SABBATISMOS. 
 
 DISCUSSION AND DEFENCE 
 
 THE LORD'S DAY OF SACRED REST, 
 
 GEORQE JUNKIN, D.D. LL.D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR, 
 
 BY JAMES B. RODGERS, No. 52 & 54 XORTH SIXTH STREET. 
 
 1866. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year of our Lord, 
 
 1866, by 
 
 GEORGE JUXKIN, 
 
 In the Clerk's OflBce of the District Court for the Eastern District 
 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 BTEREOTTPED BY ■WESTCOTT k TU0M60X. 
 
TO THE EBADEE. 
 
 The American people are a Christian nation ; and, like 
 all other nations, having any reasonable pretensions to civil- 
 ization^ they have had from the first an organic law. With- 
 out an organic law, or constitution, they would not be a 
 nation, in any other sense than that in which we call our 
 Indian tribes nations. Our first political organic law, which 
 made us a nation was the Declaration of '76. This soon 
 yielded to the Articles of Coneedeeation ; and this 
 again to the Constitution, our present organic law. The 
 first two are defunct as to their form : they are no formal 
 part of our Constitution, whilst their moral substance is 
 perpetuated in the grand bond of our National Union. 
 But above and beyond all these, the people who made this 
 nation always recognized the moral law of God as summarily 
 contained in the Ten Coimmandsients, and as spread out in 
 "the Scriptures of Truth," as the grand basis of our entire 
 national organization. Our Common LaAv is all found, 
 as to its pure moral elements, in the Bible. Among these 
 pure moral elements stands conspicuous the Fourth Com- 
 MAND^IENT. Strike down this, and our Christianity goes 
 with it. Destroy the Lord's Day, and its indispensable ac- 
 companiments, and you sweqD away the foundations of the 
 
 3 
 
4 TO THE READER. 
 
 Republic. For a free goverainent without the representa- 
 tive principle is an irapossibilit3^ Without the virtue which 
 the Sabbath only can secure and promote, a democratic re- 
 public, of any considerable extent, never existed and never 
 can. Hence the frequent assaults upon the Sabbath. Six 
 years ago all classes of in-eligion, deism, atheism, etc. , con- 
 Rpired to overturn our Sabbath laws. Now another attack 
 is in progress, with this avowed purpose. 
 
 Penn's Great Law — the first ever established in his Pro- 
 vince, was passed December 12, 1682, see Chap, xiv. of 
 this work; its principle was renewed in 1700, in 1705, in 
 1794, in 1845, and is now the law which this combination 
 of hostile interests is endeavouring to destroy. Hence 
 this Httle work. 
 
 I have arranged the matter for practical use : yet not go- 
 ing into much detail as to minor objections; giving princi- 
 ples rather, which the reader must apply in refutation of 
 objections. 
 
 >- 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 PACK 
 
 HISTORICAL PROOF OF THE MORAL CHARACTER OF THE 
 SABBATH. 
 
 1. First law ever given to man — 2. Worship in Adam's 
 family — 3. Noah observes a seven days' section of time 
 — i. Seven, a number of perfection — 5. The law re- 
 newed at Sin — Bondage in Egypt 9 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 OBJECTION ANSWERED. 
 
 If the Sabbath had been given at the beginning, it must 
 have been often named in history 16 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS A COMPEND OF MORAL LAVT 
 
 Law necessary to man at the beginning — 1. Their history 
 — 2. Covenant with God — 3. Miraculous accompani- 
 ments — 4. Given by Messiah — 5. Moses' miraculous 
 fast — 6. Written on stone — 7. Deposited in the Ark 25 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 A. SACRED REST PROVED BY NATURAL RELIGION AND 
 
 PROFANE HISTORY 34 
 
 5 
 
b CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The ten words — eight of the fourth by prescrip- 
 tion 39 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ARGUMENT FOR THE SABBATH FROM THE CHARACTER OP 
 ITS OPPOSERS. 
 
 AThe fruits prove the tree good or bad 45 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE TEN COMMANDMENTS THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF IS- 
 RAEL — THIS CONSTITUTION PURELY RELIGIOUS AND IVIORAL. 
 
 Ratification — "The commandments" mean the ten — 
 Adopted not by tribes, but as a nation — Examination of 
 the ten words — The fourth passed by 52 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF ISRAEL PURELY MORAL 
 '^ — CONTINUED — FOURTH COMMANDMENT ANALYZED 62 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ALL JEWISH PECULIARITIES ARE LEGISLATI\TE ENACTMENTS, 
 NOT CONSTITUTIONAL LAWS. 
 
 Some constitution necessary — Distinction between law and 
 penalty— 1. The passover— 2, The tabernacle— 3. Ser- 
 vants — 4. Usury laws — 5. Penalties vary, law unchange- 
 able — Death penalty to six of the commandments 69 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SET FEASTS, OR EXTRA SABBATHS. 
 
 Col. ii. 16, vindicated, against our opponents — New moons 
 — Passover — Trumpets — Atonement day — Tabernacles 
 — Rom. XV. 5, 6 79 
 
CONTENTS. 7 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 PASB 
 THE FOURTH PRECEPT, OBJECTIOlSr TO BECAUSE ITS PENALTY 
 IS TOO SEVERE — LOCAL LEGISLATION UNDER IT FOR HE- 
 BREWS. 
 
 Death penalty, as in the other eight 86 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 OBJECTION — THE SABBATH WAS A SIGN TO JSRAEL, THERE- 
 FORE NOT A PERMANENT MORAL LAW. 
 
 Things well known are used as signs — Sun, moon, and 
 stars — Eainbow, circumcision, stars and stripes 95 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 OBJECTIONS — IF YOU HOLD TO THE SABBATH, YOU ISIUST HOLD 
 1. TO ITS DEATH PENALTY — 2. TO THE SEVENTH DAY. 
 
 Seventh day, never used as a name for the day of sacred 
 rest — Sabbath day is never used but as the name of time 
 devoted to sacred rest 101 
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 THE QUESTIONS OF TIME. 
 
 Evasion by it attempted — Eemarks — 1. The same absolute 
 portion impossible — 2. Day begins ? extra Sabbaths at 
 even — 3. The seventh, or the first day ? a voyage round 
 the globe changes the day — 4. The change of day to the 
 first — Sunday a name objectionable — William Penn on 
 Lord's day...- 108 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 BENEFITS OF THE SABBATH. 
 
 Individual man — Physically, socially, intellectually, spi- y— 
 
 ritually — Eternally — Upon society 127 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 PAQK 
 
 The moral force of the sabbath — and its bear- 
 ing ON NATIONAL WEALTH 133 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 KEEP IT HOLY TO THE LORD 
 
 Negatively — Positively 142 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 DUTY OF HEADS OF FAMILIES AND NATIONS — PLEA OF FOR- 
 EIGNERS — LET US ALONE. 
 
 Relations — 1. To son and daughter — 2. To his man-ser- 
 vant and maid-servant — 3. Nor thy cattle — 4. And thy 
 stranger that is within thy gates 152 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 OBJECTION — THE SUNDAY LAWS OF THE STATE CURTAIL CIVIi: 
 LIBERTY. 
 
 German combination — Laws are a restraint — Every pre- 
 cept of the ten restrains — Not bondage but freedom 161 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 ^ The SABBATH — A TYPE OF HEAVEN 169 
 
PEIITCHTOIT ^^ 
 
 .fi£C. NOV 1880 
 HB0L06IG& 
 
 THE LORD'S DAY A SACRED REST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 HISTORICAL PROOF OF THE MORAL CHARACTER OF 
 THE SABBATH LAW. 
 
 1. The first law ever given to man —2. "Worship in Adam's family — 
 3. Noah observes a seven-days' section of time — 4. Seven, a num- 
 ber of perfection — 5. The law renewed at Sin — Bondage in 
 Egypt. 
 
 The Bible is our book of moral philosophy. 
 Above and beyond it there is no authority. What 
 then does it say as to the Sabbath ? 
 
 1. The first proof of its permanent moral obliga- 
 tion is the fact that it is the first law God ever en- 
 acted "for man." "And God blessed the seventh 
 day and sanctified it ; because that on it he had 
 rested from all his work which God created and 
 made." — Genesis ii. 3. What can be meant by this 
 blessing the day ? Can time be made happy ? 
 What by hallowing or making it holy ? Can time 
 be clothed with moral purity ? Clearly, both the 
 blessing and the sanctifying have reference to man, 
 for whom our Saviour says the day was made. This 
 appointment of a day of rest for man, immediately 
 
10 THE lord's day 
 
 after creation, proves that it was not an institution 
 peculiar to the Jewish nation, for Abraham, their 
 root-progenitor, was not born until 2076 years 
 afterwards ; and because it is expressly said else- 
 where, "The Sabbath was made for man" — for 
 mankind; and because here, the reason of its ap- 
 pointment was God's ceasing from the work of cre- 
 ating, in which the whole race are equally interested. 
 It was established as a means of holiness and hap- 
 piness to mankind. This proves it to be a moral 
 law binding and blessing all the human race. 
 
 2. The second proof we find in the history in 
 Genesis iv. Here we have a brief account of pub- 
 lic worship. "At the end of days " — at the cutting 
 off of days. Here is reference to the division of 
 days into sections. The number of days included 
 in these sections is not here named. But as after- 
 wards we know the sections were of seven days, as 
 will be proved shortly, we have a right to conclude 
 it was so here. The history of his creation most 
 assuredly was made known to Adam. It is not 
 conceivable that God would give him no account of 
 the creation of the six days and the resting of the 
 seventh. To allege, because no written account 
 was given to Adam, therefore he was ignorant of 
 all this, is simply childish; for no man can prove 
 that there was any written alphabetic language 
 prior to Moses. And why should Moses be in- 
 formed of the history of creation and Adam himself 
 left ignorant of it ? No man can believe it. Be- 
 
A SACKED BEST. 11 
 
 sides, the brevity of the history admits not of detail 
 in this worship of Adam's family — the whole race. 
 These first seven chapters cover the history of 1656 
 years. This public worship, in process of time — at 
 the end of days — imitating the Creator's example 
 of six days' labor and one of rest, is mentioned as 
 a thing of course, and proves the observance of a 
 day of sacred resting from labour and of holy con- 
 secration. 
 
 3. The cutting off of days into sections of seven 
 days is twice mentioned in Genesis viii. 10, 12. 
 This proves that Noah observed the division of 
 time, the same as we do now. The same can be in- 
 ferred from the seven days noted in chapter vii. 4, 
 10, "Yet seven days and I will cause it to rain." 
 "And after seven days the waters of the flood were 
 upon the earth." Undoubtedly the hebdomadal, 
 division of time was then currently in use. 
 
 4. The application of this number to the clean 
 beasts, v. 2, also shows a mystical use, most easily 
 explained by its reference to the days of creation 
 and of rest as its origin. Seven is the number of 
 perfection. The seventh year was consecrated, and 
 "seven Sabbaths shall be complete," and previ- 
 ously, the Egyptian visions presented " seven well- 
 favoured kine," and ill-favoured the same in number ; 
 and so seven good and seven bad ears on a stock. 
 So seven days and seven priests, bearing seven 
 trumpets, etc., plainly showing the number seven to 
 be peculiarly distinguished in the Scriptures ; and 
 
12 THE lord's day 
 
 this being first presented in reference to the days 
 of sacred rest, amounts to more than a violent pre- 
 sumption — it constitutes a proof of the seventh 
 day's consecration as a Sabbath from the begin- 
 ning. 
 
 5. The next historical notice of the law is in Ex- 
 odus xvi. 1 : — " The children of Israel came unto 
 the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and 
 Sinai." This was before the giving of the law at 
 Sinai ; for we learn in Numbers xxxiii. that there 
 ■were four removals of the camp, viz., Dophkah, 
 Alush, Rephidim, and Sinai, before they came to 
 the Mount. It was here in the wilderness of Sin, 
 they murmured for bread and the manna w^as given. 
 Just one month passed from their departure from 
 Rameses (see Numbers xxxiii. 3,) on the 15th day 
 of the first month, and on the 15th day of the 
 second month they came into the wilderness of Sin 
 (Exodus xvi. 1.) And, "in the third month, when 
 the children of Israel had gone forth out of the 
 land of Egypt, the same day they came unto the 
 wilderness of Sinai." Exodus xix. 1. The same 
 day, that is, the fifteenth day. At the very least, 
 therefore, the rain of manna took place a month 
 before the thunders of Sinai were heard. Of this 
 bread from heaven, the people gathered an homer 
 for each person each day, except on the sixth day 
 they gathered two homers for each person. The 
 rulers reported this matter to Moses, "And he said 
 unto them, this is that which the Lord hath said, 
 
A SACRED REST. 13 
 
 to-morrow is the rest of the Holy Sabbath unto the 
 Lord ; bake that which ye will bake to-day, and 
 seethe that ye will seethe." Exodus xvi. 23, 26, 
 "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." On this remark — 
 
 (1.) In their bondage condition for two hundred 
 and ten years, it is not conceivable that the people 
 could enjoy their Sabbath rest, and keep up the 
 regular system of worship and instruction which 
 belongs properly to "the Sabbath which was made 
 for man;" those sweet rests and joyous songs of 
 praise, and heavenly instructions by their elders (for 
 they had elders even in Egypt. Exodus iii. 16. 
 "Go and gather the elders of Israel together;" and 
 xii. 21 ; and xvii. 5, etc.) The oppression which 
 doomed all their male children to death, like the 
 oppression, which dooms a man to work ima print- 
 ing-office, or on a railroad car seventeen hours per 
 day, for seven days in a week, must have well nigh 
 crushed out all knowledge of the holy day, as it cut 
 oiF the poor people from all opportunity to worship 
 their God and to receive instruction from their 
 elders. 
 
 (2.) This miracle of the manna is manifestly de- 
 signed, as it is admirably adapted, to teach the peo- 
 ple the blessedness of the Sabbath day. It teaches 
 (1,) That they have a right, a franchise from the 
 
14 THE lord's day 
 
 God of heaven, to cease from labour one day in 
 seven. No Egyptian task-master (no printer or rail- 
 road company) may stand over them to enforce 
 labour on the Sabbath. No dire necessity any longer 
 to toil all day at the brick-kiln, the printing-office, 
 or the cars. Total abstinence from toil is required. 
 *' Bake that which ye will bake to-day." Evidently 
 the Hebrew in the wilderness was a freer man than 
 the bakers are to-day in Philadelphia. Freedom 
 from labour, and liberty to worship God unmolested, 
 have made so little progress in 3757 years ! Such 
 is the despotism of Mammon ! (2,) That the peo- 
 ple are not to sit in idleness, or run wild in excess 
 of plays and sports. " See, for that the Lord hath 
 given you the Sabbath." "Abide ye every man in 
 his place ; let no man go out of his place on the 
 seventh day. So the people rested on the seventh 
 day." They kept the day ''holy unto the Lord." 
 The only sense, as we have seen, in which time can 
 be kept Jioly, is the performance of holy exercises 
 of God's worship. " It is lawful to do good on the 
 Sabbath day." 
 
 (3.) This transaction, as a whole, is not the enact- 
 ment of a new statute, but the resuscitation of an 
 old one. Our statute-book exhibits an analogous 
 case. The act of Penn, December 12, 1682, just 
 after his first landing in his colony, (see Chap. 14) 
 Btates, " for the ease of the creation, every first 
 day of the week, called the Lord's Day, people shall 
 abstain from their common toil and labour." This 
 
A SACRED REST. 15 
 
 " Great Law " was not set aside, but involved — re- 
 enacted in the law of 1705. The act of 1705 was 
 called up and re-enacted in 1794, and again in 1845. 
 If we had only the lex no7i scripta, the cases would 
 have been more alike. They are, however, alike in 
 another respect, viz., some appendages are added, as 
 we shall see in another place. Now, we insist that 
 this has not the form and appearance of a new law. 
 " This is that which the Lord hath said. To-morrow is 
 the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." If a 
 colporteur take his station near some depot, where 
 the crowd is hurrying off to worship God in the 
 country, and should raise his voice and say, " This 
 is the Sabbath to be kept holy unto the Lord, and 
 here are little books suitable for the Lord's day," 
 would he be considered in the light of a legislator 
 enacting a new statute ? Thus our Lord himself 
 speaks : — ''A new commandment give I unto you, 
 That ye love one another :" but John, 1 Epis. ii. 7, 
 speaking of the very same law of love, says: — "I 
 write no new commandment unto you, but an old 
 commandment, which ye had from the beginning." 
 Here is no inconsistency: — "He that loveth not his 
 brother, abideth in death." 
 
 (4.) We must remember this transaction occurred 
 a whole month before this same Sabbatic law, but 
 with more detail, was enacted again at Sinai. So 
 our legislature act continually. A large amount of 
 their acts contain, and are an enactment of some 
 principle of the Decalogue. 
 
16 THE lord's day 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 OBJECTION ANSWERED. 
 
 If the Sabbath had been given at the beginning, it must have been 
 often named in history. 
 
 Here we may as well meet an objection. It may 
 be — it has been said, if the Sabbath was a binding 
 moral law from the beginning of mankind, as 
 Luther and Calvin tell us, it is strange that we find 
 scarcely any notice of its observance for so many 
 hundred years. Surely, if it had been a moral law, 
 binding upon all mankind, more frequent notices of 
 it must have occurred during the twenty-five cen- 
 turies from Adam to Moses. This is plausible, but 
 not solid. For, first, as just noted, the history is 
 very brief; and we have seen two notable instances 
 of Sabbatic observance. Secondly. The patriarchs 
 Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were in the habit 
 of erecting their altars and of calling upon the name 
 of the Lord. See Genesis viii. 20, xii. 7, xxii. 9, 
 XXXV. 1-3. Now calling on the name of the Lord 
 is a description of public worship ; and public wor- 
 ship implies publication of the time and place — it 
 involves conventional agreement; and the presump- 
 
A SACRED REST. 17 
 
 tion is strong that these days of public worship were 
 the same as observed from the beginning — the hal- 
 lowed Sabbath day. But my third and chief refu- 
 tation of this objection lies in the fact that it is a 
 negation. There is no record duly authoritative 
 that Moses' wife was a black woman ; therefore she 
 was not black, she was only ''an Ethiopian woman." 
 There is no record that Abram forded the Euphrates ; 
 therefore he did not ford that river. There is no 
 evidence that he ferried over it ; therefore he did 
 not cross it at all. Let us apply this reasoning in 
 another case. From the days of Cain (Gen. iv. 17) 
 to the flood, there is but one mention made of wives 
 (Gen. iv. 19 ;) therefore men had no wives for six- 
 teen centuries. From the sacrifices of Abel and 
 Cain to Noah, no sacrifices are mentioned in the 
 records, and so from Noah to Abraham ; therefore 
 the divine institution of sacrifice was utterly ne- 
 glected for sixteen centuries, and again for four 
 centuries. Again, "No special instance of the prac- 
 tice of circumcision is recorded as having occurred 
 from the settlement of the Hebrews in Canaan to 
 the time of Christ." (Princeton Rev., October, 1859.) 
 Therefore for nearly fifteen centuries the sacred 
 symbol and seal of Abraham's covenant was lost 
 and ignored ! On the contrary, the brief notices 
 above of the law of sacred rest are just such as the 
 brief history would reasonably be expected to give. 
 Let us expand this last idea a little. It is argued 
 by the opponents of the Lord's Pay, that if the rest 
 
 2 * 
 
18 THE lord's day 
 
 was given to man at the beginning as a binding 
 moral law, it would surely have been oftener men- 
 tioned in history ; whereas we hear nothing of it 
 until Moses gave it at Sinai; it is therefore a Jewish 
 institution, and we have nothing to do with it. This 
 is the logic of a distinguished divine of the Estab- 
 lished church of Scotland, and quite fresh. Of 
 course my readers know, that the cream of Scotland's 
 piety and learning was skimmed off from the church 
 established by law to constitute "the Free Church.'* 
 Establishments seemed doomed to a descending 
 movement : it is exceedingly probable that this ar- 
 gument will develop the Colenso of the Scottish 
 establishment. But let us to the answer. If the 
 omission or infrequent mention of the Sabbath from 
 Adam to Moses proves that it was never given to 
 man as a moral law, this must be equally applicable 
 to each and every one of the ten commands. They 
 were all alike uttered in thunder from Sinai ; all 
 equally written and rewritten by the finger of God 
 on the tables of stone ; they each and all stand on 
 the very same foundation ; they must stand, all of 
 them, or fall together. If the Glasgow Colenso has 
 demolished the fourth commandment, he has over- 
 thrown the Decalogue; he has annihilated the whole 
 moral law of God, and there will be a jubilee in 
 Sodom, Gomorrah, and Pandemonium. Now, dear 
 reader, would you believe it ? This conclusion the 
 Glasgow Doctor swallows. "The whole of the Dec- 
 alogue as a Decalogue was buried with Jesus in his 
 
A SACKED REST. 19 
 
 grave." This results, by the necessity of eternal 
 logic, from the position taken, that the fourth com- 
 mandment is purely Jewish. But the end is not yet ; 
 for the same inexorable logic "will force him to reject 
 the whole Old Testament, a fortiori ; and yet fur- 
 ther, the New Testament must fall too. 
 
 Open infidelity is the end of this assault upon the 
 moral law of the Sabbath. Short of this no logical 
 mind can stop. This accounts for the glaring fact, 
 that all the interests of immorality — the rum holes, 
 the gambling-houses, the theatres, the masked balls, 
 "the synagogue of the libertines," the pulpits which 
 " deny the Lord," and proclaim an amnesty in the 
 world of woe — all conspire to overthrow the Sab- 
 bath ; whilst all evangelical Christians, of all names 
 and denominations, "stand up for Jesus," and ad- 
 vocate the observance of the Lord's Day. 
 
 If any of the other precepts are found in the 
 same condition with the fourth, as to not being men- 
 tioned from Adam to Moses at Sinai, the same 
 conclusion must inevitably be deduced against it. 
 Silence in the record condemns the fourth ; why not 
 condemn every precept in reference to which . the 
 same silence is observed? From this there is no 
 shift : it must be met. Let us then see how the case 
 stands. The first command is, " Thou shalt have 
 no other gods before me." Will any pleader against 
 the fourth point out to us the chapter and verse, from 
 Adam to Moses, wherein this first precept is found? 
 If no man can be discovered so learned in the law, 
 
20 THE LOKD'S day 
 
 then indisputably, the first command is null and 
 void." 
 
 How is it with the second? "Thou shalt not 
 make unto thee any graven image, etc." Worship- 
 ping idols, or using them at all in worship, is forbid- 
 den. Will Dr. McLeod show us the record of this 
 precept, prior to Moses? Therefore the second 
 commandment is obliterated; away with this Jewish 
 figment, and give liberty to the human soul, that the 
 "free German," and the scofiing atheist, and the 
 bigoted Romanist, may bow down and kiss the toe 
 of Jew Peter, expel God from his own world, and 
 rescue civil government from the thraldom of moral 
 law, and all fear of justice, and love to the Creator! 
 
 The third command is : — " Thou shalt not take 
 the name of the Lord thy God in vain," etc. Is 
 this recorded anywhere in the history prior to 
 Moses ? Let the place be pointed out. Where is 
 it? If not, then these gentlemen have their conclu- 
 sion. The law against profane swearing and blas- 
 phemy is not binding upon us. How dare any man 
 reprove us for it ? " Our tongue is our own ; who 
 is lord over us ?" How dare you ask a free man to 
 swear in a court of justice, and yet punish him for 
 taking God's name in vain on any occasion he 
 pleases ? 
 
 The same fate awaits the fifth and sixth precepts 
 — "Honour thy father and thy mother, etc.," "Thou 
 shall not kill." If these are not recorded in the 
 history, they are Jewish rites, with which we have 
 
A SACRED REST. 21 
 
 no concern ; and what child does not know that no 
 such record exists ? Hence, my readers, the fearful 
 disregard of parental authority. With all the re- 
 straint of law and the force of instruction under 
 these precepts, how fearful the disregard to parents, 
 and how horribly murders abound ! Take away 
 these laws, let corrupt nature know there is no moral 
 law giving authority to parents or protection to life 
 by the punishment of crimes ; and where are we ? 
 What a state of society we shall have ! 
 
 We touched on the law of the seventh command 
 on a former occasion. "From the days of Cain" 
 (Gen. iv. IT) to the flood there is but twice mention 
 made of wives (Gen. iv. 19), therefore men had no 
 wives for sixteen centuries. Concubines, and others 
 still less permanently bound to any man, must have 
 been the mothers of all, from Lamech to the flood. 
 Brigham and his harem are not new inventions, if 
 this logic be based on a true premise. Let us em- 
 brace this philosophy in our moral code, and the 
 Mormon gospel will supplant the Bible, and Chris- 
 tian ladies may attend balls without wearing masks. 
 
 We have good authority for the existence of the 
 seventh precept from the creation. " Have ye not 
 read, that he, which made them at the beginning, 
 made them male and female?" Math. xix. Moses 
 extended some indulgence, but he never allowed the 
 putting away of a wife for every cause, but only for 
 impurity. See Deut. xxiv. 1. The Pharisee belied 
 Moses, who did not sanction divorce without cause ; 
 
22 TUE lord's day 
 
 but if a man find a woman impure, and is about to 
 send her off, Moses orders him to " give her a bill 
 of divorce." This whole thing was, however, a mu- 
 nicipal regulation of the Jews, and not the seventh 
 precept — not the law of marriage prescribed from 
 the beginning to the whole race. Indisputably, to 
 those who believe the Bible, marriage is a moral 
 law, and was made at the beginning, and this, mo- 
 nogamy, and not polygamy. Monogamy is the 
 original law, and the seventh precept enforces it. 
 Bnt no mention is made of it from Paradise to Sinai, 
 in the brief history ; therefore, according to the ar- 
 gumentation which we are refuting, the seventh is 
 not a moral law, but only a Jewish ceremonial affair, 
 and nothing to us at all. 
 
 "Thou shalt not steal." This eighth precept 
 cannot be found on the record until you come to the 
 history of Joseph, who charged his brethren with 
 stealing his silver cup; it therefore cannot be a 
 moral law according to the reasoning used to anni- 
 hilate the Sabbath, by converting it into a Jewish 
 ceremony. From all these obviously false conclu- 
 sions we infer the falsehood of the princijDle from 
 which they spring, and return with increased confi- 
 dence to the correctness of the doctrine, that " the 
 Sabbath was made for man," immediately upoti his 
 creation. 
 
 We have seen the general character of this decla- 
 ration of our Lord ; but there remains an aspect of 
 it not yet presented. If it was ordained and estab-. 
 
A SACRED REST. 23 
 
 lished for the benefit of mankind it must have been 
 communicated to man, and not kept hidden for 
 twenty-five centuries, and then revealed and made 
 known to three millions of fugitives from bondage, 
 w^ho, by their very social constitution, were not to 
 be a commercial people; but whose national system 
 cooped them up and secluded them from mingling 
 among the nations. If there was no day of sacred 
 rest appointed of God for the benefit of mankind 
 until Israel reached Sinai in the year of the world 
 two thousand five hundred, how could it be said this 
 day was made for man ? 
 
 Man knew nothing at all of it for near half the 
 present age of the world ! But if you take the 
 history as it is, and find God blessing the Sabbath 
 day and sanctifying it, setting it apart from the six 
 days' labour, and requiring man to cultivate thereon 
 his mind and heart in the worship of the great 
 Creator, and promoting charity among one another ; 
 and consider the deep depravity and sinfulness of 
 man, which leads him away from God; and therefore 
 the constant tendency to disregard the holy day — 
 then you see the beautiful consistency of the lan- 
 guage, "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
 holy," with all the historical facts of the case. 
 
 The vocation of Abraham, and the setting apart 
 of his race as the peculiar people of God, was pre- 
 cisely designed to secure the truth from becoming 
 entirely unknown and lost. So the writing of the 
 history of the world's creation, and of man upon 
 
24 THE lord's day 
 
 the earth, became a necessity, when the lives of men 
 dwindled down so rapidly after the flood; and in 
 order to preserve these oracles, they were entrusted 
 to this chosen and segregated people, that the ages 
 to come might not wholly lose the knowledge of 
 their own history. We are now ready to approach 
 the holy and awful Mount, whence this Divine me- 
 morial of the original rest-day issued forth from the 
 midst of the fire. 
 
A SACRED REST. 25 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 GftlE TEN COMMANDMENTS — A COMPEND OF MORAL 
 LAW. 
 
 Law necessary to man at the beginning. — 1. Their history. — 2. 
 Covenant with God. — 3. Miraculous accompaniments. — 4. Given 
 by Messiah direct. — 5. Moses' miraculous fast. — 6. Written on 
 stone. — 7. Deposited in the Ark. 
 
 If an engineer were to construct a locomotive of 
 a million horse power, fire it up, and start it in the 
 midst of our citj, without governor or guide, to run 
 at random through streets and through houses, car- 
 ryi-ng desolation and death in its fearful course, 
 would the public account him a wise and good citi- 
 zen ? Or would they hold him for a madman or a 
 fiend, and call him to account for his conduct ? If 
 some Van Amburgh should turn adrift an untamed 
 elephant or a ferocious lion upon the community, 
 without any governing power to control him, would 
 he be esteemed a wise and a good man ? And do 
 you believe that God built such a machine and sent 
 it thus adrift ? Did he let loose upon his world 
 such an elephant, or such a lion, and yet make no 
 provision for its government, rule, and direction ? 
 Why, my reader, the wise Creator enacted laws for 
 
26 THE lord's day 
 
 the government of every creature of his hand. 
 Dead matter has its laws ; and living animals are 
 governed by instincts created in them, and with 
 them. And can you believe that man, the crowning 
 work of creation, and the mightiest for good or evil 
 of all the inhabiters of earth, was thrown into the 
 world without law or governing principle in him ? 
 Or do you not rather believe that law — moral law-^ 
 was con-created in him and with him : that he was 
 created in the image of God, in knowledge, right- 
 eousness, and holiness : that this image of God in- 
 volved the moral sense or conscience ; in short, that 
 man was made a moral agent and held accountable 
 for his conduct? If so, he must have had a law 
 given to him as the rule of his action. You cannot 
 form a conception of a moral agent which does not 
 involve the idea of a moral law — that is, a rule pre- 
 scribing duty. Hence the generally received doc- 
 trine concerning the moral law of man's creation, 
 that God made man upright and gave him a rule of 
 action. To this Paul refers in Romans ii. 15 : — 
 " Which show the work of the law, written in their 
 heart, their conscience also bearing witness." To 
 deny a primitive revelation to man of an elementary 
 law for a rule of action, is to deny his moral agency 
 and to place him below the brutes and birds, whose 
 instincts are to them effective laws. Such is not 
 the characteristic of him who is lord of all this 
 lower creation. 
 
 Now, this primitive revelation, so absolutely ne- 
 
A SACKED REST. 27 
 
 cessary to man's moral agency, was common to the 
 race ; and that it has been often disregarded by in- 
 dividuals is no more proof of its non-existence in 
 the earher ages, than t^e running of printing-presses 
 and cars on Sunday is proof that Pennsylvania has 
 never had a law against such things. The first re- 
 corded of these primitive laws, as we have seen, is 
 that prescribing the appropriation of one day in 
 seven to rest from labour jyliysicaly and to active la- 
 bour in things spiritual. But that there were other 
 moral rules for man in the various relations of so- 
 ciety, cannot be doubted. No law against murder 
 is named in the record, but the death of Abel and 
 the treatment of his murderer, in whose favour a 
 pardon, or rather a noli prosequi Avas issued, shows 
 that such a law was well known at that. day. 
 
 We now enter on the proof of the proposition, 
 that the law of the Ten Commandments is a sum- 
 mary re-enactment of the moral laws under which 
 God'had placed man. 
 
 1. Let us advert to their history. One month 
 after the revival and restoration of the Sabbatic 
 law, Israel arrived at Sinai ; Moses, the vicegerent 
 of God, their King, went up the very next day to 
 meet God on the Mount. Exodus xix. 3. God re- 
 manded him back to the people, to submit to them 
 the terms of a coven^t which he proposed to es- 
 tablish between himself and Israel. Its terms are 
 — " If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my 
 covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure to me 
 
28 THE lord's day 
 
 above all people — for all the earth is mine. And 
 ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests ; and a 
 holy nation." Verses 5,6. Moses went down "and 
 called the elders of the people, and laid before their 
 faces all these words." And all the people (that 
 is, by their representatives, the elders) answered 
 together, and said, "All that the Lord hath spoken 
 we will do." Verses 7, 8. And Moses returned the 
 words of the people unto the Lord. This negotia- 
 tion occupied two days, and Moses was directed to 
 go down and make all proper arrangements for the 
 awful solemnities of the third day. Bounds are to 
 be marked along the base of the Mount, over which 
 no man or beast must pass. Verses 12, 13. The 
 morning of the third day from their arrival was 
 ushered in by the loud discharges of heaven's ar- 
 tillery : " Thunders and lightnings, and a thick 
 cloud upon the Mount, and the voice of the trumpet 
 exceeding loud, so that all the people that were in 
 the camp trembled." And remember, they num- 
 bered three millions. " And Moses brought forth 
 the people out of the camp to meet with God, and 
 they stood at the nether part of the Mount. And 
 Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because 
 the Lord descended upon it in fire : and the smoke 
 thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and 
 the whole Mount quaked grQ3,tly. And when the 
 voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed 
 louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered 
 him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon 
 
A SACRED REST. 29 
 
 Mount Sinai, on the top of the Mount, and the 
 Lord called Moses up to the top of the Mount, and 
 Moses went up." Verses 16-20. Such are the 
 scenes preparatory to the giving of the law of the 
 Ten Commandments ; the central one of which 
 wicked man desires to strike out, and thus to drown 
 the thunders of omnipotence in the mad bellowings 
 of jMammon for money ! money ! money ! The 
 grandest and most sublime scene our earth ever 
 witnessed, or ever will witness, until that very same 
 Lord shall descend with a shout with the voice of 
 the archangel and the trump of God, and wake up the 
 teeming myriads of earth's longest and most profound 
 sleepers, is to be scouted and contemned, because a 
 few rebels against God's law and the laws of Penn- 
 sylvania want to make money by Sunday labour ! 
 
