% PRINCETON, N. J. % Presented by Mr. Samuel Agnew of Philadelphia, Pa, BV 110 .M2 1822^ ' Macbeth, John. A dissertation on the Sabbath Number L. V % DISSERTATION ON THE SABBATH; THE NATURE OF THE INSTITUTION, AND THE OBLIGATIONS TO ITS OBSERVANCE, ARE STATED AND ILLUSTRATED. BY THE Rev. JOHN^ACBETH, A.M. GLASGOW: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM TURNBULL; WAUGH & INNES, EDINBURGH; AND LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, & BROWN, LONDON. 1822. James Curll, Printer, 26, Bell-Street. TO JOHN SMITH WRIGHT, Esa. OF BULLCOTE- LODGE. SIR, A short publication of mine having fallen into your hands, you were pleased to express a kindness for the Author; and since that time, he has enjoyed the favour of your friendship. When, with some reluctance, you allowed me to prefix your name to the following Work, it was upon the express condition, that I should use this liberty with great deli- cacy. I will not give you pain, by attempting to display that humble and fervent piety, by which you are distin- guished, and of which you have given many substantial proofs to the world. a2 IV If my humble labours shall be blessed of Heaven to promote the cause of goodness, I know you will rejoice ; and the highest wish of the Author will be giatified. That you may be long spared to be a blessing to your Family, and to all with whom you are connected, is the earnest desire of, SIR, Your obUged humble Servant, JOHN MACBETH. 2bth December y 1822. PREFACE. The following Dissertation on the Sabbath, in which, the nature of the institution — the history of its orinjin — the obligations to its observance — and the advantages attending its sanctification, are examined and detailed — is oflPered to the public with much deference. The Author lays no claim to originality, in any of the arguments he has employed. He is perfectly aware, that we live at too late a period of the world, to obtain so rare a merit, on a question that has been so often, and so fully discussed. The subject, however, is one, respecting which, mankind are very much divided in opinion ; and he is not without hope, that the present work may prove useful, by calling the attention of the reader to a view of it, which has not been very generally contemplated. He is sensible, that there is much omitted which might, in the opinion of others, have been introduced; A3 VI and the discussion of some controverted points may not be so full as a polemical writer would exhibit, or expect. But it has been the Author's study, to reject all extraneous matter — to avoid all unnecessary controversy — and to state and illus- trate arguments, which might contribute to advance the knowledge and piety of the reader, rather than display his own acuteness or dexterity. The present is an age of great profession of religion; and, at the same time, of great profane- ness; and it would be particularly gratifying, if the following Treatise should have the slightest effect in checking the spread of the one, and giving excitement and encouragement to the other. Our intercourse with the nations of the Continent, has not contributed to increase our attachment to the ordinances and the laws of the Gospel; and it is much to be feared, that, where a regard to these is neglected, the principles and duties of morality will be but partially cherished and obeyed. The profanation of the Lord's Day has long been loudly complained of, as a growing evil among us; and if it be true, that, on its public observance, our character as a religious people mainly depends, that character must be in imminent jeopardy, from the open and increasing violation of the sanctity Vll of this sacred institution. It becomes the duty, then, of all ranks in the country, to oppose the authority of their instructions, and the influence of their example, to an evil which threatens us with national demoralization and depravity; and it would be well, if the higher and privileged orders of the state, would open their eyes to the consequences of public profligacy, before it reaches a crisis, at which it may defy their wisdom and power to apply a remedy or restraint. The desecration of the Sabbath, has, like all other acts of religious apostacy, " arisen from small beginnings; and, by an unperceived, because a gradual growth, it has, at last, gained a most alarming height." The violation of the fourth commandment, has greatly accelerated and aggra- vated the violation of the others; because, when the fear and worship of God are publicly and habitually cast off", the private restraints of con- science are easily relaxed, — the feelings of personal apprehension are soon subdued, — and the censure and reprobation of the world gradually disre- garded and despi-sed. The truth of religion, however, is immutable; and if the penalties which are denounced against its despisers, are not uniformly inflicted, they are, most certainly, Vlll uniformly incurred. The cup of the wrath of one nation, may be sooner filled than that of another; but, in no instance, can the neglect or contempt of the sacred ordinances of religion escape un- punished. The laws which were promulgated from Mount Sinai, are still binding upon all the nations and kingdoms of the earth; and wherever the more spiritual and comprehensive enactments of the Gospel have been published, there do the justice and the mercy of God, with peculiar sanc- tions, enforce their obedience. He, therefore, is the truest friend to his country, who is the most ardent promoter of its moral interests, and he deserves to be most richly emblazoned in the annals of its reputation, who stands in the breach of its public and private immoralities, and warns the guardians of its political rights, and the patrons of its sacred institutions, of the danger they will incur to themselves, and the evil they will entail on pos- terity, if they relax the restraints, or diminish the obligations of religion on the heart and the life of man. He deserves the highest reward, who holds up to his countrymen, the true portrait of their virtues and their vices; and who ceases not to proclaim to them, that righteousness alone can IX exalt a natfon, while sin is the disgrace and the ruin of every people. " Wherefore," thus saith the Lord, " be instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee — lest I make thee desolate— a land not inhabited." * Lo, this is what has been sought out of old, and found; hear it, and know it for thy good — " If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." f * Jer. vi. 8. f Isaiah Iviii. 13, 14. % ^^"^^^^ CONTENTS. Page INTRODUCTION, 13 SECTION II. Origin and Antiquity of the Institution of the Sabbath, 16 SECTION III. The Observance of the Sabbath unconnected with the Per- formance of Ceremonial Rites, 27 SECTION IV. Examination of the grounds on which the distinction between moral and positive duties is founded; so far as that distinction affects the moral obligation of observing the Sabbath, 37 SECTION V. Moral obligation of the Sabbath, proved from the primary end of its institution, .. 57 SECTION VI. Review of the objections urged against the Antiquity and moral obligation of the Sabbath, 71 SECTION VII. The Writings of the Old Testament, furnish the clearest and most satisfactory proof, that the observance of the Sabbath had a moral, and not a ceremonial obligation, 92 Xll SECTION VIII. Page Moral obligation of the Sabbath, under the Christian Dispen- sation, 115 SECTION IX. Reason of the change of the Sabbath from the Seventh to the First Day of the Week, 129 SECTION X. Manner in which the Sabbath is to be Sanctified, 165 SECTION XL Examination of some of the Causes and Consequences of the Profanation of the Sabbath, 200 SECTION XII. Advantages which the Sanctification of the Sabbath is calcu- lated to produce, 227 NOTES, 265 DISSERTATION, &c. INTRODUCTION. The institution of the Sabbath, whether contem- plated in a moral or political point of view, cannot fail to have furnished to every true Christian, copious matter of varied and pleasing reflection. Its wisdom and utility, in reference merely to the temporal concerns of man, claim for it our highest regard and admiration: for, if we consider that human nature is unable to endure the hardship of incessant or long-continued exertion, and that, by the present constitution of society, the largest portion of our race must continue to be " hewers of wood, and drawers of water," — in the view only of affording relief to our toilsome condition, the appointment of one day of rest in seven, must appear peculiarly seasonable and salutary. If we do not regard the bulk of mankind as mere drudges, whose destiny it is, to toil in hopeless B 14 poverty, while the higher classes draw from their labours, the means of ease and luxury — if we admit, that all men have a right to personal enjoyment, and have certain duties to perform, as rational and accountable beings — it must be allowed, that it is of the highest importance to their intellectual improvement and happiness, that there should be regular and fixed intervals of rest, devoted to the cultivation of moral and religious truth. This is one end of the institution of the Sabbath; and thus does it prove an effectual means of preventing men from becoming forgetful of their religious and moral duties, and, consequently, from relapsing into a deplorable state of brutal ignorance and barbarity. But this, comparatively speaking, is a very con- fined and inferior end, of this, the most ancient and venerable institution known to human society. As the means of uniting us in fellowship with God, and of recalling to our minds his creating power and redeeming love — as the symbol of that peace- ful blessedness which awaits the faithful in the land of uninterrupted purity and rest — there is no appointment of Providence, and no ordinance of religion, which point more directly to the present dignity of man, and his future destination to glory. It abstracts him from the cares and the business of life. It lifts him above the influence of his senses, 15 and of the objects which seduce or distract them. It withdraws him from an intercourse with what is transient, and unsatisfactory, and perishing, to a communion with what is immutable in its existence, and unlimited in the sources of its enjoyment. It raises him above the character and the concerns of a mortal. It carries his wishes and his hopes beyond the associations and employments of an inhabitant of this world of change and decline; and furnishes him with a foretaste of the peace, and placidity, and blessedness, which await him, after the fashions and the follies of time have passed away. It exalts him, in fine, above the pursuits and pleasures of animal existence. It leads him to the fountain of intellectual and moral felicity; and consummates all his labours, and disappointments, and virtues, and sufferings, with the hope and earnest of glory, honour, and im- mortality. '^'^^^^ '^^^%. 16 PEIHGBTON 1^ RiQMmf SECTION II. Origin and Antiquity/ of the Institution of the Sabbaths In the brief account which Moses has left us, of the early history of the world, the work of creating and replenishing the earth with all the beautiful varieties of its vegetable and animal tribes, is re- presented as having been progressive. At first, it was without form and void ; but, when the Spirit of the Almighty moved upon the face of the deep, darkness fled away, and light and gladness spread over the renovated scene. The blue ethereal fir- mament came next into existence, at his awakening call, in whose boundless fields, numberless worlds, various and vast in their magnitudes, revolve; but which, notwithstanding all our curiosity, and all our ambition, to penetrate their analogies and histories, will, in all probability, never be other- wise known to living man, than that they do exist. The waters, again, are commanded to withdraw from the indiscriminate possession of the earth, and their channels are encompassed with bounds which they cannot pass. The grateful view of a rich and 17 diversified herbage, next clothes the surface of our globe, and every herb and tree yielded their fruit after their kind, whose seed was within them every one after its kind, so that their succession might never fail. At the omnipotent command of Jehovah, vast masses, both of luminous and dark matter, hasten to arrange themselves into systems; and, along with some which took their stations in the regions of unformed light, and others which disposed themselves within the enlivening influence of some primary star, God appointed, in our portion of the firmament, two lights, " the sun, to rule by day, and the moon, to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever." Next, there came into existence, at the creative voice of the Almighty, endless tribes of living creatures, with which, the air, and the earth, and the seas, were peopled. All around, and above, and below, teemed with fowl after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and creeping things after their kind; — all endowed with instincts, the most wisely suited to their natures, and surrounded with ingredients of life and happiness, the most abundant, and the most perfectly adapted to their capacities. Last of all, man appeared upon the surface of the globe, made after the similitude of God himself, and gifted by his inspiration with understanding, by which he might hold dominion over all the beasts of the field, B 3 18 and the fowls of the air; and with the power of distinguishing right from wrong, by which he might choose what was good, and avoid what was evil, and continue to enjoy the favour and com- munion of his Creator. — " And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good." Now, after all this marvellous and magnificent work is completed, — which, in condescension to the ideas and feelings of man, and in correspondence with the established divisions of time, is represented as having been finished in six days, — on the seventh, the Almighty blessed the day, and sancti- fied it; because, on it he had rested from all the works which he had created and made. " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it."* Here, then, is the first intimation of a Sabbath, which is to be found in any writings; and there are some circumstances connected with the account, which afford the strongest evidence of its very high antiquity, and give a very powerful sanction to its universal obligation. We have the concurrent testimony of ancient Gen. ii. 1, 2, 5. 19 history, that the institution of that short period, called weeks, consisting each of seven days, was the first method which was resorted to, for measuring and dividing time. Now, we are naturally led to enquire. What event or circum- stance could have suggested to the early inhabitants of the world, this division of time, in preference to any other? The history of every society of men, which ever existed on the earth, generally exhibits to us some causes sufficient to account for till the political customs, and domestic rites, and conventional practices, which prevailed among them; and, if we are unable, at any time, to dis- cover the causes of these rites and customs, the failure must be ascribed entirely to our ignorance of the circumstances in which they originated; or, what is the same thing, to our want of access to the records or legends by which they are explained. Fortunately for our general argument, we have access, in the present case, to the most satisfactory information. The computation by days, is so obvious, that it would, unquestionably, be the first method which men in the very first stage of society would employ; and, as soon as they had begun to observe the phaenomena of the heavens, the division of time into years would readily be suggested to their minds. The division of months, also, would be alike early and naturally adopted: for, if the apparent circuit of the sun round the earth, gave rise to the distinction of years, the latter period of time would equally originate in the successive revolutions of the moon round the same centre. But the institution of weeks was antecedent to any of these last two divisions of time; and its immemorial use among the nations of antiquity, without any variation in its form or length, clearly points to a date prior to the discoveries of science, or the improvements of art. The length of the year, besides, was different among different people, in the early ages of the world; and so also was that of months. But the week, embracing a period of seven days, never varied. It could not, there- fore, as some have supposed, be a subdivision of one of the periods now mentioned; otherwise, it must have shared the variations, to which, at different times, and in different countries, they were subjected. This, however, was not the case; and Assyrians and Egyptians — Arabians, Israelites, and Indians — have, in all ages, employed, as a measure of time, a week, consisting of seven days. Among the ancient Romans, Gauls, Britons, and Germans — as well as among the nations of the North, and of America — the same custom pre- vailed; and we must, therefore, seek its origin in some cause which was common to all, but uncon- nected with the peculiarities of any. 21 The tradition, concerning the space of time employed in the creation of the world, — the ordi- nance of heaven, respecting the sanctification of the seventh day, published immediately after that event, — can alone account for the universality and antiquity of the above custom.* That this tradition was derived from the Books of Moses, is impossible: because, it existed long before their publication ; and because we know, that there was nearly an equal reluctance among the Jews and the Heathens to give, or receive knowledge from each other, as well as nearly an equal abhorrence of each other's customs. Among the Gentile nations, particularly, there existed a deep-rooted contempt for every thing Jewish; and, as we have the most satisfactory evidence, that the distinction of weeks, and the observance of a seventh day, dedicated to the worship of the Supreme Deity, constituted a universal custom among all the nations destitute of divine revelation, we must go back to the land of Shinar, and the days " when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech," to find the origin of the tradition in question, and to account • Neque est ulla civitas Graecorum aut Barbarorum, neque ulla gens, ad quam, septimi diei, in quo vacamus, consuetude minine pervenerit. Joseph, Cont, Apj), 22 for the institution of weeks.* On the sixth day, God created man, and gave him dominion over all the inferior creation. " On the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made. And he blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it ; because that in it he had rested from all his work which he had created and made." In conformity, then, to the example and command of the Almighty, (for the above account of the institution of the Sabbath, has been viewed as an express order for its obser- vance,-)-) Adam would consecrate every seventh day to the holy exercises of devotion; and the recur- rence of such days would furnish him with the mode of reckoning the time which passed over him, by weeks, before he could have any experi- mental knowledge of its division into months and years, — and before he could, by any circumstances whatever, be led to adopt such a division. The knowledge, moreover, of the divine appoint- ment of the Sabbath, and of the institution of weeks, would be easily transmitted from Adam to Noah; and as Noah was distinguished as a preacher of righteousness, we may be assured, that he would not fail to instruct his posterity in the divine ordi- nances and laws which he had learned from his • See Note A. f See Note B. 23 forefathers. From them, the same knowledge would be directly, and without perversion, con- veyed to Abraham and the other Patriarchs; and from Ham and Japheth, it would likewise, without doubt, be communicated to all the other nations of mankind, which soon spread over the face of the earth.* In confirmation of this statement, I may here more particularly observe, that we have as full evidence as the nature of the case will admit, that the practice of computing time by weeks, did prevail among the Patriarchs; and there can be no reasonable doubt, that it was a practice coeval with the history of man, and observed by him, in honour of the creation. It is recorded, that when the Almighty called Noah into the ark, he sus- pended the execution of his judgment, for the space of seven days.f When the waters began to subside, Noah, at intervals of the same duration, * It is worthy of notice, that Adam lived 508 years after the birth of Enoch, 243 after that of Methuselah, 66 after that of Lamech, the father of Noah, and he was dead only 126 years at the birth of the last mentioned Patriarch. The wisdom of this arrangement is obvious. Knowledge could not, in all probability, have been transmitted entire, or without perversion, orally or by tradition, through so many hundred years, (nearly eleven hun- dred, from the creation of Adam, till the birth of Noah,) if the age of man had been as limited as it is now. As it was, however, the risk of loss or corruption was of no amount whatever, f Gen. vii. 4. 24 sent out a dove, three different times, to ascertain if any part of the land was left dry.* Jacob, when serving for Rachel, was commanded by her father Laban, to " fulfil her week;" and it appears from Judges xiv. 12, that by this, was meant, the custom of entertaining her relations for seven days before he received her in marriage, f Seven was the number of perfection among the Jews; — and, accordingly, we find, in their sacred books, a great many mysterious events and cir- cumstances represented by it; as well as some cases, in which it is obviously applied as symbolical of the character of the true God, the Creator of the heaven and the earth. When Job was visited with his heavy calamities and afflictions, he sat on the ground for seven days and seven nights, before he gave utterance to his grief, f Balaam, in several instances, erected seven altars to the Lord ; and offered, on every altar, a bullock and a ram. 1| The friends of Job were commanded to offer the same number of bullocks and rams, as a burnt-offering to the Lord, before they were ac- cepted by him; § and other proofs of the universality of the custom, might be plentifully adduced from • Gen. viii. 8 — 15. f Gen. xxix. 27. ^ Job ii. 15. II Num. xxiii. 1, to the end. § Job xlii. 8. various parts of the sacred writings. — See 1 Chron. XV. 26. 2 Chron. xxiv. 21. and Ezek. xlv. 23. Now, if it be allowed, (as we think, in fair criti- cism, it ought,) that the work of creation was sym- bolically alluded to, by the custom to which we have just referred, — and that, moreover, the work of creation was commemorated in the patriarchal, or pastoral ages, by the division of time into weeks, — we arrive, by a just and clear induction, at this inference, that the seventh day must have been regularly computed and remembered from the beginning. And, such being the case, there can be no doubt, that the worshippers of the living and true God, bad all along honoured that day, by such a cessation from servile labour as their circumstances would permit. On the whole, then, we regard the fact, of the very ancient and universal division of time into weeks, as a direct and powerful argument for the very ancient institution of the Sabbath, and th€ very universal knowledge of the moral obligation of its observance. Because that knowledge was afterwards corrupted and lost, militates nothing against our position ; and hence, we cortsider our- selves warranted to conclude, that, as the division of time by weeks, was the earliest mode of compu- tation adopted by mankind, so the institution of the Sabbath, which was the cause of that division, c 26 must have been the earliest public religious ap- pointment with which they were acquainted. I am perfectly aware, however, that all which has now been advanced, may be assented to by men, who still deny the moral obligation of ob- serving and sanctifying the Sabbath. I know that there are persons, who, with an inconsistency and an obstinacy, surely not very creditable to their judgment or piety, admit the truth of all that is related in the Book of Genesis, respecting the creation of the world, and the space of time which is there represented as being occupied in the stu- pendous work, — and yet deny that the observance of the day of rest, there described as sanctified and set apart for the worship of God, was meant to be morally binding on us. But, as the ground of their objection involves some points different from that we have been considering above, we shall make it the subject of examination in a separate Section, 27 SECTION III. The Observance of the Sabbath unconnected with the Performance of Cei'emonial Rites. An opinion has been openly avowed, and stoutly defended, by some expounders of moral duty, who have manifested an indiscreet zeal for simplifying and reducing the external form* of religion, that the observance of days and seasons, is, under the Christian dispensation, or in the writings of the New Testament, enjoined by no positive authority; and that, therefore, their neglect interferes with no moral obligation, and is subject to no moral penalty. From an apparent eagerness, moreover, to get quit of the observance of the Sabbath, as a duty binding on the hearts and consciences of all men, — they contend, that it was only a day of ceremonial appointment, — that it was only one of those institutions, which were designed to distin- guish the peculiar character and religion of the Jews, — and that its obligations were, of conse- quence, abrogated, when our Saviour triumphed over principalities and powers — and blotted out c 2 S8 the hand-writing of ordinances that was against us; and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. I shall not stop, at present, to inquire, what may be the particular meaning of the Apostle in the words just quoted; for this^ we shall have an opportunity of doing more amply, as we proceed ; but, for the purpose of setting the question before us, in a clear point of view, I make the following remarks: — That which is in itself purely ceiemonial, has no natural or essential connection with moral or religious feeling. All ceremonial appointments and acts are purely arbitrary in their nature, and secondary in their influence on the mind; and cannot possess the same value or force as those commandments which reach a controlling autho- rity ta the counsels and purposes of the under- standing, and to the public and private transactions of the life. Who, for instance, would compare the abstinence from eating blood, or any legally unclean animal, with abstinence from falsehood and fraud, or intemperance and extortion? Or who would say, that the act of making the sign of the cross on any part of the body; or of performing an ablution, was alike important with that of working in upon the mind a mortification of evil and impure passions? Or, that the act of travelling to the ancient seat of the tabernacle, to discharge m a vow, was alike acceptable in the sight of God, with tiiJit of continually going about visiting the widows and the fatherless in their afflictions, and keeping ourselves unspotted from the corruptions and iniquities of the world? Ceremonial acts and appointments, moreover, are only temporary and local in their