all mankind. Moral suasion and human enactments can procure for the Sabbath no deep devout reverence. God must speak himself, before men will hear and obey. His authority, and his only, is paramount and universal. His sanctions invest the Sabbath with a sacred character, with a power and ubiquity of influence, that follow its violator into his darkest lurking-place, and clench its obligations on his conscience too strongly ever to be skaken off by any effort short of an entire, everlasting renunciation of his allegiance to the King of kings, and Lord of lords. God's decision settles the point of duty forever, and binds all men alike to keep holy that portion of time, and that day of the week, which he has set apart for the high and sacred purposes of religion.

Here turns the whole question. If God has not appointed a Sabbath, we have none that deserves the name-only a holiday of pleasure and dissipation; but if he has appointed one, then it is binding alike on every member of the human family. This is the real, the only essential point in dispute on this subject, between the friends of God, and the motley multitude of errorists, who strive so hard to throw off the restraints of the Sabbath, by denying its divine authority and its broad and holy demands. Their sophistry here is too generally a mere subterfuge of guilt -one of the Protean forms which depravity so often assumes to evade the claims of God. For who are these assailants of the Sabbath? Those who breathe most of His spirit; who know no sin, neither is guile found in their mouth;' who are 'holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners?' No; such men are, with very few exceptions, firm believers in its divine authority; and all of them are its strict and conscientious observers, and its stedfast friends. Who, then, are its angry assailants? The Sceptic, the Infidel, the Universalist, the irreligious worldling, the unprincipled demagogue, the lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, the whole herd of profligates and villains; and we deeply regret to find some lax, temporising professors of a better faith, ranging themselves (perhaps unwittingly, yet really) ⚫ under the banners of this unholy and ominous warfare against the Sabbath.

But who is to decide the point in dispute? For ourselves we acknowledge but one tribunal of ultimate appeal on this subject ;— 4

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and of "the law and the testimeny" we would reverently inquire, whether God has actually ordained a Sabbath for all mankind?

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I. Look, then, at ITS ORIGINAL APPOINTMENT. It was instituted in paradise, and the progressive work of creation was so arranged, as to enforce its observance by the example of our Maker himself. On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made."*

Is it possible to mistake the import of a passage so perfectly plain? The sacred historian, after relating what had been done on each preceding day of the week, closes his simple account by informing us, that God rested on the seventh from all his works; and for this reason blessed the seventh day, and consecrated it (for this is the meaning of the original word) to the holy purposes of religion. Now, if we construe one part of this narrative literally, we must construe it all in the same way; if we suspect the literal truth of one part, we may with equal propriety suspect that of the whole; and thus might we venture to deny, or explain away, the entire account which Moses has given of the creation. Nay; we know not a single passage of sacred history which is likely to pass unhurt through the ordeal of that rash and reckless criticism, which dares to deny the literal truth of a statement so unequivocal respecting the original institution of the Sabbath in paradise.

How strange, then, the supposition, that the Sabbath was instituted by Moses in the wilderness, nearly three thousand years after the creation, and that this same Moses recorded it in the second chapter of Genesis merely by way of anticipation! By way of anticipation!! As well might we suppose, so far as the historical veracity of Moses is concerned, that the whole history of our race, previous to the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, was written by anticipation, and that Abraham was born, Adam created, and the world itself made in the wilderness!

What confidence could we repose in such a historian? This language naturally conveys the idea, and it has actually led nearly all his readers to suppose, that the Sabbath was instituted immediately after the creation. Did not Moses perceive the natural import of his own language? If not, he was utterly incompetent to write any history, and still more the earliest annals of our world. But did he mean just what he says? Then, if the

• Gen. ii. 2, 3.

Sabbath was not appointed in paradise, he was guilty of intentional deception; and, according to certain critics, the man whom God inspired to write the early history of our race, actually told a deliberate falsehood, to enforce on his countrymen the observance of the Sabbath!

Are any of our readers surprized to find that there is little or no mention of this sacred day from Adam to Moses? The reason is obvious. The narrative is extremely brief; the history of centuries is often condensed into a single page; and consequently many very important events are necessarily omitted. Does this omission prove that no such events occurred? Can a similar silence respecting the Sabbath justify the supposition that no Sabbath had ever been appointed? From Joshua to David, no mention is made of the Sabbath, even in the fuller and far more circumstantial history of that period; but can we, from such an omission, infer that the Sabbath did not then exist, and was entirely unknown to all the pious Judges of Israel? From Moses to Jeremiah, a period of more than eight hundred years, the rite of circumcision is nowhere expressly mentioned; but did prophets, and pious kings, and the whole Jewish nation neglect, for eight centuries, this seal of their covenant with God? If not, then the silence of Moses respecting the Sabbath, during the Patriarchal age, does not furnish a shadow of proof, that no Sabbath, had been given to the parents of our race.

But how can this supposition be reconciled with the fact, that nearly all the nations of antiquity were acquainted with the weekly division of time? The oldest pagan poets speak of this division; the Phenicians regarded one day in seven as holy; and we are informed by Josephus, that "no city of Greeks or Barbarians could be found, which did not acknowledge a seventh day's rest from labor ;" and by Philo, that "the Sabbath was a festival, not peculiar to any one people or country, but so common to all mankind, that it might be called a public and general feast of the nativity of the world." We might adduce a great variety of similar testimonies; but every student of ancient history must have met with abundant evidence, that the pagan nations of antiquity were familiar with the Jewish division of time into weeks. How shall we account for this? If the Sabbath was instituted at the close of creation, we can easily see how this division of time might have been handed down by tradition to all the descendants of Adam; but if the Sabbath was not known till the time of Moses, it would be impossible to account for so

* Hesiod, Homer, Callimachus, Linus, Lucian, &c.