 2. Having entered into a formal and solemn cove- 
 nant with Israel, they pledging obedience to him, 
 and he pledging to make them his peculiar treas- 
 ure above all people, the Lord proceeds to test their 
 obedience by prescribing laws to them. The great 
 and magnificent preparations for their utterance we 
 have adverted to. We must now note the neAv and 
 more intimate relations the people sustain to God 
 under this covenant of restrictions ; which looks to 
 the limitation of the covenant with Abraham mak- 
 ing him the father of many nations, and confining 
 its blessings to this people of Israel. Accordingly, 
 in verse 2, chap. xx. he refers to this peculiar near- 
 ness of relation, " I am the Lord thy God, which 
 3 * 
 
30 THE lord's day 
 
 have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of 
 the house of bondage." This language is substan- 
 tially the same which prefaced the proposal of the 
 covenant of restriction mentioned in the preceding 
 paper, and in chap, xix., 4-10. Without expressly 
 affirming it, it nevertheless suggests the reason why 
 Israel should give an attentive ear to the command- 
 ments immediately following. It occupies the local 
 position, yet Avithout either the form or the substance 
 of a preamble to the constitution which follows. 
 Hence it is argued by some that the ten words be- 
 long exclusively to the Hebrew people, and that 
 they have no binding authority for any other peo- 
 ple. We admit they express a reason, special and 
 pointed, and based on gratitude, why that people 
 should make a solemn league and covenant with 
 God, and why they should fulfil it in keeping this 
 law of the ten words. But how this should shut 
 out other nations and people from the pale of this 
 moral code, it is impossible for us to see. There 
 are no terms indicative of exclusiveness, either in 
 this preamble or in the ten words, or in the subse- 
 quent remarks ; nothing to shut off the rest of man- 
 kind from the benefits of God's moral law. 
 
 We ought to note particularly that they were 
 uttered in thunder-tones from the summit of the 
 fiery Mount. We have observed the prelude to the 
 awful act, and when the majestic utterances are 
 closed, the historian tells us (verse 18,) "And all the 
 people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and 
 
A SACRED REST. 31 
 
 the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smok- 
 ing." No difference is perceived in regard to any 
 of the ten. All and equally they are the voice of 
 God. 
 
 3. This miraculous utterance, with all its dread 
 surroundings, is intended to impress the mind with 
 a profoundly solemn sense of the transcendent im- 
 portance of the matter or things so uttered. We 
 can imagine nothing better adapted to produce such 
 an impression. " And the people stood afar off, and 
 Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where 
 God was. And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus 
 shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ye havo 
 seen that I have talked with you from heaven" — 
 verses 21, 22. Take with this (3) another remark. 
 These ten commandments are all that God thus 
 spake. Much instruction and many laws he com- 
 municated through Moses ; but the ten only in thun- 
 der tones to the whole people directly. Their very 
 great importance it is impossible for us not to in- 
 fer. 
 
 4. Before we inquire into the matter of them, let 
 us note the person who gave this law. This we find 
 to be the second person — the Son of God. This is 
 made evident by comparing Psalm Ixviii. 17, 18 with 
 Ephesians iv. 8: — " The chariots of God are twenty 
 thousand, even thousands of angels ; the Lord is in 
 the midst of them as in Sinai. Thou hast ascended 
 on high. Thou hast led captivity captive ; Thou hast 
 received gifts for men." This is applied by Paul to 
 
82 
 
 Christ: — ^'When He ascended up on liigh, He led 
 captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." The 
 same Lord who was among his angels on Sinai, de- 
 scended into the lower parts of the earth, and also 
 ascended and received and gave gifts for men. Je- 
 hovah Jesus it was that thundered from Sinai and 
 that flashed in the lightnings out of the thick dark- 
 ness and the lurid flames ; hence this fire was, like 
 that in the bush at Horeb, a fire that burned with- 
 out consuming. 
 
 5. Moses, after the utterance of the ten words, 
 drew near the thick darkness, xx. 21, and there abode 
 with God in the Mount forty days and forty nights. 
 Exodus xxiv. 18. And during these meetings he 
 received a great variety and number of municipal 
 regulations, chapter xx. 21 to xxiv. 1, and the en- 
 tire instructions concerning the construction of the 
 Tabernacle. And at the close he received the "two 
 tables. of testimony, tables of stone, written with the 
 finger of God," — xxxi. 18. ''And on them was 
 written according to all the words which the Lord 
 spoke with you in the Mount, out of the midst of 
 the fire." Deut. ix. 10. 
 
 6. This writing on stone is as significant as the 
 utterances from Sinai, of the permanency of the 
 Ten Commandments, and their essentially moral 
 nature. They are a transcript of the moral attri- 
 butes of God, and as unchangeable as his own eter- 
 nal nature. Nothing short of this can be inferred 
 from the material and the writing. 
 
A SACRED REST. 33 
 
 7. The same is taught in their subsequent deposit 
 in the Ark, called for this very reason *'the Ark of 
 the Testimony." The ten words are God's testi- 
 mony to moral purity and against all iniquity. The 
 Ark is the most sacred of all the Tabernacle and its 
 furniture. Its location within the vail, the material 
 of its composition, the golden cover and the cheru- 
 bim constituting the mercy seat, and the fact that 
 nothing but the two tables was permitted to be 
 deposited therein — all conspire to enhance the 
 purity, permanency, and sacredness of the ten 
 words. The entire system of the Tabernacle service 
 has these^ tables for its central idea. To keep un- 
 tarnished the tables of the testimony ; to impress 
 the worshippers with the profoundest veneration and 
 reverence for them ; to point out the way of accept- 
 able approach into the holiest of all ; and to pro- 
 vide for the dissemination of their contents on the 
 swift wings of the divinely constituted and qualified 
 messengers of mercy, this is the life and soul of the 
 symbolic gospel of the Tabernacle. See, for more 
 on this point, "The Tabernacle," recently published 
 at No. 821 Chestnut Street. 
 
34 THE lord's day 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A SACRED REST PROVED BY NATURAL RELIGION AND 
 PROFANE HISTORY. 
 
 The design has been expressed, to limit the dis- 
 cussion to Bible arguments. " Above and beyond 
 it there is no authority." And this design I will 
 adhere to, with 'but little deviation. Nevertheless, 
 you will indulge me, in presenting the common ar- 
 gument in favour of a sacred, religious and physicial 
 rest, deduced from natural religion. A few only of 
 the leading points of argument can be compressed 
 into our brief space. 
 
 1. Physical labour is a necessity to man. Let 
 the Deist account for the fact as he may, he cannot 
 deny its existence : the great mass of mankind are 
 doomed to work for their living. 
 
 2. This doom exhausts their physical powers : 
 labour cannot possibly be continuous and indefinite. 
 Rest, in its primary sense of cessation from motion, 
 there must be, or the living, human machine will 
 wear out and perish. 
 
 3. This rest, because of man's very extensive as- 
 sociation in work in factories, work-shops, &c. must 
 
A SACRED REST. 35 
 
 be simultaneous. The operators must begin, and 
 continue and cease at the same time. 
 
 4. Man is social: he must live in society. Mo- 
 nasticism is a sin against the laws of nature and of 
 nature's God. No man has a right, as we have seen 
 before, to expatriate himself from human society j 
 for then he must perish, and suicide is a crime. 
 
 5. Man is a religious being. The disposition to 
 venerate and adore some being or beings superior 
 to himself is an essential element of his nature, 
 come whence it may. Neither Deist nor atheist can 
 deny this and express his denial in continuance. 
 Witness Hume and Voltaire. Speculate they may, 
 and persuade themselves by times into the belief in 
 all unbelief; but nature will arouse them from the 
 fond dream of skepticism, to a consciousness of their 
 own rational nature and moral accountability. " The 
 spectre conscience starting through the gloom ; man ! 
 we shall meet again beyond the tomb." 
 
 6. Man is social in religion. The world's history 
 is the proof. In all pagan antiquity, social religion 
 displayed its amazing power, in the construction of 
 temples, and the expenses of religious worship. 
 Their principal investments of capital and wealth 
 were in these very things. 
 
 T. Time is an indispensable element in social re- 
 ligion. Convocation must take place and duration. 
 Whatever be the forms and substance of their re- 
 ligion, they must come together and remain together 
 for some time. 
 
36 THE lord's day 
 
 8. PlacBj therefore, is as necessary as time. 
 Without a place of social worship, and a time, the 
 thing itself is utterly impossible. Both these ele- 
 ments areindispensable, for the embodiment in action, 
 of the most powerful and predominant principle in 
 man's nature — his religious principle. 
 
 9. Conventional agreement, therefore, is a neces- 
 sity, to social worship. There must be a time and 
 a place agreed upon ; when and where the people 
 may and shall assemble together for sacred worship. 
 
 10. The first three remarks above, are equally 
 applicable to the mind as to the body ; the mind 
 must work ; it becomes exhausted ; it must rest that 
 it may be refreshed and qualified for renewed action. 
 
 11. The settlement of time and place for public, 
 social worship, by conventional agreement, involves 
 the cutting up of time into sections. For if no day 
 is appointed in a regular succession, convocations 
 of the people for worship soon become impractica- 
 ble. One part are working in the shop on silver 
 shrines for Diana, whilst othjers are at the temple. 
 The business of society is thus thrown into inextri- 
 cable confusion : and they will be forced to fix upon 
 a regular time for rest from labour and devotion to 
 religion. 
 
 12. Thus we have a Sabbath by the inherent and 
 unchangeable laws of human nature. How often 
 it shall occur ; whether one day in four, or five, or 
 six, or seven, eight or ten, will be somewhat difficult 
 to determine ; but determined it must be ; there is 
 
A SACRED KEST. 37 
 
 no avoiding it. A day of sacred rest man must 
 have. 
 
 Now from these elements, every one of which is 
 historically true, we infer that, had the question 
 been left to human experiment, it would have been 
 found that one day in seven is best suited to all the 
 wants of man. Long periods would have been re- 
 quired to settle the question by experiment. Phil- 
 osophers would have wrangled about it for centuries, 
 and there is no probability that they would have 
 ever come to a unanimous agreement what the law 
 of nature .on this subject is. The fact, however, is, 
 that the nearest approach to agreement is for the 
 seventh part of the time. We assert, however, that 
 this is the result of the primitive law or rest estab- 
 lished in Eden, and handed down in imperfect tra- 
 ditions. Of these traditions Owen has quoted from 
 Hesiod, giving both Greek and English : the latter 
 I present to the reader. " The first, the fourth, 
 and the seventh day is sacred." 
 
 " The seventh again, the sacred or illustrious light 
 of the sun." And out of Homer, 
 
 " Then came the seventh day that is sacred." 
 
 Again, "It was the seventh day, wherein all 
 things were finished, or perfected." Again, 
 
 " We left the flood of Acheron on the seventh 
 day." 
 
 He adds also out of Linus, 
 
 " The seventh day, therein all things were fin- 
 ished." 
 
 4 
 
38 THE lord's day. 
 
 Again, " The seventh day among the best things, 
 the seventh is the nativity of all things." . 
 
 " The seventh is amongst the chiefest, and is the 
 perfect day." 
 
 He quotes the Latin of Tibullus, a Roman writer, 
 speaking of the " Saturni sacra die" — the holy day 
 of Saturni — that is, Saturday : and Ovid, speaking 
 of the Sabbath — " nee te peregrina morentur Sab- 
 bata." "^Nor let foreign Sabbaths detain you." 
 
 These quotations prove simply, that in the remot- 
 est pagan antiquity, the seventh day was known as 
 a sacred day: and those who may consuJt Owen's 
 master work, will see abundant proof of the seventh 
 being the most generally admitted day for religious 
 observances the world over. 
 
A SACKED KBST. 39 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TEN WORDS — BIGHT OP THE FOURTH BY PRE- 
 SCRIPTION. 
 
 The Decalogue has been, for three thousand three 
 hundred and fifty-six years, esteemed and held, by 
 all who knew it, as a brief compend of moral law. 
 The sentiments of the few infidels which lie scat- 
 tered along this vast tract of time, are utterly be- 
 neath contempt as argument against the ten com- 
 mandments. These sacred oracles bear down all 
 opposition by their own inherent force, from their 
 manifest and perfect adaptation to man in all possi- 
 ble conditions. They are perfectly free from all 
 specialty that can limit them to any tribe, people, 
 or nation. In principle they are therefore common 
 to the race, and co-eval with its existence. Now, 
 among these Ten, and central to them, is the Fourth, 
 which was first divulged. The Sabbath is as old as 
 the finished creation. We have just seen its coin- 
 cidence with the dictates of nature and reason. Not 
 that it was the discovery of reason ; but, when pro- 
 posed to reason, secured its conviction to this amount, 
 that it is a law of God the Creator, given for man's 
 
40 THE lord's day 
 
 benefit. It has date as a law 5866 years back. It 
 holds the place, therefore, by right of prescription. 
 Many laws on human statute books have become 
 obsolete, from mere neglect, although never form- 
 ally repealed. Not so this Fourth of the Ten. 
 For although no mention of it is made in the his- 
 tory of Israel, for 559 years — see Num. xxviii, 10, 
 and 2 Kings iv. 23 — yet no reasonable pretence has 
 ever been set up or can be, that it was obsolete and 
 inoperative during nearly six centuries. Another 
 fact, this, for those to study who allege the silence 
 of Scripture (erroneously too, as we have seen) from 
 Eden to the wilderness and Sinai, as proof against 
 the Sabbath-Bereshith, or Sabbath of the begin- 
 ning, so called by Maimonides, Abarbinel, Manas- 
 seli Ben Israel, and other learned Hebrew commen- 
 tators, who affirm this law to be co-eval with men. 
 With such a basis for prescriptive right, this First- 
 born of commandments may Avell challenge contra- 
 diction — " He crouched as a lion, and as an old lion, 
 who shall rouse him up." "The sceptre shall not 
 depart from Judah." 
 
 The logical result is, that the burden of proof is 
 thrown upon the assailants of the Sabbatic law. 
 Its friends stand behind bulwarks of nearly sixty 
 centuries standing and have nothing to fear, if only 
 they prove faithful to their solemn trust and stand up 
 for Jesus and his holy day. He uttered this laAV in 
 thunder tones out of the midst of the smoke on the 
 top of the burning mountain. Whose voice is this, 
 
A SACRED REST. 41 
 
 that seeks to drown the voice of the Son of God ? 
 He wrote these words with his own finger on the 
 tables of stone. Who is this, that seeks to obliterate 
 the only record ever written, immediately, by the 
 God of heaven ? Come on, gentlemen. Bring up 
 your chisels and mallets and cut out this word from 
 the centre of the stone. We have been some con- 
 siderable time in possession, bring your ejectment 
 and let the cause be fairly tried. Our opponents 
 allege 
 
 1. You have admitted the ten words to be the 
 Federal Constitution of the Hebrew Commonwealth. 
 But we Americans, Britons, Frenchmen, are not 
 citizens of the Hebrew Commonwealth; and are 
 therefore not bound by this constitution. This in- 
 ference, we admit, would be fair, logical and irre- 
 fragable, were it not for the single lapsus, that God 
 has given to us, this same identical constitution for 
 our government, under himself as the Governor over 
 the nations. He had given the same substance, as 
 the constitution of government to the nations before 
 the flood, to the patriarchal governments from Noah 
 to Moses: to the Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Greek, 
 the Roman, and now to the French, the British, the 
 American ; to all the nations, for He is Lord of all. 
 Glaringly false, therefore, is the covert assumption, 
 in this argument, that the ten words were given 
 exclusively ' to Israel — to Israel and to no other 
 nation. This we never affirmed, but have always 
 denied. The argument therefore rests wholly on a 
 
 4* 
 
42 THE lord's day 
 
 false assumption ; and its inference must, therefore, 
 be wholly false. It ought to stand thus. God has 
 given to France, England, America and all nations, 
 the same precise elements of moral truth, as their 
 constitutional and elementary law ; therefore, all 
 nations are bound to regulate all their legislation, 
 according to these eternal and unchangeable princi- 
 ples of moral truth. From this it must follow, as 
 a corollary inevitable, that wherein any nation leg- 
 islates and governs contrary to this transcript of 
 the divine perfections, it is sinful — it is rebellion 
 against God, and must bring distress upon the 
 people, and, in the end, ruin upon the government: 
 for we ought to obey God rather than men. If 
 human governors run counter to the ten words, it 
 is tyranny ; for God has never given them such 
 authority ; and obedience to God then is resist- 
 ance to tyrants. And this is the only sense, in 
 which there is such a thing, as the right of revo- 
 lution by force of arms ; and thus it is, that an ap- 
 peal to arms is carrying the cause to the highest 
 court. 
 
 2. But we are told, there are a great many mod- 
 ifications, additions, alterations, amendments to the 
 ten words, utterly inapplicable to us and to other 
 nations ; and therefore we cannot admit their bind- 
 ing force. For example, this very law of the fourth 
 commandment is punished with death. . Is every 
 man who gathers an armful of sticks on Sunday, to 
 be stoned to death ? 
 
A SACRED REST. 43 
 
 This brings up a legion of objections; and de- 
 mands a very deliberate response. In the close of 
 this paper, I can only lay down the general princi- 
 ple, on which they must all be disposed of. Our 
 answers in detail will largely correspond with the 
 views of the objector himself; but for very different 
 reasons. 
 
 Our principle is this — that legislation is clearly 
 distinct from fundamental law. If America has 
 learned one lesson of paramount importance to her 
 and to the world, it is this : that a Constitution of 
 elementary moral principles, rising high above all 
 governmental officers — legislative, judicial, execu- 
 tive — is necessary to the public safety. No sooner 
 had she emerged from the Red Sea of a bloody 
 Revolution — rather, I should say, whilst still en- 
 closed within the blood-stained walls — she groped 
 around in search of some rock foundation on which 
 to erect the temple of freedom. Deeply did the 
 men of that day feel, amid the tremendous surges 
 of that agitated sea, that the quicksands of human 
 ignorance and passion could never bear up the glo- 
 rious structure of Constitutional Liberty which 
 they were erecting as a Pharos, to guide the en- 
 •thralled nations into the haven of peace and a gov- 
 ernment of law. The yearnings of their souls 
 went forth continually after a system of elementary 
 principles which should constitute the rule of all 
 rulers and the guide of all the people. A Consti- 
 tution involving the pure moral elements of all 
 
44 THE lord's day 
 
 government they laboured after, and in thirteen 
 years they found it, and founded it upon the broad 
 basis of the people's will, whose voice, coalescing 
 with the voice from Sinai, became to them the voice 
 of God. 
 
A SACRED REST. 45 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 ARGUMENT FOR THE SABBATH, FROM THE CHARACTER 
 
 OF ITS OPPOSERS. 
 
 The fruits prove the tree — good or bad. 
 
 "By their fruits ye shall know them," is a very 
 simple rule of judgment. It is the principle of 
 all inductive science. It was not discovered nor 
 invented by Bacon. Newton's head was not its 
 original source. These reformers of philosophy, 
 renovators of the true law of philosophizing, found 
 it in the Bible, and their application of it to nat- 
 ural science placed them at its head. But mani- 
 festly, this maxim of our Saviour is an inductive 
 process. Like causes produce like effects : and I 
 infer the nature of the cause from its effect. If 
 this shrub bear figs, it is not a thistle : if this one^ 
 produce grapes, it is a vine, and not a thorn-bush. 
 If blasphemy flow from this man's mouth, he is 
 not a holy man with the fear of God before his 
 eyes and the love of God in his heart. If this 
 man wash his hands from keeping of bribes ; if he 
 do good to men as he hath opportunity; if he avoid 
 all evil and appearance of evil ; if he visit the 
 
46 THE lord's day 
 
 fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and 
 keep himself unspotted . from the world ; ye shall 
 know him by his fruits ; he is a good man. If a 
 man say, "I love God," and yet hateth his brother, 
 you cannot believe his words; you cannot do other- 
 wise than believe his actions : you judge the tree 
 by its fruits. In the absence of holy living, no 
 man can have m himself, or give unto others, proof 
 that he is a converted man and on the way to 
 heaven. But if his walk be holy ; his life pure ; 
 his whole course of action conformed to the law 
 and love of the Lord; inductive science infers, 
 without a faltering fear, that he is a changed man. 
 Now it is by furnishing the facts for this philosophy 
 that every true Christian makes himself, or rather 
 is made, by" Divine grace, a preacher of Christ's 
 gospel ; he lets his light so shine before men, that 
 they cannot avoid the conclusion that his religion 
 is from above ; and they are constrained to glorify 
 his Father in heaven. 
 
 Now, if we apply this first law of experimental 
 philosophy — of inductive science — to the question 
 whether the Bible is from God, or whether it is an 
 imposition upon the credulity of mankind, we shall 
 reach a satisfactory result. We have only to glance 
 for a brief moment at the character of the friends 
 of the Holy Book, and then at that of its enemies, 
 to reach this conclusion. Reader ! just look around 
 you. There stand the • men and the women by 
 thousands who reverence this Book, and evince this 
 
A SACRED REST. 47 
 
 reverential regard by reading and studying it with 
 all the helps within their reach : they attend the 
 exposition of it by men of educated and trained 
 minds, wholly devoted to this work : they ponder 
 it themselves ; it is their daily companion in the 
 house and by the way. Everything they can do is 
 done to increase their acquaintance with its precious 
 contents. Moreover, they practise its heavenly 
 doctrines — these are they which follow the Lamb 
 whithersoever he goeth. Now look at their moral 
 and religious character. How do they stand in- 
 spection ? Are they, as a class, unreliable men and 
 women ? Can you rest upon their moral integrity? 
 Will you admit their testimony in court as decisive 
 of the most important interests of their fellow-men? 
 When charity utters her calls to the relief of suf- 
 fering humanity, do you find a listening ear ? Who 
 feeds the hungry poor ? Who clothes the naked ? 
 Who visits the sick and afflicted ? 
 
 Now turn to the other side. Mark the opponents 
 of the Bible and scoffers at the doctrines it contains. 
 Do none of them blaspheme God and curse men ? 
 Do none of them give or take bribes at elections or 
 in the lobbies of legislative halls ? Are they active 
 in staying the progress of vice and immorality? 
 Do they, as a class, set a beautiful example of moral 
 purity, and stand distinguished for all the moral 
 virtues, so as to abash the workers of iniquity, and 
 commend, by their own example, the ways of holi- 
 
48- THE lord's day 
 
 ness and truth ; and thus constrain men to glorify 
 God in a pure life ? Reader ! you know the re- 
 verse of all this is true; the notorious facts con- 
 stantly passing before your eyes demonstrate the 
 haters of the Bible to be far different. The 
 inference you cannot resist : it follows by the 
 resistless power of eternal logic. The Bible must 
 be a good book, because its friends and admirers 
 are good men; its enemies and revilers are bad 
 men. 
 
 Parallel with this is our argument. What is the 
 moral character of the friends and the enemies of 
 the Sabbath day respectively ? 
 
 Again, Reader ! look around you. What are 
 the facts ? We observe, first, that the day of sa- 
 cred rest has a civil, even a worldly aspect, as we 
 have seen. Human legislation has embraced it, as 
 it has the other commandments, because they bear 
 favourably upon the social and pecuniary benefits 
 of the country : and therefore men, in very great 
 numbers, favour the general observance of the day. 
 AVithout taking particular interest in its religious 
 influences, they see and recognize its benefits in 
 other regards, and give it, for the sake of these, a 
 general approbation. Now among this large class, 
 we do not deny but that some may be found of loose 
 morality, and may be cited against us. This would 
 be unfair : for this whole class, after all, are not 
 friends of the sacred day of rest in our meaning 
 of it : but only of one aspect, and that the least 
 
A SACRED REST. 49 
 
 important, of its benefits. The only fair compari- 
 son must be limited to those who take the law in its 
 totality, as a Divine ordinance requiring rest physi- 
 cal ; but whose main substance, spirit, and life lie 
 in its religious character, as a day kept holy to the 
 Lord. They only are friends of the Sabbath who 
 adhere to it, as it is a day of rest from worldly em- 
 ployments and recreations, and of religious conse- 
 cration to the worship and service of God. Now, 
 we ask you to look around and mark the moral con- 
 duct of this large class of men, women, and chil- 
 dren. Where do you find them on the holy day ? 
 Roaming the streets ? crowding the rum shops and 
 beer houses, in violation of Penn's Great Law ? 
 In riot and dissipation around these haunts of vice? 
 Rushing to the country on fast horses or steam cars, 
 to the infinite annoyance of peaceful dwellers and 
 their fruit-beds, orchards, and gardens? In the 
 lock-ups on Sunday nights and in the alderman's 
 office on Monday morning ? Or do you find them 
 in the early day at home — sweet, lovely home — 
 "reading the Scriptures of truth," as Penn directs 
 and recommends — and the children conning over 
 their Sunday-school lessons ? Then passing quietly, 
 cheerfully, peaceably to the Sunday-school room — 
 then to the church and its sacred exercises ? Then, 
 the worship over, returning in the same order to 
 the delightful home and its holy quiet. Again you 
 see the repetition of the sacred solemnities and the 
 day closing in the beautiful sunshine of heaven's 
 
 6 
 
50 THE lord's day 
 
 approbation. On other days, diligent in business ; 
 honest in their dealings ; never indulging in profane 
 or obscene language ; kind to the poor ; given to 
 hospitality ; always ready for every good work ; 
 fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. 
 
 Now, how is it with the opponents of the Sabbath 
 day? Strange that it should be so; but do not the 
 Jews, who still deny the Lord, abhor his holy day ? 
 Do not Deists — deniers of the Divine inspiration 
 of the Scriptures; atheists — deniers of the being 
 of a God ; do not profane swearers ; do not gam- 
 blers ; do not corrupters of the public morals and 
 murderers of thousands by the sale of alcoholic 
 poisons ; do not the entire body of their customers 
 and victims ; do not debauchees, forgers, burglars, 
 incendiaries, and all persons of bad moral character, 
 — do they not all affiliate, and unite, and combine 
 " together against the Lord, and against his anointed ; 
 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away 
 their cords from us ?" These inuendoes are general 
 truths. The few among them who do not so affiliate 
 and combine, are most assuredly the exceptions rare. 
 In reference to the mass, this is no slander, unless 
 in the sense of the eifete English maxim, " The 
 greater the truth the greater the libel." Ee it that 
 they will take offence at this position. If it were 
 not true they would have little occasion for offence, 
 and less profit from their displeasure. But they 
 will curse you. Very well, " The curse causeless 
 shall not come." " Shimei cursed David and cast 
 
A SACRED REST. 61 
 
 stones;" and David said, " Let him curse/' And 
 Solomon says, '' The curse of the Lord is in the 
 house of the wicked." "The Lord turned the 
 curse of Balaam into a blessing." This all I speak 
 for their good. See Appendix XL 
 
52 THE lord's day 
 
 CHAPTER yil. 
 
 TION OP ISRAEL — THIS CONSTITUTION, PURELY 
 RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 
 
 Ratification — The commandments means tlio ten — Adopted not by 
 tribes, but as a nation — Examination of the ten words — The 
 fourth passed by. 
 
 We have seen, from Exod. xix. 5-8, that God 
 made a covenant with Israel, before the utterance 
 of the TEN WORDS from the summit of the burning 
 Mount ; now ^ye affirm, that after this awful and 
 glorious utterance, this covenant was more formally 
 confirmed and ratified in the blood of typical sacri- 
 fice. Exod. xxiv. 4, 5. " And Moses wrote all the 
 words of the law — 7. And he took the book of the 
 covenant, and read in the audience of the people : 
 and they said. All that the Lord hath said we will 
 do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood 
 and sprinkled it on the people; and said, Behold 
 the blood of the covenant, Avhich the Lord hath made 
 with you concerning all these words." Another 
 ratification of this federal compact — this national 
 constitution, took place forty years afterward on the 
 plains of Moab: Deut. xxix. 1, 2-14, "Neither with 
 
A SACRED REST. . 53 
 
 you only do I make this covenant and this oath" — 
 I know, it may be affirned that other items are 
 probably included in this covenant, vi. "These are 
 the words of the covenant, which the Lord com- 
 manded Moses to make with the children of Israel 
 in the land of Moab, beside the covenant which he 
 made with them in Horeb." I answer, if other 
 matter is here included, the commandments are 
 specifically referred to Chap, xxvii. 1. " Keep all 
 the commandments which I command you this day." 
 Now, when the commandments are spoken of by 
 themselves ; or in connection with other terms — as 
 in — Deut. viii. 11, "Beware that thou forget not 
 the Lord thy God, in not keeping his command- 
 ments, and his judgments and his statutes." So in 
 Deut. iv. 13, "And he declared unto you his cov- 
 enant, which he commanded you to perform, even 
 ten commandments : and he wrote them upon two 
 tables of stone:" and in the next verse, ^'statutes 
 and judgments'' are contradistinguished from com- 
 mandments : — whenever these are mentioned, our 
 position here is, that the ten words of the two tables 
 are meant. Such is the New Testament usage. 
 Mark x. 19, "Thou knowest the commandments. 
 Do not commit adultery. Do not kill. Do not steal," 
 &c. So Luke, i. 6, " And they were both righteous 
 before God, walking in all the commandments, and 
 ordinances of the Lord blameless." Jno. xiv. 21, 
 " He that hath my commandments and keepeth 
 them, he it is that loveth me." Such is also the 
 6 * 
 
.54 THE lord's day 
 
 Old Testament usage : the word occurs in Ps. cxix. 
 eighteen times, and in every instance, in reference to 
 the ten words. " And he — God, wrote on the tables 
 (which Moses hewed out) according to the first writ- 
 ing, the ten commandments, which the Lord spoke 
 unto you in the mount," &c. Deut. x. 4. Beyond 
 doubt, by the phrase, the commandments, the law 
 of the two tables is meant. And it is of these our 
 Lord declares, Mat. v. 18, — " Till heaven and earth 
 pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from 
 the law, till all be fulfilled." And Luke xvi. 17, 
 "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than 
 one tittle of the law to fail." "The word of our 
 God shall stand for ever." Our conclusion is safe. 
 
 The TEN COMMANDMENTS are THE FEDERAL CON- 
 STITUTION of the Hebrew commonwealth. They 
 constitute the fundamental law of his people : they 
 became such by the appointment of God and the 
 election of the people. They have been solemnly 
 inaugurated as such, by a formal federal compact : 
 — an inauguration, which, for solemnity, pomp, 
 grandeur and glory, has no parallel in the world's 
 history. 
 
 A few words, as to this adoption of the federal 
 compact seem proper ; to guard against misappre- 
 hension and mischief therefrom. 1. No convention 
 or committee of the thirteen tribes met, deliberated 
 and drew up the original draft of this constitution, 
 and thus first gave it form. This was done to their 
 hand by God himself. Herein it differs from the 
 
A SACRED REST. 55 
 
 federal constitution of the Anglo-Saxon Common- 
 wealth. Nevertheless the framers of our constitu- 
 tion, ever and anon, felt themselves bound and 
 bounded by that of the Hebrews. I say* bound, 
 because these wise men, like all wise men the world 
 over, recognized the Decalogue, — that is, to translate 
 this Greek word into English, the ten words, as a 
 transcript of the divine attributes, the common law 
 of humanity. I say bounded — because they felt, 
 that no moral principle — no political doctrine could 
 be found outside of the Hebrew constitution — that 
 is, they knew, that the elements of all moral rules, 
 requisite for human society and its governments, 
 are found within this Hebrew constitution. 
 
 2. It was federal — by covenant, in the strictest 
 sense ; God offered it to Israel, with a guaranty of 
 protection, peace, prosperity, happiness, provided 
 they would accept and keep it in good faith. The 
 people consented, and assented, and pledged them- 
 selves to obedience. Thus it is federal: and herein 
 it resembles our adoption of our Constitution, though 
 differing as to origin : and not much, neither. For 
 what God did for Israel by miraculous interposition, 
 he did for us by providential arrangements, ap- 
 proaching to the miraculous. He hedged up our 
 
 . way so that we could not avoid making just such a 
 Constitution. 
 
 3. The Hebrew people compacted with themselves 
 and with God through delegates or representatives — 
 the elders of the people, in their behalf, signed the 
 
66 THE lord's day 
 
 bond and sealed the covenant with blood. Herein 
 our case and theirs agree, except in the matter of 
 typical blood. The people, by their representatives, 
 adopted the Constitution. 
 
 4. The Hebrew Constitution was adopted, not by 
 representatives of the thirteen Tribes as distinct 
 and organized bodies, but by the elders of the peo- 
 ple of Israel as a nation — " Ye shall be unto me a 
 kingdom of priests and an lioly nation.''' Their 
 tribal distinctions were never noticed in this adopt- 
 ing act ; but always are they viewed and spoken of 
 as one people — a nation — and their fundamental law 
 was adopted by the nation. There is here a par- 
 allelism between these thirteen tribes and our thir- 
 teen States. Our Constitution was adopted, not by 
 and in the name of the States as States : not one 
 of the conventions of the people in any one of the 
 States ever stated, in their adopting act, that they 
 did it in the name of the State, but always, in the 
 name of the People. 
 
 That the Decalogue is a summary compend of 
 God's moral law, is and always has been the senti- 
 ment of the Christian world. Aware I am that 
 Rome, as she ceased to be a true Christian Church, 
 repudiated the second commandment. This reform 
 became necessary for her justification in the worship 
 of and by images, and saints, the virgin and the 
 host. But evangelical Christendom, with such few 
 exceptions as are scarcely worthy of notice, have 
 sustained the ten words, as containing the essence 
 
A SACRED REST. 57 
 
 of all moral truth. The usual division into duties 
 to God and duties to man, is substantially correct : 
 the first table containing the former, and the second 
 the latter. 
 