sanctions; and, except so far as their observance is enjoined by a positive rule, or com- mandment, they may, or may not, be performed, without any moral praise, or reproach being associated with our conduct. In themselves, they are matters of indifference- — and it is only because they are the means ordained for the expression of our dependence upon God, and our veneration of his power; it is only because they are the sign of our desire to purify our hearts from iniquity, and to advance in the cultivation and practice of holi- ness and truth, that there is any obligation or responsibility attached to them. Besides, the peculiarity of their being only temporary in their obligations, they were only local in their influence, and could not, in the very nature of things, apply to the condition of every people. Such were almost all the ritual services prescribed by the Mosaic law; binding the whole Jewish nation to the performance of sacrifices, which could only be offered within the precincts of that country; and to the observance of ablutions and penances, and c 3 30 to distinctions of food and dress, which were chiefly designed to cure or counteract their tendencies to adopt the rites, and practise the abominations of idolatry, and to preserve them on the earth as a peculiar people, dedicated to the worship of the one living and true God. This, we conceive, was the great end of the ritual services, prescribed to the descendants of Abraham; and they were continued among them, ^s a test of their patience and sincerity in submitting to the authority, in adoring the majesty, and obeying the commandments of that Almighty Being, who, with an outstretched arm, and great terribleness, delivered them from the bondage of Egypt, and gave them a victorious settlement in the land of Canaan. They formed a set of auxil- iary rules, excellently suited to an infant church, whose members were unable to comprehend fully the more spiritual doctrines of religion; and who were in perpetual danger of being drawn on to make shipwreck of their faith, by the vices and corrup- tions of their heathen neighbours. They served as landmarks, to show them all that was externally due, of homage and reverence, to the Almighty Creator of the heaven and the earth. They were well calculated, at all times, to keep before their view the great doctrine of the unity of the God- head; to preserve within their minds a lively sense 31 of the sinfulness of idolatry, and to inspire them with a hatred of the practices, and a dread of the consequences to which it led. Important, however, and necessary as they were, for aiding the worshipper in his adoration of the divine attributes, they were only adapted to the condition of an infant people — they were only the symbolical representations of an original that was yet to be revealed — they were only the types and shadows of a more simple and spiritual dispensation that was yet to come; and, hence, we are informed, that when He, to whom they all pointed, appeared in the world, as the author of a new and everlasting righteousness — he blotted out the hand-writing of ordinances that stood against us, in the legal cere- monies of the ancient dispensation, and directed us to a purer, and more spiritual manner of wor- shipping the Father, through himself, as the way, the truth, and the life. But the institution of the Sabbath, as we have already shown, was long prior to the introduction or establishment of the cere- monial rites of the Jewish worship; and it cannot, by any fair rule of criticism, be regarded as possessing the same character, or as being destined . for the same end. The fate of the one, cannot, by any fair construction, be considered as involved in the fate of the other. The hand-writing of legal S2 ordinances that stood against us, embraces all those ritual prescriptions, and sacrificial offerings, which formed the middle-wall of partition, that prevented the Gentiles from having access to the knowledge, the worship, and the favour of the one living and true God; and which Jesus Christ our peace-maker, broke down, that he might reconcile both Jew and Gentile unto God, in one body by the cross. But the institution of the Sabbath, was primarily and preemi- nently intended to unite all mankind in the bonds of brotherly unity and religious homage, to their com- monParent and Benefactor,and could not, therefore, be included under the " law of commandments," contained in ordinances which the Saviour abolished, that he might make to himself of twain, one new man, and preach peace to them that were afar off, and to them that were nigh. A ritual, or ceremonial act, has a reference only to the externals of religious worship; and experience has proved to us, that it may be performed, in numberless instances, without one affection of the heart being awakened to fervour of devotion tovvards the Most High. A moral, or spiritual act, (for I take the term moral in its highest and most extended sense, embracing the operation of our power of distinguishing right from wrong, our consciousness of duty and of crime, and our capacity of enjoy- ment and suffering, ) a moral act has a reference to the very essentials of religion, and is directly cal- culated to quicken and increase our love and reve- rence of our Creator, and, through him, our love and obedience of all the virtues of a holy and pious life. It is true, that the same authority which commanded the Hebrews to consecrate to the Lord, the firstlings of their flocks, commanded them also to remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy; but no one, I presume, would hold these acts to be intrinsically of equal value, any more than he would account the offering of thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil, to be equally binding on the human conscience, and equally calculated to advance human virtue and happiness, with the exalted, though unostentatious dedication of our hearts and our souls, " to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God." The sanctifi- cation of the Sabbath, embraces our instruction and advancement in the knowledge and performance of those last mentioned duties; and it must, therefore, be an institution preeminently superior, in its sanc- tions and its tendencies, in its obligations and its uses, to all ritual or ceremonial appointments whatever. Wherefore, let it be particularly remembered, that if, by the ceremonial law and worship of God, be meant those only which were 34 delivered to the descendants of Abraham, to the heirs of the promised land, (and this, we believe, is generally admitted,) then, the appointment alluded to, in the second chapter of Genesis, cannot be included under that character. When the Almighty rested from his labour, and blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, he had intimated no intention of selecting any particular people to be the depositories of his ordinances, and the pre- servers of the knowledge of his will and worship, among men. It was immediately after the creation of the world — it was immediately after he had planted man upon the earth, to hold dominion over every living thing that moveth upon it — to preserve upon it some resemblance to the glory and perfection of heaven, and to spread the image and the worship of Himself over its yet unpolluted, and smiling, and luxuriant surface — it was after this, that God rested on the seventh day, and blessed and sanctified it. We ask, then, Was this an act which referred solely to the exercise of the infinite attributes of the divinity? Was this an act unconnected with the future condition and felicity of man? Or, was it not meant to be an institution in society, commemorative of the creating power, wisdom, and goodness of the Most High? A Being of infinite power, could not possibly grow 35 faint or weary in the accomplishment of any under- taking, the most stupendous, nay, far more stupen- dous than any of which our minds can conceive: and, when we are informed that He rested from his labour, the language must be regarded as applied to the Creator, in reference to the weak- ness and imperfection of our understanding; and must have been intended to secure a compliance with the practice, on the ground of imitating the most exalted and most perfect example. " Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work— But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it, thou shalt not do any work; thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, &c. For, 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 seventh day, and hallowed it." At this point of our discussion, however, I am bound to observe, that a distinction, which has been long made, and very generally adopted, respecting the nature of some of the divine com- mandments, has had a very extensive, and, I hesi- tate not to say, a very pernicious effect, in lessening the opinion of men, concerning the obligations they are under to obey that one, in which the duties of the Sabbath are enjoined; and although there be 36 considerable difficulties attached to the subject, I shall endeavour to make it appear, that too much has been built upon the distinction in question; and that it is not, to the extent which has been alleged, founded on the nature and philosophical relations of the human mind. But its importance, as it affects our general argument, renders it neces- sary that we examine the grounds on which it rests, under a separate Section. m SECTION IV. Examination of the grounds on "which the distinction between moral and positive duties is founded; so far as that distinction affects the moral obligation of observing the Sabbath, The distinction above alluded to, as the title of this Section indicates, is that which has been insti- tuted between what are called moral and positive laws, precepts, or institutions. A moral precept, or commandment, relates to the conduct of intelli- gent and accountable creatures; and is such, we are told, as, independent of divine revelation, is recognized by human reason to be a fit rule of action, obligatory, in its enactments, on all man- kind. A positive commandment, again, it is said, is such as unaided reason could never discover; and, however equitable it may appear, when pub- lished, as it has no natural connection with the ordinary conceptions of the understanding, or the ordinary dictates of conscience, all its importance and obligation must be derived from the will of the Being who publishes it. Now, of this D 38 latter kind, is the commandment respecting the Sabbath accounted; and it is worthy of notice, that it is the only commandment of the Decalogue which is held to possess that character. There are nine besides it, and we have never heard it denied, that they are morally binding on all men, or that their reasonableness, their obligations, and their use, were discoverable without the light of divine revelation. The fourth commandment stands alone as an exception; and it is argued, that, with- out the express declaration of the will of God, we could never have become acquainted with the restraints and requirements, which, on every seventh day, it imposes on us. We have no hesitation to say, that we believe this last statement to be perfectly correct; while, at the same time, we maintain, that what are called the moral precepts, or institutions of the law, have been assigned their high rank and value, at the expense of that one, which is held to possess only a positive character. We admit, that there is nothing in the appropria- tion of one day out of seven, to the worship and glory of God, which suggests itself to the human mind more naturally than one out of seventeen, or any other number. We cannot perceive any natural reason, why one day should be esteemed more sacred than another; neither do we think, that there is any natural fitness in one day above 39 another for the discharge of particular duties. The human mind, unaided and unenlightened by divine truth, cannot, we say, perceive this. But we are strongly inclined to believe, that the fact is much the same respecting the greater number of those precepts which are generally accounted moral; and the reasons which thus incline us to believe, we shall endeavour, plainly, but shortly, to detail. Notwithstanding all that has been said and written about the eternal Jitness of things^ sympathy ^ a moral sense, and public utility, as criteria, or tests of virtue, we cannot give up the conviction, that the safest, the broadest, and the most universal standard of duty, is the will of God.* It is true, that the will of God, as it is contained in the revelation of his counsels of mercy, respecting our present and eternal welfare, is but imperfectly known in the world, and cannot, therefore, accord- ing to the present state of religious knowledge, be universally applied as the gauge of human conduct. It is true also, that the Apostle Paul has said, that " the Gentiles who have not the law, do, by nature, the things contained in the law: these, having not * C'est a la seule idee d'un Dieu, qu'il est facile d'unir toute la legislation morale, et le systeme entier de nos devoirs. M, Necker. d2 40 the law, are a law unto themselves — which show the works of the law written in their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile, accusing, or else excusing one another." But, are we sure that these words apply to the Heathen generally, and not exclusively to those who lived before the publication of the Mosaic law, and who were believers and worshippers of the one living and true God? Such, at least, is the opinion of several respectable commentators. Are we sure, that not the idolatrous Heathen, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worship- ped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is God over all, blessed for ever — are here meant; but those, who, understanding by the things that are made, the eternal power and Godhead of the Father, glorified him by giving him the honour and fear due to his great name? Felix trembled when Paul preached before him of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come; and this, we are told, is a proof of the natural fitness of the human mind to distinguish right from wrong, and to suffer reproach and punishment for the violation of virtue and the indulgence in vice. But, would Felix have trembled, if Paul had not preached ? Would he have experienced the upbraidings of an angry conscience, if Paul had not reasoned of righteous- 41 ness, and forced him to become his own accuser, by demonstrating to him, that his conduct was as disgraceful and destructive to himself, as it was unjust and cruel to others? It is one thing to acknowledge and feel the obligations of a moral law, when it is expounded to us in all the length and breadth of its character and consequences — and quite another to discover the law and the obli- gations, and to act upon them, without any external revelation or aid whatever; — and we believe, that, if Paul had not preached, Felix had not trembled; and that he would have gone on in extortion and profligacy, heedless of his guilt, unconscious of his danger, and unawed by any of the judgments which shall hereafter be revealed as the portion of the ungodly. The mind is very capable of under- standing the truth of many doctrines, and of assent- ing to the obligations of many duties, which, of itself, it could never have known, felt, or obeyed; and this remark, we humbly think, strictly applies to the question before us. We must add, however, in justice to ourselves, and to prevent a false interpretation of our views, that we know well the power of conscience over the moral actions of man, and the valuable account to which it may be turned, by a judicious appeal to its own decisions, on all matters respecting simple right or wrong; and, assuredly, we would be the D 3 42 last to advance any thing which might tend to derogate from the one, or diminish the other. But, on a question concerning the general principles of duty, or the moral character and divine authority of particular commandments, we must not allow preconceived, or unexamined opinions, to influence or determine our judgment. The power of con- science, we hold to be identical with the faculty of reason, applied to moral objects; or to the deter- mination of the right and wrong, the merit and demerit of human conduct. And of this, I pre- sume, it is needless to produce any farther proof than this, that, in different individuals, and different societies, it varies in its decisions, according to the previous knowledge and habits of the parties; so that, what in one country, is set down and repro- bated as a crime, in another, is sanctioned and applauded as a virtue. If it were a faculty of the mind, distinct from the power of understanding, or reason — if it were not dependent for information on the usual channels of communication — if it did not receive all its impressions of the character of other men's actions, through the ordinary medium of observation, and did not form its decisions respecting all that passes within itself, by the ordi- nary intellectual process of consciousness, and by a comparison of the conduct in question, with a standard of duty, which experience had taught it 43 to establish; — we might surely expect to find the judgments which it forms, respecting the moral character of certain actions, more uniform and consistent. If it were a faculty of mind implanted within us, exclusively for taking cognizance of the right and wrong of human conduct, and possessed, within itself, the means of intuitively deciding what was moral duty, and what was not — if it were the peculiar province of this faculty to judge of what was virtuous, and what was vicious, in the actions of men; and the spectacle of the one, uni- formly gave rise to feelings of disapprobation, while that of the former, uniformly produced sentiments of applause and delight — if, in fine, it were the sole office of this faculty to condemn whatever was opposed to the desires and the dictates of moral purity, justice, and truth, apd the human mind were so constituted, that it must unavoidably suffer pain on the perpetration of any act that was contrary to any of the principles of virtue; — then, we should undoubtedly meet with an universal (or nearly universal) agreement among men of all descriptions, and in all situations of life, respecting the morality, or immorality of human conduct. But nothing is more contrary to fact than this: and there are acts of various kinds, the commission of which, will create much bitter compunction and agony in the breast of one man, while, in that of another, it 44 will not give birth to a single uneasy or repentant feeling. The conscience, unenlightened and unaided by the word and the Spirit of God, is a most unsafe and fallacious guide on the great principles of duty which we owe towards God, and even towards man; and the history of every people who have been destitute of the knowledge of divine revelation, and the history of those, too, who have possessed the written record of the rule of our faith and manners, equally proclaim to us, that, like the power of reason applied to the ordinary business of life, it is often doubtful, false, and capricious in its decisions. The violation of some of the most obligatory principles of duty, on which the peace and well-being of society depend, but which are unproductive of personal inconvenience or injury, will be unsparingly indulged by some men, without any remorse, or suffering, whatever, — while the commission of an act which brings on bodily debility and disease, will awaken the most pungent self-reproach and wretchedness. The profane swearer is a monstrous rebel against the King of heaven, who contaminates, by the execrations which he heaps on himself and others, the society in which he lives; and yet, we may witness him, every day, going on in his wickedness, without a single apprehension arising in his breast respecting 45 the doom which he has so awfully imprecated on himself. When the slaves of sensual pleasure, (and they are numerous and daring as the former,) suffer shame or sorrow for their unhallowed deeds, is their repentance the fruit of a conviction of their having sinned against God, or of their having wasted their health and their fortune, and exposed themselves to public disgrace and misery? Has it not been entirely owing to the purity of sentiment which the Christian religion has produced, that fornication is now generally considered as a breach of moral duty? It is true, it was prohibited by the Jewish law, but under conditions and penalties of such a nature, as could easily be evaded or answered by a licentious people. Among the more gross and sensual of the Heathens it was encouraged, under the sanction of the example of their false deities; and even where their ideas of morality were con- sidered to be very refined, it was never taxed as a crime, except when the marriage-bed was contami- nated, or a virgin's honour violated. But I go on with my illustration of the case before us, by asking, — Are not covetousness and avarice expressly condemned by the divine law; and yet, are they not indulged by thousands, without the least apprehension of the divine dis- pleasure, and without the least apparent conscious- ness of doing wrong? — are not backbiting, lying, 46 drunkenness, and uncleanness, distinctly enume- rated among the causes which exclude from the kingdom of heaven; and yet, how many, most wantonly and perversely, continue in their indul- gence, without any other uneasy sensation or fear, than what their consequences, in this world, may produce? Murder, it is said, is recognized, in all situations, by the human mind, as a criminal and punishable act: and surely the shedding of human blood is a startling and appalling spectacle — but there are despotic countries, where the officers of power claim, and exercise the right of uncere- moniously beheading those who offend them — there are licentious and depraved countries, where men make a trade of assassination — and there are barbarous countries, where it is reckoned a public duty and virtue to expose the aged and the infirm, the young and the helpless, to perish by the slow and cruel agency of famine and cold. — There are some nations where theft, if it is dex- trously committed, is held to be rather a virtue than a vice — and societies have been discovered, where chastity seemed to be unknown, and licentiousness openly encouraged. Is not polygamy fraught with the most immoral and pernicious consequences, both of a domestic, and social nature? — does it not directly tend to extinguish some of the best affec- tions of the human heart, and to engender and chafe some of the most malignant and deadly passions, and, in general, to degrade and brutalize the species? Yet, can we say that it is recognized by unaided and unenlightened reason, as sinful and hurtful, while we have such clear testimony of its prevalence among nations destitute of divine reve- lation; and while the Scriptures, themselves, fur- nish us with so many sad examples of its practice among the patriarchs and the monarchs of Israel? It is said, that the idea of property is one of the earliest that is formed by the human mind; and, hence, it is argued, that there is a natural ground for the distinction of the rights of individuals recog- nized, and that the law which prohibits their en- croachment on each other's possessions, is felt, in all circumstances, to be binding on the conscience of man. But, if men had lived without society, the idea of property had never been formed; neither had the principle of justice ever been recognized or acted on; and hence, it must be allowed, that that principle is the offspring of the social combinations and conventional transactions in which they engage; or that it originated in some direct revelation of the law of God, for the regu- lation of their dealings with one another. I am carrying this detail of illustration too far, however, and perhaps it may now be asked, — what is the point which it is meant to establish? I 48 answer, without hesitation — to show, that too much has been built upon the distinction which has been framed, between what are called the moral and positive institutions of religion; and that, so far as the subject of this Treatise is concerned, it is founded on error, and pregnant with mischief. We do not believe that the human mind is, of itself, capable of discovering and feeling all the obligations of moral duty; that is, we do not believe that the bare perception of what is good in any action, constitutes, in the estimation of man, the obligation to its performance; or, that the perception of what is bad, constitutes the obligation to avoid, or resist it. There is no quality or prin- ciple, belonging to the human understanding, or the human conscience, which warrants us to say, that it is fitted to be a measure of virtue, or a standard of duty; otherwise, we should find, among the rude and the civilized, the learned and the unlearned tribes of mankind, a constant conformity of senti- ment and action on the leading points of morality. Now, it is because the distinction we are consider- ing, takes for granted the existence of this quality or principle, that we say it is founded on error, and fraught with mischief. Moral obligation must arise from a higher source than the reason or the conscience of man; otherwise, we would witness an endless variety of standards to determine the 49 character of the same actions, and an endless conflict of opinions respecting the most essential questions of moral right and wrong. Moral obligation, moreover, necessarily implies the idea of accountability, but it would be absurd to speak of a man being accountable to himself, and yet maintain, that the proper distinctions between virtue and vice could be preserved, and that the just and necessary rewards and punishments would be impartially dispensed. The selfishness, the de- ceitfulness of the human mind, and its uniform tendency to interpret its own decisions, and what arises out of this, its own actions, favourably to itself, directly contradict such an opinion. Our accountability for our actions, directly points to an authority superior to our own ; and the rewards and penalties which that authority has associated with particular conduct, constitute the moral obli- gation, or the motives which should prompt us to its performance, or withhold us from it. The doctrine of the eternal fitness of things, as it is generally understood, and of the immutable distinctions of right and wrong, discovered and established by human reason, as a rule of duty, is calculated, at once, we think, to exalt natural religion above revealed, and to render man inde- pendent of the knowledge of the will of God. We believe, then, that although we admit, and this we E 50 most readily do, that there is an eternal fitness of things, and an essential and incommutable dis- tinctionv between right and wrong, mankind are not, in all situations, or in all cases, able to perceive them, or to feel the obligations to their observance. It is, undoubtedly, the express appointment of the Almighty, which has given to virtue and holiness all that loveliness and charm which never fail to awaken delight in the heart of possessors and spectators; and it is the same cause which has arrayed iniquity, of every kind, in the most odious forms, to all who are not in thraldom to its power, and ren- dered it the parent of penury and wretchedness to some, and of moral debasement and degradation to all. The love of God, and the love of man, are the foundations of all religious and moral duty, and, when they are described or illustrated to us, we, at once, perceive and acknowledge, that there is an inherent excellence, or an eternal fitness, belonging to them; but, surely, if this excellence or fitness had been discoverable by human reason, idolatry or polytheism would not have become the universal religion of mankind — or the doctrine of the unity of the Godhead, have been confined to one small district of the earth — or rapine, war, and murder, have been the universal trade of heathen nations. The history of the world has proved to us, that where men were ignorant of the 51 one living and true God, they were incapable, by their own inquiries or discoveries, of rising to the knowledge of his glorious and incommunicable attributes; and wherever they were ignorant of this fundamental doctrine of all true religion and morality, they indulged, without restraint or re- morse, in the most selfish, licentious, profane, and cruel actions. A divine revelation, therefore, was 7iecessary to instruct men in the knowledge of the true character of the Creator, of the just distinc- tions of moral right and wrong, and of the indis- pensable obligations they were under to avoid the one, and practise the other. Public utility could not point out these obligations, because this, as a standard, varies with the varying wants and desires of different nations and kindreds of men: reason, or conscience, could not confirm them, because this, as a judge, also varies in its decisions, according to the previous habits and knowledge of the individual. A positive ordinance, or appointment of heaven, could alone give efficacy to the natural distinctions of virtue and vice, and establish their obligations and observance on broad and indisputable grounds. The will of God, revealed as the rule of our faith and practice, can alone give a beneficial direction to the fears and the hopes of the human mind, and bind us to the performance of the great duties of holiness and justice, benevolence and integrity, and E 2 52 restrain us from their violation, by the considera- tion of a future and eternal retribution. In this sense, then, all the moral duties of reli- gion are positive: that is, their obligations rest upon an express statute of heaven; and their wil- ful and unnecessary neglect, must, in all circum- stances, be regarded as criminal and punishable, by the All-wise and Almighty Legislator who has ordained them. Nor do we think that this doctrine tends, in the least, to destroy the distinction which exists between duties or virtues of different characters and degrees, or that it places all crimes on an equality, in point of guilt. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind," — this, said our Saviour, is the first and great command- ment; and the second, he added, is like unto it; but it is not said, equal to it^ — " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Religion enlightens and instructs human reason, but it does not outrage or contradict it. The shedding of man's blood, is a crime of a deeper complexion than the purloin- ing of his property, and the law of God has marked and admitted the distinction. The giving to the Lord the reverence and worship due to him, for the great and manifold benefits conferred on us, is an act of primary obligation and importance; 53 but, even admitting that all our duty rests solely upon the positive enactments of heaven, the unnecessary or wilful absence from the assemblies of the faithful, on the first day of the week, cannot be ranked as a crime of the same guilt, or worthy of the same punishment, with that of fraud, theft, or murder. The Sabbath may be sanctified in private, as well as in public: for, though the Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwell- ings of Jacob; yet, he is nigh to all that be of a broken heart, and he saveth them that are of a contrite spirit. There are many circumstances connected with the most sacred and important duties of life, which may prevent an individual from waiting on the Lord, according to his own appointment, in the house of prayer; and, as the highest authority has informed us, that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; the very acts of justice, of compassion, of mercy, and charity, which its observance is intended to recom- mend and encourage, may, in many cases, inter- fere with the public celebration of the external solemnities of religion, and imperatively claim a preference in the distribution or discharge of our moral duties. In all circumstances, we believe the end is better than the means; and, as there is an essential difference between the act of publicly acknowledging our love and gratitude to the Most E 3 54 High, and living habitually under the fear of offending him, and cherishing habitually the desire of glorifying him, by doing justly, and loving mercy, and walking humbly before him; so is there an equally essential difference between publicly appearing in the assemblies, where prayers and praises are offered up to him, — and the act of con- secrating our affections to the holy exercises of devotion, and adjusting all our thoughts, words, and deeds, to the conditions and requirements of the divine commandments. There is a moral and positive obligation attached to all these com- mandments; that obligation is derived from the will and decree of God, and no one who values his present, but especially his eternal welfare, will voluntarily or unnecessarily neglect it. There is no inherent excellence in ritual or ceremonial appointments; nor can we, by any acquaintance with the relations or fitness of things, discover an}^ motives which naturally prompt us to their observance. The human mind cannot, for instance, perceive any reason for the prohibition which was laid on our first parents, in the garden of Eden, except what is derived from divine authority; and the rite of circumcision, enjoined on all the descendants of Abraham, and the order for them to dwell in booths, during the feast of tabernacles, with many of the ceremonial services 55 of the Jews, rest entirely upon the same foundation. Nor are we disposed, in the remotest manner, to represent this as a reason which is not strictly binding on the understanding and conscience of all to whom it is addressed. But, when there is added to this, a reason for the duty, or the service arising out of the very nature of things, or out of the rela- tions which subsist between the act we are called to perform, and our perception of what is excellent and praise- worthy; then, there is a very strong additional obligation laid upon us for its faithful and diligent observance. And here, we would expressly maintain, that, for the discharge of the require- ments of all the commandments of the Decalo^^ue, — of the fourth, as well as of the fifth — of the first, as well as of the sixth, — there is this additional obligation laid upon us. All of them have a moral sanction attached to them. We are able, by the exercise of our understanding, to appreciate the inherent excellence and the beneficial tendency which belong to them \ and we feel and acknowledge the responsibility under which we lie, for their faithful and conscientious performance. The dedication of one day in seven, to the public worship of God — to the commemoration of his creating power and wisdom, and redeeming good- ness and love, — is not an act which reason, of itself, could have discovered to be obligatory on 56 man; but, when it is revealed to him as a divine ordinance, its wisdom and utility at once recom- mend it, and we are constrained to acknowledge, that it ranks among the highest duties imposed upon us. If what we have already stated, how- ever, be correct, the very same character belongs to all the other commandments of the Decalogue; and thus the distinction which has been made be- tween the fourth and the other nine, is founded on error, calculated to mislead men in their notions of moral obligation, and productive of very bane- ful consequences to the general interests of rcHgion. 57 SECTION V. Moral obligation of the Sabbath, proved from the primary end of its institution. By referring to the period of the world at which the Sabbath was instituted, we have the most satis- factory evidence, that its observance was enjoined for the purpose of preserving the history of a most important and interesting event, and of inspiring into the minds of men, the love and reverence of that Almighty Being, who endowed them with so many exalted capacities of knowing and serving him. It was afterwards revealed, that this season of holy rest should be celebrated as the earnest of an uninterrupted and blissful rest, which awaits the righteous in heaven; and, in search of which, this mortal life has, in all ages, been reckoned but a pilgrimage, by the pious and patient worshippers of Jehovah. But, even without recurrinor to the period of the world at which its observance was first promulgated — taking up the commandment, in which it is enjoined, in a general point of view, so far from being inferior in its obligations to any 58 other of the moral laws, it seems to us superior both in its sanctions and advantages. And our reasons for entertaining this opinion may be thus briefly stated. The sanctification of the Sabbath, is the first religious duty enjoined by the Almighty on man ; for we regard the account of its institu- tion, given in the second chapter of Genesis, as tantamount to a positive command to devote it in a peculiar manner to his worship and ser- vice.* Now, the worship of God, embracing our adoration of his power and wisdom, our reverence for his justice and holiness, our gratitude for his goodness and mercy, and our meek submission to the dispensations of his providence, constitute, in the highest sense of the word, the religious duties of man. His moral duties, or those which relate to the government of his own affections and passions, and to the integrity and honour of his transactions with others, rest upon these, as their natural and proper foundation, and derive from them all their value and excellence. The acknow- ledgment of a belief in the existence of one God, and of his supreme and absolute right to our homage and obedience, is essential to an acknow- ledgment of the obligation of the duties which • See Note B. 59 bind us to the observance of personal purity and holiness, and to the practice of fidelity and justice, benevolence and mercy, in our dealings with one another. If it be not so, then, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary, moral duty can have no other sanction than what convenience or expediency may give it, and it will depend altogether on the fleeting circumstances in which man is placed, whether its requirements and enact- ments be complied with, or not. Whatever, there- fore, tends to keep us in remembrance of our dependence upon our Creator, and to inspire us with gratitude for his goodness, and to confirm our reverence for his authority, and to impress us with the fear of his displeasure — must directly quicken our sense of moral obligation, and lead us to the faithful discharge of all the duties of the moral law. But it is the sole end of the institution of the Sabbath, to preserve and cherish the feelings above enumerated; it is the exclusive design of its public and private exercises, to commemorate the creating and redeeming power of Jehovah, to remind us of the imperfections and sinfulness of our nature, and to unite us in a sacred fellowship with the Father and the Son, by abstracting us from the vanities and iniquities of the world, and awakening and increasing our desires after holiness, righteousness, and new obedience. Wherefore, the 60 sanctification of that day, must be of supreme importance in subduing our sinful propensities; in quickening within us a love of moral excellence; and working in us a conformity to all God's righteous commandments. But, returning to the period of the world, at which the institution was first published to man, we have already shown, that it was totally uncon- nected with any of the peculiar revelations of heaven, by which particular laws and ceremonies were originally confined to particular districts of the earth, and intended only for the benefit of particular sets of people. The Sabbath was designed to preserve, among " all the families and kindreds of the earth," the knowledge and worship of God. It was the commemoration of the visible exercise of his attributes of power, wisdom, and goodness; and the natural and direct effects of its observance should be, to draw forth our spon- taneous reverence for all that was sublime and awful, our wonder for all that was admirable and unsearchable, and our gratitude for all that was amiable and endearing in these perfections. Now, will any individual say, that there is no moral sanction accompanying an appointment, such as we have just been reviewing? Will any one say, that what was made known to our first parent, as our representative, is not binding on us? 61 Or, that the same causes of devotion to God, which existed in the early ages of the world, do not operate now? Are the testimonies of creative goodness less visible, or less copious now, than when the earth was only fresh from the hand of its Maker, and but a scanty portion of its surface had been trodden by the foot of man? Shall we be told, that man is less dependent upon the favour and mercy of God now, than when, being made upright, he had not yet become acquainted with the inventions of iniquity, nor been estranged from the purity of feeling and ardour of enjoyment, which frequent communications with heaven in- spired? Is it not the bounden duty of every man, to acknowledge the goodness by which he is pre- served, and the bounty by which he is fed? And if it can be proved, that any particular enactment was given to him for that purpose, is not that enactment binding upon all who are sharers of the same wants and the same benefits? Is not a moral sanction, which accompanies any establishment, be it what it may, which is ordained by God, obliga- tory upon ail men who are invited to the observance of the duties, and a participation of the blessings which are attached to it; and will not the neglect of those duties, in all situations, and under all characters, involve men in guilt, and most justly subject them to the righteous displeasure of the F 62 Most High? We maintain, that this is the legiti- mate deduction from the neglect of the Sabbath, with even the scanty information we have of the state of the world, at the period to which we have been alluding: and we go on to state and illus- trate this argument more fully, because, on its clear and irrefragable validity, depend, in a high degree, the perpetuity and universality of the moral obligation of remembering the seventh day, to keep it holy. We have already seen, that the institution and sanctions of the Sabbath, are recorded, by the his- torian of the early ages of the world, as a divine appointment, immediately after the heavens, and the earth, and all the host of them, were created. " For God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because in it, he rested from all the work, which he created and made." We shall have occasion to notice, more particularly, hereafter, that every ex- ample of moral duty bequeathed to us in the Bible, and every act of religious service, except what is merely ceremonial, performed by one possessing the character of a lawgiver, are equally binding on us, as if they were enjoined by a positive precept, and enforced by the most solemn conditions. But, waving the particular consideration of this point at present, we hold it to be altogether ab- surd to suppose, that such an allotment of the 63 seventh part of the week, as that which we have just quoted, would have been made by the Almighty, if it had not been intended as a rule for the public devotional exercises of man. It is altogether im- possible, that it would have found a place in the register of the very earliest transactions of the world, if it had not been meant to apply to the condition of every people, and to be continued as an ever- lasting memorial of the power, the wisdom, and benevolence of the Creator. There was no appro- priation of favours, yet made or promised, to any particular class of men; there was no distinction of claims, yet recognised, to the protection and blessing of God; there were no influences yet shed upon them, which were to be limited to certain times and certain places; nor were any duties yet prescribed, which were destined to separate them into inde- pendent tribes, and to distinguish them by peculiar rites and laws. The human race, as yet, consisted of only one family ; placed on a fruitful portion of the earth, and surrounded with every thing that was lovely in contemplation, and delightful in en- joyment. The Almighty dwelt among them by sensible manifestations of his presence ; and re- verence for his supreme authority, and gratitude for his boundless goodness, must have been inspired by all that they daily saw and experienced. His protecting arm was ever around them ; the splen, F 2 64 dour of his attributes was imprinted on all the works they beheld; his condescension and love beamed through all the communications he made to them of his will ; and their feelings of devotion and thanksgiving, must have been kept ever ardent and active, by the continual pledges of his care, to administer to their hopes and their happiness. The wants of the infant society would be but kw, and they would be easily supplied. The rich va- riety of all that was agreeable to their senses and their taste, would leave no wish or desire ungrati- fied: and, as their blessings came directly from the hand of the Creator, their songs of gratitude and praise, would rise as directly to the place where the glory of the Godhead dwelt. This would be the constant effect of what they were constantly experiencing; and, as there was yet no interruption to their innocence and happi- ness, there would be none to the exercise of their piety and love. But they formed the embryo po- pulation of the world. From them were to spring all the tribes, and kindreds, and tongues, which were to cover and diversify the wide spread sur- face of the earth. Distance from the scene of primeval innocence and holiness, would be followed with an indifference about their duties, and when, in consequence of the curse pronounced against 65 their first transgression,* they were subjected to the toilsome task of collecting, from diminished sources, the means of supplying increasing wants, they would speedily lose the delicate but fervent sentiments of devotion, which bound their fathers in fellowship with heaven. Depravity of feeling would spread with degeneracy of conduct; and, where every one was engrossed with his own wants, all would become indifferent about each other's condition. When no sense of dependence upon God was experienced, no sensations of grati- tude for his goodness could be awakened; and when his name and his attributes were not revered and worshipped, all desire of his favour, and dread of his displeasure, would perish from the heart and the life of man. He would lose the hope of future happiness, with the image of his original purity ; he would forfeit the dignity of his nature, by the degradation of his moral pursuits; and those holy inspirations which breathed the sweetness and the serenity of his early blessedness, would be swallowed up by a host of coarse and contending desires after pleasures, which might nourish, but which would never gratify his passions. To counteract these disastrous effects, however. • Gen. iii. 17, F 3 66 we find the observance of the Sabbath early and solemnly enjoined, as an appointment of universal and perpetual obligation. It was, doubtlessly, fore- seen, that the knowledge and worship of the true God would be lost or forgotten, as men receded from their original settlements, and became forget- ful of their original habits and laws. The relative duties of society, upon which all moral security and comfort rested, would lose all their sanctions, when the authority of God was not recognised and venerated: and, hence, it was provided, by a particular statute, that the public worship of the Creator, should be regularly performed at periodical intervals, and that thus the affections of men, being: enlisted on the side of devotion to their com- mon Parent, that devotion should give birth to mutual esteem and kindness, forbearance and love. The dedication of the seventh day to holy retire- ment and rest ; its consecration to the duties of piety, and praise, and thanksgiving, were the acts of the Almighty Creator and Preserver of men, — and they were intended to inspire them with reverence for his Glorious Majesty, to cherish within them a sense of their continual dependence upon his bounty, and to quicken and increase the feeling of obligation they were at all times under, to respect and obey his laws. Now, from this, we conceive, that there was something in the very 67 nature of the institution, which was well calculated to ennrajje and interest the moral affections of mankind in favour of its observance. It was de- signed to recal to their minds the goodness and wisdom of God, displayed in the creation of the mighty fabric they inhabited ; and to give excite- ment and strength to their gratitude, by affording them frequent opportunities of acknowledging the benefits he bestowed upon them. It was admirably fitted to promote and increase brotherly kindness, by reminding them of their common origin, and to banish from their hearts all unsocial and ci uel passions, by uniting them in the bonds of piety and allegiance to their common Benefactor and Father. These considerations, of themselves, therefore, were sufficient to recommend the ob- servance of the Sabbath, as an appointment of the highest utility and pleasure; and when we reflect, that the employments and the labours of men, would be daily multiplied with the multiplication of their wants, and the diminution of the means of supplying them ; we shall readily find another f-eason for the consecration of a regularly fixed portion of their time, to the purpose of moral and religious meditation. When we reflect farther, on the tendency of human nature, to become un- mindful of all that is pure and spiritual ; to sink into an indifference about all that is distant and 68 unseen; to overlook the importance of those things that are eternal, in the greedy pursuit after things that are temporal ; when we consider, moreover, that, in the first ages of the world, the positive laws of Heaven were few, and only traditionally known, we shall see an additional reason for con- cluding, that some great moral appointment was necessary, to collect their affections from the way- ward courses into which they were prone to stray, and to lead them to the cultivation of their highest moral excellence, by leading them to the study and performance of those duties, in which their highest hopes and ultimate happiness centered. Now, with the limited means of moral know- ledge and improvement, which were vouchsafed to the first generation of man, we have no hesitation to say, that we believe the institution of the Sabbath, to have been intended to supply the want of minute information, and to furnish the great land- marks of duty, which would preserve within them a habitual reverence for their common Creator, and a habitual esteem for each other's virtues, and sym- pathy for each other's frailties. It was made known to the first family of the human race, as an enact- ment of divine authority, sanctioned and recom- mended by divine example. There were no cere- monial accompaniments, which marked it as only intended for certain ages and countries. It was 69 communicated to the father and the representative of mankind, free of all restrictions, suitable to all conditions, and binding upon all generations. It was the earliest statute in the code of religious legislation, and there is not one circumstance con- nected with its natw^e, or its end, "johich marks it as havi?ig yet become, or as ever to become, obsolete, or inefficient in its provisions. The wants of men are the same as they were ever; the supplies of divine goodness are not diminished, either in their extent or their value; neither are the claims on our grati- tude changfed in their number or their force. The tendencies to forget the Author of our being and our happiness, lurk as deeply in our hearts as ever; and it requires, even now, the operation of all the means which piety and devotion can suggest, to prevent mankind from sinking into a deplorable condition of moral darkness and degeneracy. All this, however, we believe, will be readily granted by men, who provokingly deny the force of our general argument, without furnishing us with any thing like a refutation of it. We contend, that it is an appointment, which has altogether a moral, and not a ceremonial character; and that, from the very nature of its duties, from the very ordinance of heaven by which it is enjoined, it has a universal and perpetual authority over the heart 70 and the life of man ; and, after noticing and answer- ing an objection, which has been very generally, and, in some cases, vauntingly advanced against this view of the subject, we shall endeavour to adduce some proofs of it from the writings of the Old Testament, posterior to the publication of the Mosaic law. 71 SECTION VI. Review of the objections urged against the Antiquity and moral obligation of the Sabbath, There is a fine observation of a late dignitary of the Church of England,* bearing so closely upon the very point we have been attempting to defend and illustrate, that we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of placing it at the head of this Section. — " An institution of this antiquity," (such as we have shown above, belongs to the Sabbath,) " could derive no part of its sanction from the Mosaic law; and the abrogation of that law no more releases the worshippers of God from a rational observance of a Sabbath, than it cancels the injunction of filial piety, or the prohibition of theft and murder, adultery, calumny, and avarice. The worship of the Christian church, is, properly, to be considered as a restoration of the patriarchal, in its primitive simplicity and purity; and, of the patriarchal worship, the Sabbath was the noblest, and, perhaps, the simplest rite." It is thus, we * Bishop Horsley. 