 Of course the reader does not expect, here and 
 now, an exposition of the Decalogue. All you can 
 expect and desire, is simply such a brief notice of 
 its contents as the proof of my proposition requires ; 
 and this accompanied by evidence that no peculiarity 
 of the Jewish people is contained in any one of the 
 ten ; but that, on the contrary, all these laws are 
 equally applicable to all men and nations as to the 
 Hebrew nation. With this in view, the method is 
 exceedingly simple, viz., to take up the precepts 
 seriatim ; leaving, however, the fourth to the last 
 place. And also let us bear in mind that all the 
 ten are negative precepts, except the fifth and the 
 former hpJf of the fourth. And that, therefore, 
 the common sense rule must be adopted in their in- 
 terpretation ; that wdiere a sin is forbidden, the con- 
 trary duty is (Commanded ; and w^iere a duty is 
 commanded, the contrary sin is forbidden. And 
 moreover, that all the Ten are addressed to the in- 
 dividual : if every person obeys the law, the social 
 body obeys it, for society, governments, nations, are 
 made up of individuals. 
 
 The first commandment is, " Thou shalt have no 
 other gods before me." Jehovah here asserts his 
 right to the worship and adoration of every individ- 
 ual, to the exclusion of everything which men or 
 
58 THE lord's day 
 
 devils may set up as gods. Here is the prime ele- 
 ment of religious obligation. Nothing ceremonial 
 here : nothing peculiar to the Jew. Nothing but 
 what is the duty of every rational and moral agent 
 in the universe. 
 
 The second — " Thou shalt not make unto thee 
 any graven image, or any likeness of anything that 
 is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, 
 or that is in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt 
 not bow down thyself to them nor serve them," 
 This is the commandment, as distinguished from the 
 reason enforcing it. It is obviously counterpart to 
 the first. It forbids the substitution of anything in 
 the place of God as an object of religious worship 
 and adoration : — forbids idolatry in all and every 
 form. Is there anything here peculiar to the Israel- 
 ite? Or is it not a duty, proper to every moral 
 creature ? All men and all nations and at all times 
 are equally bound by it. And the reason is equally 
 general, "For I, the Lord thy God am a jealous 
 God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the 
 children, unto the third and fourth generation of 
 them that hate me ; and showing mercy unto thou- 
 sands of them that love me and keep my command- 
 ments." Here is no allusion even to any peculiar 
 claim or obligation upon the Jew. No ceremonial 
 institute is here. Everything affirmed or implied is 
 common to all the race of Adam. 
 
 The tJiird — " Thou shalt not take the name of the 
 Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold 
 
A SACRED REST. 59 
 
 him'"guiltless that taketh his name in vain." Here is 
 a purely moral duty enjoined — reverence in the use 
 of the holy names of God. If this be not a moral 
 and religious duty, "what can be ? And where is there 
 anything ceremonial or peculiar to the Israelite in 
 it ? Was there ever a time, or will there ever be a 
 time when the individual, or a nation and people 
 where this duty was not binding ? The allegation 
 that it is a law peculiar to the Jewish people is as 
 absurd as it is false. Can blasphemy, profanity, 
 perjury ever cease to be sinful ? Satan himself has 
 not brazen falsehood enough to affirm it. 
 
 The fifth, " Honour thy father and thy mother : 
 that thy days may be long upon the land which 
 the Lord thy God giveth thee." • This is the only 
 command purely positive in its form. It contains 
 the principle of subordination to lawful authority. 
 It is the basis of all government in the hands of 
 men. Without it human society is impossible ; and, 
 of course, the continuance of the race would be im- 
 possible. Is the basis of all social obligation a 
 peculiarity of the Hebrew nation ? — a mere Jewish 
 municipal regulation ? Silly ! simply silly assertion. 
 
 But a learned Scotch divine has caught a Jew 
 here, in the promise of long life and prosperity — 
 " The land which the Lord thy God hath given 
 thee," he says means nothing but Canaan; and he 
 avers, God never gave the land of Canaan to him, 
 therefore he, not being a heritor of the land, cannot 
 be bound to obey his own father or mother, or 
 
60 THE lord's day 
 
 Queen Victoria herself! Beautiful logic! Pecu- 
 liarly beautiful in the land of Scotland which, if we 
 mistake not, God gave to Knox, Chalmers and Mc- 
 Leod. Does this gentleman believe, tliis is the 
 interpretation given in the 133d question of the 
 Larger Catechism, which he has solemnly bound 
 himself to hold and teach ? Or does he not know 
 it is the contradictory of it ? And assuredly it is 
 as absurd as it is novel. The land which the Lord 
 giv.eth to any man, is the land where he lives. 
 There is not a hint of its limitation to Canaan. It 
 is equally applicable to all the dwellers on earth, as 
 it was to the Jew atj» Sinai : and the man who denies 
 the moral obligation of this commandment, will, if 
 consistent, abrogate all law and all human society. 
 
 Sixth. "■ Thou shalt not kill." Is this a moral 
 law ? or a Jewish ceremonial institute ? 
 
 Seventh. " Thou shalt not commit adultery." Is 
 this too a Jewish ceremonial ? Then how can it 
 bind a Scotch doctor of divinity ? And are all but 
 Jews free from this badge of slavery to a foreign 
 yoke? 
 
 Eighth. '' Thou shalt not steal." And is honesty 
 exclusively a Jewish virtue, and all the rest of man- 
 kind left free to steal ? 
 
 Ninth. ^' Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
 thy neighbour." This too was buried with Christ 
 in his grave, and we have nothing to do with these 
 dead statutes of a dead rehgion. . 
 
 Tenth. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's 
 
A SACKED REST. 61- 
 
 house ; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife ; 
 nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his 
 ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neigh- 
 bour's." 
 
 Are these hankerings after my neighbour's prop- 
 erty sins only in a Jew ; and are all men besides at 
 liberty to covet with impunity ? But I forbear. 
 These nine precepts are religiously and morally 
 binding upon all men in all ages of the world. 
 There is not one principle or phase of an idea in 
 the whole that is peculiar to Israel. This has al- 
 ways been the sentiment of evangelical Christen- 
 dom. 
 6 
 
62 THE lord's day 
 
 CHAPTEK yill. 
 
 THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF ISRAEL PURELY 
 MORAL, CONTINUED — FOURTH COMMANDMENT 
 ANALYZED. 
 
 We have demonstrated the moral nature, and, 
 therefore, the binding obligation of all these nine 
 words upon all mankind. It remains to analyze 
 the Fourth, which, in more senses than one, is the 
 central commandment. It is so in position, physi- 
 cally, as it were. It is so as to its moral substance ; 
 for it includes duties to God, and also some of our 
 duties to man. 
 
 The commandment involves five distinct points, 
 viz. : 
 
 1. First, Remember the day of the Sabbath. 
 
 2. The purpose or object — to keeiJ it holy. 
 
 3. Rest implies previous labour. 
 
 4. From all labour there must be a total cessa- 
 tion. 
 
 5. The reason enforcing the precept. 
 1. Remember the day of the Sabbath. 
 
 We translate the Hebrew article, as it gives di- 
 rection to the -central thought. "Remember the 
 
A SACRED REST. 63 
 
 day of the Rest," obviously refers to it as previ- 
 ously known and now recalled. It thus gives point 
 to the imperative word, Remember. And here we 
 must be indulged in a little metaphysics. Memory 
 is that power of the mind by which we have a 
 knowledge of things gone by and viewed in past 
 time. It is well defined — Conception, with a feel- 
 ing of relation to past time : and it has two dis- 
 tinctions, created by the two laws of suggestion, 
 which regulate the introduction of thoughts into 
 the mind ; viz., nearness in time and place ; and 
 resemblance. The memory of contiguity, or near- 
 ness, is the most common, and characterizes the un- 
 educated mind. The memory that calls up thoughts 
 by resemblance is the scientific — the philosophic. 
 Both kinds are only partly voluntary. We cannot 
 call up a former thought by an act of volition di- 
 rect. The efi'ort to do so is reminiscence^ and im- 
 plies a feeling of want and vague notion about 
 something capable of supplying it. Hence desire 
 holds the mind in expectancy. Things desirable 
 are cherished and retained, and so become recallable 
 by contiguity. Things undesirable — for which, from 
 whatever reason, we have no desire — are not re- 
 tained, secure no attentio7i, or but little, and so pass 
 away beyond the mind's purview and are lost. 
 Such, by reason that the carnal mind is enmity 
 against God, is the fate of the sacred duties of the 
 Sabbath day. The Sabbath is not to it "a delight. 
 — the holy of the Lord, honourable;" its duties are 
 
64 THE lord's day 
 
 ignored, because the Lord, whose day it is, appears 
 to careless men as a root out of a dry ground, hav- 
 ing no form nor comeliness. Hence the necessity 
 of this arrest of attention ; " Remember the day 
 of the rest." Forgetfulness results from want of 
 desire^ and want of desire from indifference, dis- 
 relish, want of adaptation of the objects to promote 
 the mind's enjoyment. Now, in spiritual things, 
 this defect lies in the heart's alienation from God. 
 " They have both seen and hated both me and my 
 Father," and therefore the Lord's day and its sacred 
 duties, so delightful and so desirable to true Chris- 
 tians, excite no interest, but disgust rather. " When 
 will the new moon [which was a Sabbath peculiar 
 to Jews] be gone, that we may sell corn ? and the 
 Sabbath, that we may set forth Avheat?" Am. viii. 
 5. These people's desires are not set on sacred 
 things, but on worldly aggrandizement — " to buy 
 and sell and get gain" — this is everything; and so 
 " they make the ephah small, and the shekel great, 
 and falsify the balances by deceit, that they may 
 buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of 
 shoes." Hence the necessity of a reminder. Be- 
 yond doubt, the command to remember is designed, 
 because needed, as a prophylactic remedy against 
 neglect. 
 
 2. The purpose for which we are commanded to 
 remember it, is "to keep it holy." We have already 
 remarked, that time is incapable of a moral quahty. 
 Holiness is an attribute of an intelligent moral being 
 
A SACRED REST. 65 
 
 only. Time is consecrated or kept holy when we 
 spend it in holy, religious exercises. No better ac- 
 count of this matter can he desired, than Isaiah's. 
 Chap. Iviii. 13, '' 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 
 finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own 
 words" — Ivi. 2, "Blessed is the man, — that keepeth 
 the Sabbath from polluting it." Is time capable of 
 moral turpitude ? What is time ? An intelligent, 
 rational, moral agent ? You see the absurdity. The 
 only positive sanctification conceivable, is the devo- 
 tion of ourselves to the Avorship, the praise and 
 glorifying of God : — " Thou shalt delight thyself in 
 the Lord." "It is the Sabbath of the Lord thy 
 God " — appropriated by himself, and to himself, for 
 his most holy worship. 
 
 It is not my purpose to enter at large into the 
 positive duties of the holy day ; but to prove it a 
 moral law, prescribed by his Creator for the good of 
 man. But now, if the day is to be spent in intel- 
 lectual, moral and religious culture, and the worship 
 of God, for his glory and our good, it cannot be 
 spent in servile labour, in secular and worldly pur- 
 suits. This leads us to the negative part of our 
 analysis. 
 
 3. Rest implies previous action, and cessation 
 therefrom. " Six days shalt thou labour and do all 
 thy work ; but the seventh is the Sabbath of the 
 
bb THE LORD S DAY 
 
 Lord tliy God : in it thou slialt not do any work, 
 thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-ser- 
 vant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy 
 stranger that is within thy gates." Total suspension 
 of secular business is commanded. This is the in- 
 dispensable negative side of the question. Whether 
 the positive part even here, is a command — " Six 
 days shalt thou labour and do all thy work," I shall 
 not discuss ; but only say, I see no good reason to 
 deny it. Industry is certainly a Christian virtue — 
 a duty binding upon all to whom any talent whatever 
 is committed — " Occupy till I come." If " diligence 
 in business " is a duty, as well as fervency in the 
 service of the Lord, it is because he has commanded 
 both. Por the will of God revealed to man for the 
 rule of his conduct, is law. " My meat is to do the 
 will of him that sent me." The Saviour knew no 
 higher obligation. If then, he forbids labour on a 
 given day, it is equally binding with a positive pre- 
 cept : and he who does any work on " the Sabbath 
 of the Lord," transgresses his command — resisteth 
 his will. This negative precept covers all under the 
 command and control of any man — son, daughter, 
 servant, stranger. And this last is the most difficult 
 to manage. In our country, it is the foreign element 
 that gives most trouble. Foreigners seem determined 
 to force a European and Romish Sunday upon this 
 Protestant nation. 
 
 4. The six days, and the seventh day are of the 
 same kind. Six are to be devoted to secular, and 
 
A SACRED REST. 67 
 
 one to sacred services. The question as to the 
 seventh day controversy, we postpone for the pres- 
 ent. One day in seven, on a regular succession, is 
 manifestly the spirit of the law. 
 
 5. The reason supporting the precept claims our 
 attention. " For in six days the Lord made heaven 
 and earth, the sea and all that in tliem is, and rested 
 the seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the 
 Sabbath day and hallowed it." Here note 
 
 (1.) To bless is to make or declare a person happy, 
 as before stated. The idea of time being itself 
 made happy is absurd. But God's worship makes 
 man happy that day. 
 
 (2.) The Sabbath day, it was, which the Lord 
 blessed and made holy, not the seventh day. As 
 will be shown hereafter, the phrase, "seventh day," 
 is never used in the Bible as the name of the day 
 of holy rest ; and the word Sabbath is never used 
 but to signify a time of holy rest. 
 
 (3.) That this fourth command is a moral law ; 
 and not in any sense restricted to the Jewish people, 
 is manifest from the reason embodied within it. The 
 preamble to a resolution, a law, a constitution, is the 
 index to its interpretation : it gives the reason be- 
 forehand. The same is true, when the reason is 
 given .anywhere. It were perfectly easy to throw 
 this into that form; ''Whereas in six days the Lord, 
 &c., wherefore the Lord blessed the rest day, &c." 
 Now this reason is not peculiar to the Jewish peo- 
 ple, but it is common to all mankind. It is purely 
 
68 THE lord's day 
 
 moral ; not an item in it or about it relates to any 
 Jewish ceremonial. Therefore, the law, for which 
 it gives the reason, is a moral law, binding upon all 
 niankind, and is equally appropriate to Jew and 
 Gentile. " The rest day was made for man." Some 
 fifty years ago, Judge Rush, in an address to the 
 Grand Inquest of Philadelphia, county, pressed this 
 argument with great force. He showed, that as the 
 reason given in the law itself, is a moral reason, 
 common and applicable to all mankind, the law 
 could not be special and peculiar to the Hebrew 
 people ; but must be general and obligatory upon 
 all mankind. 
 
A SACRED REST. 69 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ALL JEWISH PECULIARITIES ARE LEGISLATIVE EN- 
 ACTMENTS, NOT CONSTITUTIONAL LAWS. 
 
 Some Constitution necessary. — Distinction between Law and Pen- 
 alty. — 1. The Passover. — 2. The Tabernacle. — 3. Servants. — 4. 
 Usury Laws. — 5. Penalties vary, law is unchangeable. — Death 
 penalty to six of the commandments. 
 
 E/EADER, do we understand one another ? Do 
 ■jve agree that the organic law of a nation — the 
 elementary and fundamental principles of its gov- 
 ernment, the Constitution — is its safeguard and 
 bond of union, without which it would not be a 
 nation, but only a gregarious mass — a mob ? Are 
 we agreed that this Constitutional Bond lies above, 
 limits and controls all legislation ; and that, con- 
 sequently, all laws contravening the Constitution 
 must be null and void ? If we herein agree, then 
 we cannot differ as to the possibility, probability, 
 yea, certainty, that, if numerous laws are made so 
 subordinate, they will sometimes branch forth in 
 their details into minute regulations peculiar to that 
 particular nation. Suppose the people of Alabama 
 and those of Vermont were distinct and indepen- 
 dent nations ; and that each and both would adopt 
 
70 THE lord's day 
 
 the TEN WORDS as their Constitution ; how long 
 would it be before their legislation would exhibit 
 distinct peculiarities, mutually inapplicable to each 
 other ? Diversity of climate, and therefore of soil, 
 and therefore of productions, and therefore of in- 
 dustry, and therefore of commerce, would force 
 upon them laws correspondent to all these diversi- 
 ties. For example, Vermont legislation would have 
 an eye to lumber, to maple sugar, to live stock, and 
 especially sheep and wool. Alabama legislation 
 would regard sugar cane, cotton, rice, &c. The 
 laws of each thus become utterly inapplicable to 
 the other. Thus Hebrew legislation, under the very 
 same constitution which God gave as the moral, 
 elementary law to the Greek, the Roman, the Egyp- 
 tian, produces laws and regulations peculiar to them 
 and unsuitable to other nations. 
 
 One other general principle will prepare us for 
 some detail, viz. : That a law and iU i:fenalty are 
 quite distinct. Be it that a law without a penalty 
 appropriated to its violation is mere counsel or ad- 
 vice. This alters not the case ; for all human leg- 
 islation exhibits changes interminable in penalties, 
 whilst the law, i. e., the rule prescribing duty, re- 
 mains unchanged. For example, under the consti- 
 tutional law of the eighth precept, "Thou shalt not 
 steal," how vastly diversified is human legislation! 
 English law awarded death even for petit larceny ; 
 time and Christianity have changed this. American 
 legislation, very soon after the trammels of English 
 
A SACRED REST. 71 
 
 law were thrown off, produced the same change; 
 but still with great diversity of penal enactment. 
 Similar diversities exist as to modes of the one cap- 
 ital punishment — hanging, beheading, strangling, 
 stoning, poisoning, burning, drowning. But all 
 these diversities in penalty, both as to degree of 
 severity and mode of infliction, involve no altera- 
 tion in the organic law itself: it still remains the 
 same, "Thou shalt not kill." And this springs 
 from the distinction between law and penalty — a 
 distinction nowhere more strongly marked than in 
 the TEN WORDS. No penalty was uttered from the 
 summit of Sinai. No penalty was written on the 
 two tables of stone. No penalty is anywhere re- 
 corded in the Constitution of the Hebrew Common- 
 wealth. No penalty is registered in the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States. A prophylactic is set 
 forth in the eighth amendment, against " cruel and 
 unusual punishments." But, except removal from 
 office and disqualification, no penalty, not even for 
 treason, is prescribed in that wonderful instrument. 
 Of all this, the philosophy is not difficult of com- 
 prehension. It is found in the object of penalty. 
 This is two-fold : — to vindicate justice in asserting 
 and sustaining the majesty of law ; and to prevent 
 future transgression : the former being principal, 
 the latter subsidiary. The Enghsh judge who ele- 
 vated the latter above the former by saying to the 
 horse-thief, "We hang you, sir, not because you 
 stole a horse, but to prevent horses from being 
 
72 THE lord's day 
 
 stolen," showed his ignorance of the foundation 
 principle of government, and his belief that an 
 English horse is worth more than an Englishman. 
 Justice is a fixed guaranty ; penalty is a contin- 
 gency. The law is immutable ; but its violations 
 are, as to aggravations, interminably variable ; and 
 so, therefore, must the punishments be. Hence, 
 the world over, a wide discretionary margin is left 
 to the judges. 
 
 Let us now open the Hebrew code, and observe 
 some of the ramifications of elementary law in the 
 legislative enactments under it. And the first in- 
 stitution to be cited is a kind of prolepsis in his- 
 torical development. It was an act of the legisla- 
 tor, acting under the elementary law, yet before its 
 formal enunciation. Of course the Passover feast 
 is referred to. The Passover services belong chiefly 
 to the first table ; they are covered, as to their prin- 
 ciple, by the command, " Thou shalt have no other 
 gods before me," which contains the proposition, 
 " Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him 
 only shalt thou serve." Its spirit is also found in 
 the second, which prohibits idolatry, and enjoins 
 holy and reverend use of Divinely-instituted wor- 
 ship. The Fourth in spirit is here also, for it in- 
 cludes and commemorates deliverance from servi- 
 tude, devotion of time to sacred services, and always 
 includes one Sabbath day devoted to the Lord and 
 his regular worship, inclusive of the typical sacri- 
 
A SACRED REST. . 73 
 
 fices, and referring to Chi'ist our Passover, sacrificed 
 for us. 
 
 Now, this institution we hold to be a law of Is- 
 rael : formal subjection to it belongs not to the 
 Church under the gospel : it was a shadow of good 
 things : the substance to which it refers is ours ; 
 but the form is ritual and ceremonial, and dies by 
 limitation. 
 
 2. The Tabernacle, with its Court, and Brazen 
 Altar, and Laver, and Candlestick, and Table of 
 Show-bread, and Golden Altar of Incense, and Ark 
 of the Testimony — including the entire system of 
 burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, incense-offerings, — 
 all these are formal and legal, and yet outgrowths 
 of legislation, under and consistent with the organic 
 -law, but repealable and mortal by their own limita- 
 tion. The substance is of Christ, and is immutable 
 and eternal ; but the shadows pass away in their 
 own proper time. The tables of stone may be 
 broken and lost, but the heavenly Constitution 
 abides for ever. The tendency, drift, and design of 
 this system, and indeed of the whole ceremonial 
 institutions, is to direct and lead to the fulfilment 
 of law ; the tables being the grand centre of all 
 Jewish worship — presenting, under a wonderful di- 
 versity of instrumental symbols, instructions as to 
 the preservation of the Organic Law intact, and as 
 to the means of restoration of the worshippers to a 
 state of acceptance and Divine favour. They are, 
 in fact, all evangelical in their doctrinal substance. 
 7 
 
74 THE lord's day 
 
 3d Example may be the regulations relative to 
 servants, Exod. xxi. 1-11, and many others in the 
 same chapter. They are called "judgments which 
 thou shalt set before the people." " If thou buy 
 an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve ; and 
 in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If 
 he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself," 
 etc., etc. So xxii. 1 : " If a man shall steal an ox 
 or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it, he shall restore 
 five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep." 
 Great numbers of such laws were enacted, in appli- 
 cation of the principles in the Constitution to the 
 various conditions of the people. But all these are 
 manifestly municipal regulations, and are subject 
 to amendment, repeal, or modification, thus differing 
 entirely from organic law. 
 
 4. A fourth example of this kind is the usury 
 laws. By usury the Hebrews meant interest, not 
 exactly what we mean by it, viz., unlaicful interest. 
 We undertake, foolishly enough, to fix by law the 
 amount that shall be paid for the use of money ; 
 and great is the mischief and moral corruption oc- 
 casioned — perhaps I might say caused — by our leg- 
 islation about usury. The Hebrew Lawgiver, more 
 wise, undertakes nowhere this thing so unreasonable. 
 The usufruct value of money can no more be fixed 
 and defined by municipal rule, than that of horses, 
 or cows, or butter. Moses prohibits absolutely any 
 interest to be exacted of a Hebrew for the use of 
 money. Exod. xxii. 25 : " If thou lend money to 
 
A SACRED REST. 75 
 
 any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt 
 not be to him as a usurer, neither shalt thou lay 
 upon him usury." So repeating and expanding 
 the law. Levit. xxv. 35-37: "Take thou no usury 
 of him, nor increase. Thou shalt not give him thy 
 money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for 
 increase." And Deut. xxiii. 19, 20: "Thou shalt 
 not lend upon usury to thy brother : usury of momey, 
 usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent 
 upon usury. Unto a stranger thou mayest lend 
 upon usury, but unto thy brother thou shalt not 
 lend upon iisury." The reason of this municipal 
 regulation is evident on its face : it is special to 
 the Hebrew people, and not binding in its' specialty 
 upon us ; although its moving principle, brotherly 
 love, belongs to the Constitution of Israel and of 
 mankind : the charitable provision for the poor is 
 a duty ; but the form is ceremonial. 
 
 It is surely unnecessary to proceed farther in de- 
 tail of these legislative enactments, it being my 
 object, simply to illustrate by example, the difference 
 between the law of the tex words, which is com- 
 mon to man ; and Jewish legislation under it, which 
 is peculiar to the Israelitish people. 
 
 The other class of cases arises from the difference 
 between law, as a rule of action, and penalty as an 
 enforcement of rule. Strictly speaking, no duty 
 can be enforced, i. e., you caiinot compel a man and 
 thus bring him up to performance of his duty. The 
 reason is plain ; duty must be the voluntary outgo 
 
76 THE lord's day 
 
 of the heart in reverential subjection to the Govern- 
 or's will. Unless a man does the will of God, cheer- 
 fully, voluntarily, willingly, he performs no duty, 
 however right the thing he does may be in itself. 
 You cannot force a man to keep the Sabbath holy : 
 any more than you can force a child to love and 
 obey its parents. All you can do, is to hold up a 
 choice between outward physical compliance and 
 punishment. Thus a motive, !>ased on self-love, 
 which shrinks from suifering the penalty, is added, 
 to strengthen the sense of moral obligation to obe- 
 dience. 
 
 Penalty, then, as distinguished from law, may be 
 varied in the same country at different times ; and 
 in different countries at the same time. This vari- 
 ation is occasioned chiefly^ perhaps solely by the 
 secondary object of it ; viz., its tendency to prevent 
 crime. For this end the character of the person 
 deserving punishment, his upbringing, his surround- 
 ings ; a thousand circumstances come in to modify 
 and adjust punishment. " A reproof entereth more 
 into a wise man, than a hundred stripes into a fool." 
 Hence, no government pretends to gauge all penal- 
 ties by statute : but all, from Moses to our day, 
 leave a large discretion to the judges. Now the 
 error which we wish here to correct, is the supposi- 
 tion tliat the law is changed, because the penalty is 
 modified. History abundantly testifies that wher- 
 ever Christianity has gone, the penal code has been 
 relaxed and meliorated. In the days of the Stuarts, 
 
A SACRED REST. 77 
 
 more than one hundred and fifty crimes were pun- 
 ished with death. But whilst these great changes 
 were in progress, the laws themselves remained 
 unchanged. When the punishment of death ceased 
 to be inflicted for theft, the eighth commandment 
 remained the same. 
 
 Now so is it in the Hebrew commonwealth. The 
 penalty for the violation of most of the ten words, 
 was death: which to us now seems unreasonably 
 severe : yet were they not at all more so, than were 
 common to other nations of the same age. 
 
 For example, the penalty for transgression of the 
 third commandment is death. Lev. xiv. 16, " And 
 he that blasphemeth the Lord, he shall surely be put 
 to death." The same death by stoning was inflicted 
 for a violation of the first and second command- 
 ments. Deut. xiii. 6-9. And xvii. 2-7, — "And hath 
 gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, 
 either the sun or the moon, or any of the host, which 
 I have not commanded — thou shalt bring forth that 
 man or that woman — and shalt stone them with 
 stones till they die." 
 
 In like manner, the fifth precept. Exod. xxi. 17 
 — Lev. XX. 9, " Every one that curseth his father or 
 his mother, shall be surely put to death." And the 
 seventh. Lev. xx. 10-13, " The adulterer and the 
 adulteress shall surely be put to death." Equally 
 equivocal is the testimony in regard to the sixth. 
 Num. XXXV. 16-31, " The murderer shall surely be 
 put to death — ye shall take no satisfaction for the 
 
< 5 THE LOUD S DAY 
 
 life of a murderer, which is guilty of death ; but he 
 shall be surely put to death."- 
 
 Here then are six out of the ten words, to which 
 no penalties are affixed in the Decalogue, but to 
 which the highest penalty is affixed by Jewish legis- 
 lation. Our Pennsylvania code awards this punish- 
 ment to only one of the six. Does this prove that 
 the other five are not moral laws binding upon us, 
 but only ceremonial regulations of the Jews ? 
 Must we hold to the sixth as moral, and abandon 
 the five as ceremonial ? And that, siinply because 
 Hebrew legislation has appended penalties, which 
 we deem unsuitable to us, in our greatly ameliorated 
 condition of the penal code ? 
 
A SACRED REST. 79 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SET FEASTS, OR EXTRA SABBATHS. 
 
 Col, ii. 16 vindicated against our opponents. — New moons, — Pass- 
 over. — Trumpets. — Atonement day. — Tabernacles. — Romans xv. 
 5, 6. 
 
 A CHIEF source of error in the Sabbatic contro- 
 versy, is fbund in the Hebrew festivals, or special 
 sacred days of that people. These were, by acts 
 of legislation, peculiar to them, and for them alone. 
 They involve the rest principle — cessation from 
 labour, and consecration of the times specified to 
 public religious worship — and therefore are called 
 Sabbaths, and hence are often confounded with the 
 weekly Sabbath. Let us inquire into them and 
 extricate the general subject from this confusion. 
 
 1. Thefnonthly solemn observance is most fully 
 set forth in Num. xxviii. 11-15 : "And in the be- 
 ginnings of your months, ye shall offer a burnt-of- 
 fering unto the Lord ;" the detail is given. It is 
 immediately preceded by the sacrifices for the weekly 
 Sabbath, and that by the daily offerings. It does 
 not appear that the new moons were days of holy 
 convocation and rest from servile labour. Yet Amos 
 
80 THE lord's day 
 
 viii. 5 seems, in his reproof of tlie eager and ava- 
 ricious spirit of traffic, to imply as much. " When 
 will the new moon be gone, that we may sell 
 corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth 
 wheat?" Still, it is nowhere expressly called a 
 Sabbath. 
 
 2. We pass on to the great feasts of the Passover 
 and unleavened bread. Num. xxviii. 16-25: "And 
 in the fourteenth day of the first month is the Pass- 
 over of the Lord." Verse 18 : " In the first day 
 shall be an holy convocation ; ye shall do no man- 
 ner of servile w^ork therein." Then the sacrifices 
 are prescribed; and verse 25 : " And on the seventh 
 day ye shall have an holy convocation ; ^e shall do 
 no servile work." Here we have two days of rest 
 from all worldly labour ; and public assemblies for 
 worship by sacrifices — Sabbaths in fact ; the first 
 of the seven being the fifteenth day of the month. 
 It is impossible that both these days should be the 
 regular weekly Sabbath. Yea, it must generally 
 happen, that neither could be ; yet the seven must 
 comprehend one regular sacred, weekly Sabbath. 
 So Deut. xvi. 8 : " Six days thou shalt ^t unleav- 
 ened bread, and on the seventh day shall be a sol- 
 emn assembly .to the Lord thy God : thou slialt do 
 no work therein." The same is repeated in Lev. 
 xxiii. 4^8. Two Sabbaths; every element of Sab- 
 batic rest is here, except the name — cessation from 
 work, public assembly, and public worship. 
 
 3. The feast of trumpets has all these elements, 
 
A SACRED REST. 81 
 
 and the name also. Lev. xxiii. 24, 25 : " In the 
 seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall 
 ye have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trum- 
 pets, an holy convocation. Ye shall do no servile 
 work therein; but ye shall offer an offering made 
 by fire unto the Lord." Here is a Sahhatli^ which 
 is not the weekly rest day. 
 
 4. "Also on the tenth day of this seventh month 
 there shall be a day of atonement ; it shall be an 
 holy convocation unto you, and ye shall do no work 
 in that same day. For whatsoever soul it be that 
 doeth any work in that same day, the same soul 
 will I destroy from among his people. It shall be 
 unto you a Sabbath of rest ; from even unto even 
 ye shall celebrate your Sabbath." Lev. xxiii. 27-31 ; 
 xvi. 31. This is a Sabbath, but not the weekly rest 
 day. The first day and the tenth day of this sev- 
 enth month are special Sabbaths, peculiar to the 
 Hebrew people, appointed by the same Divine au- 
 thority w^hich at the creation blessed and sanctified 
 the Sabbath day. Both these never could be the 
 day of weekly rest ; and very rarely, if ever, could 
 either of them be so. It is from this special rest 
 day the error was derived by the Jews and others, 
 that the regular weekly Sabbath begins in the even- 
 ing ; for which opinion, as we shall see anon, there 
 is no Scriptural authority : for this misunderstand- 
 ing is not authority. 
 
 5. Again, verse 34 : " The fifteenth day of this 
 seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for 
 
82 THE lord's day 
 
 seven days unto the Lord. On the first day shall 
 be an holy convocation ; ye shall do no servile work 
 therein. On the eighth day shall be an holy convo- 
 cation unto you. A solemn assembly, and ye shall 
 do no servile work therein." This is repeated at 
 verse 39 : And these days, the first and the eighth, 
 are expressly called Sabbaths: "on the first day 
 shall be a Sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a 
 Sabbath." 
 
 We have therefore seven — viz., in Nos. 1 and 2, 
 — 3 ; and in Nos. 3, 4, and 5, — 4 Sabbaths : Nos. 1 
 and 2 not so named, but including all the elements ; 
 of the rest day : the four in Nos, 3, 4, and 5, in- 
 cluding both the elements and the express name of 
 Sabbath. But all the seven are expressly contained 
 in verses 38, 39. " These are the feasts of the 
 Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convo- 
 cations. Besides the Sabbaths of the Lord, and 
 beside your gifts, and besides all your vows, and 
 beside all your free-will ofi'erings, which ye give 
 unto the Lord." Nor must we neglect the contrast 
 between these set feasts, these extra Sabbaths and 
 the Sabbaths of the Lord. The weekly rest day is 
 contra-distinguished. In verse 3d we read, — " It is 
 the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings :" 
 and they are called, "My Sabbaths." But these 
 seven are additional — extra days, besides the regular 
 days of rest — "your Sabbaths." 
 
 "And Moses declared unto Israel the feasts of 
 the Lord." Thus clearly distinguished, are the 
 
A SACRED REST. 83 
 
 Sabbaths of the Lord, — the regular weekly memori- 
 als of his finished work ; — the eternal and unchange- 
 able moral law; from the municipal regulations, 
 peculiarly adapted to the Hebrews, and which, being 
 superadded specialities, must expire with the other 
 ceremonials of that people. 
 
 And just here, whilst these facts are before us, 
 we may as well dispose of an argument, on which 
 great stress is laid by the opponents of the holy day ; 
 and whose entire force is destroyed by the distinction 
 here presented. It is built on Col. ii. 16, " Let 
 no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, 
 or in respect of an holy day or of the new moon, 
 or the Sabbaths." It is obvious at a glance, 
 that the apostle is cautioning his readers against 
 Judaizing teachers, — persons disposed to enforce 
 observances of the ceremonial law. "Except ye be 
 circumcised and keep the law of Moses, ye cannot 
 be saved." For leaning in this direction Paul re- 
 proved Peter. Gal. ii. 10-16. And here he directs 
 us to resist such influences and stand up for Chris- 
 tian liberty; and that we must not be entangled with 
 the yoke of bondage. Let no man usurp authority 
 over you and censure you because you refuse to 
 comply with the distinctions of clean and unclean 
 animals for food, or as to the prohibitions of drinks 
 and drink-oiferings, or of holy days — new moons or 
 of Sabbaths. Every one of these are ceremonials 
 of the Jewish law — shadows, types of good things 
 to come, foreshadowing Christ. The Sabbaths are 
 
84 THE lord's day 
 
 those we have just been discussing : the three holy 
 days, including the new moons ; and the four feasts, 
 which we have seen are Sabbaths, but not the weekly 
 rest days. As to Paul's own conduct in regard to 
 the weekly rest day, he constantly observed it, en- 
 tering into the synagogues and reasoning out of the 
 Scriptures : and he gives directions to the Corinthi- 
 ans, 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2, in regard to their duties on 
 the first day of the week ; making it evident that 
 for a while he kept and improved both the seventh 
 and the first. Thus, there is not a particle of evi- 
 dence that the weekly Sabbath is meant in this 
 place ; but only the Jewish ceremonial feast days, 
 which must die by their own limitation. 
 
 This reasoning is applicable to Rom. xiv. 5, 6, 
 '' One man esteemeth one day above another ; 
 another esteemeth every day alike.'' The heathens 
 in Rome and all the world over, had their special 
 days, like our ancestors, and like the Jews, devoted 
 to their peculiar divinities. And it was difficult, to 
 wean off the Jewish Christians at Rome from the 
 feast days and annual Sabbaths above named. The 
 questions were perplexing — are these observances 
 binding ? Must we keep these annual Sabbaths ? 
 May we omit them without sin ? And the same 
 questions yet trouble us. There are people in this 
 enlightened age whose consciences are uneasy, at 
 sight of desecrated Christmas day; Good-Friday; 
 Easter-Monday, Ascension day, &c. Now, says, 
 Paul, these are matters of utter indifference. God 
 
A SACRED REST. 85 
 
 has not made the Jewish annual Sabbaths binding 
 upon us. Christmas, Good-Eridaj, &c., may be ob- 
 served rehgiouslj and even profitably ; but there is 
 no command of God for it : and no man may justly 
 take offence at their neglect. 
 
86 THE LORD'S DAY 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 THE FOURTH PRECEPT — OBJECTION TO IT, BECAUSE 
 ITS PENALTY IS TOO SEVERE — LOCAL LEGISLATION 
 UNDER IT FOR HEBREWS. 
 
 Death penalty, as in the other eight. 
 
 The immutability of moral law is admitted by 
 all who admit that its home is the bosom of God. 
 Equally universal is the concession that the penal 
 sanctions appended to laws are mutable, and haVe 
 been varying in all ages and nations. Our ninth 
 chapter demonstrated this truth by the Scriptural 
 examples of the first and second, the third and fifth, 
 the sixth and seventh precepts. To neither of these, 
 as organic laws, uttered in thunder and written on 
 stone by Jehovah himself, did he append any pen- 
 alty ; but left that, as our fathers left the United 
 States Constitution, to have its penal sanctions af- 
 fixed by municipal legislation. This parallel be- 
 tween our national organic law and that of the He- 
 brew Commonwealth, is as thoroughly and graphic- 
 ally correct, as it is philosophically and historically 
 true. Even treason, the highest crime known to 
 law, has no punishment defined in the Constitution. 
 
A SACRED REST. * 87 
 
 Sucli definition is left to municipal statute ; and the 
 reason has been made apparent, viz. : penalties are 
 variable by time, place, and circumstances ; but or- 
 ganic law must consist of purely elementary prin- 
 ciples. We have seen that penalties were added in 
 regard to the first, second, third, fifth, sixth, and 
 seventh precepts. We may say, also, the eighth. 
 Por stealing a man, Deut. xxiv. 7 : " Then the thief 
 shall die." For stealing food, ^'he shall restore 
 seven-fold." Prov. vi. 31. 
 
 For violating the ninth precept, the law enacting 
 penalty is not a specific, but yet an equitable mea- 
 sure. " Then shall ye -do unto the false witness as 
 he had thought to have done unto his brother." 
 Deut. xix. 19. The tenth, which aims to check sin 
 in its incipient movement, is the only one of the 
 TEN WORDS which hath no special penal enactment 
 added. The reason is plain ; it is violated in the 
 heart's entertaining an illicit desire, and is not cog- 
 nizable by law for punishment until it externalizes 
 itself in overt acts, when it necessarily falls under 
 some one of the penalties of the nine. 
 
 Now the Fourth is not an exception. Special, 
 municipal laws were passed, modifying the phrase- 
 ology and applying its principle, and prescribing its 
 penalty. In these matters it is attended by just 
 such circumstances as attend all the others. Of 
 these we may mention first the penalty. It is, like 
 the eight already noticed, severe^ according to our 
 present conceptions, which are the product of gos- 
 
88 • THE lord's day 
 
 pel amelioration. So are all the rest : but so were 
 the penalties of law in all the nations of the world 
 at that period. Deatli seems a cruel punishment 
 on a boy for cursing his father or his mother ; or a 
 woman for violating the rules of chastity. But 
 such severities existed in all the nations to a much 
 later period. All that is needful to my argument 
 is this fact. I cannot be called upon to defend the 
 penal code of Jewish legislation. The same God 
 who enacted these penalties under the other organic 
 laws of the two tables, enacted this penalty. If 
 you charge him with cruelty, be it so : the quarrel 
 is not mine ; but be on yeur guard, for "if it be 
 of God, ye cannot overthrow it ; lest haply ye be 
 found even to fio-ht acrainst God." Acts v. 39. Be 
 impartial, ye that fight against God for ordering 
 the death penalty for Sabbath breaking. So it 
 reads. Num. xv. 35, 36 : " And the Lord said unto 
 Moses, The man shall be surely put to death : all 
 the congregation shall stone him with stones without 
 the camp." Did Jehovah pass a wicked and cruel 
 law ? " And all the congregation brought him 
 without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and 
 he died; as the Lord commanded Moses." Ana- 
 nias and Sapphira fell down dead for coveting an 
 evil covetousness. Acts v. Did Peter or Peter's 
 Master, who punished them with death for lying 
 unto God, do a great wickedness ?. Be ye impar- 
 tial, who undertake to condemn the Hebrew legislator 
 and Peter and his Lord for this cruelty ; and God, 
 
A SACRED REST. 89 
 
 for inflicting death on Adam's race for his eating the 
 fruit forbidden. Apply your objections and your 
 condemnation to the punishments ordered for the 
 first, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and 
 ninth precepts — all capital. You admit such pun- 
 ishment to be right and proper, and not cruel, only 
 in regard to the fourth : wherefore this partiality ? 
 Pause and think a moment, and let your sense of 
 compassion and of justice temper themselves with 
 reverence toward God. For after all your over- 
 flow of benevolence, perhaps God is as benevo- 
 lent and even as wise as you are. Perhaps he 
 knew as well or better than you, what laws mu- 
 nicipal were best suited to the condition of his 
 peculiar people at that time. But I may not de- 
 fend Jehovah. 
 
 Let us look at the various modifications of the 
 Sabbatic institution : and the first of these, after the 
 penal sanction, which was enacted in the wilderness 
 of Sin (as we have seen,) a month and more, before 
 the organic, constitutional law was uttered from 
 Sinai, is found in Exodus xxxi. 13-17, "Verily 
 my Sabbaths ye shall keep ; for it is a sign between 
 me and you, throughout your generations" — and in 
 verse 14, it is in the singular — " Ye shall keep the 
 Sabbath, therefore : for it is holy unto you :" and 
 the death penalty enacted in the wilderness of Sin, 
 is re-enacted. Then verse 15, the general principle 
 of the organic law is recited — " Six days may work 
 be done, but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, 
 
90 THE lord's day 
 
 holy to the Loed;" and in verse 17, "It is a 
 sign between me and the children of Israel for 
 ever." 
 
 The second act repeats the first, with the addition 
 prohibiting the kindling of fire : Exodus xxxv. 2, 3. 
 " Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh 
 day there shall be to you an holy day, a Sabbath 
 of rest to the Lord : whosoever doeth work therein, 
 shall be put to death. Ye shall kindle no fire 
 throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath day." 
 This shows again that, the proportion of time is the 
 chief matter — six days to worldly pursuits and one 
 to holy, religious duties — "to the Lord." 
 
 In the order of the historic statement, the next 
 is Leviticus xvi. 31. But as this and the Sabbaths 
 mentioned in chapter xxiii., except verse 3, are all 
 special and extra rests, and not the regular weekly 
 Sabbaths, we postpone their discussion to a separate 
 chapter : let us pursue the citation of acts of legis- 
 lation under the fourth article of the Constitution 
 proper. The next or third act is Leviticus xxiii. 3, 
 " Six days shall work be done, but the seventh is 
 the Sabbath of rest, an holy convocation ; ye shall 
 do no work therein : it is the Sabbath of the Lord 
 in all your dwellings." Here is the same propor- 
 tion set forth, the same cessation of worldly labour, 
 the same consecration of time to God's worship — 
 the only conceivable sense in which holiness can be 
 spoken of time. The penalty is not here named, 
 but it prescribes public worship — " an holy convoca- 
 
A SACRED REST. 91 
 
 tion" — a calling together of the people for holy, 
 sacred worship. 
 
 The fourth notice of legislation is in Leviticus 
 xxiv. 8. It regards not the Sabbath^ properly 
 speaking, but simply marks it as the time of chang- 
 ing the shew-bread. '' Every Sabbath he shall 
 set it in order before the Lord continually" — no 
 change. 
 
 The next notice of Sabbaths regards not the 
 weekly rest day, but the Sabbatic year, Leviticus 
 XXV. 1-8, and the Jubilee, which will be treated 
 under the head of extra Sabbaths. 
 
 The fifth notice by way of legislation is found in 
 Numbers xxviii. 9, 10, where there is direction given 
 about the regular sacrifices for the daj^ "And on 
 the Sabbath day, two lambs of the first year with- 
 out spot, and two tenth-deals of flour for a meat- 
 offering, mingled with oil, and the drink-offering 
 thereof. This is the burnt-offering of every Sab- 
 bath, besides the continual burnt-offering, and his 
 drink-offering." 
 
 In Deuteronomy, which is a kind of resum^ of 
 the history from the Exodus unto " the plain over 
 against Zuph — on this side Jordan," chapter i. 1, 
 we have a statement of the ten ivords, with some 
 enlargements and explanations, adapted peculiarly 
 to Israel. I will not repeat the whole, but only 
 these amendments : and shall put in italics the 
 words additional and explanatory, that the reader 
 may see at a glance how utterly groundless is the 
 
92 THE lord's day 
 
 innuendo of anti-Sabbath men, that there is incon- 
 sistency between the repetition here and the utter- 
 ances from Sinai. The only variances, except some 
 hlight ones in translating, such as, " Neither shalt 
 thou desire;'' instead of, "Thou shalt not covet,'' 
 are in the fourth, fifth, and tenth. Moses says, v. 
 12, '^ Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it as the 
 Lord thy God hath commanded thee ; six days thou 
 shalt 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, nor thy man-servant, no7^ thy maid-servant, 
 nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor a7it/ of thy cattle, 
 nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that thy 
 man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well 
 as thou. And remember that thon toast a servant in 
 the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God 
 brought thee out thence, through a mighty hand, and 
 by a stretched out arm : therefore the Lord thy God 
 commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day." 
 
 " Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord 
 thy God hath commanded thee : that thy days may 
 \>Q prolonged, and that it may go ivell with thee in 
 the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
 Verse 21. " Neither shalt thou desire thy neigh- 
 bour's wdfe, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's 
 house, his field, nor his man-servant, nor his maid- 
 servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that 
 is thy neighbour's." 
 
 The reader sees at once that here is, as it were, 
 
A SACRED REST. 93 
 
 a paraphrase — a little expansion and addition, and 
 an omission of the reason of the Fourth — but 
 no inconsistency between Moses and his Divine 
 Master. Legislation under a Constitution may 
 cite its language; but, if it give nothing but 
 its language, it is not legislation at all, only repe- 
 tition. 
 
 We have now before us all the legislation which has 
 occurred under the Fourth Article of the Hebrew 
 Constitution. Those defining penalties are severe, as 
 all cotemporary legislation was : but not more so, nor 
 as much so, as most of the nations. Penal laws are an 
 everlasting variation, and never long in any country 
 an absolutely fixed quantity. These and the other 
 special modifications of laws peculiar to that people 
 are of course not obligatory upon us now, any more 
 than they wxre upon cotemporaneous nations. But 
 these, we have shown, are clearly distinguished from 
 the Organic Law, the elementary principles of 
 which run through a vast number of their local 
 laws, unsuitable now even to the Hebrew people in 
 detail ; whilst their elements are common to all na- 
 tions. In fact, our common law is largely borrowed 
 from Moses ; and so far as its moral elements are 
 concerned, is all comprehended in the Decalogue. 
 Thus the Fou7'th commandment stands on the rock 
 of eternal truth. Like all the others, it was made 
 for man, and was, therefore, by infinite wisdom, 
 adapted to promote his welfare in time, as we shall 
 see, and the sure grounds of his hopes for eternity. 
 
94 THE lord's day 
 
 For, obliterate the Sabbath, and you shut up the 
 doors of knowledge and throw the pall of spiritual 
 darkness around the race ; shut out the light of the 
 glorious gospel of the blessed God, and you leave 
 the world a prey to infidelity and sin. 
 
A SACKED REST. 95 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 OBJECTION — THE SABBATH WAS A SIGN TO ISRAEL, 
 THEREFORE NOT A PERMANENT MORAL LAW. 
 
 Things -well known are used as signs — Sun, moon, and stars — 
 Rainbow — Circumcision — Stars and Stripes. 
 
 This objection is based on Exod. xxxi. 13-17, 
 as already stated ; — " For it is a sign between me 
 and you throughout your generations. 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 he rested and was refreshed." 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to repeat here that the 
 reason of the command "for in six days," etc., is 
 a reason common to mankind, and is given in God's 
 history of the creation, so often sneered at by op- 
 ponents of the Sabbath. The reason has no espe- 
 cial reference to the Hebrew people : it is purely 
 moral, and therefore everlasting — "for ever." 
 
 The point taken as an objection, is that it is a 
 sign between Cfod and Israel; therefore it could 
 not have existed as a moral law from the beginning; 
 (although this is expressly affirmed as the reason of 
 it.) Because, say these objectors, God created the 
 
96 THE lord's day 
 
 heaven and the earth in six days and rested on the 
 seventh, therefore he blessed the seventh and sanc- 
 tified it to Israel alone, and that twenty-five centu- 
 ries after creation ! It could not be a sign to man, 
 for whom the Sabbath was made, but is a sigti to 
 Israel, and proves that the reason given in the text 
 is no reason at all ! Obviously, the assumption 
 here is that nothing could be a sign between parties 
 covenanting, which had previously existed. How 
 could the Divine example of six days' work and 
 one of rest and refreshment be a sign or token of 
 a covenant twenty-five hundred years after the ex- 
 ample was set ? Impossible ! say these objectors ; 
 if it is a sign, and betokens a covenant, it must 
 spring up simultaneously with the covenant itself, 
 and this proves the Sabbath to be merely a Jewish 
 institution, now for the first time established ! 
 
 1. Remark, first. The Hebrew word, here trans- 
 lated sign occurs seventy-seven times in the Bible. 
 The first, in Gen. i. 14, signifies the " lights in the 
 firmament of the heaven," — sun, moon and stars — 
 ^' let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days 
 and for years." The second. Gen. iv. 15, "And 
 the Lord set a mark upon Cain." The third. Gen. 
 ix. 12, 17, " I do set my bow in the cloud, and it 
 shall be for a toke7i of a covenant between me and the 
 earth. This is the tokeji of the covenant." 
 
 2. Gen. xvii. "And ye shall circumcise the flesh 
 of your foreskin, and it shall be a token of the 
 covenant betwixt me and you." Exod. iii. 12, and 
 
A SACRED REST. 97 
 
 iv. 8, it is applied to the miracles by which Moses 
 is to prove his mission to lead Israel out of Egypt 
 — "And this shall be a tolcen unto thee" — "If 
 they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the 
 voice of the first sign, that they will believe the 
 voice of the latter sign.'' It is applied to the 
 miracles Moses wrought and is often translated 
 miracles. He is directed, verse 17, "And thou 
 shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou 
 shalt do signs.'' And Num. xvii. 8, 10, this same 
 "rod was budded, and brought forth buds, and 
 bloomed blossoms and yielded almonds" — "Bring 
 Aaron's rod again before the testimony to be kept 
 for a token against the rebels." Exod^xii. 13, 
 "And the blood shall be to you for a token'' — 
 Num. xiv. 22 — "Which have seen the tnirades 
 which I have done." 
 
 Thus various are the uses of this word. A few 
 words will suffice to sweep away the foundation of 
 this argument against the antiquity and moral char- 
 acter of the Sabbatic law. The covenant with Noah 
 had for its sign the bow in the cloud ; therefore, 
 says this argument, there never was any rainbow 
 before the flood ! But if the laws of nature are 
 uniform, this inference is false and absurd. When- 
 ever the sun and the cloud faced each other, there 
 must have been a bow or a miracle to prevent it ; 
 for the laws of refraction and reflection of light 
 exist in nature, and must always give a bow, when- 
 ever pencils of sunbeams fall upon the cloud. Now, 
 
 . 9 
 
98 THE lord's day 
 
 God appointed this uniformity in nature to a new 
 and beautiful use ; — made it henceforth a sign, an 
 instrument of calling up to the recollection of Noah 
 and mankind, the covenant guaranteeing summer and 
 ■winter, seed time and harvest, as long as the earth 
 endures, and protection against any future deluge. 
 As therefore God's covenant with Noah and mankind 
 made new and significant use of a phenomenon ex- 
 isting in nature from the beginning of the world ; 
 so precisely, God's covenant with Moses and Israel 
 made a new and significant use of an institution 
 established in the beginning as a sign of everlasting 
 rest in heaven. 
 
 Agaiiji God made a covenant with Abraham for 
 himself and for a blessing to all mankind — for he is 
 constituted the heir of the world — and this he con- 
 firmed — see Gen. xv. 9-15 — by sacrifices and the 
 bloody rite of circumcision, the former of which 
 existed from the days of Eden. In "like manner, 
 the blood of sacrifice was used as a token — Exod. 
 xii. 13 — on the houses of the Israelites on the night 
 of Egypt's sorrows. But the philosophy we oppose 
 insists that nothing can be used for a sign or token, 
 which is not itself a new thing. 
 
 Again, our Saviour says, ^' Moses therefore gave 
 unto you circumcision, (not because it is of Moses, 
 but of the fathers)" John vii. 22. But circumcision 
 is the token of the covenant, as we have just seen, yet 
 Moses repeated this. (Lev. xi. 3.) And Paul (Rom. 
 iv. 11) tells us circumcision is the sign and seal of 
 
A SACRED REST. 99 
 
 the righteousness of faith — given by Moses four 
 hundred years after it was given to Abraham. 
 Therefore we conckide, that an institution, a matter, 
 a thing may be appointed as a sign, which had ex- 
 isted long before. 
 
 Moreover, is not the eagle banner of the great 
 Republic a sign ? Are not the stars and stripes a 
 sign ? And did no eagle's wing cut the lofty ether 
 before '76 ? Did no stars twinkle in the distant 
 deep of the blue expanse, or stripes adorn the grass 
 of the field, or the bow in the cloud before Ameri- 
 can patriot ladies embroidered the eagle banner, or 
 stuck the stars on the blue, and stitched the stripes 
 into a flag ? The fact then, that in this municipal 
 regulation, the Sabbatic institution is used as a sign 
 of the covenant between God and Israel at Sinai, is 
 no evidence at all of the non-existence of the con- 
 stitutional law from the beginning, but the contrary 
 rather. If two men, or two nations enter into a 
 solemn covenant, do they append as the sign and 
 seal thereof a mark, token, impression hitherto 
 utterly unknown ; or do they affix something previ- 
 ously well established and known ? " The salutation 
 of Paul with mine own hand, which is the tohen in 
 every epistle: so I write." Had Paul no autograph 
 before he wrote to the Thessalonians ? of what use 
 could his sign manual be, if it had never existed be- 
 fore ? The wedding ring, is it not a token of un- 
 dying affection? But is this proof that the ring 
 
100 THE lord's day 
 
 never existed before it was set up as a token of 
 love ? The fourth of July is a token ; had there 
 been no fourth prior to 1776 ? The Sabbath was a 
 token to Israel ; and is now a token to us, of 
 heavenly rest. 
 
A SACRED REST. 101 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OBJECTIONS. 
 
 If you hold to the Sabbath, you must hold, 1. To its death penalty. 
 — 2. To the seventh day. — Seventh day, never used as a name for 
 the day of sacred rest. — Sabbath day is never used, but as the 
 name of time devoted to sacred rest. 
 
 . It has been urged time after time, by way of 
 objection, " If you hold to the Sabbath, you must 
 take it with the penalty." We reply, it has no 
 penalty as an organic law. As abundantly shown, 
 the ten words, uttered from Sinai and written in 
 stone, have no penalty. All the penalties are special 
 enactments of municipal law. We hurl back the 
 assertion : if you take the fifth precept, you must 
 take the Jewish penalty and put to death the son 
 who curseth father or mother. So of the woman 
 who violates the law of the seventh commandment. 
 " He that is without sin among you, let him first 
 cast a stone at her." So of the firsts the second, 
 the third, the eightJi, the ninth — all capital penalties 
 according to statute Mosaic; but without penalty 
 according to organic law. 
 
 2dly. We reply, if you take the colonial law of 
 Pennsylvania on the subject of theft, you must take it 
 
102 THE lord's day 
 
 ■with the penalty and punish larceny with death. The 
 old laws prohibitory of theft, robbery, arson, burglary, 
 blasphemy, perjury, forgery, and a hundred other 
 wrong things, have been received and remain as laws, 
 whilst in most, if not all instances, the penal sanctions 
 have been modified. Manifestly, the whole plausi- 
 bility and seeming force of this objection lies in the 
 confounding of two things, in themselves entirely 
 distinct — the law and moral rule immutable ; and 
 the penalty, which is ever variant. 
 
 Another 'popular objection involves the question 
 of the day. If you hold to the Sabbath you must 
 keep the seventh day. The error has already been 
 noted, which mistakes Sabbath for seventh. Please 
 Mr. Sabbath means rest ; and "when the Lord spake 
 from Sinai, and wrote on stone, he did not say as 
 you suppose, he blessed the seventh day and hal- 
 lowed it, but the Sabbath day, and hallowed it. Now, 
 in resrard to time I have several remarks to make. 
 
 1. The phrase " seventh day " is never used in 
 the Bible, as the name of the day of hallowed rest. 
 This is a universal negative proposition, and can be 
 proved only by examining all the places where this 
 phrase occurs. It must be noted, that seventh is an 
 ordinal number ; that is, it implies the arranging of 
 things in order, successively; first, second, third, 
 fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, etc. It of course im- 
 plies six things as going before it in order. It is 
 therefore necessarily descriptive; it designates or 
 points out the thing to which it is applied, relatively 
 
A SACRED REST. 103 
 
 to six or more other things, which follow each other 
 in order of time or place or both. In fact, this is 
 its precise use and only intent — to describe, desig- 
 nate, point out a thing as distinguished from all pre- 
 ceding. The streets of this city are numbered from 
 the Delaware, first, second, third, etc.; and these 
 ordinals have no other intent and use, but simply to. 
 describe the position and thus enable us to find the 
 place we desire. Then we count the houses west- 
 ward from the streets, first, second, seventh, for the 
 same precise purpose. Now here, as in every possi- 
 ble use of ordinal numbers, there must be a starting- 
 point — a point of departure, like the money unit 
 in coinage, to which there is constant reference. 
 We are now in the 1866th year from the birth of 
 our Saviour, which is our chronological unit : and 
 in the sixteenth day from a point of time immedi- 
 ately succeeding the 31st day of January. Now 
 my assertion is, that this essential ^.nd inherent 
 meaning of the word seventh, is found in all the 
 forty-four times, wherein it occurs in the phrase 
 seventh-day : and in every instance its purpose of 
 defining and designating, depends on its unit of 
 departure : the seventh day, from what ? Unless 
 this question is answered, it is no description at all. 
 You tell me Mr. Smith lives at number seventh ; 
 can I find his house, unless I know from what point 
 the count begins? It reminds me of the wisdom 
 of numbering in New York, where adjoining streets, 
 for example Fulton and Ann, running parallel, 
 
104 THE lord's day 
 
 count their numbers, one from East River, the other 
 from Broadway. 
 
 The reader will assuredly excuse me from the 
 labour of inspecting the whole forty-four cases in 
 detail. I shall examine some, and give him refer- 
 ence to all the rest, that he may examine for him- 
 self. In Gen. ii., 2d and 3d verses, you have sev- 
 enth day three times. Here the point of departure 
 is distinctly marked — ''the beginning," that is, of 
 creation work. The creating acts of each day are 
 enumerated, first, second, sixth, and at its close, 
 creation work ceased, and on the seventh there was 
 no creating energy put forth : rest, cessation from 
 this form of action, characterized this day. God 
 from Sinai giving the reason for the command, — 
 Remember the Sabbath day, refers to this order. " Six 
 days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, but 
 the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy 
 God, for he rested on the seventh day : wherefore 
 the Lord blessed, not the seventli, but the Sabbath 
 day and hallowed it." Seventh day^ in these five 
 cases, is merely descriptive — not nominal — not giv- 
 ing the proper name. 
 
 In Exod. xii. 15, 16, describing the feast of un- 
 leavened bread, he directs that, on the first day, 
 leaven shall be put away until the seventh day. 
 These two instances have no necessary connection 
 with the day of sacred rest. Chapter xiii. 6 is a repe- 
 tition of the case. Chapter xvi. 26 describes the 
 gathering of the manna: "Six days shall ye gather 
 
A SACRED REST. 105 
 
 it; but on the seventh day is the Sabbath." And 
 verses 27 and 28 refer to the same. Chapter 
 xxiv. 16 : " And the cloud covered the Mount 
 six days : and the seventh day he called unto 
 Moses," etc. ; no reference to the Sabbath. Chap- 
 ter xxxi. IT is a repetition of the reason as at 
 the creation. Chapter xxxiv. 21 is the same ; and 
 so is XXXV. 2. 
 
 Lev. xxiii. 3 is a repetition of the reason. Verse 
 8 is in describing the feast of unleavened bread, 
 and is parallel with Exod. xii. 15, 16. Lev. xiii. 
 5 : The priest shall shut up the leper seven days, 
 and " shall look on him the seventh day ;" and this 
 is repeated in verses 6, 27, 32, 34, 51 ; no one will 
 claim these as the names of the Sabbatic rest. 
 Chapter xiv. 9 ; " On the seventh day of his exclu- 
 sion from his house because of leprosy, he shall 
 shave his head," etc. ; and in verse 39 the similar 
 case. Num. vi. 9 is a case of shaving the head, 
 etc. Num. xix. 12, it occurs twice in a case of 
 purification. Chapter xxviii. 25 : This is the case 
 of extra feasts of unleavened bread. Chapter xxxi. 
 19, 24 : This is a case of purification — " Purify 
 both yourselves and your captives on the third day 
 and on the seventh day." Deut.- v. 14 : This is the 
 phraseology of the Fourth precept ; and xvi. 8 is 
 the feast of unleavened bread. Josh. vi. 4, 15 : 
 "On the seventh day they compassed the city seven 
 times." Did the Lord order this on the Sabbath ? 
 Judg. xiv. 15, 17 : " Within the seven days of the 
 
106 THE lord's day 
 
 wedding feast, a riddle was propounded, and this is 
 the seventh day referred to. 2 Sam. xii. 18 : "And 
 it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child 
 died" — i. e., from the time "the Lord struck the 
 child." 1 Kings xx. 29: "And they pitched one 
 over against the other for seven days. And so it 
 was, that on the seventh day the battle was joined;" 
 that is, the seventh day from the time the two ar- 
 mies faced each other. The Jews would not fight 
 on the Sabbath. Esther i. 10 : On the seventh day 
 [of the feast] when the heart of the king was merry 
 with wine," etc. Was this a Sabbath? Ezek. xxx. 
 20: "Seventh day of the month;" xlv. 20: "And 
 so shalt thou do the seventh day of the month." 
 Heb. iv. 4: "And God did rest the seventh day 
 from all his works." 
 
 The phrase, Sabbath day, occurs fourteen times 
 in the Old ; and twenty-two times in the New Tes- 
 tament : and there can be no question raised, as to 
 whether it is applied as the distinctive name of the 
 day of holy rest and religious worship. This is 
 perfectly undeniable; and I need not trouble the 
 reader with the detail. If he is very particular in 
 having his foundations doubly sure, let him take 
 Cruden and examine for himself. The word Sabbath 
 as given in Cruden is read forty-one times in the 
 Old, and fourteen times in the New Testament. In 
 the plural — Sabbaths, it occurs in the Old Testa- 
 ment twenty-nine times and none at all in the New. 
 
A SACRED REST. lOT 
 
 Of these eighty-four, as of the thirtj-six occurrences 
 of the phrase Sabbath day, there is no instance of 
 its application to anything but to sacred rest — 
 cessation from servile labour and consecration of 
 time to religious worship. 
 
108 THE lord's day 
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF TIME. 
 
 Evasion by it attempted — Remarks, 1. The same absolute portion 
 impossible— 2. Day begins? extra Sabbaths at even — 3. The 
 seventh, or the first day ?— A voyage round the globe changes 
 the day — 4. The change of day to the first — Sunday, a name ob- 
 jectionable — William Penn on Lord's day. 
 
 We hope the candid and attentive reader is con- 
 vinced, by what we have said on the point of time, 
 that the spirit of the law regards the proportion^ 
 rather than the portion absolute. One seventh part 
 of our time, we are bound to withdraw from secular 
 labours, physical and intellectual, and to appropriate 
 and expend it in moral and religious culture, in the 
 exercises of God's worship, private, but especially 
 public, as being the chief means of improving our 
 social nature. 
 
 It is one of the most ordinary arts of sophistry, 
 when it cannot meet an argument directly and in 
 front, to seek a side issue and lead attention away 
 from the real point in debate. Apply to an avari- 
 cious man for a contribution for foreign missions, he 
 directly becomes much concerned for the ignorant 
 and neglected poor — the heathen at home. Ask 
 
A SACKED REST. 109 
 
 him to contribute to the Bible society, ' you better 
 make clothing for the naked.' Press him to spend 
 holy days in holy duties. Oh but you can't tell me 
 what time is holy. You say the seventh part ; he 
 responds, but what part? One says the seventh 
 day ; another the first ; and so he discards both and 
 determines to keep all days holy, pursues his gains 
 and refuses that rest which God requires and adapts 
 to man's benefit. 
 
 On this question of time we remark, 
 1. The keeping holy of the same portion of ab- 
 solute duration of time, by persons living in difierent 
 latitudes and longitudes all round the globe, is a 
 physical impossibility. There is no practicable 
 m.ethod of measuring and thereby knowing it. 
 When it is high noon with us, it is midnight with 
 our antipodes; sunrise ninety degrees west, and 
 sunset ninety degrees east of us. The same, ident- 
 ical time is therefore impossible to be kept holy; 
 and the idea of God commanding a physical impos- 
 sibility as a moral duty, cannot be entertained by 
 any rational mind ; and therefore the pretence of 
 some affirming it, savours of irreverence, bordering 
 on atheism. The Bible teaches no such doctrine. 
 Its phraseology everywhere implies simply the ap- 
 propriation of six days to secular pursuits ; and 
 another day, to be measured and ascertained pre- 
 cisely as each of the six is ascertained, to holy and 
 sacred services. Practical difficulty here there is 
 none. If there is intelligence enough to count six 
 
 10 
 
110 THE lord's day. 
 
 units, and to add a seventh, nothing else lies in the 
 way. 
 