72 argue, that the duty of publicly solemnizing and sanctifying the Sabbath, is a duty, as binding upon Christians, as any other duty which is prescribed by the Most High, and, in its consequences, too, equally serious and lasting. But, proceeding entirely on the idea, that it is purely arbitrary and ceremonial, it is argued against us, that no moral consequences can attend its observance, or its neglect, because no moral conditions attended its first establishment — because its positive enforce- ment was confined to one nation, and to one period of the world — and because, under the more wide, liberal, and equitable dispensation of the Gospel, all ceremonial rites have ceased, and all distinctions in the external modes of worship have perished with the circumstances which gave them birth. We are not able to suppress our wonder, when we hear men, who profess a reverence for the authority of God, and a belief in the doctrines of Christianity, arguing in defence of a cause which is directly subversive of both. In charity, we may ascribe their errors to a mistaken zeal to free our religion from the tedious prescriptions, and complicated forms, with which its duties have sometimes been encumbered; but, injustice to the cause we defend, we must lament, that their zeal was not corrected by their imprudence, when they saw, by its effects, that, instead of strengthening 73 the pillars of our faith, they were undermining the very foundations upon which they were built. But, let us hear how they have endeavoured to support the position, which, in our opinion, they have very rashly and unadvisedly assumed. They are aware — if it can be proved that the Sabbath was instituted immediately after the creation of the world — that it was made known to our first parent, as the head and representative of the human race — and was unconnected with any of the ceremonial appointments, which, in later ages, applied only to particular times and places; — then, the argument for its universal and perpetual obligation is un- answerable. They have attempted, therefore, to get rid of this difficulty in a way, which seems to us to correspond exactly to that which schoolmen call, begging the question. They contend, that the first notice of its establishment, (which is found in the second chapter of Genesis,) was inadvertently introduced there, by the author of the Pentateuch, or by some transcriber of it, when he was giving an account of the division of time into weeks; and this opinion they hold, because there is no evidence from the subsequent details of the above document, that the Sabbath was regarded as a day of rest, or of religious worship, until its observance was enjoined, with that of the other commandments, on Mount Sinai. They have searched the patriar-. G 74 chal ages for traces of its existence; and because they have discovered no record of its celebration, they have considered themselves warranted to con- clude, that the statement, or notice, above-men- tioned, is ante-dated, or, what is the same thing, was the anticipation of a law, which was hereafter to be published; and, that there is no authority for its observance, — that there is, indeed, no proof of its being recognised as a duty, till it was solemnly promulgated to the Hebrews, as they journeyed through the wilderness. In assuming this ground, their avowed object is, to prove that the Sabbath is an institution which was strictly confined to the Jews; and that the obligations to its observance, existed only as long as the dispensation under which they lived, had the sanction and approbation of heaven. To say the least of it, there is something not very fair, or honourable, in a critical point of view, in this way of maintaining an argument; for, if we were at liberty to conclude, that any passage of Scripture, which it was troublesome to explain, or which it was difficult to reconcile with some favourite theory which we wished to establish; if we were at liberty, I say, to conclude that this was an interpolation, — that is, was introduced into the work by some other hand than that of the inspired author, or found its way into the particular position it now 75 occupies, by the ignorance of some careless tran- scriber,— then, there is an end to all precision in the interpretation of the sacred oracles; and men may superinduce upon the plain and unambiguous doctrines of inspiration, any explanations whatever, which may suit their unbridled, and, perhaps, impure fancy. It is not, we think, a very safe, or a very commendable mode of procedure, to attempt to weaken, in any circumstances, the divine authority of any appointment on which the moral security and happiness of society depend, and we ought, certainly, to calculate, very seriously, the expediency of our undertaking, as well as the motives by which we are influenced, before we rashly engage in a work, which, at the best, can only throw a stumbling-block in the way of the weak, and increase the effrontery and the impiety of the prophane. But, the argument we are now combating, if it proves any thing, proves too much. It is true, that, from the first promulgation of the Sabbath, at the creation, a long period of nearly three thousand years intervenes, during which, we hear nothing of its observance, or its sanctions. We read of men having multiplied greatly upon the earth — of having spread exten- sively over its surface — of having divided them- selves into different tribes, and espoused different G 2 76 interests — of having increased in iniquity, as well as knowledge — and of having forgotten, except in one small district, all reverence for the authority, and all gratitude for the goodness of their Creator — but in no condition of their social improvement or debasement, do we read of their remembering the seventh day, to keep it holy. We accompany the patriarchs in their various migrations and pursuits, and amidst all their veneration of God, and the consecration of their lives to his service, we hear not once of the duties of the Sabbath forming any part of their devotional enjoyments and exercises. In all the variety of fortune, which characterized the human race, before and after the deluge — in all the details of piety which distinguished the families of the few among whom the knowledge and reverence of the true God were preserved and cherished — we never read of their meeting to devote the seventh portion of the week to a respite from their ordinary labours, and to spend it in the study and adoration of his attributes, and the fear and obedience of his laws. But, all this may be easily accounted for, without recurring to the solution which our opponents have adopted, and, thereby, rejecting a belief in the early institution, and universal sanction of the Sabbath. The records of the transactions of the first, or patriarchal ages of the world, are exceedingly 77 brief and scanty In their details. They are con- fined to a few families, and a few districts of the earth, and serve only as an introduction to the history of the Jewish people, among whom, the Almighty was pleased to place the symbols of his tutelary presence and glory; and whom he honoured to be the preservers of his knowledge and worship, amidst the wide spread idolatry which characterized the other nations of mankind. In these records, we find no enumeration of the duties which are enforced in the moral law, and which are universally acknowledged to have been, in all ages, binding upon men; and as well, there- fore, might we contend, that, to the crimes of murder and robbery — to the guilt of violated faith and chastity — no moral penalties were attached, because no specific enactments against them exist; as to argue, that no moral obligation belonged to the sanctification of the Sabbath, because no special law is found confirmatory of its first establishment. The silence of history respecting any fact or event, is, by no means, a proof of the non-existence, or non-occurrence of that event; and because we are not told that the early inhabi- tants of the world held the seventh day sacred to the duties of devotion and meditation, we have no reason to conclude, that the obligations to do so, were either not felt, or not obeyed. In the eager- g3 78 ness of some men to establish their favourite opinion, they have stoutly contended, that this day never had any divine sanction given for its observance, till it received it amidst the thunders of Mount Sinai. But, we beg to ask them, how they will explain to us the fact of the solemn injunction which was given to the Israelites for its devout celebration, when they were encamped be- tween Elim and the wilderness of Sin, a considerable time prior to their having reached the hill of Sinai, where the law was promulgated? This solitary fact, is, in our opinion, a strong voucher for the regular observance of the seventh day, as a day of rest, antecedent to the date at which the moral law was communicated to the Hebrews; and refers us back to the period of its appointment, as narrated in the Book of Genesis. But, it seems, this very fact is employed by our opponents as an argument against the perpetuity of the moral obligation of this day; and, on this account, it is necessary that we briefly examine the passage in which it is recorded. When all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from Elim to the wilderness, they murmured against Moses and Aaron, saying, " Would to God, we had died by the hand of the Lord, in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots; and did eat bread to the full: for ye 79 have brouffht us forth into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."* Thus, soon did they forget the manifold and marvellous mani- festations of divine power and goodness, exhibited in their redemption from the cruel oppression of Pharaoh; and thus early were extinguished in their hearts, all the sentiments of love, gratitude, devotion, and resignation, which these manifesta- tions were calculated to excite and perpetuate. Yet, many a time did the Lord turn away his anger, and forgive their iniquity; and, in the present instance, he furnished a table in the wilder- ness, and rained down manna for them to eat. From the unusual appearance of this food, the people knew not what it was, and while they seemed to have been perplexed about its use, Moses put an end to their doubts, saying, " This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat — gather of it, every man according to his eating, an omer for every man, according to the number of your persons. Let no man leave of it till the morning." f The order was, however, in some instances disobeyed; and we are told, that the surplus quantity, which remained on the morrow, became putrid and unfit for use. Immediately after this, it is added by the sacred historian, " It • Exod. xvi. 2, ■>. f Ibid. xvi. 15. 19. 80 came to pass, that on the sixth day, they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man." This deviation from the injunction so lately given, excited the notice of the rulers of the congregation, and they came, and told Moses. But Moses said unto them, — " This is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord; bake that which ye will bake to-day, and seethe that which ye will seethe; and that which remaineth over, lay up for you to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade; and it did not stink, neither was there any worm therein. And Moses said. Eat that to-day; for to-day is a Sabbath unto the Lord ; to-day ye shall not find it in the field. Six days ye shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it there shall be none."* This passage, it is argued, contains the first account of the institution of the Sabbath, as a day of public religious duty; and hence it is attempted, to assign it a rank exclusively among the laws of the Jews, and to confine the obligation of its ob- servance exclusively to that people. A fair and impartial interpretation of the passage, does not, we think, by any means, support such a view. The language does not at alj bear out the idea, » Exod. xvi. 23, 24, 25, 26. 81 that a new and unheard-of institution was referred to. It points directly to some ordinance which was famih'ar to the people who were addressed, and with the sanctions and duties of which they were well acquainted. " This is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." There is here an obvious allusion to some antecedent revelation of the will of God; and, in the conduct of the people who were addressed, we plainly perceive the com- pliance with some well-known and long-established custom. At the fifth verse of the chapter from which we have already quoted, it is said, in rela- tion to the mode of gathering the manna, " It shall come to pass, that on the sixth day, they shall pre- pare that which they bring in, and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily." Now this is the injunction, of which we see the observance in the twenty-second verse, but of which the rulers being apparently ignorant or unmindful, and con- ceiving that it was a violation of the general order contained in the sixteenth verse, in the execution of their official duty ; they lay a report of the transac- tion before Moses. The answer we have already heard. " This is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath." The multitude testified, by their ready obedience of the command issued in the fifth verse, that they 82 were well acquainted with the duty of observing the seventh day; and regarded that duty as possess- ing a superior authority to the special prohibition, about which the rulers seem to have experienced some perplexity, — that they were familiar with the mode of reckoning by weeks, a mode of cal- culation, which, we have formerly shown, must have originated in the consecration of that day, to a cessation from wordly labour, and to the exalted exercises of devotion, of which we consider the passage before us as affording a direct proof — " On the sixth day, they gathered, every man, a double quantity, because the morrow was the rest of the holy Sabbath." The plain and natural interpreta- tion of these words, fully authorizes us to say, that this was an institution with which they were all previously acquainted, and the obligations to the observance of which, they all fully acknowledged. If it were not so, we must have heard, or have been informed of something, on the part of the people, or of the elders, expressive of surprise, or hesitation, or inquiry, respecting so novel, and so important an institution; otherwise, the individuals concerned, must have been destitute of ordinary discernment, and of the ordinary desire of know- ledge. Grant, however, that it was, as we contend it was, an old institution, which they were enjoined to observe — and their ready acquiescence with the 83 command, and the absence of all doubt and inquiry respecting its propriety and its obligations, are perfectly natural, and most easily explained. But we are not allowed to rest here. The sacred writings inform us, that, notwithstanding the admonition of Moses, " It came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments, and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days: abide ye, every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day."* Now, strangely indeed, and most erroneously, as it seems to us, has it been argued, that the words just quoted — " the Lord hath given you the Sab- bath," refer to a new and positive institution, formerly unknown. It is maintained, that the phraseology applies emphatically and exclusively to the Hebrews, and that, taken in connection with the twenty-third verse — " This is that which the Lord hath said. To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord," they furnish a decisive proof of the original appointment of the sanctifi- cation of the seventh day. This, we consider the • Exod. xvi. 27, 28, 29. 84 last resource of a weak and desperate cause; and we are only astonished, that men of acknowledged talent and piety should ever have been found resorting to it. The argument, however, carries its own refutation along with it; for, either the words, " how long refuse ye to keep my command- ments, and my laws?" which immediately precede the clause, "for the Lord hath given you the Sabbath," relate to an old, well-known, and com- mon practice — to the neglect and violation of some long-established institution — or, they have abso- lutely no point or meaning. But we cannot waste time in offering a more serious or lengthened answer to an objection so frivolous and evanescent; and if what we have very recently advanced, respecting the statement in the twenty-third verse, be correct, then, the words now under considera- tion, cannot be understood as the original announcement of the institution of the Sabbath, but must be taken as a repetition of an old ordi- nance, enjoining its sanctification. "When men, who have a weak, or a bad cause to defend, are driven from one fastness, they generally fly to another; and, rather than honour- ably relinquish a position which has been proved to be untenable, they strengthen themselves in fool-hardiness and obstinacy, and engage in a desperate resistance, which only exposes them to 8^ defeat and derision. Accordingly, we find it alleged by our opponents, that although it is not mentioned in the history, yet, the observance of the Sabbath might be introduced and enjoined after the passage of the Red Sea, or, as above, at the gathering of the manna. But this assumption is altogether gratuitous, and cannot, for a moment, be adhered to by any who give the sacred records a careful and candid perusal. It is quite absurd to suppose, that a new institu- sion, of so much importance as that of the Sabbath, which was accompanied with the solemn benedic- tion of the Almighty himself, should be introduced and announced to the people, with all its claims of moral obligation, and yet be wholly excluded from its natural and proper place in the regular history. Those who assume this to be the fact^ maintain a position, which every event and incident detailed in the sacred writings, combine to over- throw. Circumcision and the passover, are insti- tutions confessedly inferior in importance to that of the Sabbath; and yet, their first establishment is found narrated at the exact period of time, and along with the exact circumstances in which they originated. Now, if we allow that the institution of the Sabbath was unknown, or had no existence till the time of Moses, then, both circumcision and the passover, as prior in their appointment, H 86 might justly be regarded as superior in their moral sanctions and obligations: and, in that case, we would ask our opponents, how they will dispose of our Saviour's argument with the Jews, on this point — " Moses gave unto you circumcision, (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers,) and ye on the Sabbath-day circumcise a man. If a man on the Sabbath-day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken, are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath-day?" * It is manifest, from the reasoning here employed, that our Saviour regarded the Sabbath as an insti- tution of superior importance, and of stronger moral obligation, than the other two; and it is also manifest, that the Jews entertained the same opinion. Had they believed it to be an institution of no higher antiquity than the time of Moses, it could never have been a subject of doubt or sur- prise, that it should yield to the prior rite of cir- cumcision; nor would our Saviour's argument, in that case, have possessed any force or any applica- tion to the point at issue. We have farther to observe, however, that, if the general argument of our opponents proved any thing, it would prove too much — too much, at • John's Gospel, vii. 22, 23. 87 least, for the safety of the doctrine they defend. We have already seen, that it is chiefly on account of the silence, which has been remarked in the writings of Moses, respecting the observance of the Sabbath, that they contend it never had any divine authority as a commandment, until it re- ceived it amidst the thunders of Mount Sinai ; and by this means, they imagine, they are able to take away the general sanction, which belongs to it as a moral appointment. Now, it is unfortunate for their hypothesis, that the evidence for its truth, is altogether of a negative character; and that, so far. from amounting, in any case, to a proof, it carries not, in our estimation, the air of probability. But let us see a little more particularly how the matter stands, even according to their own state- ment The observance of the Sabbath, we are told, is not mentioned in the history of the world, before the call of Abraham; and because the ne- glect of it is not ascribed to the inhabitants of the old world, as a crime, it is concluded, that its institution must have been unknown. We have already replied, in general terms, to this objection; and we shall only add, that, if the reasoning on which it is founded, be allowed to be correct, we may argue for the non-observance of the Sabbath, and the non-criminality of its neglect, during the long period of seven hundred and thirty years, H 2 88 after the events recorded in the sixteenth chapter of Exodus; or, during the still longer period of nine hundred years from the same date: for then only do we find the first direct censure of the Jewish people, and the first judgments denounced against them, for the profanation of that holy day. See Isaiah, chapter first, but particularly the twentieth chapter of Ezekiel. But, farther, it is objected, that the second chap- ter of Genesis, does not contain an account of the original institution of the Sabbath, because there is no record of its observance, or of its neglect, during the stay of the children of Israel in Egypt, or during any other public emergency of that people. It is answered, that, at a much later period of their history, viz. that of their captivity in Chaldea, we have no record of any permission for them to dispense with the obligation of the Sabbath; neither have we any account of their observance of it. The sacred writinors are altogether as silent respecting it, in this case, as in that above referred to. Yet, as Nehemiah, and his pious coadjutors in the work of re-establishing the worship of God, and of reforming the morals of the people, solemnly enjoined and enforced its observance, and recom- mended, by their own example, the duty of sancti- fying it; it is impossible to doubt, that the public celebration of the day, was a well-known, though 89 neglected, ordinance of the Most High, during the above period.* I shall only mention, as a parallel circumstance in the cases just mentioned, that, as it was shortly after the return of the Jews from their captivity in Chaldea, that Nehemiah commanded them to rest, on the Sabbath, from their secular pursuits, and to sanctify it — so was it, shortly after their release from the bondage of Egypt, that its observance was enjoined by Moses, on the occasion of their gathering the manna: and thus, by a parity of reasoning, we may con- clude, that the institution was equally known to that people during their residence in Egypt, as during their captivity in Chaldea. The brief and summary details contained in the sacred writings, sufficiently account for the infrequent mention of the observance or non- observance of the Sabbath ; and ought to operate as a restraint on the disputatious tempers of those, whose zeal, in the cause of reducing the moral obligations of that holy day, by shaking men's faith in the antiquity of its establishment, may lessen, but can never strengthen their attachment to an institution, which is undeniably the most venerable, wise, and beneficial, that the Almighty ever ordained for the use of man. It is worthy of * See Nehemiah, passim. H 3 90 consideration, moreover, that this institution is not mentioned in more than five or six passages of Scripture, relating to different events, during one thousand years, embracing the whole period from the time of Moses till the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity. The first is found during the reign of Saul, (1 Chron. ix. 32,) nearly five hundred years after the giving of the law. The second occurs at the time Jehoram reigned over Israel, and Jehoshaphat over Judah, (2 Kings iv. 23,) about six hundred years after the above event.* The third passage may be seen, (2 Kings xvi. 18,) relating to a sacrilegious act of the wicked Ahaz, at the distance of seven hundred and fifty years from the fore-mentioned date. The other passages, in which any notices of the Sabbath are recorded, previous to the above epoch, may be found in chapters Ivi. Iviii. and Ixvi. of the pro- phecies of Isaiah; and these were written nearly eight hundred years after the death of Moses. No other trace or record of it can be discovered in the sacred writings, till after the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon. If, then, during so long a period as one thousand years, when the history of the Jewish nation was increasing in clearness and fulness of detail, such • See also 2 Kings xi. 5, et seq. 91 are the only passages, in which we have any notice of the institution now under consideration, can it be matter of surprise, that, during the antedeluvian and patriarchal ages, when its details are so brief and imperfect, we have no notice of it at all? We have seen, that, from the time of Moses, until the time of Saul, comprising a period of nearly five hundred years ; there is not to be found in the historical registers of the Jews, any traces of its observance, or any rehearsal of its duties, or any enforcement of their obligation. Now, if the silence of the Scriptures, in the first instance, were any proof that the sanctification of the Sabbath was not recognised as a duty, so assuredly would it be in the second instance; but as the most violent opponents of the moral obligations of this day, do not deny that its observance was a duty, and its neglect a crime, after the giving of the moral law, although the Scriptures have said nothing about it, during five hundred years after that event — so we maintain, that its observance was a duty, and its neglect a crime, prior to the giving of that law, although the Scriptures are silent respecting it for nearly three thousand years.