 2. The question about the point at which the day- 
 begins, has no peculiar difficulty as to the Sabbath, 
 more than any other of the seven. An ordinary 
 day, counted and reckoned as other days, is to be 
 observed as holy unto the Lord. We have before 
 hinted the probable error arising from the extra 
 Sabbath of atonement on the tenth day of the 
 seventh month : Leviticus xxiii. 27-32. This and 
 the feast of the Passover and the feast of un- 
 leavened bread, Exodus xii. 6, 18, are special Sab- 
 baths — annual feasts peculiar to the Hebrew nation, 
 resulting from the Decalogue as their root, but not 
 of it, as permanent organic law. The Passover- 
 lamb was slain in the evening — or, as in the margin 
 correctly translated — "between the evenings ;" that 
 is, about three o'clock afternoon, when the sun was 
 half-way declined ; and about this time the evening 
 sacrifice was offered : by both of which was pre- 
 figured, Christ's being crucified for us in the last 
 part of the age of the world, and his dying at that 
 time of the day." However this may be, certain 
 it is, the typical Passover-lamb was slain in the 
 evening; and about midnight the first-born of 
 Egypt were stricken down and there was a great 
 cry. "And Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron by 
 night — and they were thrust out of Egypt." It is 
 also certain that the feast of unleavened bread be- 
 gan in the evening of the fourteenth day of the 
 
A SACRED. REST. Ill 
 
 first month, and continued until the one and twen- 
 tieth day of the month at even.'" The reasons lie 
 open and obvious. And this, doubtless, led to the 
 designation of the same time for the reckoning of 
 the extra Sabbath of the atonement. Leviticus 
 xxiii. 32, " It shall be unto you a Sabbath of rest, 
 and ye shall afflict your souls in the ninth day of 
 the month at even : from even unto even shall ye 
 celebrate your Sabbath." As these are extra Sab- 
 baths — Jewish institutions and contra-distinguished, 
 for obvious reasons, as your Sabbaths, with my Sab- 
 baths — the Sabbaths of the Lord; there is no just 
 ground here for the inference, -that the ordinary 
 weekly rest began in the evening. On the con- 
 trary, as this modification, ''from evening unto 
 evening shall ye SahhatJi your Sabbath/' — shall ye 
 rest your rest — "shall ye celebrate your Sabbath," 
 is appended to these extra Jewish days of rest, and 
 to no others, the inference rather is, that these an- 
 nual days of rest are exceptional as to the time of 
 beginning them. What is a day ? If this be set- 
 tled in regard to the second, the fifth, the other 
 days of the seven, then it is decided as to the 
 seventh also. If an ordinary day properly begins 
 at 12 M., then must the day of rest begin at high 
 noon ; how impracticable this would *be all can see 
 at once. If a day begins at six P. M. or at sun- 
 down, how impracticable and how often attended 
 with retrenchment upon holy time ? The farmer 
 goes to the mill or blacksmith-shop on Saturday after- 
 
112 THE lord's day 
 
 noon, expecting to return before sundown and to 
 do up his business before the Sabbath hour begins ; 
 he has no watch, it is cloudy, or the water is low 
 and the mill grinds slowly ; he is delayed and thus 
 is betrayed into intrenchment upon sacred time. 
 Such beginning of the holy day is impracticable. 
 For an annual festival, to continue several days, a 
 more formal preparation, as is required for histori- 
 cal reminiscence, obviates these difficulties, which 
 lead to continually recurring infractions of the 
 Sabbatic law. But if the day begins, at an hour 
 when all working-men, and beasts, too, are asleep, 
 there is no room for such interruptions, and no 
 difficulty in marking minutes : the conscientious 
 man is ever anxious, lest, under disappointment that 
 delays him, or the cloud that hides the sun as it 
 nears the western horizon, he may transgress the 
 law. 
 
 Such rational considerations seem to call for the 
 beginning of the day, at the central point between 
 sun-set and sun-rise. And this deduction of rea- 
 son from the book of nature, and the book of ex- 
 perience, corresponds with the book of revelation. 
 
 Webster says of our leading connective "And," 
 "It signifies that a word or part of a sentence is to be 
 added to what precedes." Darkness preceded light: 
 " Darkness was upon the face of the deep :" this is 
 followed by the creation of light ; and so, the eve- 
 ning was and the morning addedj made one day. 
 No certain inference can be however deduced, as 
 
A SACRED REST. • 113 
 
 to the dividing point of time between the days. 
 There is something more distinct at the rising of the 
 Sun of Righteousness. Matt, xxviii. 1, " In the 
 end of the Sabbath as it began to dawn towards the 
 first day of the week, came Mary," etc. The word 
 rendered ''' end," occurs but twice more in the New 
 Testament. Mark xi. 19, "And when eveyi was 
 come, he went out of the city ;" xiii. 35, "For ye 
 know not when the Master of the house cometh, at 
 even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in 
 the morning." At a late period of the Sabbath — 
 or of the week as it was dawning toward the first 
 of the Sabbaths. Whether the plurals -here mean, 
 the two Sabbaths — the Hebrew and the Christian, 
 as confining, or only as translated, the tueek, it is 
 not necessary for our present purpose to determine ; 
 we are concerned with the expression, began to dawn. 
 As the rays of the sun began to approach the 
 eastern horizon, the Marys, having made all neces- 
 sary preparations, on their preparation or day be- 
 fore their Sabbath, left their homes at its close, and 
 by the time they reached the sepulchre, it was early 
 dawn. The expression intimates the turning point, 
 when the rays were thrown chiefly from the east 
 and met them at the tomb. This was '' very early 
 in the morning" of the first day. Luke xxiv. 1. 
 The crucifixion occurred on what we call Friday, at 
 nine o'clock A. M. Mark xv. 25 : at twelve dark- 
 ness came on, until three P. M., verse 33. Shortly 
 after he cried with a loud voice and gave up the 
 
 10* 
 
114 THE lord's day 
 
 ghost. He was therefore six hours and more on 
 the cross before his death ; of which three were 
 shrouded with darkness over the whole land : there 
 remained nine hours of the day before the Sabbath, 
 as we contend ; that is before the day began to dawn 
 toward the Sabbath: these nine hours, and the 
 whole of the Sabbath, and the six hours from the 
 dawning toward the first day, his body remained in 
 the tomb. But if the day begins at sundown ; as 
 it was the vernal equinox, there would be less than 
 three hours between the death and the end of that 
 preparation day, which we would call Saturday. 
 During these three hours the Jews must go back to 
 the city and get an order for breaking the legs of 
 the three, return and proceed to execute the order ; 
 Joseph after this has to return and beg the body 
 from Pilate ; Pilate, doubting the fact of Christ's 
 death, had to send for the centurion and ask him 
 whether he had been any while dead, and when he 
 knew that he had been dead some little while, he 
 gave the body to Joseph, who returned and buried 
 it. Now for all these transactions there were less 
 than three hours. Whatever of the three remained, 
 if any was possible, was all we have to fulfil his own 
 declaration that "the Son of Man shall be three 
 days and three nights in the heart of the earth." 
 Matt. xii. 40. But if we account the dividing of 
 days to be at midnight, then we have part of the 
 day and night of our Friday, the whole of the day 
 and night of our Saturday, and part of the day and 
 
A SACRED REST. 115 
 
 night of our Sunday : and thus the conditions of 
 the prophecy are fulfilled. These considerations, 
 together with the silence of Scripture, satisfy us, 
 that to begin the holy weekly Sabbath at sundown 
 is a Jewish figment, occasioned by their magnifying 
 their own special feasts above the -LoRil's Sabbaths. 
 
 3. Our third question of time is, as to the sev- 
 enth or the first. Confessedly of trifling impor- 
 tance, yet it is controverted with no trifling zeal — 
 we may say violence. In this we have verification 
 of the uncomplimentary remark, that theological 
 disputes are often warm and excited, inversely as 
 their importance. As there is not matter in them 
 worthy of controversy, the little that is is lost sight 
 of, and in the contest victory supplants truth : and 
 whoever fights simply for victory, forfeits all just 
 claims to success. Truth, which alone is worth 
 contending for, repudiates such defenders. 
 
 We are told, if you take the Sabbath, you must 
 take the seventh day. We answer, this is a non 
 sequitur ; and for several reasons. (1.) The sev- 
 enth must mean, in this objection, the seventh from 
 the beginning of creation ; that is, the start-point ; 
 and we affirm the impossibility of ascertaining the 
 knowledge of it. No man can now affirm, that our 
 Saturday is the exact time in an unvarying seventh 
 day's division from the genesis of light. This ut- 
 ter impossibility excludes the idea from the field of 
 morality. (2.) If we fix the start-point of the 
 count on Tuesday, and call that first day, we shall 
 
116 THE lord's day. 
 
 call Sunday seventh day. And this could be in- 
 sured in individual cases by a little artifice. Sup- 
 pose you hold a sponge saturated with mesmeric 
 power to the nose of a seventh day advocate, or 
 lay him up in sleep^ by any opiate, for a whole day ; 
 when he awakes to consciousness, having lost a day 
 out of his count, his seventh will be Sunday. (3.) 
 A voyage round the world changes the day ; west- 
 ward losing one, and eastward gaining one. That 
 is, the westward voyager adds to the length of each 
 day he travels, the distance, measured by time, of 
 his day's journey ; whilst the eastward voyager, by 
 meeting the sun sooner each day, diminishes his 
 day's length by the distance he travels. This will 
 be made evident by the following statement from 
 the pen of a distinguished professor of astronomy : 
 "The difference in local time, caused by difference 
 of longitude, is a familiar fact. Any one who has 
 travelled from New York to St. Louis must have 
 noticed that his w^atch, though correct when he left 
 the former city, is more than an hour too fast by 
 the local time of the latter. The explanation, too, 
 is simple. Owing to the diurnal rotation of the earth 
 on its axis, the sun appears to make a circuit round 
 the earth from east to west every day; i. e., 360° in 
 24 hours. Hence its apparent motion each hour is 
 15°. And as St. Louis is more than 15° west of 
 New York, more than an hour must elapse after 
 the sun passes the meridian of the latter, before it 
 reaches that of the former. 
 
A SACRED REST. 117 
 
 Suppose, now, a Jew and a Christian, starting 
 from the city of Washington to travel in opposite 
 directions, — the Jew going west, and the Christian 
 east, each at the rate of 15° per week, — and sup- 
 pose they commence their reckoning at six o'clock 
 on Sunday morning, by Washington time. At the 
 expiration of one week, when it is again six o'clock 
 A. M. on Sunday at Washington, the Jew will be 
 in Missouri, and his local time five o'clock A. M; 
 while to the Christian, out at sea, the time will be 
 seven o'clock A. M. In like manner, after another 
 week, the time by the former will be four o'clock 
 A. M., and by the latter eight A. M., and so on, 
 the Jew's time growing earlier, and the , Christian's 
 later, by one hour each week, till, at the expiration 
 of twelve weeks, they meet in northwestern Chin^, 
 the Jew pronouncing the time to be six o'clock P. 
 M. on Saturday, and the Christian six P. M. on 
 Sunday, and each will have observed the Sabbath 
 on the same day." 
 
 What a cheap method of uniting a divided church ! 
 Two sects of Baptists, for example, exist. The 
 smaller section separate from the great body, on 
 the ground that the seventh day is the true Sabbath. 
 No religious principle is involved — no doctrine, but 
 only this question of time — not ihQ proportion, for 
 both agree in the obligation to keep one day in 
 seven holy unto the Lord ; but simply whether our 
 Saturday or our Sunday is the proper day to be 
 kept holy. Now let the Saturday man go to Cali- 
 
118 THE lord's day 
 
 fornia, and then to China, and then home by the 
 Cape of Good Hope, keeping his own seventh day 
 rest all the time, and the dispute is over — he wor- 
 ships with his brethren on Sunday. The Baptist 
 schism is healed — the church is one ! 
 
 4. The change of the name and day — not of the 
 thing, for the observance of the holy day is the 
 same with all Christians : but on what ground do 
 we vindicate the Sunday as the day of sacred rest? 
 We admit that any other day, Tuesday, Thursday, if 
 agreed upon over the whole country and the world, 
 would answer as well. We deny any holiness in 
 time : the thought is absurd. The holiness lies in the 
 heart of the worshippers. With the unbelieving 
 world, Sunday is the most polluted of all days. In 
 all popish governed countries, their Sabbath is the 
 devil's day. The interests of Satan's kingdom are 
 more abundantly advanced on that day than on any 
 one of the seven. But some day is indispensable. 
 This must be agreed upon, or public worship is im- 
 practicable. Instead, however, of leaving man to 
 settle this question by experiment and consultation, 
 conventional adjustment and agreement, God was 
 pleased to decide it for us. The first law he gave 
 to man was the Sabbatic law — the day following the 
 six days' labour is sacred to God by his own com- 
 mand. In imitation of the Creator's own example, 
 he has given us also the glorious and blessed privi- 
 lege of resting, and worshipping himself. And 
 Paul tells us, God the Son, in imitation of God the 
 
A SACRED REST. 119 
 
 Creator, when he had said, "It is finished," bowed 
 his head, and gave up the ghost, and entered into 
 his rest. " For he that is entered into his rest, he 
 also hath ceased from his own works, as God did 
 from his." Paul had just said, "There remaineth 
 therefore a Sabbatismos for the people of God." 
 Heb. iv. 10, 9. Christ's finishing his work,' for the 
 salvation of lost men, is followed bj his entering 
 into his rest and securing a Sabbatismos for his 
 people. Thus the creation-example is imitated ; 
 and this is a most satisfactory^ reason of the change. 
 Jesus rose from the dead and went to his heavenly 
 glory, and thus consecrated the first day to holy 
 services. His Church obeyed his command and 
 followed his example. Let us note the occasions. 
 
 (1.) The first has been mentioned above. The 
 pious women came to the sepulchre very early on 
 the first day of the week : they came to do honour 
 to a dead, but found a living Saviour. 
 
 (2.) " Then the same day at evening, being the 
 first day of the week, when the doors were shut 
 when the disciples were assembled, for fear of the 
 Jews, came Jesus, and stood in the midst, and saith 
 unto them. Peace be unto you." John xx. 19. The 
 law being changed the day must also be changed ; 
 and here is the express sanction of it. The disciples 
 were assembled : and for what ? No man can doubt 
 — for religious worship. And the Master enters by 
 miracle, giving a new proof of his divine mission 
 and power. 
 
120 THE lord's day 
 
 (3.) "And after eight days, again his disciples 
 were within, and Thomas with them. Then came 
 Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, 
 and said, Peace be unto you." This second time, 
 He meets them on the first day of the week, in order 
 to designate it as the Sabbatism of the new covenant 
 and to run out the parallel between the first and the 
 second creation or work of redemption. At the 
 close of this work, which is "creation more sub- 
 lime," there must be a rest physical, that is, a ces- 
 sation of that work ; just as there was at the first 
 creation : and then there must be, as at first, a rest 
 in the higher sense, viz., the delight and compla- 
 cency resulting from the contemplation of his fin- 
 ished work, all which he pronounced "very good;" 
 or as Moses, Exod. xxxi. 17, expresses it, " and was 
 refreshed." So Christ, having finished his new 
 creation-work, entered into his rest in the higher 
 sense; to contemplate and for ever rejoice in the 
 results of his work, from the manger at Bethlehem 
 to the tomb of Joseph. " There remaineth there- 
 fore a Sabbatismos to the people of God." And 
 then Paul adds the reason, in the parallel to which 
 we have just referred. "For he that is entered into 
 his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as 
 God did from his." Thus the apostle demonstrates, 
 from old Testament authorities, the change of the 
 Sabbatic rest for the New. And several notices of 
 its observance are recorded. Acts xx. 7, "And 
 upon the first day of the week, when the disciples 
 
A SACRED REST. 121 
 
 came together to break bread, Paul preached unto 
 them, ready to depart on the morrow." Here is 
 not a special call of the people, but it is mentioned 
 as an ordinary occurrence — a regular thing. A 
 more rigidly close rendering strengthens this idea — 
 it is the case absolute — " the disciples being assem- 
 bled together." A similar incidental remark occurs 
 in 1 Cor. xvi. 2, " Upon the first day of the week 
 let every one of you lay by him in store, as God 
 has prospered, that there be no gatherings when I 
 come." The order regards "the collection for the 
 saints," a duty which he had urged upon the Gala- 
 tian church. Chap. vi. 7-10. It is enjoined as a 
 regular service. The churches of Galatia were so 
 ordered — it was obligatory upon them. The church 
 at Troas, in Asia Minor, were in the habit of assem- 
 bling on the first da.y. And the churches at Corinth 
 — I say churches ; for though the epistle is addressed 
 "to the church of God w^iich is at Corinth," that 
 church included many congregations or particular 
 churches, Acts xviii. 10, " I have much people in 
 this city," and the churches of Galatia met con- 
 stantly on the first day of the week, and that by 
 apostolic command and example. But if we translate 
 the phrase as the same word is translated, in Luke 
 xvi. 19 — every day — or even, as in Mat. xxvi. 55, 
 Mark xiv. 49, Luke xix. 47, and xxii. 53, Acts ii. 
 47, and iii. 1, and xviii. 4, and xix. 9 — daily — it 
 indicates still more strongly their hahit of meeting 
 every first day for religious worship. 
 11 
 
122 THE lord's day 
 
 Let us sum up these evidences of tlie Sabbatismos 
 for the New Testament or covenant. Paul demon- 
 strates it in Heb. iv. — that so it must be accordinor 
 
 o 
 
 to the Old Testament Scriptures, and according to 
 the very nature of Christ's work of the new cre- 
 ation. Accordingly Jesus arose on the first day — 
 the day immediately after the finishing of his work. 
 He manifested himself to the Marys. He met the 
 disciples on the first day ; once and again : and he 
 met them for worship on no other day. Individuals 
 saw him possibly on other days, but of this there is 
 no certainty. " He was seen of above five hundred 
 brethren at once," 1 Cor. xv. 6, but at what time 
 we are not informed ; the probability is however all 
 on the side of the first day, when they were assem- 
 bled for worship. Then the sacramental service at 
 Troas, the order for collection on the first day by 
 churches, at Corinth, and in Galatia — churches 
 widely separated. To all this must be added the 
 invariable practice of the church for more than 
 fifteen centuries during which no dispute arose 
 against this practice. Jewish converts embraced 
 the law, and to a large extent, even when respecting 
 the seventh day, fell in with the general custom. 
 This suggests the additional remark that, this change 
 to the Lord's day, diminished not, but increased the 
 measure and proportion of time devoted to sacred 
 uses. Two Sabbaths came together ; and it is abun- 
 dantly evident, that Paul and his companions on his 
 missions, were in the habit of entering the Syna- 
 
A SACRED REST. 123 
 
 gogues on the Sabbaths, and reasoning out of the 
 Scriptures : and thus the required transition, by 
 tolerating both days for a time, became easy and 
 produced no confusion. 
 
 Nor may we omit the proof from Rev. i. 10 : "I 
 was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." This was 
 about A. D. 95. It is the last of the inspired writ- 
 ings, and this accounts for the fact that this name 
 — the Lord's day — is found here and nowhere else. 
 Surviving the other inspired penmen by a quarter of 
 a century, by which time the habits of all Christian 
 churches became settled in their public worship on 
 the first, and with the well-known reason for the 
 change from the Jewish seventh day Sabbath to the 
 first, John adopts this phrase, the Lord's day^ with- 
 out the least hint explanatory. I was in the Spirit 
 — under the supernatural influences of the Holy 
 Ghost — on the Lord's day. This is proof conclu- 
 sive that the phrase was perfectly understood at 
 that time. John had been banished by the edict 
 of the Emperor Domitian to "Patmos, for the 
 word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus 
 Christ." Cut off from Christian associations, he 
 was honoured with the Divine presence ; and in 
 entering up the record of his visions and messages, 
 he honours his Lord by using an expression which 
 could give no information of date, but as it was the 
 well-known epithet for the day of sacred rest. 
 Sixty-one years before this, the Lord had twice met 
 John, along with the other disciples, on the first day 
 
124 THE lord's day 
 
 of the week, in that upper room, the doors being 
 shut for fear of the Jews ; and now he meets him 
 in banishment to a desert island, and John records 
 the day — his Lord's day. In their contest with 
 popery, the Reformers rejected the numerous festal 
 days of the Romish calendar, and Luther especially 
 was fierce against them. Hence some ill-informed 
 people assume that he rejected the Sabbath too : 
 this is not true. He did deny indeed the Jewish 
 Sabbaths as simply Jewish — denying that Hebrew 
 legislation binds us any farther than the Decalogue 
 extends. He rejected all feast days, " nisi dies Do- 
 minicus — except the Lord's day.'' 
 
 Sunday is a name objectionable, becaiTse it im- 
 plies that we worship the Sun, and have devoted 
 this day to his service. The same objection applies 
 to our names for the other days. They are all bor- 
 rowed from our pagan ancestors, being the names 
 of their imaginary gods, prefixed to the word day : 
 Monday, appropriated to the worship of the moon ; 
 Tuesday, to Tuis, or the war god of our ancestors ; 
 Wednesday, to Wodin ; Thursday, to Thor, the god 
 of thunder ; Friday, to the goddess Frigga, or Frea ; 
 Saturday, to Saturn. The objections made by the 
 Friends, or Quaker society, to these names, are not, 
 in our judgment, frivolous. David says of the hea- 
 then gods — "Their drink-offerings of blood will I 
 not off'er, nor take up their names into my lips." 
 Ps. xvi. 4. And Zech. xiii. 2 : " I will cut off" the 
 names of the idols out of the land." I know it 
 
A SACRED REST. 125 
 
 may be said, this only means they shall not dwell 
 on our lips as objects of worship. Still, it is to be 
 regretted that we have not better names for the 
 days respectively; and I cannot but respect the 
 founder of Pennsylvania for the introduction of 
 the more respectful epithets into the very first act 
 of legislation in his province. 
 
 I quote from an able report of a committee in 
 the Legislature, in A. D. 1860, on the petitions for 
 the abrogation of the Sabbath protecting laws : 
 
 "In the 'Great Law,' passed in the Assembly 
 at Chester, soon after his first landing, December 
 12, 1682, William Penn has recorded his estimation 
 of the Sabbath as one of the main safeguards of 
 civil and religious liberty. In the first article of 
 this code, the design of which is declared to be, — 
 ' That God may have his due, Cassar his due, and 
 the people their due, so that the best and firmest 
 foundation may be laid for the present and future 
 happiness of both the government and the people 
 of this province,' he thus ordains : — ' To the end 
 that looseness, irreligion, and atheism may not creep 
 in under the pretence of conscience in- this province, 
 be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, 
 that according to the good example of the primitive 
 Christians, and for the ease of the creation, every 
 first day of the week, called the Lord's Day, peo- 
 ple shall abstain from their common toil and labour, 
 that whether masters, parents, children, or servants, 
 they may the better dispose themselves to read the 
 11 » 
 
126 THE lord's day 
 
 Scriptures of truth at home, or to frequent such 
 meetings of religious worship abroad as may best 
 suit their respective persuasions.' " (Hazzard's An- 
 nals.) 
 
 He does not use the word Sabbath, nor the word 
 Sunday; but ^' first day of the iveek and the Lord's 
 Day," both Scriptural epithets. So let it stand. 
 
A SACRED REST. 127 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 BENEFITS OP THE SABBATH. 
 
 These may be considered in reference to man in- 
 dividually, and to man socially : and in both these 
 respects, as to its bearing upon his physical condi- 
 tion ; and upon his intellectual, his moral, and his 
 spiritual interests ; for time and for eternity. 
 
 I. How is the individual benefited pliysically by 
 the Sabbath ? By rest, in the primary sense — ces- 
 sation from motion — from activity — from labour. 
 The Creator has so formed us, that incessant activity 
 must destroy the powers of action and bring to an 
 end the organism of our body. Death and utter 
 dissolution is the inevitable consequence of labour 
 without rest : and thus, the denial of rest, eventu- 
 ates in entire incompetency for motion and labour. 
 God's law is, that man shall have rest ; as William 
 Penn expresses it, "for the ease of the creation." 
 Adapted to this is the arrangement of day and 
 night ; sleep is a necessity to man, and darkness, 
 though not necessary to sleep, yet is a great pro- 
 moter of it; whilst light, as a positive element in 
 nature, by its power to stimulate, tends to wakeful- 
 ness and action. But the Creator has seen proper 
 
128 THE lord's day 
 
 to make not one rest in the circuit of the sun, suffi- 
 cient. Day and night shall be as long as the earth 
 endures, but additional to this, total abstinence from 
 labour one-seventh part of the time, is made a privi- 
 lege. 
 
 2. The necessary consequence of cessation from 
 work is resuscitation of the exhausted powers. A 
 recuperative action of the vital functions follows, 
 and " Tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep " 
 has great assistance in her office of benevolence, 
 from effects of the seventh part of working time 
 being similarly appropriated. Into the argument 
 for a seventh day rest, deduced from multitudinous 
 experiments on animal nature in man and beast, we 
 cannot even enter. Thousands of experiments have 
 shown, that the man or the beast of burden, which 
 rests one day in seven, can do, and actually does, 
 more labour than the beast or tlie man that works 
 seven days in the week. God's will, revealed in his 
 moral law, is perfectly consistent with his will re- 
 vealed in his physical laws. They are counterparts 
 of the same infinite wisdom. 
 
 3. By necessary consequence, the health of our 
 animal frame is promoted by this law. Why it must 
 be so, is easily seen. Exhaustion is disease ; it re- 
 veals the weaker parts of our bodily mechanism and 
 tends to their destruction ; which tendency is 
 arrested by rest and resuscitation. But detail here 
 is also inconsistent with our limited plan. The 
 world all knows, that a Sabbath-keeping commu- 
 
A SACRED REST. 129 
 
 nity, other things being equal, is more healthy than 
 one that disregards the Sabbatic law. 
 
 4. And this, because this law leads to personal 
 cleanliness. The alliance is intimate and insolvable 
 between natural and moral filth : and the Sabbath, 
 bj calling to religious social exercises and enjoy- 
 ments, prompts and constrains to a change of the 
 soiled garments of labour, for the clean and neat 
 dress of social Christianity. This is obvious even 
 in communities where the holy day is greatly pros- 
 tituted to sports and plays. This purifying influ- 
 ence of a seventh day's rest, is proverbial in the 
 phrase, Sunday clothes. We might also have re- 
 marked under the preceding, that the greatly in- 
 creased calls for medicine and counsel, on Sunday, 
 in a labouring population, shows that labour looks 
 'to this day for health. The fact is not complimen- 
 tary to the Christian reverence for the day ; yet it 
 evinces its tendency. 
 
 Now, these four remarks, being generalized, show 
 the physical benefits to society, which is composed 
 of individuals : the aggregate benefits are the sum 
 of social benefits. When every person is eased, re- 
 freshed, and has health promoted, and cleanliness 
 secured, society is thus benefited. 
 
 II. The intellect of the individual observer of the 
 Sabbath is necessarily improved. Religious exer- 
 cises and devotion, whether private or public, are 
 impossible — indeed, inconceivable, without mental 
 activity. Religion is possible only with intelligent 
 
130 THE lord's day 
 
 beings, endowed with a moral sense : and this moral 
 sense even, though an essential power of our nature, 
 yet is dependent for its possibility of exercise, upon 
 intellect. I mean that the moral sense, that is, 
 conscience includes and presupposes, mental percep- 
 tions — intellectual exercises. I cannot convict my- 
 self of wrong-doing and feel abased and humbled 
 for my sin, unless I have an intelligent idea of some 
 law that I have violated. All the religious duties- 
 of the individual therefore call into action his men- 
 tal powers upon lawful objects : and here, as every- 
 where, all legitimate activities increase the powers 
 of action. The mind improves by its own right 
 activities. What a school then we have here? One- 
 seventh part of our time, sacredly devoted to such 
 services as necessarily increase our powers of mind 
 and enlarge the sphere of our knowledge. 
 
 III. But an all important item of Sabbatic obser- 
 vance, is, its provision for instruction ; for the pre- 
 sentation of truth to the mind and its discussion, 
 analysis and application to the various conditions 
 and necessities of individuals and society. The 
 Sabbath is not a day of inaction — of stupid idleness, 
 but for the full action of our higher nature. It 
 provides subjects of study. It furnishes aids to 
 mental development — the whole system of sacred 
 ordinances ; including the Scriptures and all their 
 varied instructions; and the ministry of religion 
 and the sacramental services. ^'The priest's lips 
 should keep knowledge and they should learn the 
 
A SACRED REST. 131 
 
 law at his mouth." There never has been a system 
 for mental improvement comparable to this. Here 
 is the Book of universal instruction ; and here is an 
 order of men set apart to its study, their lives being 
 devoted to its exposition : men of good natural tal- 
 ents and of the best education. These men spend 
 six days in searching the Scriptures and studying 
 the condition and necessities of the community ; and 
 on the seventh they communicate to the people the 
 results of their labour. Under this system of teach- 
 ing the understanding cannot but be furnished with 
 knowledge of all kinds, for the Bible contains the 
 elements of all knowledge; and the reasoning 
 powers must necessarily be increased, for the 
 preacher must ''reason out of the Scriptures." Ac- 
 cordingly, the general intelligence of a nation is 
 very accurately measured by the degree of its 
 strictness in Sabbatic observance. The man of 
 seventy has been ten years at school, under direc- 
 tion of the best cultivated intellects of his country; 
 and if he arrive not at a respectable degree of in- 
 telligence, it must be owing to sad neglect on his 
 own part. 
 
 IV. But intellectual culture is an incident, rather 
 than an object. The end of the Sabbath, is our 
 moral and spiritual improvement ; and the glory of 
 God its ordainer. Man's religious element is 
 brought into action and directed to its proper end. 
 Between the soul and God the intercourse, common 
 through the week, is redoubled and that of the in- 
 
132 THE lord's day 
 
 dividual is carried on the Sabbath into the social 
 current and thus a feeling of unity is generated and 
 enlarged. The benevolent affections are cherished 
 under the deeper feelings of religious reverence. 
 The doctrines taught lead to unity of heart; for all 
 the members of that one body which Christ hath 
 redeemed with his own blood, are constantly led to 
 contemplate the oneness of their interest in the 
 great salvation. Thus, that charity which is the 
 bond of perfectness cements society together and 
 ensures that unity of co-operation, so important to 
 the harmonious movement of our social system. 
 
 V. But the bearings of all these influences upon 
 the interests of eternity are in themselves of infinite 
 value ; and in their reaction upon our social feelings 
 in time, their importance can scarcely be appreciated. 
 To be brought squarely up to face the responsibili- 
 ties of our condition once a week ; to inquire, 
 whence came I ? whither go I ? how can I prepare 
 for my duties here and my felicities in the future 
 world ? How far am I responsible for the welfare 
 of all these with whom I am associated and sur- 
 rounded daily? Shall I ever meet them again in 
 time ? How shall I meet them in eternity ? All 
 such thoughts have a happv influence upon us, in 
 checking wrong feelings and gendering and direct- 
 ing the action of right ones. 
 
A SACRED REST. 133 
 
 CHAPTER Xyi. 
 
 THE MORAL FORCE OF THE SABBATH, AND ITS BEAR- 
 INGS ON NATIONAL WEALTH. 
 
 Wherever the ten words are continually held 
 up before the minds and pressed upon the hearts of 
 a whole people ; and wherever, in immediate con- 
 nection with them, the glorious gospel of the blessed 
 God is constantly unfolded before their minds ; and 
 thus the way of meeting the high requirements of 
 the Decalogue, is made familiar to the popular con- 
 science ; it is not possible the public morals should 
 not improve and reach a high degree of excellence. 
 The pure elements of moral law ; and the purify- 
 ing doctrines of salvation — from the guilt and 
 pollution of sin, constitute the most perfect agencies 
 and instrumentalities, which the God of all mercies 
 has ever furnished to a ruined world, for its recov- 
 ery. Now, these are the invariable accompaniments 
 of the sacred rest day. Evangelical Protestantism 
 cannot exist, without a day devoted to moral and 
 religious instruction and the reverent worship of 
 the living God. The word of God must be read 
 and expounded, the praises of the Most High must 
 be made to ring in loud tones from millions of 
 
 12 
 
134 THE lord's day 
 
 tongues; the voice of prayer must ascend from 
 millions of sanctified hearts ; the pure doctrines of 
 the Holy Bible must be inculcated upon the myriads 
 of youthful minds, which with thrilling emotion and 
 voice, sing ^'let us be joyful" — ''we must not work, 
 we must not play, because it is the Sabbath day." 
 These instrumentalities, being the substance of 
 Sabbath duties, can no more exist without great 
 practical effects in promoting good morals, than the 
 rain of heaven and the genial warmth of the sun, 
 can spread over the well tilled fields, vrithout caus- 
 ing the grass and the grain to spring forth for the 
 benefit of man and of beast. A Sabbath-keeping 
 — a church-going people, spending the day as the 
 law itself requires, must necessarily be a moral 
 people. A Sabbath-profaning people: even where a 
 small part of the day is occupied in attendance upon 
 religious ceremonies, performed chiefly in a lan- 
 guage which they do not understand, but where the 
 day is chiefly devoted to sports, pleasures and pas- 
 times ; dissipation, fun and frolic, cannot possibly 
 be a moral and law-abiding people ; if order is duly 
 observed, it must be at the bayonet's point. Ac- 
 cordingly there is a striking contrast between coun- 
 tries where the different systems prevail. 
 
 We may take in here the hearings of the Sabbath 
 on national wealth. 
 
 "To the Sabbath," says Gilfillan, p. 249, ''did 
 England in no small degree owe a government so 
 puissant and beneficial as that of Cromwell, the 
 
A SACRED REST. 135 
 
 happy domestic influence of which is admitted by 
 Bishop Burnet, while its foreign aspect is eulogized 
 by a no less unbiassed judge, Sir Walter Scott, who 
 says, " Perhaps no government was ever more re- 
 spected abroad." To the Sabbath, as a principal 
 cause, was Britain indebted for such a reign as that 
 of William III., Prince of Orange, and for the su- 
 periority of our present Constitution to the govern- 
 ments of Russia, France, and Italy, where the peo- 
 ple are in chains, which the expansive spirit of a 
 nation imbued with the influence of Christian truth 
 and institutions, if we could suppose it thus fettered, 
 would calmly break in pieces. The policy of those 
 rulers, who amuse their subjects with frivolous ob- 
 jects on the Lord's day,, that they may not by seri- 
 ous thought be led to discover that they are men, 
 and deeply injured men, may be cunning and suc- 
 cessful for a time, but it is not wise, since its pur- 
 pose is as short-sighted as it is unjust. The con- 
 vulsions on the continent in 1848 furnished impres- 
 sive illustrations of this truth. It is a fact, that 
 these convulsions were more destructive in Roman 
 Catholic kingdoms, where there was nothing entitled 
 to the name of a Sabbath, than in Protestant com- 
 munities, where the institution, inasmuch as it 
 brought along with it the opportunities of a more 
 rational worship and of better instruction, had not 
 suff'ered so much deterioration. No Protestant prince 
 lost his throne. And it is especially worthy of 
 grateful remembrance, that Great Britain, where, 
 
136 THE lord's day 
 
 above almost all countries, the Lord's day receives 
 its meed, though far from its due meed of honour, 
 stood firm and unscathed in all its interests amidst 
 the shakings of the nations of Europe. ''I see," 
 says the Chevalier Bunsen, personating Hippolytus, 
 " that you have erected most wonderful factories 
 and cotton mills ; but you do not make the poor 
 people, men, women, and children, work them on 
 Sundays, as the Gauls [the French] do in their 
 country." On p. 250 he says : " In Scotland, eigh- 
 teen hundred soldiers suffice to keep the peace, 
 while Ireland required, for the eight years preceding 
 1852, troops numbering, at an average, more than 
 twenty-five thousand." What says M. Montalem- 
 bert, in the name of a commission reporting to the 
 French Parliament in 1850 on Sabbath observance? 
 After remarking that the Almighty conferred suc- 
 cess and security on human labour in proportion as 
 nations respect the Lord's day, he refers in proof 
 to England and the United States, and says: ''Wit- 
 ness that city, London, the capital and focus of the 
 commerce of the world, where Sunday is observed 
 with the most scrupulous care, and where two and 
 a half millions of people are kept in order by three 
 battalions of infantry, and some troops of guards, 
 whilst Paris requires the presence of fifty thousand 
 men." Such is the expense of irreligion and the 
 loss of the Sabbath. But how was it in the days 
 of atheism and blood ; when God's holy day was 
 abrogated, and a tenth day festival established by 
 
A SACRED REST. 137 
 
 the Constituent Assembly, in lieu of the Sabbath ; 
 and the worship of a harlot, in place of God's sa- 
 cred ordinances ? So must it be in any country 
 that abolishes the Divine law of the two tables. 
 Brute force must then rule, and the very conception 
 of liberty be lost. ^' He that makes haste to be 
 rich shall not be unpunished ;" and if, in our eager- 
 ness to make money, we abrogate the law of the 
 Sabbath, we shall find its sanctions terrible as Israel 
 found them. "As the partridge sitteth on eggs and 
 hatcheth them not ; so he that getteth riches, and 
 not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his 
 days, and at his end, shall be a fool." Jere. xvii. 11. 
 And verse 24 : " If ye diligently hearken unto me, 
 saith the Lord, to bring in no burden through the 
 gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but hallow 
 the Sabbath day, to do no work therein ; then shall 
 there enter into the gates of this city kings and 
 princes, sitting upon the throne of David, riding in 
 chariots and on horses, they and their princes, the 
 men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem : 
 and this city shall remain for ever." Verse 27 : 
 " But if ye will not hearken unto me, to hallow the 
 Sabbath day, and not bear a burden, even entering 
 in at the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day : 
 then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it 
 shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall 
 not be quenched." This solemn warning was un- 
 heeded, and the prophet was even grossly maltreated 
 for its delivery : nevertheless, the wrath of heaven 
 
 12 ^5 
 
138 THE lord's day 
 
 came speedily ; Israel was terribly scourged and 
 carried away into Babylon. Nelie. xiii. 15: ''In 
 those days saw I in Judali some treading wine- 
 presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, 
 and lading asses; as also wine, grapes, and figs, 
 and all manner of burdens, which they brought into 
 Jerusalem on the Sabbath day : and I testified 
 against them, in the day wherein they sold victuals." 
 Verse 16 : " There dwelt men of Tyre also therein, 
 which brought fish, and all manner of ware, and 
 sold on the Sabbath unto the children of Judah, 
 and in Jerusalem." 17 : " Then I contended with the 
 nobles of Judah, and said unto them. What evil 
 thing is this that ye do, and profane the Sabbath 
 day?" Verse 18: "Did not your fathers thus, and 
 did not our God bring all this evil upon us and upon 
 our city ? Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel 
 by profaning the Sabbath?" 
 
 Ezek. also, xxi. 8, 26, mentions among the great 
 sins of the people, that they " have hid their eyes 
 from my Sabbaths, and I am profaned among them." 
 Observe. 1. We thus learn, that Sabbath-breaking 
 was a leading cause of the Babylonish captivity. 
 2. We learn farther, that foreign traders were largely 
 instrumental in this corruption : precisely as it is 
 now with us in these United States. It is chiefly, 
 imported atheism and low dealers that give life to 
 the assaults upon our Sabbatic laws and the religious 
 foundations of our morality. 3. Even within the 
 sphere of agricultural necessity — so alleged, the 
 
A SACRED REST. 139 
 
 gathering of the crops, is a sin against God on 
 the holy day of rest. 4. Officers of the law sin ; 
 in winking at this sin; ''have hid their eyes from 
 my Sa,bbaths." Sunday papers are hawked along 
 our streets on the Lord's day and our public servants 
 don't see it. 5. And Oh, how many fires has God 
 kindled up all over the land and the water : what 
 bursting of boilers ; runnings off the track ; collisions 
 of locomotives and cars ; burning of depots, bridges, 
 stores and dwellings. All these are visitations from 
 God and largely in punishment of Sabbath-break- 
 ing. 6. We learn too the philosophy of this class 
 of things. Employers disregard the law of God : 
 they force their employees to work on Sunday 
 or lose their places: their consciences revolt at 
 first, but soon become blunted — seared as with a 
 hot iron. But conscience polluted in reference to 
 one part of God's law, cannot possibly continue 
 long pure in reference to other points. "Whoso- 
 ever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one 
 point, he is guilty of all," James ii. 10. And the 
 reason is obvious — the law of God is a unit — it is 
 his will revealed as a rule of action to his creatures : 
 resistance to his will in anything, shows a heart at 
 enmity with him. 7. Thus, corporations which boast 
 that they have no souls, expel the souls from the 
 bodies of their employees — for when a man has no 
 conscience, he has only the soul of a brute ; then, 
 the leprosy of conscienceless sin spreads over the 
 whole inner man and no moral element can bind him. 
 
140 THE lord's day. 
 
 Hence these terrible disasters. They are the Baby- 
 lonish captivity of God's curse — "Ye bring more 
 ■wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath;" and 
 this "fire shall not be quenched." There is God's 
 sentence; let Sabbath-breakers read it: especially 
 let monied corporations which profane the Sabbath 
 by their agents and let all stockholders in such cor- 
 porations — read God's sentence upon their wicked 
 business and fear before Jeremiah's messaore. 
 
 o 
 
 If God's veracity can be rehed on, the Sabbath- 
 keeping nation must be prosperous and happy, even 
 in a worldly sense. " Thou shalt ride upon the 
 high places of the earth, and I will feed thee with 
 the heritage of Jacob thy father ; for the mouth of 
 the Lord hath spoken it." It is most unreasonable 
 to expect that success will permanently attend rob- 
 bery. The man or people who rob God of his holy 
 day, may look for the frown of his disapprobation. 
 Pharaoh's fate, brought on him by his cruelty and 
 oppression in destroying the Israelites' Sabbath, 
 ought to be a salutary warning. Disasters must, 
 by the necessity of an abused conscience and dissi- 
 pated habits enfeebling the powers employed in 
 labour, paralyze effort and diminish production. 
 Steamers on our western waters, blow up of course, 
 nothing else is looked for ; but the philosophy that 
 traces most of these terrible visitations to want of 
 conscience, is not well understood and but little 
 studied. Gilfillan and Montalembcrt refer to Eng- 
 land for illustration ; but with all our short-comings 
 
A SACRED REST. 141 
 
 in this behalf, the United States are still the most 
 strict nation in the observance of the holy day: 
 and for this A^ery reason the most prosperous people 
 on the face of the earth. No nation has ever moved 
 onward, in everything that belongs to civilization, 
 with such amazing rapidity. Our wealth and re- 
 sources are inexhaustible, and their development 
 is largely owing to the lofty tone of our national 
 morality. And, as observed before, the measure of 
 this morality is in exact proportion to our Sabbath 
 observance. Thus we reach a standard of admeas- 
 urement, by theory; which fails never, when brought 
 to the test of experiment. Nations are prosperous, 
 great and happy and influential for good, the world 
 over, just in proportion as they remember the Sab- 
 bath day and keep it holy. 
 
142 THE lord's day 
 
 CHAPTEK Xyil. 
 
 KEEP IT HOLY TO THE LORD. 
 
 Negatively — Positively — Cessation from business — Sports, plays, 
 pleasures — Quibbles — Necessity and mercy — Necessities numerous 
 — Feigned — Positive — Private — Public. 
 
 It has been already noted that holiness, in the 
 sense of moral excellence, no more than blessedness, 
 in the sense of happiness, is not imputable to time. 
 The conception is absurd. Both these belong only 
 to moral agents, who only are capable of moral 
 purity and felicity. When, therefore, the Sabbath 
 day is blessed and sanctified, the meaning is, that it 
 is made and appointed for a blessing to man, by 
 being set apart to resting from worldly labours, and 
 consecrated or devoted to the holy service of God. 
 
 By keeping it holy to God negatively, we simply 
 mean cessation from secular or worldly business. 
 " Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work" 
 — or business — complete thy mission. "But the 
 seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God ; 
 in it thou shalt not do any work." Now, if a man's 
 "business" lies in physical or bodily labour, there 
 must be a suspension of his toil: if his "business" 
 — ^his worldly avocation — consists of intellectual ex- 
 
A SACRED REST. 143 
 
 ertion, this is to be suspended; or if his "business" 
 include both kinds of work intermixed, then both 
 forms of exertion must cease. Thus provision is 
 made for the relief of both mind and body : and 
 this for one seventh part of the time. Detail as to 
 kinds of business is not consistent with the nature 
 of organic laiv. To enumerate all the kinds of 
 both forms, or either form of labour, in which men 
 in all ages may be engaged, is impossible. Most 
 silly would it be for a ploughman to say. The fourth 
 precept don't forbid ploughing ; a blacksmith, It 
 does not forbid making axes or shoeing horses ; a 
 carter. It does not forbid hauling brick ; a printer, 
 There is no prohibition of printing ; a lawyer, There 
 is nothing expressly against legal research on the 
 Sabbath. Against such absurdity, the wording of 
 this part of the Hebrew Constitution is a prophj^lac- 
 tic remedy. The original word, translated "work," 
 does not mean simply labour of mind or body, or 
 both, but "business," — avocation^ trade, purstdt, 
 employment. It is often translated "workmanship" 
 — as in Exod. xxxi. 3, 5. Whatever be a man's 
 employment during the six days is to be suspended 
 on the seventh ; and this, so far, makes it a Sab- 
 bath. 
 
 But the law equally prohibits meditation, and 
 study, and the outgo of desire after his business on 
 the, holy day; for this interferes with other parts 
 of the consecration. 
 
 It also cuts off pleasures, sports, and plays, — all 
 
144 THE lord's day 
 
 mere amusements. The evangelical prophet gives 
 us a clue to this exposition. " If thou turn away 
 thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure 
 on my holy day, not doing thine own ways, nor find- 
 ing thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own 
 words." Isa. Iviii. 13. And this exposition is in- 
 dispensable to the very end of the institution, which 
 is to honour God by spending the day in his holy 
 service. 
 
 These remarks, though brief, are sufficient to shut 
 off the miserable quibbles, sometimes thrown out, 
 about not feeding cattle, cooking victuals, riding or 
 walking to church. " Thou shalt not do any work," 
 say these champions of reason, as an adequate guide 
 in duty, therefore a man must not wash his hands, 
 put on his clothes, lead his horse to water, feed him, 
 saddle or harness him and ride to church ! Whilst 
 the work prohibited is the ordinary "business" of 
 the six days, and not at all any of the works of 
 necessity or mercy, for which this phraseology of 
 the law fully provides. And this is the popularly 
 received interpretation. When the Church or the 
 nation appoints a day of fasting and prayer, or of 
 thanksgiving and praise, they consecrate and ob- 
 serve it by a suspension of all "business," and a 
 resort to the sanctuary for religious worship. 
 
 This provision for works of necessity and mercy, in- 
 herent in the organic law, is developed in subsequent 
 legislation ; and our Saviour rebukes the querulous 
 pharisees for their perversity and ignorance: "What 
 
A SACRED REST. 145 
 
 man shall there be among you that shall have one 
 sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, 
 will he not lay hold on it and lift it out ? Where- 
 fore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." 
 Matt. xii. 11 : " Thou hypocrite, doth not each one 
 of you, on the Sabbath, loose his ox or his ass from 
 the stall and lead him away to watering?" Luke 
 xiii. 15. Works of mercy even to a brute are not 
 prohibited. 
 
 So also is it in regard to works of necessity, about 
 which infidelity has made itself merry at times. 
 Jeremiah informs us, this is no new thing : for in 
 Jerusalem's ancient sorrows, " the adversaries saw 
 her, and did mock at her Sabbaths." Lam. i. 7. 
 Scoffing is cheap at first cost, but dear in the long 
 run. There is a day of settlement ahead. 
 
 One of the most fatal fallacies of false-hearted 
 men in this regard, is in their creating their own 
 necessities and then making them a plea for violat- 
 ing the law. A country merchant arranges his 
 business and travel so as to be on the road himself, 
 and start his goods homeward, so as to insure their 
 transportation on the Sabbath : then puts in his 
 plea of necessity and robs God of his day. A lime 
 or brick-burner puts fire to his kiln on Friday, and 
 then claims necessity as a justification for Sabbath 
 profanation. A railroad company contract for the de- 
 livery of goods in ten days at a distant point, knowing 
 that the whole ten will be necessary to meet their 
 contract, one of which ten is the Sabbath, and then 
 
 13 
 
146 THE lord's day 
 
 plead the necessity of their own creation, as a jus- 
 tification for violation of law. That is, in all such 
 cases, the wrong doer takes advantage of his own 
 wrong, and that in the face of man's law and God's. 
 Let all such villany know that it cannot succeed. 
 " Be not deceived ; God is not mocked : for what- 
 soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Gal. 
 vi. 1. The government also feigns necessity in the 
 matter of mails and post-offices. The people of 
 the United States lived^ and were happy and pros- 
 perous, when a letter required three days and a 
 half to pass from New York to Washington ; and 
 yet now, -when part of one day only is required, 
 commerce cannot dispense v/ith Sunday mails — they 
 are a necessity, and this necessity, created by ava- 
 rice, and having no foundation but lust of gain, is 
 flung in the face of God as a reason to justify the 
 violation of his law ; and thus a Christian people 
 *' bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the 
 Sabbath." ''Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye 
 have robbed God, even this whole nation." Mai. 
 iii. 9. How large a proportion of our recent ca- 
 lamities and present perils is a visitation from God 
 for these transgressions of his law, it is not fojr us 
 to say. " Shall I not visit for these things? saith 
 the Lord : and shall not my soul be avenged on 
 such a nation as this?" They " have dealt very 
 treacherously against me, saith the Lord. They 
 have belied tlie Lord, and said. It is not he : neither 
 shall evil come upon us ; neither shall w,e see sword 
 
A SACRED REST. 147 
 
 nor famine." Jere. v. 9, 12. For none of these 
 violations of the Divine law is there any real ne- 
 cessity. They all spring from lust of money, and 
 evince a preference for the worship of Mammon 
 over the worship of God : they exhibit a purpose, 
 among the people and in the nation, to adore the 
 almighty dollar and to bow down before the golden 
 calf. 
 
 A real necessity, which has moral power to sus- 
 pend the law, must be of God's creation, not man's. 
 "When the authority which established the law is put 
 forth for its suspension in a given case, then the 
 doing of the thing forbidden in general is now, and 
 in this particular, permitted, and is not a sin. If 
 a sheep or a man fall into a pit, or my house takes 
 fire on the Sabbath, it is my duty to use every effort 
 to prevent the destruction of life and property. 
 But let no man purposely set his house on fire, or 
 pitch his sheep into a pit, and then insult reason 
 and God by justifying his own wickedness. 
 
 On this whole subject of necessities, no conscien- 
 tious Christian has much difficulty. If the heart 
 be right — if it purpose to obey God, scruples of 
 conscience are thrown into the balances of the 
 sanctuary, and the scale turns to a right decision. 
 It is only where the heart is depraved and racked 
 with unholy desires, that conscience, as a discrimi- 
 nating faculty, abides more than a moment in a 
 state of equilibrium on the question of doing secular 
 service on the Lord's day. A pure conscience 
 
148 THE lord's day 
 
 adopts the rule — '^ let every man be fully persuaded 
 in his own mind:" if there is a doubt, pause — "he 
 that doubteth is damned [condemned] if he eat; 
 because he eateth not of faith; for whatsoever is 
 not of faith is sin." 
 
 These negations are, to us practically, infinitely 
 numerous. A few more, by way of sample, it may 
 be well to mention. (1.) Reading newspapers or 
 books which treat of matters of worldly concern- 
 ment. (2.) Visiting for pleasure is a very common 
 offence and often formally defended, though clearly 
 prohibited as not being a duty to God. (3.) So 
 Sunday dining parties are a high offence, of which 
 no conscientious Christian is ever guilty. (4.) Bar- 
 bering as a "business" is a sin on Sabbath. The 
 poor barber has as good a right to freedom from 
 labour on the Lord's da}^, as the tonsured wiglit who 
 makes a slave of him. If being shaved is a neces- 
 sity, it is one of his own creation and therefore his 
 sin. Let him put it into the same class with wash- 
 ing and eating and do it at home and permit freedom 
 to the poor shaver. (5.) Cooking victuals — for this 
 infidelity has often scoffed and displayed its silliness 
 for ridicule. Christian families everywhere, feel it 
 their duty not to exact any extra services off the 
 cook on Sabbath day : but on the contrary, always 
 so arrange this necessity, as to afford the fullest 
 practicable liberty to the cook and her aids, to at- 
 tend to Sabbath privileges. And it is for this 
 reason, such families have less trouble and better 
 
A SACRED REST. 149 
 
 success in procuring such service, than those Avho 
 profane the Sabbath, and tyrannize over their ser- 
 vants. (6.) Where baking is a business, every 
 arrangement practicable ought to be made for the 
 freedom of the hands that do the work. The mir- 
 acle of a double supply of manna on the day pre- 
 ceding, and none on the Sabbath, is instructive. 
 We ought to secure the same ends, by ordinary 
 means, as far as practicable : just as "we supply an 
 educated ministry in room of the miraculously 
 qualified preachers on the day of Pentecost. The 
 great majority of families and the most healthy, all 
 over the land, bake no bread on the Lord's day. 
 And Nehemiah "testified against them, in the day 
 wherein they sold victuals, wine, grapes and figs." 
 (7.) Plays, games, races and theatres, corrupting 
 morals on week-days, are peculiarly injurious and 
 unjust on the Sabbath. Their introduction is a 
 great aim of the foreign combination, now organized 
 in our country to overthrow our Sabbath, and that 
 as a means of introducing a religion of forms, cor- 
 ruption and despotic power : and all this " under 
 pretence of conscience " as William Penn foresaw 
 in A. D. 1682. 
 
 We pass over to the positive duties. Idleness, 
 as before remarked, is a sin ; and therefore the Sab- 
 batic law provides abundant employment and of a 
 higher nature, for the holy day. 
 
 Here we must exercise the grace of brevity : and 
 the more readily, because the positive duties are 
 13 « 
 
160 THE lord's day 
 
 openly known and read of all men. Many are 
 indeed private ; and in kind common to all days ; 
 differing on the Lord's day only in degree. Among 
 these we follow Penn. 
 
 1. In naming, that " they may the better dispose 
 themselves to read the Scriptures of truth, at home." 
 Private, devotional reading, meditating on, studying 
 the Scriptures of truth, covers secret prayer — fam- 
 ily religion, instruction of the household — as Penn 
 says — "Masters, parents, children, or servants:" 
 they each are to dispose themselves to this exercise. 
 Personal, private devotional reading and care con- 
 templated. Family — home training, by all the now 
 immensely extended and complicated means of in- 
 struction — family Sabbath-schools — family preach- 
 ing, singing God's praises, (though Penn probably 
 did not specially commend this) family prayer. 
 
 2. The semi-public services of the Sabbath-school 
 are an admirable aid and auxiliary to family drilling 
 — not a substitute for it ; but an aid : and a pass- 
 port to the public services. This institution may 
 not aspire to a third estate in the church : but must 
 be kept in its true position under the control of the 
 spiritual government of the congregation ; as a very 
 important branch of the church's solemn charge. 
 
 3. The public worship of the sanctuary is the 
 great instrumentality of the Sabbatic law. The 
 observance of a Sabbath, without an holy convoca- 
 tion and an abrogation of all servile work, is an 
 unheard of impossibility. The necessary conse- 
 
A SACRED REST. 151 
 
 quences — the bearings of it upon health, wealth, 
 intelligence and morals is open and obvious over 
 the whole Christian world. These topics have been 
 up already, and need not now be expanded. Suf- 
 fice it to say — the prosperity, the wealth, the intel- 
 ligence, the morality and religion of every nation 
 has each its exact measurement in the degree of its 
 actual Sabbath observance. 
 
 The two nations, which pre-eminently regard the 
 Lord's day — England and America, now rule the 
 destinies of the world ; and to them are committed 
 by high heaven, the glorious commission of pro- 
 claiming the salvation of God to the ends of the 
 earth; and of bringing all the nations under the 
 dominion of government by moral law. But we 
 may not farther repeat. 
 
162 THE lord's day 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 DUTY OF HEADS OF FAMILIES, AND NATIONS — PLEA 
 OP FOREIGNERS — LET US ALONE. 
 
 Relations — 1. To son and daughter — 2. To his man-servant and 
 his maid-servant — 3. Nor thy cattle — 4. And thy stranger that is 
 within thy gates. 
 
 We have not specially noted the relation of this 
 organic law, to heads of families. It is addressed 
 to the individual man — " Thou shalt not do any 
 work " — follow up any business. But if the indi- 
 vidual be the head of a house — if he stand in any 
 responsible relation to any other persons or things, 
 the constitutional rule views him in all these rela- 
 tions, and holds him to his responsibilities. For all 
 his faculties, powers, talents, capabilities of doing 
 good or evil, the Creator and universal proprietor 
 holds every man to account. " Occupy till I come ;" 
 and at his coming the account must be rendered. 
 Carrying with us the well-established rule of her- 
 meneutics ; that, where a duty is commanded, the 
 contrary sin is forbidden ; and where a sin is for- 
 bidden, the contrary duty is commanded — let us 
 glance at the relations of this individual. 
 
 1. To Ms son and his daughter. These are under 
 
A SACRED REST. 153 
 
 his control. He has the right and power of goy- 
 ernment over them : he is bound for their mainte- 
 nance and education ; has, to a large degree, the 
 formation of their characters, their physical habits, 
 their intellectual, moral, and religious training ; and, 
 to society and to God, is accountable for their con- 
 duct. These powers and responsibilities are not, as 
 has been supposed, consequences anticipated, by 
 reason of his expenditure of time and labour, and 
 money in their early support ; but all flow from the 
 divine constitution of our nature, by which the 
 father is appointed God's agent to attend upon this 
 very thing. If therefore the son or the daughter 
 transgress the command, the father must give account 
 of it. He was vested with power to restrain, and 
 he neglected his duty — like Eli, whose " sons made 
 themselves vile and he restrained them not." If a 
 father from looseness of discipline, irreligion, and 
 atheism train up such children, he may reasonably 
 expect a Hophni and Phinehas, and to hear some 
 day news "at which both the ears of every one that 
 heareth shall tingle." Let parents study their re- 
 lations and accountabilities. Let them see and know, 
 that " a child left to himself bringeth his mother to 
 shame;" yea and his father too. Let your children 
 have liberty — the freedom of the streets, the thea- 
 tres, the saloons, the rum shops, and lager beer 
 houses ; then, parents ! lay out your accounts for 
 heavy tidings : drive them to work or sports on the 
 Lord's day and they will soon work your ruin and 
 
154 THE lord's day 
 
 their own. But, per contra, train them up in the 
 nurture and admonition of the Lord. Seize for 
 them the promises and keep them under the restraints 
 this law implies, and they will furnish you many a 
 quiet and peaceful Sabbath. 
 
 2. To his man-servant and his maid-servant. 
 
 Slavery has never had the sanction of God, in 
 any other sense, than as monarchical governments 
 or wicked wars have been sanctioned of God. The 
 Bible has always recognized its existence as an 
 evil, and tolerated it as an evil to be remedied and 
 brought to an end. That inequalities in human 
 condition should exist, is a manifest provision in the 
 arrangeraents of divine wisdom. Had man kept his 
 first estate of purity and subjection to God, there 
 would still have been a necessity for a government 
 in human hands, by the application of divine laws 
 in regulating the intercourses of society. Rulers 
 of various grades must have existed. The very na- 
 ture of society involves this. Adam was made the 
 natural head and also the moral head and ruler of 
 his race. He was appointed to keep and dress the 
 garden ; and, beyond doubt, his children, had they 
 all remained pure and holy, would have occupied 
 positions relatively to each other, of superiority and 
 of inferiority. 
 
 " Order is nature's first law ; and this confest; 
 Some are and must be greater than the rest." 
 
 But sin rendered these unavoidable inequalities 
 
A SACKED REST. 155 
 
 grievous, oppressive, and often intolerable ; because 
 sin is a tyrant and all that is burdensome and cruel 
 in the exercises of power, growing out of these 
 diversified relations, has its root in sin. "When, and 
 because, man became the slave of sin and Satan, he 
 became also the slave of his fellow-man ; for his fel- 
 low-man was a fellow-sinner. Therefore the divine 
 law made provision for these inequalities ; but this 
 provision by no means contains an approval of them. 
 God made man upright and yet his law^ provided for 
 a fallen and sinful condition ; yet surely, this pro- 
 vision gives no sanction to sins prohibited. The 
 law assumes the relation of master and servant as a 
 fact and legislates for its regulation ; just as it 
 recognizes blasphemy, idolatry, rebellion against 
 parental authority, sexual pollution, false witness, 
 &c., as facts, and prescribes rules for their restraint 
 and punishment. 
 
 "Now I say. That the heir, as long as he is a 
 child — a minor — differeth nothing from a servant, 
 though he be- lord of all." Hence the rules and 
 reasons above remarlfed on, in regard to the son and 
 the daughter, are equally pertinent to the man- 
 servant and the maid-servant. The master has the 
 same authority over the servants as over the chil- 
 dren, for government, for instruction, for restraint 
 or coercion as to labour. Consequently he is under 
 exactly corresponding obligations. He is responsi- 
 ble to the author of the law, for their labour and for 
 their cessation from labour. Be the relation of 
 
156 THE lord's day 
 
 master and servant constituted as they may — 
 wjiether by purchase "with money, or by being 
 born in his house ; and whether permanent, as in 
 slavery, or temporary, as in hirelings ; whilst 
 it lasts, the master's responsibility lasts. If his 
 hired servants do servile work for him on the 
 Lord's day, he must render account to God for this 
 iniquity. 
 
 3. Nor thy cattle. Working animals, — beasts of 
 burden, in whatever form their strength is exerted 
 for the benefit of man and under his direction, come, 
 all within the sweep of this precept. But now, a 
 man's oxen and horses are a part of his capital ; 
 and differ from houses and lands and farming uten- 
 sils, and money the representative of all, only in 
 this ; that the live stock are sentient beings, capable 
 of suffering pains from abuse and excessive labour, 
 which is abuse. With allowance for this merciful 
 protection to animal life, we see no difference be- 
 tween this sort of capital and any other; and there- 
 fore must think, that the spirit of the law holds the 
 owner of all capital responsible for working it him- 
 self or having others to work it on the Lord's day. 
 It is, consequently, as much and as really a trans- 
 gression of law, to work cotton or iron works, 
 whether propelled by water or steam, as to work 
 animals, the cruelty excepted. Nor is it in the 
 power of logic to show, that a farmer who drives his 
 own team, with a load of his own wheat to market 
 on the Sabbath day, is more an offender against law, 
 
A SACRED REST. 157 
 
 than the capitalist who sits in church at the same 
 time, but whose capital, equal in amount, or ten 
 times greater, is running railroad cars or cotton 
 machinery on the same holy day. "What a man does 
 by his agent, he does himself. He that pa3^s wages 
 to a thief or robber, for assisting to accomplish his 
 evil designs, is himself a robber or thief. No moral 
 axiom is more obvious and more generally admitted. 
 We conclude that stockholders in Sabbath-breaking 
 companies, whether stripped of their souls by the 
 exorcising power of an incorporating act or not, are 
 Sabbath breakers, and will be held accountable to 
 the law and its Author, God. Oh ! that all friends 
 of the Sabbath, to whom God has given success in 
 business, would see to it, that their capital employed 
 in violating the Sabbath, may not be accusing them 
 before the beneficent Giver ; whilst themselves are 
 testifying personally, in the sanctuary, in favour of 
 the Sabbatic law. It is a question worth serious 
 prosecution, how far men, who have prospered in 
 business until their capital has outgrown their con- 
 cern, so that they have a surplus to invest in some 
 other way, have ventured it in Sabbath-breaking 
 stocks ; and have suffered loss and even ruin in con- 
 sequence. And may it not be asked, whether Chris- 
 tian men who thus offend are not more likely to 
 suffer for such sin, than others. Assuredly God is 
 at least as much offended by sin in his own people ; 
 and as likely to chastise them on its account ; as he 
 is with the same sin in others who profess no regard 
 
 14 
 
158 THE lord's day 
 
 to him and his laws, and whom he punishes for their 
 transgressions. 
 
 4. And thy stranger tliat is tvitliin thy gates. 
 
 Gates, in eastern cities and in ancient times, were 
 places of public resort. In large towns they were 
 often fortified strongly with bulwarks and towers of 
 defence. They were, moreover, places of trade — 
 market-houses, as you see in the reference to Nehe- 
 miah — and they were court-houses, where magis- 
 trates dispensed justice. To be withiyi thy gates, 
 then, can mean nothing less than to be under the 
 protection of the civil and military power of the 
 city. And as protection begets allegiance for the 
 time being, the stranger or person born in or com- 
 ing from a foreign land, voluntarily pledges obedi- 
 ence to the law and subjection to the government 
 of the family and household in which he has, with 
 its consent, located himself. And as the city, the 
 State, the nation consists of the households included 
 in it, the stranger owes allegiance to government in 
 all these forms. Moreover, there is an obvious sense 
 in which he is more rigidly bound in this allegiance 
 than the sons and the servants born in the house, 
 city, and nation. The home-born or the purchased 
 slave, and the home-born son, did not come into the 
 household, city, and State by their own voluntary 
 action, as did the stranger. He came in of his own 
 accord, and he abides of his own will. He can go 
 away whensoever he pleases. His coming was a 
 contract. He knew the laws when he came in : or 
 
A SACRED REST. 159 
 
 if not, he acted very foolishly. His coming in is a 
 real bona fide promise of subjection to them whilst 
 he sojourns in the land. In this sense he is more 
 obviously bound than those born or brought into 
 the household, city, or State. His is voluntary ; 
 theirs is not primarily so. These facts are indis- 
 putable and these obligations are insolvable but by 
 the destruction of society and government. If 
 strangers could come into a family without coming 
 actually under the laws of the household, two or 
 three such ungoverned intruders must break up and 
 destroy the household. And so of the city, State, 
 or nation. Thus the Gallic nations were subverted 
 by the Romans. Thus the Roman Empire was 
 overturned by the Huns, the Goths, the Vandals. 
 Thus the Danes swept off the Britons ; the Angles 
 and Saxons the Danes ; and the Xormans the Saxons. 
 Nations have perished chiefly by foreign interference. 
 So passed away the aborigines of America. Hear 
 the voice of Mount Yernon : " Against the insidi- 
 ous wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to be- 
 lieve me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free peo- 
 ple ought to be constantly ■2k,-v(^kQ', since history and 
 experience prove that foreign influence is one of 
 the most baneful foes of Republican government." 
 The voice from Mount Sinai is re-echoed from Mount 
 Vernon: Keep the stranger within thy gates subject 
 to thy laws. The head of the house, the city, the 
 State, is responsible for the foreign inmate, and 
 bound to restrain him from Sabbath profanation. 
 
160 THE lord's day 
 
 Yet here, in free America, a Christian nation, 
 we have a combination of foreigners, who volun- 
 tarily emigrated from their own country, and were 
 kindly received within our gates, arraying them- 
 selves under the leadership of Jews, and Deists, 
 and Atheists, for the avowed purpose of subverting 
 one of the most distinguished laws of our religion 
 and of our government — a law that has adorned 
 the statute book of Pennsylvania for one hundred 
 and eighty- three years^a law that has governed 
 man, for whom it was made, wherever a knowledge 
 of true religion has not been wholly lost, from the 
 beginning of the world. This conspiracy against 
 the fourth commandment we are, by itself, com- 
 manded to resist, and to enforce its sacred observ- 
 ance upon all the strangers within our gates : and 
 woe be to this city, state, nation, if we permit this 
 renewed attack upon our organic law to triumph. 
 
A SACRED REST. 161 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 OBJECTION — THE SUNDAY LAWS OF THE STATE — 
 CURTAIL LIBERTY. 
 
 German combination — laws are a restraint — every precept of the ten 
 restrains — not bondage but freedom. 
 
 I CANNOT easier and better express this objection, 
 than by quoting a paragraph from the New York 
 Spectator for September 13th, 1859, which is found 
 in a very able article of the Princeton Review for 
 October of that year. It presents it in the language 
 of a foreigner addressing a public meeting of for- 
 eigners assembled to resist American laws, that 
 " The free thoughts which they had brought with 
 them from Germany should be established here." 
 Men, born under despotic governments and held in 
 political slavery all their lives, no sooner arrive in 
 this free Protestant country, than they become re- 
 formers — revolutionists and aim at the overthrow 
 of our institutions, Christianity itself included. 
 This speaker is reported as exclaiming : " Free Ger- 
 mans and citizens of America, let us join hand in 
 hand with all other free citizens around us, to 
 oppose a law which is unjust, and an infringement 
 on our sacred liberty. The Sunday laws are only 
 11* 
 
162 THE lord's day 
 
 tlie tools used by cliques of politicians to further 
 their own ambitious ends, in opposition to the in- 
 terests of mankind. They are upheld in the sacred 
 name of religion. We all have our own views about 
 religion, and we mean to keep them without in- 
 fringement, or being forced to adopt those of other 
 men. We honour all days, and consider what is 
 right to be done on one day is right to be done on 
 another. Men should be left to the exercise of 
 their own judgment in regard to the way they spend 
 their time. If they wish pleasure, let them have 
 it; if they wish social enjoyment and enlivening 
 music, let them have it. This' is freedom." This 
 then is the anti-Sabbath men's notion of liberty as 
 to the Sabbath. Their birth-right in enslaved Ger- 
 many becomes freedom to set our laws at defiance 
 and distract our cities, towns and country with fun 
 and frolic^ drinking, singing, theatres, and all their 
 pleasures on God's holy day. This is freedom, and 
 this is the claim which this chapter proposes to re- 
 sist. 
 