* ♦ See Note C. 92 SECTION VII. The Writings of the Old Testament furnish the clearest and most satisfactory proof that the observance of the Sabbath had a morale and not a ceremonial obligation, I SHALL not recur, under this Section, to any of the arguments already deduced from the early period of the world, at which the ordinance of Heaven was first published for the observance of the Sabbath, and which so clearly and forcibly establish its universal and perpetual obligation; — but, confining myself to those parts of the sacred writings which relate to the history of the Jews, after their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, I shall endeavour to support the same conclusion, from all the notices which these writings exhibit of the nature and end of this institution. It is generally allowed by theologians, that the moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments, which were published to the Hebrews, amidst the thunders and lightnings of Mount Sinai; and we believe, that all writers on 93 morality, have admitted the same fact. At least, they all admit, that the great leading points of duty which we owe to our Creator, to our fellow- men, and to ourselves, are embraced in these commandments, and that subsequent revelations of the will of God, and increased experience and knowledge, on the part of man, hav^lled up all the intermediate and minute cases, which his wants, or desires, or claims, in any of the above capaci- ties, might suggest. Now, the moral law is held to be obligatory, in the most universal sense of the word, on men of every age and every country: for, although it was originally delivered to the Hebrews only, there is not the slightest ground for believing, that it was not expressly designed by the Almighty, that it should, ultimately, be of general application, and that men of every nation should be bound by its conditions. The sanctification of the Sabbath, is enjoined in one of the most solemn of all the commandments which constitute that law; and if the same reasoning which would be held good in every other case, be held good here, that which is due to one, must be due to all; and all mankind must be under the same immutable obligations to observe and obey the injunction contained in the fourth, as they are to obey that contained in the third. Nor do we think it is of little consequence, to mark the manner in which 94 these laws were promulgated for the instruction and the government of man. Never were any of the communications of heaven accompanied with such awful and glorious manifestations of the divine majesty and power. The mountain, we are told, was " altogether on a smoke, and quaked greatly, because the Lord descended on it in fire." There were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud encircling it; and, when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice, saying, — " I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage. — Thou shalt have no other gods before me. — Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generations of them that hate me. And showing mercy to thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." Such is the form in which the Almighty condescended to introduce, to his erring and sinful creatures, the revelation of those great moral precepts, which were intended to constitute the perpetual rule of their conduct; and it is impossible to conceive any circumstances more powerfully calculated to make a deep and solemn impression on the mind of man. 95 But, farther, we are informed, that when Moses was called up into the mountain of Sinai, the glory of the Lord abode upon it, and a cloud covered it six days. " And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire, on the top of the mount, in the eyes of the children of Israel." For forty days and forty nights, Moses enjoyed the singular and exalted honour of holding per- sonal communication with the Most High; during which time, he received explicit and minute directions respecting the materials and the form of the ark, and the tabernacle — the mercy- seat, and the cherubim of glory with which it was to be sur- mounted— the table — the candlestick — the lamp of pure gold — and all the other vessels requisite for the public services of religion. And it is certainly remarkable, that, after every necessary instriitrtien had been published regarding the dress of the priests who were to officiate — the sacrifices they were to offer — and the ceremonies they were to perform, — this marvellous and splendid manifesta- tion of God's condescension and kindness to man, should terminate with a most solemn republication of the law of the Sabbath. " And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily, my Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you, throughout your generations, that ye may know 96 that I ana the Lord, that doth sanctify you. Ye $hall keep the Sabbath* therefore, for it is holy i^into you^ Ev^ry oEe that defileth it, shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work thereon, that soul shall be cut off from amongst his people^ It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever ; for, in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day, he rested a^d vyas refreshed." * It canniOt fail to attract the notice of every pious and reflecting reader, that there is a peculiar soUcitude displayed throughout the whole of the passage I have now quoted^ for securing the devout and solemn observance of this holy day : and the reasons which are assigned for the act, or the jajiotives by which it is enforced, are of the most ej^alted moral and spiritual character. " Six days qaay work be done; but the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy unto the Lord. Wherefore, the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe it, throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant : for, in six days, the Lord made heaven ai)d earth,, and on the seventh he rested.^'f The qause which is here assigned for the institution, is altogether independent of any of the local pecu- * Exod. xxxu 12—18. f lUid. xxxi. 15, 16, 17. 97 liarities or ceremonial appointments of the Jews. It equally affects and concerns men of every age, and of every climate, who believe in the existence of God, and acknowledge the homage of reverence and gratitude due unto him : and though the law, in which the observance of that institution was so minutely and circumstantially enjoined, was first delivered to that people only, it bears upon all its conditions and requirements, this undeniable character, that, like the other nine, with which it is incorporated, it was intended to be of general and perpetual obligation, under every dispensation of providence, and in every age of the world. But this is a view of the subject, which I have detailed very fully above ; and I shall only here add, by way of supplement, that, if I were disposed to argue minutely in defence of the position I have assumed, or to combine in its support every cir- cumstance or fact, furnished by the sacred wiitings, I might state at great length, that the two tables of stone, on which were written, by the immortal finger of God, the words of the covenant — the ten commandments, were expressly designed to serve as a symbol of the perpetuity of their obligation on the consciences of all men, to whom their conditions and requirements apply. But we have no need to resort to extraneous, minute, or doubtful sources of reasoning, to up-r I 98 hold and establish our cause. It rests upon broad and stable grounds of its own, which no inquiries, or discoveries, or sophistry of men, ^ shall ever be able to subvert or confute. An examination of the terms, and conditions of the laws of the Deca- logue, will, at once, satisfy every man possessed of just religious sentiments, or of common moral discrimination, that they apply to the circumstances of every i-easonable and accountable being, to whom they are made known ; and, therefore, must every reasonable and accountable being, to whom they are made known, be held answerable for his observance, or non-observance, of their require- ments. Unlike the local ceremonies, and temporary institutions of the Hebrews, the written prescrip- tions of which were placed beside the ark, the record of the ten commandments, the two tables of stone, were deposited within the ark ; and as the ark was a symbol of the divine presence, this very circumstance, may, without any straining of metaphor, or any unnatural interpretation, be regarded as a testimony of their paramount au- thority, their everlasting importance, and indis- soluble obligation. But, there are some circumstances, connected with the institution and observartce of the Sabbath among the Jews, which decidedly mark it as being independent of, if not unconnected with, the Mosaic 99 ritual ; as being, in fact, universal and perpetual in its obligations; and to these we shall very briefly advert. The fourth commandment runs in these words : " Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God ; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is *within thy gates.'^ This last clause, we contend, furnishes a strong indirect argument, for the universality of the law to which it is appended. The strangers who resided in the land of Judea, were divided into two classes; and distinguished by the names of Proselytes of the covenant, and Proselytes of the gate. The former submitted to the rite of circumcision, and were bound to observe the whole of the Jewish laws and ceremonies. The latter did not submit to the initiatory rite of the Abrahamic covenant, neither did they embrace the peculiar tenets and rules which the Jews, as a nation, observed. They simply renounced idolatry, professed their faith in the one living and true God, and promised obedience to the patriarchal institutions and laws. Now, it is to this class, that the fourth commandment alludes, by the " stranger within thy gates." He was bound to keep holy the Sabbath; but he was not I 2 100 permitted to eat of the passover, or to offer incense, or to join in many of the ritual services of the law. What, then, can be the cause of this distinction? Is there, in the history of the case, any grounds for it? Can we point out a reason for it, derived from the very nature of the institution, and appli- cable to the character of the persons in question ? Yes. The passover, and all the other ordinances and rites, to which the proselyte of the covenant was admitted, were national institutions^ and purely Jewish in their obligations. The Sabbath, which the stranger, or the proselyte of the gate, who had not adopted the peculiarities of the Jewish religion, was bound to observe and keep holy, was not national^ hwt universal m its obligations. It was not restricted to those who embraced all the pecu- liar tenets of the Mosaic economy ; but extended to every descendant of Adam — to every rational and accountable creature, dependent upon God for life and preservation ; and bound, therefore, by every consideration of love and gratitude, to give him the homage of thanksgiving and praise. Prophecy is a prospective detail of events which are hereafter to be unfolded; and if we can show, that there are, in the sacred writings, any prophetic declarations bearing upon the future observance and sanctification of the Sabbath; we may, with the strictest propriety, plead, that they afford a 101 powerful argument in favour of the universality of its obligations, under every dispensation of God*s will and mercy to man. This, then, I shall en- deavour to do, as briefly as the importance of the case will permit. In Psalm cxviii., it is thus written, " The stone which the builders refused, is become the head- stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing : it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made : we will rejoice and be glad in it." It is universally allowed, that these verses are a prediction of the rejection, the perse- cution, and death of the Messiah, by his infidel countrymen: and of his miraculous and triumphant resurrection from the grave. The day on which he rose victorious over the spirits of darkness, and spoiled principalities and powers, making a show of them openly, is, by way of eminence, called, " the day of the Lord;" and, in the enthusiasm of his feelings, awakened by the glorious event, the Psalmist exclaims, " On it we will rejoice and be glad. Open to me the gates of righteousnes?. I will go into them, and I will praise the Lord." The day here prophetically alluded to, is the day on which the Lord Jesus became our shield and our salvation, on which prayers were ever after to be offered up, and praises sung to the Most High ; and on which the righteous were to receive I 3 102 blessings out of the house of the Lord. This is the day on which Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and became the head-stone of the corner. It is the day of holy rest, devoted to the commemoration of the marvellous doings of the Lord, and to the anticipation of the eternal joy and blessedness, which await the righteous, in the land beyond death and the grave. In chapter Ivi. of Isaiah, we meet with this striking and beautiful prediction, which, beyond all doubt, relates to the days of gospel light and purity,* when the privileges and benefits enjoyed by the faithful, should be universally extended and confirmed.* " Let not the son of the stranger that hath joined himself to the Lord, speak, saying, The Lord hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say. Behold I am a dry tree. For thus saith the Lord, Unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbath, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my cove- nant; even unto them, will I give in mine house and within my walls, a place, and a name, better than that of sons and of daughters: and I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. Also, the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name * Isaiah Ivi. 3 — 9, 103 of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant. Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt-offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar : for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people. The Lord God, which gathereth the outcasts of Israel, saith, Yet will I gather others to him, besides those that are gathered unto him." It requires no ingenuity or labour to prove, that this passage of scripture is strictly descriptive of the days of the Son of man : when it was no longer they, who worshipped in the temple at Jerusalem or the mountain of Samaria, but all in every climate and country, who worshipped God with a pure heart fervently, that should be accepted by him. An enlarged knowledge of the revelation of mercy and grace to men ; an universal diffusion of the light of truth and salvation, are clearly implied : and the period alluded to, can be no other than that, when the middle wall of par- tition which divided the Jew from the Gentile, was broken down, and the vail of the temple rent asunder, and the tidings of peace and reconcilia- tion preached unto them who were afar off, and to them who were near ; when the law o^ cere- monial commandments, was abrogated and abo- 104 lished by the death and the resurrection of Christ ; and of twain, one new man made for ever unto himself. The public ordinances of religion were then to be held sacred by every people; the divine sanctions of the Sabbath were to receive a glorious illustration, when the salvation and the righteous- ness of the Lord were revealed, and the outcasts of Israel and the sons of the stranger were gathered unto Christ; when all, indeed, without distinction of age, or of nation, who kept the Sabbath from polluting it, and took hold of the covenant of God, should be accepted and blessed, and made joyful in his house of prayer. Now, the above is a prediction, which the Spirit of truth would never have penned, unless it had been true ; and it cannot be true, unless, at the period of its accomplishment, the Sabbath con- tinued to be a divine appointment, and men were accepted and blessed, in observing and sanctifying it. Under the dispensation of the Gospel, but never before that, this prediction has received an exact and glorious fulfilment. The outcasts of Israel and others, have been gathered unto Christ. The sons of the stranger have come from afar, and joined themselves unto the Lord to serve him. They have loved his name, and kept his Sabbath from polluting it. They have been brought into his holy mountain, and made joyful in his house 105 of prayer. Their sacrifices and burnt-offerings, the incense of their hearts, and the pure aspira- tions of their faith, have been accepted upon his altar; and thus, in the fullest and only true sense of the terms, has his house become *' a house of prayer for all people." The ceremonial law has been abolished, but the moral law has remained. The distinction between Jew and Gentile, and bond and free, is for ever broken down ; new heavens and a new earth have been created; former things have passed away, and all things have become new.* The work of redeeming, and of sanctifying the souls of men, has made the spiritual Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy : and during eighteen hundred years, have the blessings, foretold by the most sublime and evangelical of all the prophets, been possessed and enjoyed by all who have kept the Sabbath from polluting it, and taken hold of the covenant of the Lord; for they have been brought into his holy mountain, and made joyful in his house of prayer. If it were necessary for the support of our argu- ment, other passages than these now referred to, might be adduced from the Old Testament, to give additional force to the views we have been illustrating. But we do not consider the case to * Isaiah Ixv. 17, 18. 106 stand in need of such assistance, and we forbear to load our pages with long and tedious quotations. The Sabbath was instituted, to be a commemora- tion of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, displayed in the creation of the universe; and of this we are fully informed by the very command- ment which enjoins its observance. Though the fourth commandment, therefore, was originally delivered to the Jews only, it possesses the same claim to universality of application, as all the other commandments of the law : by the same moral conditions, then, are all men bound to its ob- servance, and by the same rule of moral justice, will all be judged for the transgression of it, as for the transgression of any of the others, the moral character and obligations of which are not disputed. The end of its institution, moreover, was to furnish to man an opportunity of advancing in the knowledge and practice of holiness ; and of this we have the most satisfactory proof, from almost every notice which is given of it in the writings of the Old Testament. To all men, therefore, of every kindred and climate, its enact- ments and requirements are alike interesting and obligatory : and to all of them, also, their neglect and violation must be alike criminal and punish- able. The very nature of the commandment, indeed, points out its universality: its universality 107 clearly establishes its morality: and this again leaves not a shadow of a doubt of our responsibility, *' For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord." * After this full, and, we trust, satisfactory, detail of those passages of Scripture, by which the argu- ment placed at the head of this Section, is sup- ported, we might, with safety, leave it to the candour of the reader to decide, respecting its force or validity: but we are unwilling to bring our illustration to an end, without adverting to two or three general facts, which, we cannot help thinking, give much additional weight to the views we are defending. In these late, and enlightened ages, as they are called, it never enters into the mind of any man to dispute the moral obligations of the commandments which prohibit idolatry, or the worship of false gods — the profanation of the glorious and fearful titles of the one living and true God — the crimes of murder, of adultery, of * Isaiah IxvL 22, 23. 108 theft — of bearing false witness against our neigh- bour— and of coveting from our neighbour what we are afraid openly to plunder. No one thinks of denying, that we are under moral obligation to reverence and worship the Lord God Almighty, the maker and preserver of all things; and to honour and obey our parents, as the natural guardians and instructors of our hfe; that, accord- ing to the promise annexed, our days may be long and prosperous upon the earth. Now, in the very body of these commandments, is found that one in which the duties of the Sabbath are enu- merated, and the same sanctions that belong to all the others, belong to it. The same blessings and the same punishments, as are attached to the observance or violation of the other commandments, are attached to the fourth : and the whole history of the Jews, abundantly proves the punctuality and rigour with which they were dispensed and inflicted. " Six days shall work be done, but, on the seventh, there shall be to you an holy day, a Sabbath of rest to the Lord. Whosoever doth work therein, shall be put to death." * If it be objected, as we know it has been by some, that the threatenings and penalties, asso- ciated by the prophets with a violation of the duties * Exod. XXXV. 2. 109 of the Sabbath, are merely of a temporal nature; and if they expect, by this subterfuge, to shake off the obligation to its public observance, we can answer, that, upon the same grounds, and with as good reason, they may throw away the obligation of every commandment of the moral law. It was a peculiar feature of the Jewish dispensation, that temporal blessings only were originally annexed to the preservation of its forms, and the obedience of its requirements: and temporal penalties only denounced a ce jour, ils sont maitres absolus de leur temps, et peuvent se dire ainsi quelquefois: Et moi aussi je suis Lrbre.'* M. Necker De I'importance des opinions religieuses. 233 indispensably requisite in all our movements and gestures. We are engaged in the worship and service of the Most High; and the act of confessing our sins, and imploring forgiveness, and seeking, through the intercession of the Redeemer, recon- ciliation and favour, must strongly awaken within us, a sense of our guilt, our frailty, and insuffi- ciency; and thus, effectually banish from our minds every feeling of pride, hardheartedness, and inso- lence. The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, is, in the sight of God, of great price; and no man can make an acceptable approach to his altar, or engage aright in his service, who has not expe- rienced the influence of holy desires extinguishing ihe power of impure passions, and felt a spirituality of temper, and a sweetness and gentleness of dis- position, uniting him in sympathy with the wants and the wishes of all around him. Haughtiness and self-conceit, in many cases? characterize the possessors of learning and wealth, and these dispositions are generally manifested in a supercilious contempt for all who are less favour- ably gifted. The qualities on which haughtiness of demeanour is founded, are, for the most part, entirely fictitious; and, as society is now consti- tuted, one very considerable cause of suffering to the lowly and undistinguished, arises from the insolence which the pride of rank, or of riches, u 3 234 compels tbem to endure. But there is one place, and only one, where the distinctions of birth and of rank — the insolence of office — the pride of wealth — and the self-sufficiency of science, are annihilated; and all classes and denominations of men, appear, " without respect of persons, as nothing and vanity." There is one place, where the dazzling illusions of the world have lost their power to deceive, and the measure of truth and rectitude is impartially applied to the conscience and the' conduct of all. In the house of God, and in the worship of God, all men appear, even in their own estimation, equally " wretched and poor, blind and naked," — distinguished in no way from one another, except by the sincerity of their contrition — the strength of their faith — and the fervour of their desires to purify themselves from all iniquity of heart and of life, even as the author of their faith is pure. It is here, in the sanctification of the Sabbath, and the performance of its solemn public duties, that the rich and the poor truly meet together, and the Lord appears as the Maker and the Father of them all. Here " the mighty are put down from their seats, and they of low degree are exalted." All the distinc- tions of honour, and power, and wealth, are abolished; and the glorious distinction of having " full assurance of the faith, and hearts sprinkled 235 from an evil conscience, and purged from dead works, to serve the living God," is alone recog- nized. The poor man is released from the de- pressing influence of an untoward fortune; and he gains a holy confidence, and an unyielding forti- tude against the evils of his lot, from the assurance of the loving-kindness and favour of the Most High. The rich man gives his earthly treasure to the wind, and, prostrating himself at the foot- stool of the divine throne, he is only raised from the depths of his self-abasement, and released from his fears of utter rejection, by the cheering declaration, that although not many wise men, after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called, " of a truth, God is no respecter of per- sons; but in every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." The worship of God, then, according to the ceremonial and spirit of the Gospel, is the grandest moral spectacle the world ever witnessed. It is here, alone, that all men are equalized in the presence of the Creator, and combined by their common imperfections and wants, in mutual benevolence and esteem. It is here, alone, the rich and poor meet together, as children of the same Father, and heirs of the same inheritance — as suppliants of the same mercy, and partakers of the same hopes. The same desires and aspirations are here poured 236 forth from a thousand hearts, and consolations and comforts, which are neither few nor small, are showered down on all, according as their varied circumstances require. It is only in the house set apart for the worship of the one living and true God, that mankind are publicly taught, that the same purposes are destined to be fulfilled, by all the vicissitudes of condition and enjoyment which they experience here, and that the disap- pointments and afflictions which fall to their lot now, will, hereafter, issue in the full and ever- lasting happiness of all who are suitably exercised under them. " O Israel, trust thou, therefore, in the Lord, for the Lord God is a sun and shield. Keep ye judgment, and do justice, for his salvation is near to come, and his righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it — that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it — and keepeth his hand from doing any evil," But this leads me to state, that, in a detail of the benefits resulting from the observance of the Sabbath, as a day of holy rest and meditation, the facilities it affords for instructing men in the knowledge of religious and moral duty, must be assigned a high and important station. The direct tendency of natural and moral science to soften and civilize mankind, and to qualify them 237 for discharging, most successfully and beneficially, all the duties of social and domestic life, has been questioned, we believe, by none who have not been decidedly hostile to the moral and political interests of our race. Wherever learning is patronised and encouraged, it unfolds, in a pre- eminent degree, the highest faculties of the human mind, and gives exercise and energy to feelings and affections which would otherwise have lain for ever dormant. It multiplies the means of human subsistence and enjoyment; and unlocks the richest intellectual treasures that dignify and adorn our nature. It ennobles the mind of man, more than all the arbitrary honours and distinc- tions which princes or courts can confer; and places, at all times, within the reach of those who possess it, a rich banquet of moral felicity, which the world can neither give, nor take away. Do we admit, then, that all men have a right to personal enjoyment — and, (except in a country where the most debasing despotism has extin- guished all sentiments of virtue,) this, we should think, will not be denied — if we admit, that all men have certain duties to perform, as rational and accountable beings — as beings who are not sent into the world to run the round of a few years of care and penury, and afterwards to perish in ignorance and misery, but who are placed here in 238 a state of trial and preparation for another, and an endless world, and who, according to their present character and conduct, shall hereafter be declared the heirs of glory and honour, or of tribulation and wrath, — then it must be of the highest importance for their moral improvement and happiness, that there should be regular inter- vals of rest, devoted to the cultivation of moral and religious truth. Now, are not these intervals most wisely provided by the weekly recurrence of the Sabbath; and does it not furnish more effica- ciously than was ever done by any other moral or religious institution, the means of growing in the knowledge of holiness and righteousness, and