 NoAV, at the very outset, we concede to our Ger- 
 man freemen, that the Sabbath laws are a restraint 
 upon the conduct of men and women. They are 
 hereby restrained, forbidden, and kept back from 
 doing their own j:)?easMre : but only when their 
 pleasure is to do wrong, in violating the laws of 
 Christianity, and disturbing the public peace, and 
 interfering with the rights and privileges — the reli- 
 gious and sacred privileges of the Christian people 
 
A SACRED REST. 163 
 
 around them. If mere restraint upon conduct is an 
 infringement on your sacred liberties, we plead guilty. 
 Very many of our laws are designed and well 
 adapted to operate restraint, ex. gr. We have a 
 law which restrains a magistrate from forcing, or 
 permitting a man to swear by Almighty God, that 
 he will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
 but the truth, and that as he shall answer to God 
 in the great day; who does not believe there is any 
 Almighty God — a God of truth; and any great 
 day of judgment ; or who does not believe he him- 
 self has a rational soul, that shall survive the body 
 and be constrained to give an account of himself to 
 God. We have a law that restrains liberty to such 
 an extent, that a man who swears falsely or pro- 
 fanely shall be fined or imprisoned : another law we 
 have, which sends a man to the penitentiary and im- 
 mures him for years, thus cutting ofi" entirely his free- 
 dom merely because he wisJiedj^leaswe, and sought it 
 by writing two words on a bank check. Another law 
 we have, that strangles a man to death with a strong 
 rope, merely because he ministered a little dose of 
 medicine to a patient : another law we have, which 
 arrests a freeman, holds him in durance vile and then 
 puts six bullets through his brain, simply because 
 he pleased to enjoy his freedom in leaving his tent 
 and going home to his wife and children. Oh what 
 horrible infringements on "sacred liberty" are per- 
 petrated in this protestant country ! Why we hung 
 
164 THE lord's day. 
 
 a " free German" in Washington, because he served 
 his employers faithfullj. 
 
 But now, the terrible aggravations of all these 
 and innumerable other cases, is, that they are not 
 done by the uneducated and lawless rabble, in their 
 senseless clamours for freedom and lager beer ; but 
 under the direct sanction of law ; and by the orders 
 and action of the officers of justice. Are then law 
 and justice antagonistic to liberty ? or is that which 
 "looseness, irreligion, and atheism" call liberty, 
 nothing more or less than the harlot, which infidel 
 France, under the schooling of Voltaire, worshipped 
 as a goddess ? 
 
 We have seen abundantly, that the Decalogue is 
 a compend of moral law, given, by the Author of 
 his being to man : within which are the elements of 
 all law ; and outside of which, if human legislators 
 pass, they become tyrants, not governors. We have 
 also noted the fact, that, except the fifth precept 
 and half of the fourth, these organic laws of God 
 for humanity, come to us in the form of negations : 
 they are prohibitory : they restrain action ; they 
 curtail freedom; they infringe the "sacred liberty" 
 of doing as we please. Can it be possible that 
 God's law is hostile to freedom ? This can be an- 
 swered only after ascertaining what free<lom is : and 
 the reader already perceives, that we deny liberty 
 or freedom to consist in doi^ig as we please. Men 
 often please to take their neighbour's money ; is 
 this liberty? to take his house, his fruits and grains; 
 
A SACRED REST. 165 
 
 is this freedom ? Men please to blaspheme God and 
 curse their brethren ; is this a part of freedom ? to 
 bow down and worship an idol ; to offer their sons 
 and daughters in sacrifice to Moloch, and their wid- 
 ows to Vishnu ; is this liberty ? Did the agents of 
 the East India Company play the part of rational 
 liberty, in protecting, if not encouraging the Suttee? 
 Here is a fine young man of eighteen or twenty 
 years, capable of working his way in the world, but 
 then the law of the land and the law of God place 
 him in subjection to his father; is this a curtailment 
 of "sacred liberty?" He can't do as he jDleases. 
 A German resident on Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, 
 told me, as we rode by a field, an anecdote of a 
 fellow-countryman of his, who went into the field, 
 dug up and filled his basket with potatoes, but was 
 detected; upon his arrest, he replied, in justification 
 of himself by an expression of surprise, "Yel, I 
 tought dis was a free country." Oh, no, restraint is 
 not a curtailment of freedom, unless it be contrary 
 to the Decalogue. A Jew and a Turk, whose reli- 
 gion permits them to have two or more wives, emi- 
 grate to the United States, each "wishing pleasure" 
 and liberty, such as they had in Constantinople; 
 must we concede it ? If our laws forbid it, they 
 turn upon us, with fierce vituperation ; charging, 
 that America is a tyrannical government ; more 
 hostile to liberty than the tyranny of the Sultan. 
 Mormonism is a "free-love" advocate; must this 
 Christian republic abolish its Christian laws, in order 
 
166 THE lord's day 
 
 that these bulls of Bashan may enter the Canaan 
 of our holy land ; and therein be free to pollute 
 the morals of the country and ultimately to subvert 
 the nation by their corruptions ? No, my dear 
 readers, liberty does not consist in man's doing as 
 he pleases ; but in pleasing to do and actually doing 
 right. The perfection of freedom is obedience to 
 God's law. The devil's maxim — ''Religion has 
 nothing to do with politics," will speedily destroy any 
 nation that adopts it. Every precept of the Deca- 
 logue designs to restrain action ; and the more 
 perfectly a man feels and submits to this restraint, 
 the nearer does he approximate perfect liberty. It 
 is resistance to law that constitutes the yoke of 
 bondage. Not one precept of the Ten ever galls 
 the neck of the obedient disciple of Christ. But 
 he that committeth sin is the servant of sin. The 
 victim of lager beer and bad whisky, in the midst 
 of his fun and frolic ; his Sunday dancing and fid- 
 dling, and theatricals, is a miserable slave. " These 
 are wells without water; clouds that are carried 
 with a tempest ; to whom the mist of darkness is 
 reserved for ever. For while they speak great 
 swelling words of vanity, they allure through the 
 lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those 
 who were clean escaped from them who live in error. 
 While they promise them liberty, they themselves 
 are the servants of corruption, for of whom a man 
 is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage." 
 On the contrary, instead of rehgion having noth- 
 
A SACKED REST. " 167 
 
 ing to do with politics, our maxim in America is, 
 that our whole political institutions are based and 
 founded on the Christian religion. It is the platform 
 of our law^s, common and statute. We quote the 
 last paragraph of the masterly article above referred 
 to. 
 
 " The same answer the Christians of this country 
 give all classes of men, who demand that Christian- 
 ity should be divorced from our governments, muni- 
 cipal, state and national. This country was settled 
 by Protestant Christians. . They possessed the land. 
 They established its institutions. They formed 
 themselves into towns, states, and nation. From 
 the nature of the case, regarding the Bible as the 
 word of God binding the conscience of every man 
 with Divine authority, they were governed by it in 
 all their organizations, whether for business, or civil 
 policy. Others have since come into the country 
 by thousands ; some Papists, some Jews, some infi- 
 dels, some atheists. All were welcomed ; all are 
 admitted to equal rights and privileges. All are 
 allowed to acquire property, to vote in all elections, 
 made eligible to all . offices, and invested with an 
 equal interest in all public concerns. All are al- 
 lowed to worship as they please, or not at all if 
 they please. No man is molested for his religion 
 or for his want of religion. No man is required to 
 profess any particular form of faith, or to join aiiy 
 religious association. Is not this liberty enough? 
 It seems not. Our ' Free Germans,' and other 
 
168 THE lord's day 
 
 anti-Sabbatarians insist upon it, that we must turn 
 infidels, give up our God, our Saviour, and our 
 Bibles, so far as all public or governmental action is 
 concerned. They require that the joint stock into 
 which they have been received as partners, and in 
 which they constitute even numerically a very small 
 minority, should be conducted according to their 
 principles and not according to ours. They demand, 
 not merely that they may be allowed to disregard 
 the Sabbath, but that the public business must go 
 on on that day ; that all public servants must be 
 employed ; all public property, highways, and rail- 
 roads, should be used. They say we must not pray 
 in our legislative bodies, or have chaplains in our 
 hospitals, prisons, navy, or army : that we must 
 not introduce the Bible into our public schools, or 
 do anything in a public capacity which implies that 
 we are Protestant Christians. These men do not 
 know what Protestant Christians are. It is the 
 characteristic of Protestants, as they humbly hope 
 and believe, to respect the rights of other men, and 
 to stand up for their own. And, therefore, they 
 say to all — infidels and atheists — to all who demand 
 that the Bible shall not be the rule of action for us 
 as individuals, and as a government, You ask what 
 it is impossible can be granted. We must obey God. 
 We must carry our religion into our work-shops, our 
 banking-houses, our municipal and other govern- 
 ments ; and if you cannot live with Christians, you 
 must go elsewhere." 
 
A SACRED REST. 169 
 
 , CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE SABBATH — A TYPE OF HEAVEN. 
 
 All that is painful in labour is the result of sin : 
 ^vhen, therefore, sin, as to its guilt, shall have been 
 removed by the blood of the great Atonement ; as 
 to its pollution by the renewing of the Holy Ghost ; 
 the cause being taken away, the effects will cease. 
 Rest follows. Cessation of painful exertion is gone 
 for ever. When Israel escaped from the land of 
 bondage and the turmoil and harassments of the 
 wilderness, and crossed the Jordan, he entered into 
 rest. But this Sabbath in Canaan, as Paul has 
 shown, is a figure of another and a holier rest in 
 the gospel state of the Church : and still farther, 
 this state, with all its enlargement and all its blessed 
 comforts, is preparatory and typical of a higher and 
 holier Sabbath beyond the Jordan of death. There 
 remaineth, therefore, a Sabbatismos for the people 
 of God. 
 
 Among the deliverances of which the Sabbath 
 here is typical, is removal beyond the reach of per- 
 secutions and tribulations : Seeing it is a righteous 
 thing with God to recompense tribulation to them 
 
 15 
 
170 THE lord's day. 
 
 that trouble joii ; and to you who are troubled, rest 
 with us, Avhen the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from 
 heaven with his mighty angels. As the Chnstian 
 Sabbath separates the sacred from the profane, and 
 sets them aside for a time, to the special service of 
 their Lord, to enjoy his presence in the sanctuary, 
 so the type promises and portrays an everlasting 
 separation between the righteous and the wicked ; 
 the holy and the unholy. 
 
 Deliverance is also perfected from the assaults of 
 foul spirits and all the temptations to which we are 
 here exposed. Far away from this happy rest are 
 banished for ever the arch fiend and all his company, 
 and are never more permitted to disturb the quiet 
 of the everlasting Sabbath. 
 
 But exemptions and negations constitute a very 
 small proportion of the blessings typified by the 
 Christian Sabbath. Positive blessedness, inconceiv- 
 ably great, characterizes the happy abode on high, 
 in those many mansions of our Father's house, 
 which the Forerunner has gone to furnish up and 
 prepare for us. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
 neither have entered into the heart of man, the 
 things which God hath prepared for them that love 
 him." " It doth not yet appear what we shall be; 
 but we know that when he shall appear we shall be 
 like him, for we shall see him as he is." 
 
 Undoubtedly the eternal Sabbath, like its type 
 here, will be a day of holy activities. The spirits 
 of the redeemed, and, after the resurrection, their 
 
A SACRED REST. 171 
 
 entire persons, will be active in the service of God ; 
 and that increased, as the purified souls and the 
 spiritualized bodies, have increased capacities for 
 heavenly joys. The earthly Sabbath is to them a 
 delight ; how much more the heavenly ? Here they 
 meet and recognize each other as fellow-heirs of 
 the grace of life ; they take sweet counsel and go 
 up to the house of God, and sound forth the praises 
 of redeeming love ; how much more when clogs of 
 clay are all thrown off and they meet and recognize 
 each other in the heavenly Canaan ! Oh, how they 
 will exult in the high glories of the rapturous hour 
 when sin and flesh no more control the sacred plea- 
 sures of the soul ! 
 
 Our social nature will receive a large increase to 
 its benevolent affections. We shall recognize each 
 other. For now we see through a glass darkly ; 
 but then, face to face. Now we know in part; but 
 then shall we know even as also we are known. 
 And the more we increase in the activities of hea- 
 venly love, the larger expand our powers for drink- 
 ing of the rivers of pleasure which ever flow at 
 God's right hand. The imagery used to convey a 
 general idea of this ever active Rest, is of the bold- 
 est and strongest character. Joy resounds ; golden 
 harps are strung to sound the high praises of re- 
 deeming love. Choirs stand in bright array and 
 rival angelic hosts in beauty and glory, and rise 
 above them in the lofty notes of thanksgiving unto 
 Him that loved us and redeemed us unto God by 
 
172 THE lord's day a sacred rest. 
 
 his blood. In these holy exercises there will be an 
 ever onward movement. It is not conceivable that 
 such employments should not keep in perpetual ac- 
 tion the law of progress which opens up a bound- 
 less advancement in holiness and perfection. The 
 path of the just is as the shining light which shineth 
 more and more unto the perfect day. 
 
 " Mid the chorus of the skies. 
 
 Mid th' angelic lyres above, 
 Hark ! their songs melodious rise, 
 
 Songs of praise to Jesus' love. 
 Happy spirits, ye are fled 
 
 Where no grief can entrance find; 
 Lulled to rest the aching head. 
 
 Soothed the anguish of the mind. ' 
 
 "All is tranquil and serene. 
 
 Calm and undisturbed repose; 
 There no cloud can intervene, 
 
 There no angry tempest blows. 
 Every tear is wiped away, 
 
 Sighs no more shall heave the breast- 
 Night is lost in endless day, 
 
 Sorrow, in eteuxal rest." 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 During the present campaign against the laws 
 of God and of this Commonwealth, the author 
 threw a number of brief articles before the public. 
 From these he has selected the following for preser- 
 vation, as likely to be useful, should this controversy 
 last; or the war be renewed at any future time. 
 
 Philadelphia, March 27th, A. D. 1806. 
 
 A PLEA FOR OPPRESSED CARMEN. 
 
 To THE Editor of the Evening Telegraph — 
 Sir: — The lavfs of God and of Pennsylvania pro- 
 tect the working-man. Capital shall not oppress 
 labour. Their relations I shall, God willing, en- 
 deavour to point out in a future paper ; at present 
 let us look at the cruelty exercised over conductors 
 and drivers. Seventeen hours a day they are re- 
 quired to labour. Seven hours only are left for the 
 repose and sleep, without which "tired nature" has 
 no restorer. Car riders, and car company presi- 
 dents, and car-stock owners, come up and look this 
 question in the face. Is it right ? Is it reasonable 
 
 15 * * 173 
 
174 APPENDIX. 
 
 and just to force these men under such a yoke of 
 bondage ? 
 
 In the olden time, in Jeif. Davis' own State, a 
 slave was tasked to pick — that is, to gather off the 
 stalks in the field, twenty-five pounds of cotton per 
 day. Whether this rule was universal I cannot 
 say; but "^^ Uncle Tom's Cabin" shows the slaves 
 were tasked by quantity. I know that in Missis- 
 sippi twenty-five pounds was the rule on some plan- 
 tations, and that on some exciting occasions, and 
 when time for fun in the afternoon was desired, 
 some would bring in their twenty-five pound basket 
 before twelve o'clock. And we people of Philadel- 
 phia exact seventeen hours ofi" our car-men. 
 
 In Israel of old, Isaiah (Ivii. 3) reproves the peo- 
 ple for this kind of oppression. "Behold, in the 
 day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all ^^our 
 labour." If it was a sin, deserving the prophet's 
 reprobation and God's wrath to exact all labours 
 ofi" the oppressed people, can it be a duty in us ? 
 ^'For among my people are found ivicked men; 
 they lay wait as he that setteth snares; they set a 
 trap, they catch men ; are become great, and waxen 
 rich. They are waxen fat, they shine; yea, they 
 overpass the deeds of the wicked; they judge not 
 the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they pros- 
 per; and the riglit of the needy do they not judge. 
 Shall I not visit for these tilings? saith the Lord : 
 shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as 
 this ?" — Jer. v. 
 
APPENDIX. 175 
 
 Let us ask ourselves, are we not verily guilty 
 concerning our brethren? Are Tve not setting 
 snares? Having waxen rich, have we not thrown 
 our surplus cash into a" joint-stock concern to buy 
 traps and catch men? Seventeen hours a day for 
 freemen, in free Pennsylvania!! Tell it not in 
 Gath — publish it not in the streets of Charleston, 
 lest the daughters of the slaveholders rejoice, lest 
 the sons of the aristocracy be glad. No, my friend, 
 this is cruelty, this is oppression. 
 
 What time have these "poor men" — to use the 
 Press' phraseology — to rest? How long can the 
 conductor sit down by his own fireside, with a little 
 prattler on each knee, and a lovely wife, bustling 
 about, preparing a midnight supper for a husband 
 worn down and exhausted by seventeen weary hours, 
 all spent standing on his weary limbs? Ah! no; 
 the lovely little ones have been laid up already four 
 or five hours in the humble bed, with light covering, 
 I ween, for men that work seventeen hours must be 
 forced, like the poor men of the Press, by hard 
 necessity. And the poor wife has been sitting or 
 stirring about for four or five hours. " Have you 
 no pity on these poor men," and I may add to this 
 pathetic language of Colonel Forney — these poor 
 women ? Are not the stockholders responsible for 
 these cruelties? But I must reserve this topic for 
 another occasion. 
 
 Now, look at the aggravating circumstances of 
 this oppression. At this very time a mighty effort 
 
176 APPENDIX. 
 
 is being made to reduce the day's labour to eiglit 
 hours. And yet here, in the very midst of this re- 
 form, the object of which is to give a man a little 
 alleviation from his burden, another "great reform" 
 is advocated by a leading public journal in free 
 Pennsylvania, which has for its declared object the 
 additional burden of Sunday labour upon the shoul- 
 ders of these oppressed men ! For why ? That the 
 poor men of the Press may be relieved from the 
 fearful, and to them — exhausted as they are by 
 Saturday night and Sunday labour — unbearable 
 burden of "walking all the Avay to their work in the 
 day-time'and back at night." This is what I have 
 called "Skinning Peter to make brogans for Paul." 
 One party of free men are crushed down under the 
 Press, and lest they should be worked to death be- 
 fore all the marrow is sucked out of their bones, 
 another class of Pennsylvania freemen, who work 
 seventeen hours per day all the week, must be forced 
 to work on Sunday too ! Where, in this sin-cursed 
 world, can you find such oppression? But we shall 
 be told they do it voluntarily. Do they, really ? 
 Then they should be painted black and sent to Cuba. 
 I'll say something about this voluntary slavery at 
 another time^ 
 
APPENDIX. 177 
 
 THE FREEDOM OF CONDUCTORS AND DRIVERS 
 VINDICATED. 
 
 To THE Editor oe The Evening Telegraph — 
 Sir : — We may be told, that the seventeen-hour-a- 
 daj labourers are willing thus to work : yes, they 
 are willing to do the same on Sunday ! Now, a 
 double meanincr in words is a orreat occasion for de- 
 ception and fallacy. There is a sense in which this 
 is true. The proverb, "root, pig, or die," leaves 
 grumphy a choice of evils — work or death : and his 
 pigship chooses to root as the least of two evils — he 
 is a voluntary rooter. Now I affirm that this is the 
 only sense in Avhich a free-born American is, or can 
 be made, willing to Avork seventeen hours per day, 
 for seven days in the week. No man, that has a 
 soul in him, can bring that soul up to the humiliation 
 of such voluntary bondage. A dire necessity must 
 first be laid upon him. The men who have him in 
 their trap, in great condescension and love, say to 
 him: — "Mike, w^e are going to run our cars on Sun- 
 day, and our men and horses must buckle to and 
 drive ahead. How do you like it, Mike?" "Well, 
 sir, I think seventeen hours a day for six days of 
 the week is about tight enough on a poor fellow. 
 Ye see, sir, I've no time to sit and nurse Pussy on 
 my knee and amuse myself looking at Jemmy and 
 Sue playing with the little dog about the hearth. 
 Sir, I think I'd like to have Sunday clear. It's the 
 only time I enjoy the home of my wife and chil- 
 
178 APPENDIX. 
 
 dren." "That's true, Mike; but we'll of course 
 increase your wages a little." " Well, sir, the Lord 
 knows we poor drivers and conductors have hard 
 work to get along on our present wages ; everything 
 is so dear." " Very true, Mike, but then you know 
 *half a loaf is better than no bread.'" "That's 
 true, too, Mr. Railroad President ! but then, a whole 
 loaf, and a little beef and potatoes is better still." 
 "Well, turn in, Mike, and vrork seventeen hours on 
 Sunday, and the increase of your wages will buy the 
 potatoes, at any rate." " Ah, but Mr. President — 
 then I'll have to leave poor little Pussy, and Jemmy, 
 and Sue, and their dear mother all day ; and I'll 
 become a stranger in my own house ; my little 
 darlings will soon not know their daddy. Please 
 excuse me then from the Sunday." "Well, Mike, 
 you've been a faithful driver, and I thought I would 
 make you a fair offer, full employment, and living 
 wages. Now I want you fairly to understand your 
 position. You see the cars must run of a Sunday, 
 and we must have drivers — it's absolutely necessary ; 
 and you know necessity has no law. So, Mike, if 
 you won't another will, and we will have to part. 
 If you won't work for us on Sunday, you shan't 
 work for us on week days. So good-bye, Mike." 
 " Oh ! Mr. President, stop a little. There is another 
 difficulty in my way that maybe you will think about 
 it. Mary and I were brought up in praying, and 
 Sabbath-keeping, and church-going families. We 
 both think it is wrong to work on Sunday. My 
 
APPENDIX. 179 
 
 father and grandfather, as far back as I can get any 
 knowledge of them, were Sabbath-keepers, and al- 
 ways held the Ten Commandments to be a summary 
 of the moral law, and binding upon the consciences 
 of all men. I and my dear wife may be mistaken, 
 but so it is, we conscientiously believe it is wrong. 
 
 " ' "We must not work, we must not play, 
 Because it is the Sabbatli day.' 
 
 This we teach our children, and we still think it is 
 right. Now, Mr. President, must we be cut off from 
 our employment and our bread, and turned off the 
 cars all the week, just because we want to worship 
 the God of our fathers according to the dictates of 
 our own consciences, as the constitution of the state, 
 and the laws of the land, and of God say we ought? 
 Does it not seem hard ? I am willing to drive till 
 twelve o'clock on Saturday night, and to start at 
 four on Monday morning* but, sir, if I must pollute 
 my conscience by disobeymg God's law, the law of 
 my native Pennsylvania, and the law of my church; 
 or leave your company's employment, why, then my 
 choice is, to keep a good conscience and trust to 
 God for bread." 
 
 " Well, Mike, it is hard. I do pity you. But, 
 you know, corporations have no souls, and I can't 
 help it. I am but an agent for others, and must 
 submit to my masters. So, good-bye, poor Mike." 
 " Just a minute more, Mr. Railroad President, if 
 you please. If corporations have no souls, can they 
 go to heaven, or to the other place ? And if a just 
 
180 APPENDIX. 
 
 God seizes upon the corporation, and administers 
 justice according to truth for this grievous sin of 
 persecuting all conscientious Sabbath-keepers out 
 from their employment, how wiYi the individuals who 
 compose the corporation fare at the same righteous 
 bar ? Can the whole be put under arrest, and yet 
 all the parts of that whole escape ? Oh ! sir, bear 
 in mind that individual responsibility can never be 
 merged in social responsibility. If your corporation 
 pushes off all men who love God and his holy day, 
 and thus persecute us in violation of law, can the 
 individuals who compose it wash their hands of it, 
 and say, I am clean — this sin is none of mine ? Why 
 sir, God's law protects your horses, and if you run 
 them seven days in the week, you will kill them as 
 you are killing us. Farewell. God bless the Sab- 
 bath-breakers with a better mind." 
 
 CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 
 
 These are man and wife : their combination is 
 necessary to production. Capital is all the produc- 
 tion of labour. All values result from labour — of 
 the hand and the head. Even land has no value 
 but as it results from labour. Muscle, bone, and 
 brain are the trinity which created, and continue to 
 create, the world of capital, over which Plutus reigns. 
 The adjustment of a dispute between man and wife 
 
APPENDIX. 181 
 
 is one of the most diflScult questions in practical 
 morals. Milton, one of The Press' witnesses for 
 Sunday labour, advocates separation of married 
 persons, because of unhappy diversities of temper 
 and consequent quarrels. He gives twelve reasons, 
 or arguments for his opinion. " No ordinance, hu- 
 man or from Heaven, can bind against the good of 
 man." This is the same man who wrote "Para- 
 dise lost!" Alas, how fallen ! But to our topic. 
 Quarrels between capital and labour are, like all 
 wars, unprofitable to mankind : they stop produc- 
 tion and tend towards poverty. And yet, as in 
 family disputes, such quarrels often occur. Strikes 
 for higher wages is a European fashion, which re- 
 formers are striving to make fashionable in America. 
 This middle ground, between morals and political 
 economy, is beset with thorns and briers ; rocks, 
 hills, and plains ; peat-mosses, moors, and serbonian 
 bogs. And yet it must be traversed. The question 
 about an equitable division of p7^oducts, between 
 capital and labour, is one which ever and anon must 
 come up, and cannot possibly be ignored. The 
 world's history shows that, in this everlasting con- 
 troversy, intellect comes out victor. The shrewd 
 and cunning, the long heads, are too much for the 
 round-heads — mind predominates over matter, head- 
 work over hand-work. The lion's share accumu- 
 lates, and his roar terrifies into submission ; labour 
 trembles and crouches before capital; the fecund 
 wife cowers in the presence of the strong-armed 
 
 16 
 
182 APPENDIX. 
 
 and clearer-headed husband. These things meet 
 our eye everywhere. 
 
 Sunday printing and Sunday cars are merely ex- 
 amples of the triumph of capital over labour. Such 
 triumphs cover the land and the world, and all ages. 
 "The poor ye have always wdth you." They are 
 results of sin, in the curse it brought with it : " In 
 the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou 
 return unto the ground." This is man's doom as a 
 sinner ; and happy will it be for him if the labour- 
 ing man, as he feels the sweat trickling down his 
 face, can say to himself, " These briny drops are 
 God's allotment for my sin, and there is no sove- 
 reign remedy for them but in the crimson drops 
 which oozed out in Gethsemane and trickled down 
 from Calvary's cross." These take away the curse 
 out of labour, and convert even weary poverty into 
 joy and peace. To these we commend the oppressed 
 labourer. But whilst he ought to submit peacefully 
 even to seventeen hours per day — but never on Sun- 
 day — he may and he ought to use all lawful means 
 to procure a more equitable division of products. 
 Among these lawful means are not strikes and vio- 
 lence. This is European ; it implies despotic gov- 
 ernment ; it presupposes the absence of civil rights 
 and the ballot-box. God has provided a rational 
 remedy. He has thrown the protection of law over 
 labour. He furnished a prophylactic remedy in the 
 Sabbatic law, and this even before labour was made 
 a curse. Under this labour has its protection. 
 
APPENDIX. 183 
 
 Under this John Quincy Adams threw himself for 
 protection. When the House of Representatives 
 were about to hold a Sunday session, rising in the 
 sublime dignity of a man conscious of freedom and 
 of freemen's rights, he exclaimed, " This House 
 HAS NO Power to compel me to stay here on 
 THE Sabbath day." Let the down-trodden carmen 
 and printers and • all other oppressed workers arise 
 to this heroic sentiment. Let them assert it every- 
 where. Let them carry it to the ballot-box, and 
 all the world shall know that American freemen 
 cannot be reduced to the condition of French or 
 Italian or Russian serfs. 
 
 [From the Presbyterian, Jan. 13, 1866.] 
 
 DE MORTUIS, NIL NISI VERITAS. 
 
 VINDICATION OF LUTHER. 
 
 Messrs. Editors : — Living very much retired, 
 I do not know how the question of the violation of 
 the law of God — the Sabbath law, which is the first 
 he ever enacted for man — has been of late brought 
 before the public. I have not seen the Philadelphia 
 press to any extent, but have been told that The 
 Press is the leading, if not the only one in this as- 
 sault on the laws of this Commonwealth, which have 
 stood, some of them, one hundred and sixty years. 
 
184 APPENDIX. 
 
 And yet the proprietor has the courage (shall I call 
 it ?) to affirm, in his letter to a committee of Meth- 
 odist brethren, in his issue of 25th December, thus : 
 "This controversy is of your own seeking" — and 
 " I will show to the community before which you 
 have so rudely dragged me," etc. How far the 
 editor had carried his war upon the laws of God 
 and the Commonwealth before these brethren called 
 upon him in private, I am not aware ; and what 
 they have said or written in reply to his three long 
 columns as above, I am also ignorant. But I sup- 
 pose it was their duty, and one easily accomplished, 
 to expose his plausible, yet flims}^ arguments. This, 
 Messrs. Editors, is not what is proposed in this pa- 
 per. I leave that work in the able hands of the 
 committee, and simply proceed to expose the unfair- 
 ness of the editor's assault upon the venerable Re- 
 formers, whom b'^ conscripts into the army he is 
 levying against the Sabbath and the clergy of Phil- 
 adelphia. To vindicate the dead, and the truth they 
 taught, is my single object. The editor quotes 
 Martin Luther, saying : "As for the Sabbath, or 
 Sunday, there is no necessity for its observance, 
 and if we do so, the reason ought to be, not because 
 Moses commanded it, but because nature likewise 
 teaches us to give ourselves, from time to time, a 
 day of rest, in order that man and beast may re- 
 cruit their strength, and that we may go and hear 
 the word of God preached. Keep the Sabbath holy 
 for its use both to body and mind ; but if anywhere 
 
APPENDIX. 185 
 
 the day is made holy for the mere day's sake; if 
 anywhere any one sets up its observance on the 
 Jewish foundation — then I order you to "work on it, 
 to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it, to do 
 anything that shall remove this encroachment on 
 Christian spirit and liberty." 
 
 And this is quoted in the nineteenth century to 
 sustain a breach of the laws of Pennsylvania and 
 of God, by his agents in his office and on the streets ! 
 Now, it would induce to confidence if he had given 
 reference to chapter and verse in Luther's works. 
 How can I find this paragraph in the fifteen or 
 twenty volumes of Luther's works, in order to scru- 
 tinize the correctness of the translation, and exam- 
 ine the passage in its connection? But as he states 
 it, how does it make in favour of his Sunday work 
 or Sunday cars? 
 
 1. Do the committee against whom he pours out 
 his wrath — does any one of the one hundred and 
 forty-three clergymen who signed the letter to the 
 Mayor against Sabbath-breaking, advocate "the as- 
 cetic and gloomy observance of the first day of the 
 week," as the editor of The Press asserts? 
 
 2. Does any one of them advocate the sacred 
 observance of the day "because Moses commanded 
 it?" Surely the editor knows better. Surely he 
 knows we observe the sacred rest day because God 
 commanded it in the voice of thunder from Sinai, 
 and wrote it with his own finger on the table of 
 stone. Is it possible this intelligent gentleman does 
 
 16 * 
 
186 APPENDIX. 
 
 not know that this fourth precept of the moral law 
 does not bless the seventh day and hallow it, but 
 the Sabbath day. Now Sabbath means simply rest; 
 and the word is never applied in the Bible but to a 
 sacred, religious rest, and the phrase seventh day is 
 never, in the book of God, applied and used as the 
 name of the holy rest commanded from Sinai. 
 
 3. Does the editor mean to assert — he manifestly 
 does by implication assert — but does he mean to as- 
 sert that the clergy and Christian people of Penn- 
 sylvania " set up its observance on the Jewish foun- 
 dation?" Most assuredly, no man can have become 
 a man in this State, and not know that it is a 
 Christian commonwealth, and never professed to 
 build "on the Jewish foundation;" and yet it affords 
 to its Jewish citizens all civil and religious rights, 
 as Justice Bell, in Specht versus Commonwealth, 
 has most conclusively shown. 
 
 4. What, then, does Luther mean? Exactly 
 what all evangelical men, clergy, and laity mean, 
 that the Sabbaths of the Jews, (of which five are 
 mentioned in Leviticus xxiii., which are called Sab- 
 baths, and yet distinct from the regular hebdomadal 
 rest,) and even the Jewish appendages to this origi- 
 nal Sabbatism are not binding on us now, but this 
 first law of creation stands clear of all these 
 Levitical sufiixes; just as the law of marriage and 
 the law of superiors and inferiors — the Seventh and 
 the Fifth Commandments had appended to them 
 the penalty of death for their violation. Luther 
 
APPENDIX. 187 
 
 vrould say the same of both these commands if you 
 attempt to eDforce them "on the Jewish founda- 
 tion." So on the first table beside the Sabbath law 
 is the Third Commandment, which has appended to 
 it in Leviticus xxiv. 16, the death penalty. In 
 abandoning -'this Jewish foundation," do we aban- 
 don the moral law of the Third Commandment? 
 When the clergy of Pennsylvania take this ground, 
 it will be time enough for the editor of the Press to 
 work and to ride, to dance and feast on this holy 
 day, the very end to which his doctrine inevitably 
 leads. He has been entangled by the logical trap 
 of a conditional proposition. Luther says, " If we 
 do so" — "if any where." And it is convenient 
 for my anti-Sabbath friend to drop the if. But now, 
 you may get an absolute proposition out of a con- 
 ditional one, but only if you remove the if. If the 
 editor of the Press succeeds — if Sunday secular 
 papers are cried through our streets by ragged run- 
 ners and on Sunday cars, Christianity will be 
 doomed to a terrible check. Now, if the editor 
 drops the if out of this proposition, then he may 
 assert that Theophilus means that Christianity will 
 shortly be doomed to a terrible check. Would this 
 be true ? No more true than that Luther opposed 
 the Sabbath. 
 