of all the duties that belong to the life that now is, and of that which is to come? And what knowledge can be more practical, more useful, more fitted to enlarge and exalt the mind, than that which relates to the present and future condition of man? Or where can it be acquired so expeditiously or so perfectly, as in the house where the oracles of divine truth are expounded, and the duties of devotion and charity, of meekness, patience, and perseverance, are inculcated, with the powerful aid of sympathy to enforce them, and all the charm of a pious example to win us to their love and practice? The heathen world may be searched in vain for 239 an institution that can vie in utility with that of the Sabbath, and in no Christian country can we point to any other periodical festival, or any other human appointment that can be compared to it, as the means of communicating the greatest portion of important instruction to the greatest mass of mankind. It is in the sanctuary of God's house alone, that we behold the pleasing spectacle of a mingled multitude, composed of the high and the low, the rich and the poor, assembled on the first day of the week, having their hearts warmed by the same gratitude — animated by the same hopes — and united in the same bonds of benevo- lence and peace. It is there only that they appear possessed of the same substantial and glorious privileges, in virtue of which, they can draw near to the throne of grace with confidence, as children to a flither who is able and willing to help them in every time of need. Religious knowledge is, in the highest sense of the word, the knowledge of our duty; and this, it is the exclusive end of the Sabbath to teach and recommend. Plainness and simplicity, in general, characterize the instruc- tions which are delivered from the word of God in the house set apart for his worship; and there have all ranks of men an opportunity, which they can find no where else, of hearing the doctrines of salvation, and the sanctions and obligations of £40 moral duty, explained and enjoined with un- rivalled solemnity and force. If there is not a melancholy preponderance of worldly and sinful thoughts in the mind, the im- pressions which are received in the sanctuary, must be carried into the world, and there give a charac- ter to all our transactions, in every department of life. With the lively influence of the important truths which he heard expounded on the Sabbath, pervading his mind during the week, with the consideration of his future accountability at the tribunal of God, always before his eyes, a man must ever feel restrained in the pursuit of secular profit or pleasure; for we can conceive no doctrine more powerful in training him to circumspection and purity of conduct, than the assurance, that a Being of perfect holiness — with whom evil cannot dwell, neither can the workers of iniquity stand- in his sight — is the constant witness of all his thoughts, words, and deeds. The public services of the Sabbath, therefore, furnish the mass of mankind with information respecting their duty, and motives to the performance of it, more plain and intelligible, more copious and forcible, than they could derive from the observance of any other ordinance, or the celebration of any other act of religious worship. They aid private devo- tion, by inspiring additional degrees of moral 241 fervour, and render all our duties of praise and thanksgiving, of confession and supplication, more impressive and profitable, than they can be when performed in solitude. They preserve and promote, moreover, the peace and good order of society, by removing, from the mind of the worshippers, all rancorous and turbulent passions; and exhibit, in the mingled throng who have met to serve the Lord, with one heart, and in one way, the most perfect example of social union and happiness, which the annals of the world can display. They diffuse, among all who assemble to worship under the same roof,, and in the same spirit, gentleness and meekness, mutual forbearance and friendship. They inspire the lowly and self-abased with senti- ments of manly boldness and independence, and render them careful, even from a regard to their own respectability and comfort, to observe an out- ward propriety and decorum in all their demean- our in the world. They bring together, and strip of their short-lived distinctions, the prince and the peasant, the magistrate and the subject, the master and the servant, and unite them all in a common sympathy, by uniting them in a common end. But, to sum up this detail of moral benefits, we maintain, that there is no appointment of Provi- dence, and no ordinance of religion, which can be X 242 compared to the Sabbath, as the instrument of preserving in the world, the knowledge and worship of the one living and true God. Take mankind in general, and examine their dispositions and habits. Trace them in their progress through life, and carefully compare the relative influence which temporal and spiritual objects, or, what is the same thing, which the concerns of time and of eternity maintain over their minds. Do not the things which are seen and temporal, in many cases, swallow up all regard for the things that are not seen and eternal? In every country, do not we find the largest proportion of mankind so engrossed with the care of what they shall eat, and what they shall drink, and wherewithal they shall be clothed, that they have no time and no reflection to bestow on the momentous interests of a future and eternal world? Does not the love of present ease, or the desire of future gain, or the pursuit of vain and visionary honours, obliterate from the hearts of a large portion of our race, all con- cern about the obligations of the divine law, and, consequently, all concern about the awful realities of eternity? If men were left unacquainted with the public institutions and ordinances of religion, would they not soon become strangers to the sanctions and obligations of its private duties? Certainly they would— for, if there was no regular 243 period of time devoted by them to the acquirement of the knowledge of the doctrines and duties of salvation, they would speedily become ignorant of their own immortal nature — lose all reverence for the attributes and the laws of God, and sink into a melancholy condition of moral insensibility and sin. The devout observance of the Sabbath, then, we contend, is the main pillar on which vital godliness and true holiness rest. Without the public acknowledgment of the existence and the providence of God, there can be no excitement to duty higher than what the transient considera* tions of time can create. Without the observance of the public institutions of religion, we cannot well conceive the existence of any concern about the discharge of its private virtues. If the divine authority of the commandment to sanctify the Sabbath, is denied, and the public ordinances of the Gospel are disregarded, it is not at all probable that any reverence for the name and the attributes of God, will remain; or that the desire of obtaining his favour, and the fear of incurring his dis- pleasure, will so influence the minds of men, as to preserve them in the constant love and practice of all that he has revealed, as "honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report." No. — It is by the regular observance of the X 2 ^44 Sabbath, that the knowledge of the character and the laws of God, is most extensively communicated to the majority of men. It is by this, that they are most perfectly instructed in the duties which belong to the stations they occupy in this life, and most fervently animated with the desire of attaining the realization of all the glorious hopes and pro- mises which belong to that which is to come. We may lay it down, therefore, as a general rule, that where the public ordinances of religion are not respected, its private duties will be very little known or practised. When men forsake the assembling of themselves together, to worship God, they forsake the way of holiness and happiness; and meanly proffer, at the shrine of personal ease and sensual enjoyment, the highest privileges and the brightest endowments of an immortal and account- able creature. Experience has fully demonstrated, that, when they turn away their feet from the sanctuary, they turn away from righteousness; and when they have begun to walk through life, without the fear and reverence of God, they have begun to walk after the " lust of the flesh — the lust of the eye — and the pride of life." With the largest portion of mankind, the neglect of the Sabbath, in particular, is a proof of the neglect of religion in general; — wherever the influences of religion 245 are not felt, the fear of God cannot be experienced; and where the fear of God is not experienced, the corrupt passions of the heart must be the only guides of human conduct, and under their oppres- sive and demoralizing rule, men must become the slaves of sin, and, according to their various pro- pensities and habits, sell themselves to work all manner of evil, with greediness. How dismal is the picture which such a state of society exhibits! No prayers are there heard ascending to heaven, and no voice of mercy comes from it, to cheer the humble penitent with the promise of the remission of sins, and the assurance of salvation through faith in the righteousness of Christ Jesus. They desire not the Lord, or the knowledge of his ways; and in righteous judgment, they have been given up to the delusion of a reprobate mind. There is no petition offered up for the grace of repentance, and on none are its blessful influences shed. The gates of righteousness are never entered, and the door of life is never open. Darkness has covered the earth, and gross darkness the people. The broad road, that leads to destruction, is crowded with a perverse and backsliding generation, who have rejected all counsel, and despised all reproof; and that they may eat of the fruit of their own ways, and be filled with their own devices, the fearful sentence of Ephraim has been pronounced x3 246 against them — " They are joined to their idols, let them alone." * But while we deplore the general prevalence of profaneness and profligacy — while we deprecate the operation of those causes by which the Sabbath is polluted, and the ordinances of religion neglected and despised, it is gratifying to know, (and we state the fact as matter of joy and triumph to every good man,) that there are none to be met with who are influenced, we will not say by the princi- ples of Christianity, but by the feelings of benevo- lence and patriotism, who do not readily acknow- ledge the general benefit which society derives from the recurrence of this sacred day. However much men may differ about the mode of sancti- fying it-^or however much their practice may be opposed to their opinions — what may be called the political advantages of its observance, are uncontro- verted. The Sabbath is ordained for a day of spiri- * " Wherever the Sabbatli is not, there is no worship, no religion. Man forgets God; and God forsakes man. The moral world becomes a desert, where life never springs, and beauty never smiles. Putrid with sin, and shrunk with ignorance, the soul of man loses its rational character, and prostrates itself before devils, men, beasts, and reptiles, stocks and stones. To these, man offers his prayers, his praises, and his victims — to these, he sacrifices his children, and immolates the purity and honour of his wife. — A brutal worshipper of a brutal god, he hopes for protection and blessing from the assumption of every folly, and the perpetration of every crime." 247 tual refreshment, and not of mortified restraint — for a day of public worship, and public deliverance from servile labourand confinement; and iftherebeanyto whom, in the highest sense of the word, it doth not shine a holiday, the cause, we are certain, will be found in the iniquity and oppression of their mas- ters, or in their own debasing attachment to sensual enjoyments, or the greedy and grovelling pursuit of earthly and perishing treasures. There are none of our race whose bodily frame can endure unceas- ing toil, or whose minds will not sink into debility and remissness, by long-continued, close, and thoughtful employment. There are none to whom the alternations of rest and labour are not grateful, and whose minds do not feel refreshed and invigo- rated by the holy exercises which link them in communion with the exercises and the enjoyments of another and an eternal worlii. How pleasing, then, and beneficial, must the interruption of our worldly pursuits be, while we devote ourselves on the Sabbath, to the peaceful, but sublime contem- plation of the wonders of redeeming love, and join in the solemn assemblies of the devout, who lift their souls and their songs to heaven, in adoration of the attributes and works of the Almighty. How delightful is it to contemplate the humble and hard-wrought peasant, whose daily labours leave no room for more than the grateful vicissitude 248 of his nightly slumbers, rising, with the Sabbath sun, to survey the smiling beauties with which a benignant Providence has adorned his adjacent neighbourhood; and to prepare his heart for ascending, in sympathy with all the tribes of animated nature, in celebration of the wisdom and goodness of God ! How delightful is it to contemplate the emotions of his gratitude poured out, for even the scanty portion of comfort which has been assigned to him; and to see how his soul swells with praises, when he enumerates the visita- tions which have hitherto supported and beglad- dened him on his way through life! — Is there no moral sentiment, think you, animates his heart, when he reflects on the wisdom and power which planned and created all the goodly fabric of nature, whose endless and magnificent varieties fill his senses and imagination with wonder and delight ? Is there no moral sentiment animates him, when he traces, in all that is around him, and above him, the impressions of omnipotence and majesty, which he cannot comprehend: and, when lifting his views to the heaven of heavens, he beholds, through the medium of his Bible, the fulness of the Godhead enthroned in light that is inaccessible, and full of glory? Is there no moral sentiment mingles with his speculations, when he is lost in the contemplation of the stupendous machinery 249 of the world, which he sees revolving with uninterrupted serenity and silence; and, when over- come by the magnitude and splendour of the scene, he sinks under his own insignificance, and piously exclaims, " Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou shouldst visit him?" Do no virtuous emotions mingle with his experience, when he calmly sur- veys the beauties of vegetable nature, which are every where strewn around him ; when he beholds how the wisdom and goodness of the Godhead, are imprinted on every herb and every flower that administer to his comfort or pleasure? Do no pious aspirations arise in his breast, when he admires the lilies of the field, how they grow; and while he wonders what may be the secret laws, by which they toil not, neither do they spin, yet he remembers, that Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of them?* But, more than all this: Who would deny, that the most exquisite moral feeling animates his heart, when, summoning his healthful and smiling • ** Blessed surely is the man who remembereth the Sabbath to keep it holy, who calleth it a delight, the holy of the Lord ; honourable, and honours him, not doing his own ways, nor finding his own pleasures, nor speaking his own words — for he shall be made to delight himself in the Lord, and be fed with the heritage of Israel." 250 offspring around him, he trains their yet unpol- luted tongues to join with him in the praises of that Being, by whom all the wonders and beauties he surveys, are created and preserved? Who would deny, that the purest and holiest feelings kindle in their souls, when he reads to them, out of the sacred volume, of the love and goodness, which form the brightest attributes of the God- head:— when he tells them, how man was created in innocence, and how he fell into guilt and misery: — how he had sunk himself into debase- ment and ruin, and how he was raised to the hope of immortality and glory? Are there no sentiments of piety and devotion excited in their hearts, when they read of the great love, wherewith God loved this world, in that, when there was no eye to pity us, and no hand to help us, his own eye took compassion, and his right hand wrought our redemption? Is that only a ceremonial act, which instils into the minds of an infant generation, a pious depen- dence upon God, — a devoted resolution of walking in all his ways — of keeping his commandments — of cleaving unto him, and serving him, with all their heart, and with all their soul? It is a periodical, but not a ceremonial act, which they perform, when, at the summon of the Sabbath bell, they meet in the assembly of the saints, where the 251 Lord is greatly feared; and unite in prayer with them, of whom he is constantly held in reverence. It is a periodical, but not a ceremonial act, which they perform, when, in obedience to the Apostle's injunction, " not to forsake the assembling of themselves together, as the manner of too many is," they meet on the first day of the week, that they may be exhorted and edified in the faith, and provoked to the cultivation of love and good works. — The mere walking in and out of the house of God, may, if you please, be called a ceremonial act; but, will any one contend, that there is no moral benefit attached to the exposi- tions which are there given of the doctrines and duties upon which our faith and manners are, or ought to be, built? Will any one contend, that there is no moral responsibility attached to the zeal or remissness, with which we obey the duties which are there inculcated, and the candour and honesty with which we examine the doctrines which are there expounded ? " Take ye heed how ye hear : for to him that hath, shall be given, and he shall have more abundantly: but from him that hath not, shall be taken away, even that which he seemeth to have." But we have a right to assume the point of moral obligation as already settled ; and I leave it to all who have attended to what was advanced 252 under the preceding Sections of this Treatise, to say, whether an ample mass of testimony has not been produced to satisfy every unprejudiced in- quirer on this head. We turn again, therefore, to the moral ad- vantages, which the devout observance of the Sab- bath spreads over society; and we ask our readers, if they have never, at any period of their life, been charmed with the spectacle of happiness, which the solemnization of the rites of religion presented? Has it never fallen to your lot, in some not lonely, but peaceful hamlet, to have your ears delighted, and your piety awakened, as you wandered through its lanes, and heard the morning of the Sabbath consecrated by the praises of its inmates? In the dwellings of the righteous, is heard the voice of rejoicing and salvation: for the Lord of Hosts is their strength and their song. Have not your souls, then, felt a holy influence pervade their aflfections, when you listened to the untutored notes of melody, which carried the sacrifice of a devout heart to the source of perfection and power; and have you not experienced all your sensibilities expand with the pious aspiration, that the emotions of your gratitude and praise might ascend, along with their offering, to the sanctuary of purity and bliss? Have you never marked, as you travelled along some distant, and, perhaps, 253 dreary region of your own country, where all its rugged and frowning scenery held you in a listless admiration of some visionary or undefined power — have you never marked, how the sullen features of the overhanging mountain seemed to be softened into mildness and placidity, by the smiling prospect of some plain, but picturesque mansion, which the piety of your forefathers had there planted as a temple to the Lord ; and to which now the simple peasantry of the surrounding hills were hastening, to present the thanksgiving which the past week had inspired, and to dedicate to Him the virtues which the present might require? Did you not perceive, how the devotion of their hearts diffused serenity over their countenances; and, while you gazed at the surrounding group, did you not fancy that you heard in their language, or saw in their gait, something of the heavenliness which the instructions of their Pastor breathed upon them? Did you not mingle with their con- versations; and were you not satisfied, that the lessons of divine wisdom, which they carried from the house of God, formed the rule of their actions in society: and that their steadfastness in duty; their consolation under aflSiction; their resistance to temptation; their submission to their superiors; their deference and respect for their equals ; their compassion for the distressed; and their benevolence Y S54 to the destitute — were chiefly, if not altogether, derived from the impressive, and persuasive, and fatherly admonitions of him who taught them, that it was " no vain thing to wait upon the Lord, neither was it unprofitable to keep his ordinances." Yes; we are certain that we can appeal with confidence to the history of society, for a confir- mation of this assertion — that wherever the ap- pointments and ordinances of God, have been most sacredly observed, there have the institutions and the laws of man been most punctually maintained: wherever the worship of God has been most faithfully preserved and performed, there have the person and property of man been most universally respected and protected. What is it that has shed a glory around our own country? What is it that has given it, among neighbouring nations, the reputa- tion of learning and virtue? What, but the religious institutions which our ancestors founded ; and the benefits of which we now enjoy, on the express condition, that we imitate their example, by walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord? W^hat is it that restrains men from crime, in those districts where police and municipal laws are least known, but the influence of those pious instructions, which, on every first day of the week, are delivered out of that book, which 255 commands " all the people to be gathered to- gether— men, women, and children, and the stranger that is within the gates — that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord, and observe and do all the words of his law?" — Public confidence and honour have always flourished most vigorously, where the principles of religion have been most purely taught. Integrity and truth have always most adorned the transactions of that society which cultivated most extensively the worship of God. Public tranquilh'ty and hap- piness have always prevailed, with least interrup- tion, in those quarters where the ordinances and maxims of the Gospel have been most universally observed. " Behold, then, the commandment is not hidden from us, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that we should say. Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that we should say. Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do it? But the word is very nigh unto us, it is even in our mouth, and in our heart, that we may do it."* Our fathers instructed us in it, and the blessings which they received as the fruits of its observance, * Deut. XXX. 11 — 14. Y 2 256 they have bequeathed as a rich inheritance to us. Their respect for the ordinances, and their obe- dience of the laws of God, shed a glory and a defence around their character and their dwellings; and we inherit the rewards of their piety and zeal, on the express condition, that we walk in the ways that the Lord hath commanded us. " I command you, therefore, this day," said their great law- giver; " to love the Lord your God, and to keep his statutes and his judgments, that you may live and multiply. But if you turn away your heart, so that you will not hear, I denounce unto you this day, that you shall surely perish. I call heaven and earth to witness, that I have set before you, life and death, good and evil ; choose, therefore, the good, that you and your seed may live." * Look around the nations of the earth — examine their manners and their institutions, and say, which are those that are most distinguished for political tranquillity and happiness? Where is public prosperity most strikingly conjoined with individual enjoyment? Where is the science of government best understood — and where are its principles and its laws most clearly defined, and most prudently and mercifully administered? * Deut. 2)assim. 257 Where does crime meet its most prompt and just award — and where do virtue and truth flourish and spread most vigorous and prosperous, through all the gradations of life? It is a proud and an undeniable tribute to the excellence of the Chris- tian religion, that, wherever its doctrines and its precepts have been best understood, and most extensively practised, there have public and pri- vate happiness most universally prevailed. The mild genius of the Gospel has softened the horror and the cruelty of the legislative enactments of many countries; and, with the exception of a few cases, where artful and wicked men have prosti- tuted its influence to the gratification of their secular ambition, it has spread gladness and joy over the moral aspect of human nature. It is upon the cultivation of individual virtue, that public morality is founded; and, therefore, all of us are accountable for the purity, or the profli- gacy of the land we inhabit. It is on the basis of religious principle alone, that true political security and peace can be built; and it is in the power of every man to add to public prosperity and confi- dence, by adding the example of personal holiness to the recommendation of public integrity? But, how will you preserve the practice of virtue among a people who have put away all fear of God from before their eyes? Will that family entertain Y 3 258 any regatd for the duties of private devotion, which has openly contemned all reverence for the public ordinances of religion? Or, how will you save a country from moral debasement and ruin, if its inhabitants are a race of evil doers, who have forsaken the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger? Experience has proved to us, that a nation must be virtuous, before it can be happy — its citizens must be good, before they can be loyal — and its government must be just, before it can be strong. What avail the wisest and most equitable laws, if the people are ignorant and depraved? What avail the best framed sta- tutes, and the most judicious enactments of politi- cal wisdom, if the dispensers of the law are tyrants and the people slaves? What avail the most just decisions of moral and political right, when profli- gacy reigns predominant throughout society, and all respect for the laws of man has been destroyed by the extinction of all regard for the glory of God? If you break down the public ordinances of religion, you will instantly break down the bul- warks of public virtue ; and if you obliterate from society the public worship of God, you will speedily destroy, in the minds of its members — you will quickly efface, from the conscience of man, all regard for the laws and the appointments of humanity. If you destroy the sanctions of religion, 259 or if you neglect and despise them In the court and m the palace, you will annul the efficacy of its enactments in the cottage — and if you take away the influence of its restraints and denouncements from the minds of the mass of mankind; you have annihilated, in their estimation, the influence of political authority and power. Let the experi- ment be made once, and we are sure it will never be repeated. Infidelity will occupy the seats of justice and of mercy. The courts of legislation will be filled with a wild group of disorderly and chimerical visions. The dreams of a vain philo- sophy will take the place of the dictates of moral and religious truth. , Improvement and refinement will be held out In prospect, while degeneracy and degradation are experienced in fact. A new era of regeneration and blessedness will be preached up by the disciples of falsehood, while the ministers of truth are announcing the approach of debase- ment and misery. The relaxation of public principle will speedily spread Its baneful effects over the lowest condition of private life. The abolition of the public establishments of religion, will be followed with the subversion of public tranquillity and happiness. Vile men will be exalted, and the wicked will walk on every side. The demoralizing contagion of profaneness and profligacy, will extend through all ranks In the ^60 community; the immorality of the court, will soon reach the hamlet; and all the parade of laws and proclamations, will not be able to preserve the boundaries of personal honour and fidelity entire, or inviolate. * A conflict of opposing interests and schemes will arise — all deference and respect for each other's opinions and property will be neglected — a selfish and sordid spirit be engendered among men — benevolence will forsake the human heart — a savage and ferocious temper will take possession of it, and justice, morality, and truth, will be sacri- ficed, by turns, to its capricious and ever-changing mandates. The visions of philosophy will vanish before the rude assaults of malignant and incensed passions — the illusions of moral amelioration, which spring from the imaginary perfection of the human character, will fade before the sable train which follows in the march of tumult and crime — and over the fair picture of ideal felicity and peace, the shades of wretchedness and horror will spread. " O that thou wouldst know, in this the day of thy merciful visitation, the things which belong unto thy peace, before they be for ever hid from thine eyes! Wherefore, be instructed, O Jerusalem! lest my soul depart from thee; lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited." f « See Note G. f Jerem. vi. 8. 261 / This is not an imaginary picture which we are holding up to view, nor are we endeavouring to give excitement to the feelings of piety, at the expense of the most cautious dictate of the under- standing. We are not conjuring up a fictitious detail of national immoralities. Nor are we pleading the cause of the public ordinances of the Gospel, to the prejudice of one tittle of the truth. We have not advanced a single figure of description, which has not been realized in society; and it is because there has been manifested, among certain classes of our population, a growing spirit of infidelity and profaneness, unprecedented in the annals of our hitherto peaceful and happy country, that we have so pointedly detailed the consequences of national apostacy and profligacy. Righteous- ness alone is the true glory of a nation; but sin is the reproach and disgrace of every people. We trust, therefore, that those scenes which are the forerunners of anarchy and tumult, will never be witnessed within our borders; and that we, who have long possessed, and long deserved, the character of a moral and religious people, will continue to maintain our claim to it, by the con- scientious discharge of the duties on which its existence depends. But the beginning of evil, is like the letting out of water; and we cannot too carefully guard against its first encroachments. 262 That which at first seems an inconsiderable stream, soon becomes a mighty torrent. If the flood-gates of corruption are thrown open in the high places of the earth, the strongest barriers will soon be broken down by the impetuosity of its current. The highest banks will be undermined by its whirl- pools, or swept away by the fury of its course; and the fairest and the richest scenery that adorns the adjacent plain, will be for ever blighted and obli- terated by its desolating force. But, all metaphor apart, we have lived at a period of the world in which we have seen the moral and political evils we have just described, exemplified; and the nations of Europe are not yet fully recovered from the consternation and dread which they spread among them. The time is not long past, since a nation attempted to change its God for those who were no gods. We have lived in an age, when the institutions and the rites of religion were publicly broken down and insulted; and the upstart authorities of the country openly encouraged the people in the commission of crime, that they might encourage them to destroy the emblems and the worship of the cross. The very name, and symbols, and allusions of Christianity, were blotted out of their calendars and records; and every means employed which could impress, upon the mind of man, the monstrous belief, that his Q63 existence and his hopes perished in the same grave! All restraint from iniquity was attempted to be removed from his apprehension, by the attempt to remove all dread of futurity: and the most loathsome excesses of profligacy, recommended and sanctioned by the functionaries of power, that his moral character and accountability might be effaced from his mind ! But we know, that " though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go un- punished* For the righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way; but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness." And, in the history of the people referred to, we have seen an awful illustra- tion of the truth of these sayings. The gloom and despair of death, appeared to settle on their perverted understandings — the odiousness and debasement of vice, spread over all their devices and actions — and the ceaseless turbulence, in which their passions and profaneness held them, marked them out as a people ripening in iniquity, upon whom the vials of wrath and destruction were speedily to be poured. " Be astonished at this, O ye heavens! and thou earth, be horribly afraid!" For this people committed two great evils — they renounced the God of their fathers, and that which should have been their glory, they turned into their shame. But their own wickedness has corrected them; and their backslidings have 264 reproved them; and we, and all who have seen it, have been taught, that it is indeed an " evil and a bitter thing to forsake the Lord, and to put away the fear of his laws and his ordinances from before our eyes." «' Hear ye, then, the word of the Lord, and GIVE HEED UNTO HIS COUNSEL. StAND YE IN THE WAYS AND SEE. AsK FOR THE OLD PATH, WHERE IS THE GOOD WAY, AND WALK THEREIN, AND YE SHALL FIND REST TO YOUR SOULS. If YE WILL OBEY MY VOICE, AND KEEP MY COVENANT, THEN YE SHALL BE A PECULIAR TREASURE UNTO ME, ABOVE ALL PEOPLE. When the poor and the needy SEEK FOR FOOD, AND THERE IS NONE — AND WHEN their tongue FAILETH for thirst, — I THE LoRD WILL HEAR THEM — I THE GoD OF IsRAEL WILL NOT FORSAKE THEM; — THAT THEY MAY SEE, AND KNOW, AND UNDERSTAND, AND CONSIDER, THAT THE HAND OF THE Lord hath done this — that he is found OF ALL WHO SEEK HIM — BUT THAT ALL WHO depart FROM HIM, HE WILL CAST OFF FOR EVER." NOTES. Note A Page 22. The evidence which might be adduced from ancient writers, in support of the views we have advanced, is very copious and convincing; and did it not give some appearance of a parade of learning to the Work, we might have detailed it at some length in the Section to which this Note refers. As such a detail, however, might interrupt the plain reader in following out the general train of the argument employed, we have deemed it more advisable, because more useful, to give a few additional remarks under this form. Just as the universal belief of mankind in a supreme intelligent Cause, to account for all the beautiful effects of wisdom, power, and goodness, which we behold in the external world, is assumed as an argu- ment in support of the existence of God — so may we employ the universal custom, which prevailed among all ancient nations, of computing time by weeks, as a testimony of the early universal knowledge of the Sabbath. It is not denied, by any writer, profane or sacred, that this mode of reckoning lime was practised by every people, of whose history we know any thing. Seven days were the invariable complement, and z ^66 every day was consecrated to some heathen deity, whose name it bore. The planets were the chief objects of their religious veneration. The sun held the highest rank among the idols of their worship, and the day which was honoured with its name, was distinguished by peculiar solemnities and rites. Nor was this the practice of one nation, or of neighbouring nations only, but it obtained among remote tribes of men, quite miconnected by any species of traffic, and totally unknown to one another. The ancient Saxons, Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and other nations, as we shall show in a little, followed the method of com- puting by weeks, of seven days each ; and every day was denominated after some object of their idolatry. Now, it is not at all explicable, how this custom could have obtained so universally, unless we go back to its origin under the monarchs of Assyria — before men had migrated far from the plains of Shinar — when the idolatry of the heavenly host was universal; and the days of the week were distinguished by the names of the stars, which they had clothed with the attributes of divinity. Astronomy was one of the earliest branches of science to which the attention of mankind was directed; and out of its study, we know there sprung the wildest and most general adoration of the heavenly bodies. Nimrod is charac- terized by Moses, as " a mighty hunter before the Lord;" and other historians represent him to have lorded his power very tyrannically over his brethren in the plains of Shinar, and to have laid the foundation of the mighty Assyrian monarchy, under which, the idolatry we have mentioned was so widely spread. Nimrod was only the third from Noah — mankind in his time, could not have removed far from the 267 place where the ark rested, after the waters of the flood had subsided — the customs of one party would be known to all — and the idolatry which characterized different nations in later ages, must have its origin explained by the practice of the immediate descendants of Noah. Moreover, throughout the lands of Assyria and Chaldea, astrology was long cultivated as the most honourable department of human learning, and the most certain recommendation to offices of distinction and power. It was the general belief, that the rise and fall of nations, and the good and evil fortune of individuals, were under the influence of the heavenly bodies, because these were conceived to be the sole governors of the universe; and, hence, the knowledge of their revolutions, and imaginary occult powers, became the object of study and attainment by all who aspired to a share in the councils of the nation. The magi of Assyria, the sophi of Persia, and the priests of Egypt, possessed all the learning of the age, and were consulted in every case of political emer- gency, or state necessity, for directions to conciliate the favour, or avert the vengeance of the gods, whose anger had involved them in perplexity and danger. * We know it is the very nature of all idolatry or superstition, to engender itself, or to increase the objects of veneration — to multiply the rites of worship — and to chain the human mind in servitude to the most depraved and degrading opinions and passions. Degeneracy in practice, never fails to lead to debase- ment of principle. Ignorance and depravity are closely Boemus de Assyria. Z 2 268 allied, and when men lose those high intellectual and moral distinctions, which lift them to a fellowship with the Author of their being, they necessarily sink into the grossest degradation of moral character and con- duct. Accordingly, we find, that, as they wandered from their original settlements, they wandered from the first objects of their religious veneration — lost those notions of divine power and majesty which they originally entertained — and worshipped and served the creatures of their own darkened and bewildered imaginations. At the time Abraham migrated from Chaldea to Eygpt, the inhabitants of the latter country knew very little of the science of astronomy; and we are informed, that he was richly rewarded by the king for instructing the priests in the knowledge of that science. * It was about 600 years before the incar- nation of our Saviour, that the Greeks were instructed in the revolutions and influences of the planets, when Thales, Anaximander his disciple, and Pythagoras, taught them the knowledge they had acquired from the priests of Egypt and the magi of Chaldea. In later times, we find the Romans still farther removed from this knowledge than the Greeks; and, in general, history bears us out in saying, that the greater their distance was from the plains of Shinar, the more remote v/ere they from the knowledge and customs of the early worshippers of heaven. Yet, it is worthy of remark, that all nations, then accounted civilized, under one form or another, acknowledged the existence of a God, although * Jos. de Antiq. Jud. lib. I. c. 16. 269 unassisted reason could not instruct them in the true nature of his attributes, or direct them to the most suitable and becoming mode of offering him adoration and praise. Plato himself, so highly honoured among schoolmen, for the sublimity and extent of his philosophical knowledge, could rise on this subject, very little above the most ignorant of his countrymen. — " Dicere quid, (Deus,) sit, non ausus est: hoc solum de eo sciens, quod sciri quale sit ab homine non possit — solum vero ei simillimum de visibilibus Solem reperit." * There was no created being, which awakened in the minds of men such exalted ideas of glory and power as the sun, whose going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the end of it again; and, therefore, there was no object which presented to them a more perfect idea of the excellence of God. — " Apud priscas Gentilitatis nationes, nil prorsus inter creata cuncta, quod mortalium mentes in sui venerationem alliceret, pertraheretque magis quam ipse Sol, ob nimium splendorem eminentiamque sui, comperiebatur?"-}- The Chaldeans were the first who instituted the worship of this planet, as the supreme divinity; and it soon fomid its way among the Persians, where it continued till a late period. (Boemus et Sozomen Hist. Ecc. I. 8.) The Egyptians of old, offered worship to the same being; (Euseb. de praep. Evangel.) for, when they investigated the fabric cf the world, and were lost in admiration of the nature of things, they concluded, that the sun and moon ♦ Macrob. in somn. Scip. lib. I. c. 2. f GIos. Mag. in Gen. cap. 1. z 3 270 were everlasting gods, and governors of the universe. The Phoenicians venerated the sun as God; and the idol which they set up as his image, they denominated Heliogabalus. The Trojans and Greeks had many divinities; but it is manifest, from various sources, that the sun originally held the highest rank among the objects of their veneration. As Belus was the tutelary deity of Babylon, so was Pallas of Troy. Her image, the Palladium, said to have descended from the sun, was placed in the temple of Phoebus, just as the images of the planets, with the Egyptians, were kept in the house of the sun. * At Athens, the court of judgment was without any covering, in full view of the sun, because it was considered impossible that the judge would give an unjust decision, in the sight of a being who sees and hears all things, and has an avenging eye. f Under various names and forms, the Romans paid divine honours to the same object, as may be learned from an author already quoted. :{: The Ethiopians and Tartars, though widely separated in geographical position, closely agreed in the worship of the same heavenly body; and the Messagetae, a Scythian people, acknowledged and worshipped no other divinity; " Deum quendem, sed non decs agnoscunt. Ex diis unum solem venerantur, cui equos immolant, &c." |1 These authorities, we trust, will be deemed suffi- cient to establish the opinion, that, as astrology was one of the earliest branches of knowledge cultivated by men, so the sun was the imaginary divinity to * Jer. xliii. 13. f Horn. II. lib. .5. — Plato de legibus. \ Macrob. Saturn. 1. I. c. 17 and 23. || Boeimis de Scythian 271 which they ascribed the highest attributes, and paid the highest honours. The periodical revolution of seven days, was also one of the earliest modes of computing the lapse of time known among them; and every one of these days was supposed to be under the government of one of the deities whom they had discovered in the firmament. As the attributes of divinity were ascribed to these created and inanimate beings, so divine honours were universally paid to them. But, as their blinded worshippers assigned to them a diversity of power and influence, so, of con- sequence, did they institute a distinction in the solemnities with which they observed the days sacred to their name and service. The sun was invested with the most transcendent perfections; and the day of the week which bore its name, was held as a religious festival, and accounted to possess a sanctity above all the others. We are aware, that, in order to invalidate the views we have hitherto supported, and to refute the argu- ment for the moral obligation of sanctifying the Sabbath, derived from the antiquity of the institution, and the universality of its observance, it has been asserted, that the seventh day, sacred to the sun, among the heathen, was the seventh day of the month, and not the seventh day of the week. In answer to this assertion, (which we regard as quite gratuitous,) we observe, I. That Eusebius and Clemens Alexandrinus have fully proved, from the ancient poets. Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus, and Linus, that it was the seventh day of the week, and not the seventh day of the month, which was accounted sacred. The language they employ, clearly points to the creation, and the festival they celebrate, must have been that which was instituted in commemoration of that event. " It was the seventh day on which all things were finished." Homer. " The seventh day came, on which all things were framed." — Callimachus. And the language of Linus is still more descriptive of the Sabbath — '< The seventh day is an auspicious day, for it is the birth-day of all things. The seventh holds the foremost rank among the days, for it is a perfect day." II. If the day sacred to the sun, had been the seventh day of the month, and not of the week, undoubtedly we should have found some testimony of this in the ancient Greek calendars. For, although it was impossible for that people to set down constantly the seventh day of the week, on account of their having to note so many intercalery days, just as it would be impossible for us to mark the moveable feasts, except in an annual almanack, before the year was adjusted by Julius Caesar — yet, there is no calen- dar to be found, in which the principal fixed festivals or sacred days are omitted. Now, there is an ancient Attic calendar, preserved in Scaligery de emendatione Temp.f in which events of very trifling consequence are noted, but in which this seventh day of each month, sacred to the sun, is not mentioned. The silence respecting it, therefore, may be regarded as a proof of its non-existence. III. We have the testimony of many most learned and credible writers, that the seventh day of the week, was accounted sacred among all nations; but after what I have stated above, it cannot be necessary to enlarge quotations on the subject. Chrysostome, in his Tenth Homily on Genesis, says, *' Jam hinc ab initio doc- trinam hanc nobis insinuat Deus, erudiens in circulo hebdomadae diem unum integrum segregrandum et reponendum, ad spiritualem operationem." Steuchius, on Gen. ii., affirms it to have been " in omne aetate, inter omnes gentes, venerabilis et sacer." Philo Judaeus, in hisLife of Moses, makes this bold challenge — " Quis sacrum ilium diem, per singulas hebdomadas recurrentem, non honorat?" IV. The day which the heathen held sacred to the sun, was the same day of the week which we call the Lord's Day. A very copious detail of authorities, might be adduced in proof of this position; but we shall con- fine ourselves to one or two. Very satisfactory testi- mony of its truth, may be had, by referring to Dr. Heylin's History of the Sabbath, Part Second. Sozomen, in his Ecclesiastical History, Book I. chap. 8., tells us, that Constantine commanded " diem Dominicum, quem Ebraei primum Sabbati appellant, et Groeci Soli deputant, «&c. a cunctis celebrari." And Bonaventure, in Tres Destine, 37., informs ushow the day was stripped of its idolatrous worship, and consecrated to the commemoration of the resurrection. ** Secundum Gentiles, dies Dominicus primus est: cum principio illius diei incipit dominari principalis planeta Sol; propter quod vocabant eundem diem Solis, et exhibebant ei venerationem. Ut ergo error ille excluderetur, et reverentia cultus Solis Deo exhiberetur, praefixa fuit Dominica dies, qua populus Christianus vacaret cultui divino." With one more quotation, we shall close this enumeration of ancient testimonies in favour of our general argument. '' Nos, jure optimo, diem quem Mathematici Solis vocant, Domino ascripsimus dica- virausque, et illius cultui totum mancipavimus."* The statements we have now made, are decisive of the antiquity of the Sabbath, and the universality of its knowledge and observance among all nations and kindreds of men; and, if nations which worshipped the host of heaven, and the creatures of their own imaginations, did preserve among them a custom derived from the earliest age of our race, shall not we, who enjoy the full revelation of the truth, as it is in Jesus, and the clear knowledge of the attributes and providence of the one living and true God, do honour to the Lord of heaven and earth, and consult our own moral dignity and eternal felicity, by remem- bering the Sabbath, to keep it holy? " By keeping a Sabbath, we acknowledge a God, and declare that we are not athiests — by keeping one day in seven, we protest against idolatry, and acknowledge that God, who, in the beginning, made the heavens and the eai:th — and, by keeping our Sabbath on the first day of the week, we protest against Judaism, and acknowledge that God, who, having made the world, sent his only begotten Son to redeem mankind. The observance, therefore, of the Sunday, in the Christian church, is a public weekly assertion of the first two articles in our creed — the belief in God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth — and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord." f * Cael. Rhodigin. Antiq. 1. xiii. c. 22. f Horsley. 275 Note B — Page 22. The import of the phrase, * God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it,' is generally thus explained. God set this day apart from the rest, and distinguished it in a peculiar manner, by appropriating it to religious exercises on the part of man: and con- descending to engage, on his own part, to accept the worship and homage, which should, on that day, be oflPered to him. A duty is understood to be enjoined, and the promise of a special blessing is annexed to the regular discharge of it. This is the view which is generally taken of the subject, and which gives a very solemn and universal obligation to the duty of sanctifying the Sabbath: but it does not so definitely convey the authoritative, or imperative effect, as that which Dr. Kennicott assigns to it. The Hebrew verb, which, in the above quotation, is translated by the term * blessed,' carries with it a double idea : first, of blessing ; secondly, of worshipping — and that in the particular manner of worshipping on the knees. These two senses. Dr. Kennicott adds, may be united, when spoken of man; but the first only can be understood, when confined to God. When a Hebrew verb is in the conjugation Pihel, it simply expresses action, or the accomplishment of any effect: but, when it is in the conjugation Hiphel, it denotes causation, or the operation of the power by which any effect is produced. According to the first of these modes of conjugation, the term above alluded to, may be translated, " God blessed the 276 seventh day, and honoured it with peculiar marks of his favour. According to the second, it will signify, God ordered to bless and worship by adoration. But, farther, the particle Kn, in the verse where the sanctification of the Sabbath is mentioned, is ren- dered, by theauthority of Noldius, 'upon;' and, hence, the whole clause assumes this form: "And God ordered, or caused, man to bless and worship on the seventh day." The other verb, which is translated in our version of the Bible, * sanctified,' may be understood also as in the conjugation Hiphel, and its translation will then be, " and ordered to sanctify, or set apart, for sacred uses." Taking the whole sentence together, therefore, it will, according to this view of it, run thus ; " And God rested on the seventh day from all his work v/hich he had made: and God caused man to bless and worship on the seventh day, and ordered him to sanctify it." " This interpretation," Dr. Kennicott adds, " as it seems conformable to grammar, and expresses the sense best, (though the other amounts to the same, but with less clearness,) I humbly offer to the judgment of the learned." — Dissertations on the Oblations of Cain and Abel. Note C Pase 91. In the foregoing chapter, we have purposely avoided entering very minutely on a refutation of all the objections which are urged against the perpetual moral obligation of the Sabbath, because we con- 277 ceived, that, if we fairly disproved those of a general character, the inferior ones, depending upon them, must be given up as a matter of course. When the arguments that are employed to subvert any institu- tion, or doctrine, are rather of a specious than sub- stantial nature — when they are founded on partial, distorted, or garbled views of the subject to which they refer — it is injudicious to enter on a lengthened or serious examination of them, because we thus give them an importance and consequence, in the estima- tion of the ignorant and the misinformed, which they would not otherwise possess. We have learned, however, with regret, that the name and authority of a distinguished advocate of Christianity, have been employed to an alarming extent, in many conditions of life, as a sanction to the neglect, and even the profanation of the Sabbath; and on this account, we deem it necessary, for the benefit of such as have any taste for biblical criticism, to examine, a little more particularly, the grounds on which the indi- vidual in question rests his arguments. *' In my opinion, the transaction in the wilderness above recited,* was the first actual institution of the Sabbath. For, if the Sabbath had been instituted at the time of the creation, as the words in Genesis may seem at first sight to import, and if it had been observed all along, from that time to the departure of the Jews out of Egypt, a period of about two thousand five hundred years, it appears unaccountable, that no mention of it, no occasion of even the obscurest allusion to it, should occur, either in the general • Exod. xvi. A a 278 history of the world before the call of Abraham, which contains, we admit, only a few memoirs of its early ages, and these extremely abridged; or, which is more to be wondered at, in that of the lives of the three first Jewish patriarchs, which, in many parts of the account, is sufficiently circumstantial and domestic. Nor is there, in the passage above quoted from the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, any intimation, that the Sabbath, when appointed to be observed, was only the revival of an ancient institution, which had been neglected, forgotten, or suspended ; nor is any such neglect imputed either to the inhabitants of the old world, or to any part of the family of Noah; nor, lastly, is any permission recorded to dispense with the institution, during the captivity of the Jews, or on any other public emergency."* This passage contains the most serious of Dr. Paley's objections to the antiquity and universal obligation of the Sabbath ; and we cannot help thinking, that an impartial examination of it, will satisfy our readers, that there is nothing very for- midable in it. It will readily be allowed, we presume, that he pushes his argument too far, when he asserts, that, in the preceding history, comprising a period of 2300 years, there is no mention, nor any occasion of the obscurest allusion to the institution of the Sabbath, if we consider that frequent mention is made of the division of time into weeks, and that the most natural, and indeed the only probable reason, that can be assigned for this mode of computation, is, that it was * Moral and Political Philosophy, by William Paley, D. D. Book V. Chap. 7. 279 commemorative of the work of creation. We have already shown, that, such being the case, we are led, by a just and clear deduction, to this conclusion, that the seventh day must have been regularly computed from the beginning, and that the worshippers of the true God, had uniformly honoured it by such a cessa- tion of servile labour, as their circumstances would permit. We readily allow, that, when the vicissitudes of a shepherd's life are taken into account, the cessation of servile labour on the seventh day, could only be occasional; and, therefore, we must again charge Dr. Paley with giving his objection an unnatural force, when he says, ** that the early institution of the Sabbath at the creation, implies that it was observed all along from that time till the departure of the Jews, from Egypt." Dr. Paley, surely, would not have denied, that the law of marriage, or monogamy, was ordained at the creation: neither do we think, he would have argued, that the polygamy so generally practised by the Patriarchs and their descendants, was a proof of the non-enactment of that law? Yet, this is a case exactly parallel to that on which he founds his objection to the law of the Sabbath. The neglect of any institution, or the silence of history respecting its observance, furnishes no argument in favour of the non-existence or abrogation of its moral sanctions. It is admitted by Dr. Paley, that the history before the time of Abraham, contains only a few memoirs, and these greatly abridged : and we cannot help expressing our surprise, that a writer of such general and enlightened views, as he confessedly was, should have built his hypothesis respecting the Sabbath, out Aa 2 ^80 of such scanty materials. If we except the account given of the death of Abel, of the deluge, and the new covenant made with Noah, the whole religious history of man, from the fall till the call of Abraham, including a period of more than 2000 years, is con- tained in a few short sentences. From the call of Abraham, till the death of Jacob, embraces a period of 250 years; and although this portion of the history, compared with that which precedes it, may be called circumstantial, it is still extremely brief and limited in its details. But, as bearing upon the question at issue, let us compare these parts of the sacred history with that which follows, and which is comprehended in the books of Joshua and Judges, including Ruth, the two books of Samuel, and the books of Kings. These different books contain a consecutive narrative of events; for the two books of Chronicles may be regarded as a separate history, relating chiefly to the affairs of Judah. Now, in the whole of this unbroken narrative, there is no mention of the Sab- bath, ** no occasion even of the obscurest allusion to it," till the time of the prophet Elisha, and then, it is only incidentally introduced.* I have shown, in the Section to which this Note refers, that the institu- tion is only alluded to, on three other occasions, referring to different events, until we reach the period of the captivity : a circumstance which clearly proves, what we know, in many other cases, to be true, that, when once any particular custom or law is established among a people, and incorporated with their manners, few occasions may occur of particu- • 2 Kings iv. 23. 281 larizing it in a general history: and this fact may, we think, fully remove the ground of wonder mentioned by Dr. Paley in the above quotation. Again, it is argued, by our author, against the early institution of the Sabbath, that no permission is recorded to dispense with its observance, during the residence of the Hebrews in Egypt, or any other public emergency. We have already replied to this objection, and we here add, by way of supplement, that neither is there any permission recorded to dis- pense with the ordinance of sacrifice, although, it is perfectly evident, that they considered it to be an obligatory duty. " Let us go, we pray thee," said they to Pharaoh, " three days' journey into the wilder- ness, and sacrifice unto the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with the pestilence, or with the sword."* It is plainly implied by these words, that the use of sacrifice had been suspended, on the ground of necessity; and might they not, on the same ground, consider themselves warranted to suspend, to a certain extent, the observance of the Sabbath, which, although an ordinance of great importance, might be incom- patible with the circumstances in which they were placed; and the celebration of which, might have exposed them to torture and death? But, after all, it is begging the question to say, that the Israelites did not, or could not, observe the Sabbath in Egypt. We know that the Egyptians, as well as other nations of antiquity, had a certain veneration for one day in seven, the day sacred to the Sun; and, rigorous as they might have been in their * Exod. V. 3. A a 3 282 treatment of the Hebrews, it is not quite probable, that they prohibited them the exercise of all religious worship, or that they granted them no relaxation of labour whatever. They were distinguished rather for superstition than impiety; and, although they would not tolerate animal sacrifice, because they regarded it as an insult to their own religious creed, it does not follow that they restrained the Israelites from every other act of religious homage. But, even taking the extreme case, that the full task was exacted from them on the Sabbath, might they not be led, by this very circumstance, to observe the day more conscientiously in their own families? for, it is evident, they were not in the situation of domestic slaves. And as such an observance might reasonably be viewed as a compliance with the spirit of the institu- tion, so the transition was easy to a more strict observance of its lette)-, when they were travelling through the wilderness, and were incorporated in the land of promise as a nation sui Juris. A slight review of the case will satisfy us, that very little weight ought to be attached to the objection to the moral obligation of the Sabbath, derived from the circumstance of its being denominated, " a sign " between the Almighty and the Hebrews. It ought to be kept in mind, that, at the time this people were delivered irom Egyptian bondage, the whole world was sunk in the grossest idolatry; and that they themselves were exceedingly prone to prac- tise the abominations to which it led. The whole of the moral law, therefore, was intended to distinguish them from their heathen neighbours, and mark them out as the worshippers of the one living and true God. The nations which were destitute of divine revelation, 283 had assigned each day of the week to the tutelary care of one of those imaginary beings, whom they had clothed with the attributes of divinity : and we have shown in a preceding Note (A), that the seventh day was universally dedicated to the worship of the Sun. During their residence in Egypt, the Hebrews had become deeply tainted with the superstitions and idolatry which prevailed in that country, and we have no doubt, that, among other means employed to withdraw them from the worship of false gods, the republication of the law of the Sabbath, was designed to hold a conspicuous place. The seventh day was devoted by the Heathen to the worship of the Sun, but the Hebrews were solemnly enjoined to dedicate the day of their leaving the land of idolatry, to the worship of the one living and true God, by a suspen- sion of all secular business and pleasure ; and the commemoration of the marvellous display of his attri- butes, in framing all things that are in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, prin- cipalities, and powers; and that in the space of six days, and resting on the seventh day, and hallowing it. ** Six days shalt thou do all thy work, and on the seventh thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger may be refreshed." And it is worthy of notice, that it is immediately added, " in all things that I have said unto you, be circumspect, and make no mention of the name of other godsy neither let it be heard out of thy mouth."* Here is a direct proof of the correctness of what ♦ Exod. xxiii. 12, 13. S84 we have advanced. The observance of the Sabbath is connected with the renunciation of idolatry, and stands as a testimony against it; and, in this sense, the institution served as a " sign" between the Al- mighty and his true and faithful worshippers on earth. But, are we to argue from this, that the Sabbath was a purely Jewish institution, and to be regarded as possessing the same character with circumcision, or any other subordinate rite? If so, then we may regard the whole moral law delivered to that people, as having only a local and temporary sanction. Let us hear, however, the terms in which the enunciation is made — " Verily, my Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you, throughout your gene- rations; that ye may know that I am the Lord, that doth sanctify you." * The cause of the enactment is here stated, and it is such as applies to every part of the divine law, and is binding on every people to whom that law is made known. It is a sign between the Most High, and those to whom he has communi- cated the knowledge of his will, because its direct tendency is to produce a moral character essentially different from that of idolatrous nations. But this is exactly the province of the whole moral law, and this is the effect which it is calculated to produce. " Now, these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God has taught you; therefore, shall ye lay up these my words in your heart, and in your soul; and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, • Exod. xxxi. 13. 285 speaking of them, when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way — when thou liest dov/n, and when thou risest up." * It is certainly worthy of remark, that the character here given to the whole of the divine statutes and ordinances, is exactly the same which we find respect- ing the celebration of the day on which the Hebrews were brought out of the land of Egypt. " Moses said unto the people — Remember this day, in which ye came out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread; and in the seventh shall be a feast to the Lord. And thou shalt show this to thy son in that day, saying. This is done, because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt. And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes; that the Lord's law may be in thy mouth; for, with a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt." f These quotations, we trust, will satisfy every atten- tive reader of the Sacred Scriptures, that the sanctions belonging to the institution of the Sabbath, are iden- tical, in form and character, with those which are attached to the whole of the statutes, and judgments, and laws, dispensed by the Almighty to the Hebrews; and that the objection which has been urged against the universal moral obligation of that institution, from the words above cited, is founded on misinterpretation and error. It is further objected, by Dr. Paley, however, * Deut. chapters iv. vi. and xi. I Compare Exod. xiii. with Levit. xxiii. S86 that the observance of the Sabbath is not obh'gatory on Christians, because it is not one of the articles enjoined by the apostles, in the fifteenth chapter of " The Acts," on those, who, from among the Gentiles, were turned unto God. We may shortly answer, that this objection is founded upon the palpable mistake, of considering the Sabbath to be a mere Jewish insti- tution, which had derived all its obligation from the Mosaic law. The apostolical council, held as above, was summoned, exclusively, to consider the doctrine taught by those of Judea — that, except the Gentiles were circumcised, and kept the Levitical law, they could not be saved. Now, as it was only to determine whether the Gentile converts were bound to observe any part of the Jewish ritual, that the council met; it was quite foreign to the purpose of their meeting, to take into consideration any point not essentially con- nected with that ritual. And the particular mention of fornication, in this special decree, can only be accounted for on this ground, — that, among the Heathens, abstinence on that point, was considered a peculiarity of Judaism; and, had it not been specified in the above decree, it is not probable, that the Gentiles who embraced Christianity, would have dis- covered that its indulgence was prohibited as a crime, by the seventh commandment. Nor do we think the objection derived from Paul's injunction to the Colossians, rests on more tenable grounds, *' Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holiday, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." ♦ ♦ Col. ii. 16, 17. 287 It certainly was incumbent on Dr. Paley, for estab- lishing his view of the subject, to have adduced some proof that this passage was tantamount to an abroga- tion of the sanctions of the weekly Sabbath; and, by passing from the subject with a simple assertion, he has left room to doubt, if he considered it possible to have done so. For the satisfaction of those who have any scruples about this passage, we shall make a few observations. It cannot fail to be noticed, that, in the chapter from which the above quotation is made, the apostle is particularly warning the Colossians against the errors and superstitions which artful and corrupt men endeavoured to intermingle with the pure and simple precepts of the Gospel. Teachers from the schools of heathen philosophy, and advocates for the showy, but abrogated ceremonies of the Jewish law, had appeared among them; and there is reason to believe, that the self-sufficient righteousness, which was incul- cated with the ritual services of the one party, and the boastful pretensions to knowledge and wisdom, which were insinuated with tbe philosophical instruc- tions of the other, had alienated their minds from the spiritual principles of Christianity, and subverted, in their estimation, the sanctions of its requirements and laws. " Beware, therefore," says the apostle, in refer- ence to the latter, " lest any man spoil you, through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." And, in reference to the former, he adds, ** 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." Now, we know that the term Sabbath is used, ia 288 some parts of the Scriptures, for all the Jewish festivals indiscriminately — the Passover — the feast of Taber- nacles— the year of Release, &c and of this, our readers may fully satisfy themselves, by turning to the book of Leviticus, xix. 3. and 30. xxiii. 23. to the end, and Ezek. xx. 12 — 20. We have already shown, that the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, was not included under the hand-writing of ordinances, which Christ, the mediator of a better covenant, took .out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and, therefore, we might justly conclude, that the passage before us, cannot be understood as containing an abrogation of the sanctions of that holy day, under the Christian dispensation. But, even granting all that our opponents contend for — that it does relate to the weekly Sabbath, the same inference may be fairly deduced from an impartial consideration of all the circumstances of the case. At the time the apostle wrote, the Jewish Sabbath was virtually abolished, and the day of the resurrection of the Saviour from the grave, substituted in its stead. It was no longer the seventh, but the first day of the week, which the converts to Christianity were enjoined to remember to keep holy. In passing, however, from the observance of one day to that of another, very considerable doubts and difficulties might exist in the minds of many of the disciples of the Gospel; and of these, we are fully persuaded, the enemies of the truth, as it is in Jesus, took every advantage. The prejudices of the Jewish converts, in favour of their ancient legal forms and ceremonies, were exceedingly deep-rooted and strong; and, in some cases, it seems to have been nearly impossible to withdraw them from the observance of particular days, and the celebration 289 of certain rites, which they conceived to possess a peculiar sanctity, and to which they had attached a great many weighty and sacred obhgations. The same prejudices seem to have been imbibed by many of the Gentiles; and, on this account, we find the apostle, in condescension to the weakness of their faith, and the scrupulosity of their judgment, recom- mending to the church, forbearance and silence respecting the external forms and ceremonies of religion. " Him that is weak in the faith, receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations," &c. See Romans xiv. 1—7. The Christian community was still in an infant state. The Gospel was not acknowledged or embraced by any of the rulers of this world; neither was there any legal provision for the observance of its ordi- nances in any nation. The commemoration of the day of the resurrection, the sanctification of the Lord's Day, was thus left to the private judgment of individuals; and their conviction of the reasonableness of the institution, and of the divine sanctions belonging to its duties, furnished a sufficient guarantee for its observance. But there were many situations in which these sanctions were not felt, A spirit of Judaism was widely spread among the disciples of the Gospel, and serious attempts were made to revive the obser- vance of its abrogated rites and prescriptions. To avoid, therefore, all unseemly and hurtful controversy, and for the purpose of promoting unanimity and harmony of opinion, between such as regarded the solemnization of external rites as a matter of con- science, and believed that they possessed the obligation of divine precepts, and those, who, farther advanced in the knowledge of the doctrines and duties of the B b S90 Gospel, conceived themselves warranted to dispense with their observance; — Paul reasons thus, — One man esteemeth one day above another — another esteemeth every day alike. On this point, however, let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind; i, e. let every man have a clear and distinct conviction, that he is acting conscientiously in these matters, as in the sight, and under the fear of God. The Christian law is the law of liberty, and, in the discharge of all its duties, and the observance of all its ordinances, we are not to take the measure of our obedience from the letter of the Jewish law, or from the rigour of Jewish superstition. Our holy days are to be observed in worshipping God, by offering to him the bloodless sacrifices of our supplications and prayers. Our new moons are to be held, by proclaiming his goodness and mercy, not with the blowing of trumpets, but with the praises of the heart and the understanding. Our Sabbaths, in a word, are the pledges of that rest which awaits the faithful, when the toils and miseries of this fleeting life are passed; and, having our faces, like the spiritual Israel, heavenward, we should now be attuning the affections of our souls, to celebrate the sufferings and the triumphs of Him who died for us and rose again. As, therefore, we have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so let us walk in him. Note Ti.—Page 188.> " If lawful work and labour must not be followed on this day, as on the six days of the week, there is 291 much more reason for all sports and bodily diversions to be laid aside. Because, the design of God's sepa- rating this day from others, is more perverted and contradicted, and more hurt is done to religion, by such a loose and sensual way of spending time, than by regular labour. The more men give up themselves to bodily pleasures and recreations, the less relish will the soul have for spiritual and eternal things. Diversions make the spirit trifling and unfixed, and give the flesh advantage, to profane and pollute the mind; and they set the heart against that reverence and seriousness which become a creature doing homage to its Maker, and seeking the most important blessings from him. " That saying of the prophet Isaiah, must, therefore, be applied to the day of God's rest in general, and not merely to the Jewish way of keeping their Sab- baths, when he says, ' Not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words.' The plain reason of the thing makes this injunction perpetually binding. Hence it is, that such as would make our observation of a Sabbath, as Christians, to be only a human appointment and constitution, yet have declared against all plays, and sports, and vain feasting, and drinking, and loose wanton conversation on this day. Since it is a day intended to prepare men for their heavenly rest, it must appear, to common reason, exceedingly incon- sistent and disagreeable for any to give up themselves to sensual frolics and entertainments. * Such is the reverence,' says one, • due to the public exercises of devotion, that they require, not only a ceasing from other works and thoughts, for the time of the perform- ance, but also a decent preparation beforehand, that B b 2 292 so our thoughts and affections, which are naturally bent upon the world, and not easily withdrawn from it, may be raised to a disposition befitting such sacred employments.* And the same may be said for men's retirement, and recollection of things afterwards. I find a remarkable passage quoted by another writer, from Bishop Andrews, on this head. * To keep the Sabbath in an idle manner,' he says, ' is the Sabbath of oxen and asses : to keep the Sabbath in a jocular manner, to see plays and sights, or be taken up in vain discourses and conversations, is the Sabbath of the golden calf: but, to keep the Sabbath in surfeiting and drunkenness, in chambering and wantonness, this is the Sabbath of Satan, the devil's holiday.' " Book of Universal Prayer, Note E Page 213. The frightful aspect, which the political events of our country bore in 1819 — 20, are here more imme- diately referred to, and they must still be fresh in the memory of all our readers. In the manufacturing districts particularly, great privations and suffering were endured, from the general stagnation of trade, and the consequent low rate of wages. It is matter of notoriety, that the labouring classes of men, in every country, are exceedingly prone to ascribe all public distress to the ignorance, oppression, or injustice of their rulers; and they are thus very easily led to believe, that a change of government will bring about a change in their 293 circumstances, and relieve them from all their evils. Factious and designing men, who are ever watchful to take advantage of national calamities, have here the most dangerous materials prepared for their use; and at the above period, they succeeded, to an alarming extent, in engendering a deep, and, in many cases, malignant spirit of disaffection toward the legal and established authorities of the country. Poverty was extensively spread among the whole of the mercantile population; and, instead of alleviating its pressure by the consolations of religion, and striving to remove it by the reformation of those habits of profusion and licentiousness, which had unhappily become very general among them, they madly inveighed against the profligacy and tyranny of their rulers, and unpro- fitably spent their time in cabals and plots for their overthrow. We mean not to say, that this character applied to the whole of our suffering population at the above period; but, certainly, very large numbers, in different districts, were so deeply tainted with disloyal and demoralizing principles, that His Majesty's ministers considered themselves justified in adopting such measures of security, as had formerly been deemed necessary only when a foreign enemy threatened to co-operate with the disaffected at home. It was remarked and deplored, as a fatal symptom in the character of the discontented, that infidelity in reli- gion was the concomitant, or rather the forerunner of disloyalty of political principle; and that all regard for the authority of God, appeared to be renounced at the time they began to conspire against the autho- rity of man. The Sabbath was profaned by many Bba who bad formerly found their chief happiness to con- sist in observing it, " to keep it holy." The church, as a matter of course, was deserted — the ministers of religion were despised or insulted — and the hours which had lately been consecrated to the duties of public devotion and prayer, were devoted to secret disorderly meetings, the leading object of which was, to encourage one another in profaneness and crime. Even in some of the quiet and sequestered districts of Scotland, this fearful sign of the times, was noticed to exist in an alarming degree; and in some of the populous manufacturing towns, it created most uneasy apprehensions in the minds of the religious and orderly part of the community. In England, it was observed to wear a still more malignant aspect ; and, assuredly, the savage and monstrous designs of the Cato-Street conspirators, could only have originated in an utter rejection of all religious principle, and an utter contempt of all authority, divine and human. It was said, that the machinati