 5. But the contrary is his doctrine in this very 
 passage, " Keep the Sabbath holy, for its use both 
 to body and mind " — the things which he says there 
 is no necessity for its observance are these very 
 
188 APPENDIX. 
 
 Jewish appendages ; and he goes on to prove the 
 necessity for its Christian observance, because the 
 laws of nature — the laws which God has given to 
 our physical nature require cessation from labour, 
 require just such a moral law as he wrote on the 
 table of stone. 
 
 6. But how does Luther say the Sabbath is to be 
 spent? In printing political, secular, advertising 
 matter, and hawking the sheets through the streets, 
 and forcing conductors and car-drivers, who labour 
 seventeen hours per day for six days of the seven, 
 to work also on the day God has commanded to be 
 observed as a day of sacred rest? "Have you no 
 pity, no charity for these poor men thus forced" — 
 as you say your men are forced, but by yourself, 
 sir ? Does Luther say the Sabbath is for cars to 
 run, that men may go away from God's sanctuary, 
 and hold " intercourse with nature and her ten 
 thousand blessings," as you say? Oh, no. Luther 
 speaks not in the language of infidelity. He says 
 — " That man and beast may recruit their strength, 
 and that we may go and hear the word of God 
 preached." Not rush out to the country, and wor- 
 ship nature in the grog-shops at the shanties by the 
 way, and furnish employment for the policemen and 
 magistrates. 
 
 7. Luther (quoted in Fairbairn, vol. ii., p. 467,) 
 says : — " It is good, and even necessary, that men 
 should keep a particular day in the week, on which 
 they are to meditate, hear, and learn — for all can- 
 
APPENDIX. 189 
 
 not command every day ; and nature also requires 
 that one day in the week should be kept quiet, with- 
 out labour for either man or beast." And as quoted 
 in GilfiUan, Luther (vol. v., p. 23,) says: — "Nay, 
 after the fall, God sanctified that seventh day ; in 
 other words, he instructed his family on that day, 
 as is testified by the ofi'erings of his sons, Cain and 
 Abel." "Wherefore the Sabbath was, from the 
 beginning of the world, set apart to divine worship." 
 
 VINDICATION OF CALVIN. 
 
 Messrs. Editors : — The Press calls upon the 
 great Swiss reformer to aid it in its assaults upon 
 the laws of the state, the law of God, and the 
 clergy. Let us see what Calvin teaches in his ex- 
 position of the Fourth Commandment. Insti. B. 
 IL, chap. viii. sec. xxix. " When the Lord means 
 to intimate, in the prophets, that religion is totally 
 subverted, he complains that his Sabbaths are pol- 
 luted, violated, neglected, and profaned ; as though, 
 in case of that duty beiug neglected, there remained 
 no other way in which he could be honoured.* On 
 the other hand, he notices the observance of it with 
 singular encomiums." Then after citing Jer. xvii. 
 21, 22, 27 ; Isaiah Ivi. 2 ; Neh. ix. 14, he remarks, 
 
 * Here he refers to Num. xiii. 22 ,• Ezek. xxii. 12, and xxii. 8, 
 xxiii. 38. 
 
190 APPENDIX. 
 
 " We see the singular estimation in which it is held 
 above all the commandments of the law." 
 
 After striking at the superstitious observances of 
 the Jews on the seventh day, he says, " Christians, 
 therefore, ought to depart from all superstitious ob- 
 servance of days." This is the sense in which he 
 understands the abrogation; it is the seventh, as 
 slavishly and superstitiously kept by Jews ; this he 
 condemns, and proceeds in sec. xxxii. " Though the 
 Sabbath is abrogated, yet it is still customary among 
 us to assemble on stated days for hearing the word, 
 for breaking the mystic bread, and for public 
 prayers ; and also to allow servants and labourers a 
 remission from their labour." Sec. xxxiii. "I am 
 obliged to be rather more diffuse on this point, be- 
 cause, in the present age, some unquiet spirits (and 
 they are not all dead) have been raising noisy con- 
 tentions respecting the Lord's day. They complain 
 that Christians are tinctured with Judaism, because 
 they retain any observance of days. But I reply, 
 that the Lord's day is not observed by us upon the 
 principles of Judaism." He defends and explains 
 the change of day : '' Now, whereas, it was expedi- 
 ent, for the destruction of superstition, that the day 
 which the Jews kept holy was abolished ; and, it 
 being necessary for the preservation of decorum, 
 order, and peace in the Christian church, another 
 day was appointed for the same use." In sec. xxxiv. 
 he refutes this figment, and points again to the true 
 Sabbath of the Lord, on which a Christian man 
 
APPENDIX. 191 
 
 should ^' observe the legitimate order of the church, 
 appointed for the hearing of the word, for the 
 administration of the sacraments, and for public 
 prayer ; and we should not unkindly oppress those 
 who are subject to us. Thus vanish all the dreams 
 of false prophets, who, in past ages, have infected 
 the people with a Jewish notion, affirming but the 
 ceremonial part of this commandment, which, ac- 
 cording to them, is the appointment of the seventh 
 day, has been abrogated, but that the moral part of 
 it, that is the observance of one day in seven, still 
 remains. But this is only changing the day in con- 
 tempt of the Jews, while they retain the same 
 opinion of the holiness of the day ; for on this 
 principle the same mysterious signification would 
 still be attributed to particular days, which they for- 
 merly retained among the Jews. And, indeed, we 
 see what advantages have arisen from such a senti- 
 ment. For those who adhere to it, far exceed the 
 Jews, in a gross, carnal, and superstitious observance 
 of the Sabbath." 
 
 This is the passage which the Press quotes, thus : 
 ^' The false prophets have said that nothing was ab- 
 rogated, but what was ceremonial in the command- 
 ment; but the moral part remains, to wit: the 
 observance of one day in seven. This is nothing 
 else than to insult the Jews, by changing the day, and 
 yet mentally attributing to it the same sanctity, 
 thus retaining the same typical distinction of days 
 as had place among the Jews." 
 
192 APPENDIX. 
 
 The reader will see how garbled and unfair is the 
 Press quotation, forcing a meaning upon Calvin's 
 language, the contrary of what he does in reality 
 mean. In this xxxivth section Calvin reprobates 
 and repudiates the superstitious observance of the 
 Jews, in regard to the seventh day, and rebukes 
 those who, in past ages, changed the day, but re- 
 tained the superstitions. This utter perversion will 
 further appear from the following testimony of 
 Calvin from other parts of his writings. 
 
 From his comment on Exod. xx. 8-11: "While 
 the day has ceased as the figure of a spiritual and 
 important mystery, there are other and different 
 ends for which it is set apart ; and in respect of 
 the duty of resting from all earthly cares and em- 
 ployments" [is this wide enough to take in The 
 Press, its ragged hawkers, and its street Sunday 
 cars ?] " and applying to spiritual exercises in pub- 
 lic and private, the necessity of a Sabbath is com- 
 mon to us with the people of old." And on Exod. 
 xvi. 28, he says : " Under the observance of the 
 Sabbath is comprehended the sum of all piety." 
 Would this cover The Press' work, street hawking 
 and Sunday cars? "And hereby," says Calvin, in 
 Sec. 34, on Deut. v., " it appears what affection to- 
 wards all Christianity, and toward the serving of 
 God, seeing we make that thing" [the Sabbath] "an 
 occasion of drawing off ourselves from God, which 
 is given us as an help to bring us nearer unto him ; 
 and be we once gone astray, it serveth to pull us 
 
APPENDIX. 193 
 
 quite and clean away — and is not that a devilish 
 spite of men ?" Will The Press answer this ques- 
 tion of Calvin, and explain how this "devilish spite 
 of men," against God's holy law of the Sabbath, 
 promotes piety and good morals ? But again, in 
 the same sermon, Calvin says, '' He who setteth at 
 naught the Sabbath day, has cast under foot all 
 God's service, as much as is in him; and if the 
 Sabbath day be not observed, all the rest shall be 
 worth nothing." Again, in his exposition of John 
 V. 17 : " The Sabbath, or rest of God — le repos de 
 Dieu — is not idleness, but true perfection, which 
 brings along with it a calm state of peace." And 
 on Jer. xvii. : " The city will be safe, if God be 
 truly and devoutly worshipped, and this is attested 
 by the sanctification of the Sabbath." "Wor- 
 shipped" how, Mr. Calvin, thou aid-de-camp of The 
 Press ! — in the printing-office ? in the hawker's bun- 
 dle ? in the street cars carrying out their thousands 
 of worshippers to the country to keep the peace of 
 the city ? Is this what you mean ? And if not, 
 why were you summoned up as a witness in favour 
 of these forms of worship ? But where, then, in 
 Calvin's view, is the safety of the city, when The 
 Press' reformation shall have been perfected ? 
 Again, in Henry's Life and Times of John Calvin, 
 Vol. I., p. 112, Calvin says : " The Sabbath is the 
 back of a spiritual substance, the use of which is 
 still in force, of denying ourselves, of renouncing 
 all our own thoughts and affections, and of bidding 
 17 
 
194 APPENDIX. 
 
 farewell to one and all of our own employ^nents, so 
 that God may reign in us, then of employing our- 
 selves in the worship of God." 0, John Calvin ! 
 how could you say this, " bid farewell to one and 
 all of our own employments ?" Why, sir, you were 
 called into court by your friend to support, by your 
 testimony, his right duly to testify and act against 
 the law of God's Sabbath and the laws of Pennsyl- 
 vania, so that your summoner might put down both, 
 and be free to worship God unmolested in his print- 
 ing-office, where he works hard at his " enterprise, 
 commenced in the best spirit, and conducted for no 
 other purpose but the public good;" no profits from 
 his labour — all for the public good ! Thus, Mr. 
 Calvin, you have played Balaam to the King of 
 Moab ; he brought you from the east, saying, Come, 
 curse me, Israel, his law and his Sabbath, and lo ! 
 thou hast blessed them altogether. 
 
 But let the truth come on ; Calvin is not through 
 yet : in Ser. 93, on Deut. v., he says, " If we em- 
 ploy the Lord's day to make good cheer, to sport 
 ourselves, to go to games and pastimes, shall God 
 in this be honoured ? Is it not mockery ? Is not 
 this an unhallowing of his name?" 0, John Cal- 
 vin ! You have ruined the cause you were brought 
 in to support. Why, sir, this which you call unhal- 
 lowing^ mocking^ is the very thing advocated and 
 demanded as a right by the anti-Sabbath men of 
 this city. Read Isaiah Iviii. 13, 14, and Gilfillan. 
 
APPENDIX. 195 
 
 VINDICATION OF MELANCTHON AND CRAN- 
 MER. 
 
 Messrs. Editors : — The Press arrays Melanc- 
 thon against the Sabbath and its friends, thus — 
 " Melancthon says, ' They who think the observance 
 of the Lord's day has been appointed by the au- 
 thority of the Church, instead of the Sabbath, as a 
 thing necessary, greatly err.' " Here is unfairness 
 again. Why are we not referred to that portion of 
 his writings whence the quotation is made ? Was 
 the editor afraid its accuracy, or the drift of its 
 connection might show a different meaning? But 
 history shows Melancthon's views were coincident 
 with Luther's and Calvin's. Melancthon, in the 
 Confession of Saxony, which he wrote, says : — 
 ^' There hath been at all times, even from the be- 
 ginning of mankind, a certain order of public meet- 
 ings. There hath been also a certain distinction 
 of times, and of some other ceremonies." Thus, 
 with Luther and Calvin, Melancthon held the Sab- 
 bath, or day of sacred rest, to have been ordained 
 from the beginning of mankind. See Hall's Sar- 
 mony, p. 402 ; and on pages 435 and 436 he cites 
 from the same Confession words written by Melanc- 
 thon, thus :— " We thank God * * =^^ for that 
 even from the first beginning of mankind he hath 
 preserved the public ministry of the gospel, and 
 honest assemblies, who himself hath also set apart 
 certain times for the same.''' And the Augsburg 
 
196 APPENDIX. 
 
 Confession says: — "Whereupon the apostles re- 
 tained not the seventh day, but did rather . take the 
 first day of the week for that use, that by it they 
 might admonish the godly, both of their liberty and 
 of Christ's resurrection." ''It was meet," says 
 Melancthon, " that the apostle should on this ac- 
 count — the resurrection of Christ — have changed 
 the day." Wills' Practical Sabbatarian, p. 512. 
 And this is the man whom the Press presses into 
 its unhallowed work of profaning the Christian 
 Sabbath by press-work, street-hawking, and Sunday 
 cars ! But this ungracious struggle to make the 
 Reformer speak a language the contradictory of 
 what he does speak, cannot succeed among a Sab- 
 bath-keeping people. They Avill go behind garbled 
 quotations without reference, and they will unveil 
 the fraud. Philip agrees with. Martin, saying, 
 "Wherefore the Sabbath was, from the beginning 
 of the world, set apart to divine worship." And 
 Martin agrees with Philip, " That the apostles 
 should, on account of Christ's resurrection, have 
 changed the day." 
 
 Cranmer is the next witness called to the stand 
 to testify in favour of Sunday cars, and Sunday 
 printing, in violation of God's law enacted for man 
 at his creation, and of Pennsylvania's law enacted 
 in 1705. There is effrontery in this attempt at de- 
 ception which merits some sharpness of rebuke. 
 Cranmer lived in the midst of the terrible conflict 
 between Popery and Christianity — in the reign of 
 
APPENDIX. 197 
 
 Henry VIII. and Edward YL, and sealed his testi- 
 mony to the truth under bloody Mary's persecuting 
 reign, A. D. 1556. Among many points of dispu- 
 tation between Papists and Protestants was the 
 question of holy days ; the former contending to 
 blood and fire for the obseryance of many days as 
 sacred and obligatory, simply and wholly on the 
 ground of church authority ; the latter almost uni- 
 versally repudiating all but the Sabbath, and that 
 solely on God's authority, and involving the change 
 to the first day of the week. Now, in this transi- 
 tion state — this state of disputation and bloody 
 strife — it were most unreasonable to look for those 
 clear and definite views which characterized later 
 days. The Archbishop, however, has recorded his 
 testimony. In a tract published in 1540 and 1543, 
 and designed as a union measure, for it was signed 
 by five Papal bishops, as well as by Cranmer and 
 Latimer, entitled, "A Necessary Doctrine and Eru- 
 dition for any Christian Man," our doctrine is dis- 
 tinctly stated, along with some points which are not 
 correct — " The Fourth Commandment is distin- 
 guished from the other nine, the latter being merely 
 moral, the former ceremonial, as regards 'rest from 
 bodily labour on the seventh day,' which belonged 
 only to the Jews : but moral as regards the spiritual 
 rest from sin, which binds Christians at all times — 
 the command, however, binding also to rest from all 
 bodily labour, and to the exclusive service of God 
 at certain times." This testimony is pretty strong, 
 17 « 
 
198 APPENDIX. 
 
 being published at a time v/hen the church authori- 
 ties and the king were not able to prevent all kinds 
 of open profanity, even during the hours of com- 
 munion and mass. 
 
 Cranmer's Catechism (1548) states, "That they 
 must employ and bestow the Sabbath day upon 
 godly works and business — and that to spend the 
 holy days in the neglect of such works, or ' in idle- 
 ness, banqueting, dancing,' etc., is ' a great sin,' for 
 which God punishes us with diverse kinds of plagues, 
 but especially with need and poverty." — G-ilJillan, 
 pp. 37, 38. 
 
 A little later, " Elizabeth first allowed a public 
 company of players to act under her name and au- 
 thority. When a regular theatre was at length 
 established, plays were acted at first onlt/ on Sun- 
 days^ but the actors soon contrived to make four or 
 five Sundays a week." — Gilfillan^ p. 51. On page 
 48 he quotes from Miss Strickland's " Lives of the 
 British Queens," Vol. V., 422: "Unfortunately 
 Elizabeth's respect for the Sabbath was confined to 
 the act of joining in public worship, for the rest of 
 the day was devoted to sports not meet for any 
 Christian lady to witness, much less to provide for 
 the amusement of herself and court ; but Elizabeth 
 shared in the boisterous glee with which they were 
 greeted by the ruder portion of the spectators. 
 Bear and bull baiting, tilts, tourneys, and wrestling 
 were among the noon-day divertissements of the 
 maiden Majesty of England ; dancing, music, cards, 
 
APPENDIX. 199 
 
 and pageants brought up the rear of her Sabbath 
 amusements." Such were the morals of England, 
 necessarily following from the horrible corruptions, 
 with which Cranmer had to contend in the preced- 
 ing reigns, and especially from the utter prostration 
 of the Sabbath. But we defy the Press to show 
 that Cranmer, though hardly free from Popish tram- 
 mels, ever sanctioned Sabbath profanation. And 
 now, reader, do you wish to bring about such a state 
 of things in this Christian nation ? If you do, why 
 then patronize the Press in his war upon the laws 
 of God and your country, and advocate the running 
 of street-cars on the Lord's holy day. 
 
 VINDICATION OF BAXTER. 
 
 Messrs. Editors : — Among the witnesses adduced 
 by the Press is Baxter. Let us keep in mind the 
 purpose for which he has been brought into court — • 
 ''All of whom," says the Press, "with others equally 
 orthodox, take distinct issue with your assumptions 
 in regard to the ascetic and gloomy observance of 
 the first day of the week." I have shown that the 
 insinuation, that the Christians of Philadelphia 
 maintain and practise the ascetic and gloomy ob- 
 servance of the Sabbath, is wholly unfounded in 
 truth — that it is precisely the contradictory of truth. 
 The Press assuredly knows that the Protestant 
 clergy of Philadelphia never advocated gloomy and 
 
200 APPENDIX. 
 
 superstitious melancholy in sacred things. It knows 
 that cheerfulness in the discharge of their religious 
 duties is universal in all Protestant churches here. 
 Why, then, this reckless innuendo ? Why ? Man- 
 ifestly it is the play of the sophist — it is a loop-hole 
 through which to back out of a difficulty. But it 
 shall not avail. No one can read his words without 
 seeing that he meant to induce his readers, unac- 
 quainted with church history, to believe these 
 reformers were on his side of the question. This 
 was his design, meaning and intent ; but so worded 
 as to leave a door of retreat, should any one correct 
 his groundless insinuations. We have seen that thus 
 he falsifies Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, and Cran- 
 mer. Let us now cross-examine Baxter, and see 
 how far he supports the Press' violation of God's 
 and man's laws about the day of sacred rest. I 
 quote from the folio edition of his works, vol. iii. — 
 that is, from his treatise on the Sabbath — one of 
 the best defences of the Christian rest-day ever 
 published. 
 
 On p. ^Q^ Mr. Baxter throws his general argu- 
 ment into syllogistic form ; his conclusion is in these 
 words : — " Therefore the first day of the week is 
 separated to holy worship by the Apostles, by the 
 inspiration of the Holy Ghost." In support of 
 this he lays down five distinct propositions ; I quote- 
 the fourth and the fifth :— " 4. That the Apostles 
 did actually separate or appoint the first day of the 
 week for holy worship, especially in church assem- 
 
APPENDIX. - 201 
 
 blies." He then quotes his proofs. "5. That this 
 act of theirs was done by the guidance or inspiration 
 of the Holy Ghost." Having demonstrated this, 
 he raises the question, p. 782 — " How should the 
 Lord's day be kept or used?" To this he responds 
 thus — ^^A7iswer. I. The day being set apart to holy 
 worship, must accordingly be spent therein. To 
 sanctify it, is to spend it in holy exercises." 
 
 " II. The principal work of the day is the com- 
 munion of Christians in the ]juhlic exercises of God's 
 worship. They — the Christians — spent almost all 
 the day together." 
 
 " III. . . Therefore it is a day of thanksgiving 
 and prayer ; and the special services of it must be 
 loAidatory and joyful exercises.'' 
 
 Baxter finds no time for secular employments, no 
 room for type-setting and press-work, and hawking 
 Sunday papers through the streets in violation of 
 law ; no time for Sunday plays and sports, for bull 
 and bear-baits, and all kinds of plays. He had had 
 a surfeit of this during the time he spent at court, 
 where, when a youth, he had been introduced by Sir 
 Henry Newport, Master of the Revels ; " But being 
 entertained there with a play instead of a sermon, 
 on the Lord's day afternoon, and hearing little 
 preaching except what was against the Puritans, he 
 found a month's experience of court-life sufficient, 
 and retired with disgust." — {GilfiUan, p. 130.) He 
 could not, even when a boy, endure " the King's 
 Declaration for Sports on Sundays." the Press, 
 
202 APPENDIX. 
 
 how its chosen witnesses turn traitors to its cause ! 
 Baxter is nearly as bad as Luther and Calvin. But 
 let us hear him again : 
 
 In chap, x., p. 784, he raises the question, "How 
 the Lord's day should be spent ; or what is unlaw- 
 ful on it?" This he answers in distinct propositions. 
 "I. Undoubtedly it must not be spent in wickedness 
 — in gluttony, or drunkenness, chambering, or wan- 
 tonness, strife, or envying ; or any of those works 
 of the flesh which are at all times sinful. An evil 
 work is most unsuitable to a holy day." 
 
 And yet, alas ! what day hath more rioting, and 
 excess of meat and drink, and wantonness, and sloth, 
 and lust, than it ? How very unfortunate is The 
 Press in its witnesses ! At every point they fail 
 him, and Baxter sweeps the feet from him entirely. 
 But worse, and more of it. " II. It ought not to 
 be spent in our own worldly business." No provi- 
 sion, Mr. Press, for your "poor men" to earn a 
 pittance on the Sabbath, to eke out the scant wages 
 of your "subs" on the week days. Alas, no! 
 Baxter has "no pity on these poor men," as The 
 Press counts pity. They must not " walk all the 
 way in day time to Seventh and Chestnut and back, 
 at or in the night." No wages earned on Sunday, 
 in direct violation of the laws of Pennsylvania ! 
 What shall these "poor men" do for bread and 
 sour-crout, seeing they cannot earn enough in six 
 days to keep them from the painful necessity of 
 selling their freedom, and becoming slaves to a hard 
 
APPENDIX. 203 
 
 master. Well, let us see if there is any relief in 
 Baxter's III. answer. " The Lord's day must not 
 be spent in tempting, diverting, unnecessary recrea- 
 tions, or pleasures of the flesh" — the very things 
 for which The Press advocates the running of cars 
 on Sunday. Oh, sir, why did you not interrogate 
 your witness a little before you summoned him up 
 to the stand? Why, he is ruining your cause. But 
 now that he is here by your summons, we have a 
 legal right to cross-examine, and we are not done 
 yet. Mr. Baxter, please tell the court what you 
 mean by "pleasures of the flesh." Ans. ''Bowls, 
 hunting, cards, dice, stage plays, races, dancing, 
 bear-baitings, cock-fights, or any such sensual sports. ' ' 
 He details, with great severity, in five classes of 
 these sensual delights. 
 
 Then, on p. 786, he takes up an objection. "But 
 poor, labouring people must have some recreation, 
 and they cannot, through their poverty, have leisure 
 any other day." This is precisely The Press' ob- 
 jection. How does his own witness meet it ? Thus : 
 " Alas ! a sad argument to be used by them who, 
 by racking of rents, do keep them in poverty." 
 We might, as perfectly parallel, say — By stinted 
 wages their employers cut them ofi" from reasonable 
 recreations on week days. The late John McDon- 
 ogh, of New Orleans, gave his slaves always Satur- 
 day afternoon to themselves ; and on the basis of 
 this, under his advice, they worked out their free- 
 dom, and he sent eighty-one of them to Liberia. 
 
204 APPENDIX. 
 
 Mr. Baxter's third response is thus : " Is it their 
 bodies, or their minds, that need recreation ? When 
 the body is tired with toilsome labour, it is ease, 
 rather than toilsome dancings and plays, that are 
 fit to recreate it." When the labourers on the cars, 
 or in the printing-press, the factory, anywhere, re- 
 turn to their homes on Saturday night, Baxter says 
 most truly it is ease — and he italicises it — it is ease 
 they need, and hence God, who understands their 
 nature probably as well as The Press editor does, 
 has provided this recreating ease in the Sabbath 
 law. But our most liberal Sabbath-keeping oppo- 
 nents, instead of permitting their employees tg en- 
 joy the rest day at their ease, force theiji into the 
 printing-office or the cars, to conduct or drive, or 
 to rush away from the holy sanctuaries into the 
 haunts of dissipation ; the way-side traps in the 
 country, whence they return fatigued, wearied, and 
 worn down with recreation, if not battered, bruised, 
 and bloody, the most natural and not uncommon 
 result of worshipping at the shrine of Bacchus. 
 Thus much for Baxter's testimony in support of 
 The Press. 
 
 VINDICATION OF KNOX. 
 In his new-born zeal against tlie day of sacred 
 rest, Mr. Forney has given frequent cause for a 
 smile of pity and contempt, by referring to the re- 
 
APPENDIX. 205 
 
 formers as if they were on his side of the conflict. 
 Just think, ye Presbyterians who support the creed, 
 think of John Knox being called in to aid in a cru- 
 sade against the holy Sabbath ! Only think of the 
 indomitable and stern reprover of all iniquity, in 
 whose presence the Queen of Scotland trembled 
 with rage and alternately wept over her sins, while 
 Knox reprimanded her for her errors. Yes ! this 
 same Knox, "who never feared the face of man," 
 is summoned in by an editor of a Philadelphia news- 
 paper, to help him to defend Sunday work in print- 
 ing and distributing a newspaper and running street 
 cars ! Is not this laughable ! ! Surely no Presby- 
 terian need be informed that Knox did more in call- 
 ing out from Rome, and forming and moulding the 
 Kirk of Scotland, than the extremest of the rigid 
 disciplinarians. Bishop Burnet (cited in Gilfillan, 
 p. 160) says, ." They kept scandalous persons under 
 a severe discipline : for breach of Sabbath, for an 
 oath, or the least disorder in drunkenness, persons 
 were cited before the Church-Session, and were sol- 
 emnly reproved for it." "In 1754, the Sessions 
 commenced the practice of employing individuals 
 of their number to traverse the towns on Sabbaths 
 and other seasons of public worship, for the purpose 
 of causing notice to be taken of such as should be 
 found "raging abroad upon the streets, and of 
 having them cited before the Session." And this 
 extreme rigidness continued for a hundred and fifty 
 years. Suppose they had caught The Press col- 
 is 
 
206 APPENDIX. 
 
 porteurs, how then? In 1641, Charles I. visited 
 Scotland, and attended the High Church, Edin- 
 burgh, in the forenoon of the Sabbath, but spent 
 the afternoon in playing at golf; Henderson, the 
 minister, conversed with His Majesty on the enor- 
 mity of his offence, and he reformed for the time, 
 (p. 161.) 
 
 In the First Book of Discipline drawn up by 
 Knox,'we read : " The Sabbath must be kept strictly 
 in all towns, both forenoon and afternoon, for hear- 
 ing of the Word ; at afternoon upon the Sabbath, 
 the catechism shall be taught, the children shall be 
 examined, and the baptism administered. Public 
 prayers shall be used upon the Sabbath, as well af- 
 ternoon as before, when sermons cannot be had.'* 
 And in June, 1562, the Assembly resolved, " that 
 supplication be made to Queen Mary for the pun- 
 ishing of Sabbath-breaking." And again, in 1565, 
 she was memorialized on the " manifest breaking of 
 the Sabbath day, as among the horrible and detest- 
 able crimes" which ought to be punished. In the 
 Assembly of 1562 or 1665, Knox voted approval 
 of the Helvetic Confession, in which these words 
 occur: "We keep the Lord's day, not the Sabbath, 
 by a voluntary observance," and " every church 
 chooses for itself a .certain time for public prayer 
 and the preaching of the gospel;" it declares "that 
 the Lord's day was devoted to religious meetings 
 and sacred leisure, even as early as the times of the 
 apostles, and that it is not left free to every one 
 
APPENDIX. 207 
 
 capriciously to overturn this arrangement of the 
 church," p. 463. Alas ! how sadly Mr. Forney's 
 witnesses forsake him ! 
 
 His next is Milton. In him he is not so unfor- 
 tunate. Milton, like most men of his day, and 
 many in our day, was befogged in the Red Sea — 
 they have not been able to see the difference . be- 
 tween the regular seventh day rest and the extra 
 Sabbaths of the Israelites, of which you have five 
 in Lev. xxiii. Milton was a splendid linguist, and 
 a great poet. He has never enjoyed the reputation 
 of a pious, a godly man. He is claimed by them 
 of that creed as a Unitarian, and all that sect go 
 in for a lively, slack, sportive Sabbath. '' Milton 
 was an Arian," says Hallam. "It is said that the 
 discovery of Milton's Arianism, in this rigid gene- 
 ration, has already impaired the sale of Paradise 
 Lost." This testimony of Hallam coincides with 
 Doctor Johnson's, who says, "Milton grew old with- 
 out any visible worship. In the distribution of his 
 time there was no hour of prayer, either solitary 
 or with his household ; omitting public prayer, he 
 omitted all." " The neglect of prayer in his family 
 was probably a fault for which he condemned him- 
 self." See Johnson's Lives of British Poets, L, 134. 
 This sin of neglecting prayer, altogether is very 
 probably a characteristic of. Sabbath breakers as a 
 class. The Press' vapouring over Milton's argu- 
 ment displays his own ignorance of the subject on 
 which he writes, as well as his symp^fthy with other 
 
208 APPENDIX. 
 
 errors of the great poet. Milton's" arguments have 
 been all answered a hundred times, and far more. 
 The great poet's views of Christian theology, his 
 loose and dangerous doctrines of marriage and di- 
 vorce, and low estimate of the tender sex, all com- 
 bine in putting him in his right place as a foe to 
 praying and keeping holy the Lord's day. It is 
 fortunate for the Sabbath that Milton was not its 
 friend. Doctor Johnson says Ellwood, a Quaker, 
 to whom he acknowledged his indebtedness for the 
 hint, out of which sprung the "Paradise Regained," 
 read Latin to him every day in the week, except 
 Sunday." 
 
 [From the American Preshytcrian.'] 
 
 DEISiM OPPOSED TO THE DAY OF SACRED REST. 
 
 *' A man is known by the (book) company he keeps." 
 
 Mr. Editor : — Having recently read a work "On 
 the Institution of the Sabbath Day," and marked 
 some forty passages decidedly, and more or less, ex- 
 plicitly, denying the divine authority of the sacred 
 Scriptures; I herewith send you apart of them to 
 show how open infidelity and hostility to the Lord's 
 day affiliate. I give them just as I marked them, 
 in the order of the pages. 
 
 ** Yet in the reformatory systems of the day com- 
 mon sense is iaid aside for Sabbath enactments, 
 
APPENDIX. 209 
 
 wliich it is vainly believed are sufficient to reform 
 the world, and for theological dogmas, which above 
 all else, have ever been the cause of crime, suffer- 
 ing, and degradation." — Page 7. 
 
 "And they refer to the second chapter of Genesis, 
 wherein it is stated that the heavens and earth be- 
 ing finished, God rested on the seventh day from all 
 his works, and blessed and sanctified the day. 
 
 " In this account of the creation nature speaks 
 one language, the Bible another. Shall we put 
 aside those unchangeable marks of a creation long 
 anterior to that recorded, to be guided by records 
 written when and by whom no one knows ? 
 
 "The account in the book of Genesis can only 
 be considered as an allegory calculated to please 
 children and ignorant men. In its literal sense it is 
 entitled to no confidence. Were it even true, it 
 does not warrant the conclusion which has been 
 drawn from it." — Page 18. 
 
 " No one at this remote period can decide why 
 the Sabbath was instituted." — Page 31. 
 
 "And it seems highly probable that at this period, 
 in the reign of Josiah, [864 years after Sinai,] the 
 Pentateuch was promulgated for the first time." — 
 Page 44. 
 
 " Can any intelligent mind, believe that the 
 Father of Mercies has provided a conservative 
 power to preserve and uphold all physical things, 
 and yet has left man a prey to chance ? made him 
 dependent for truth upon the Scriptures, which so 
 
 18* . 
 
210 APPENDIX. 
 
 late as the year 1516 Tyndale was burnt at the 
 stake for translating into the English language?" — 
 Page 175. 
 
 " Can any one believe that this book, ambiguous 
 in its language, uncertain in its conjectures, is de- 
 signed by the Almighty to be the rule- of life for 
 man?" 
 
 " The authority of th©.laws of Moses, which was 
 adhered to by the Puritans, has greatly lessened, 
 but the authority of the Scriptures generally, among 
 those who profess to be the teachers of men, remains 
 in its pristine vigour; and if our reasoning is true, 
 such a doctrine is of incalculable evil to the morals 
 and welfare of society. From infancy, children are 
 instructed that this book is 'the Word of God,' the 
 ' revelation of his will, the guide of life,' and with 
 these preconceived opinions, false in their very na- 
 ture, every effort to reform society fails." — Page 
 194. 
 
 " I touch upon the subject of the clergy with re- 
 gret, because I am liable to be misunderstood;" (not 
 at all, sir, you are perfectly well understood, to be 
 a malicious, bitter, slanderer of the whole evangelical 
 clergy,) "yet there can be no doubt, that it is 
 mainly through their influence that the Sabbath 
 superstition is spread through the country. But 
 the system of paying men for preaching and pray- 
 ing is liable to great abuse." — Page 198. 
 
 " The first day of the week is the great harvest 
 of the clergy ; hence so little reliance is to be placed 
 
APPENDIX. ^ 211 
 
 upon anything they say on the subject." '^ Many 
 
 of them would take either side of the Sabbath ques-' 
 tion, as their interest might dictate." — Page 199. 
 "Whose feelings I would not willingly wound." — 
 P. 198. How brotherly thee is, Friend ! " Whether 
 in religion or literature, the clergy have always been 
 behind the age ; from them have emanated all the 
 persecutions which have disgraced the name of reli- 
 gion. Their prejudices are so deep, and their in- 
 terest so immediate, that it is scarcely possible that 
 their statements should be correct." — Page 200. 
 
 " The Esquimaux and the Hottentots are effectu- 
 ally saved as Christians can be. The institution 
 of a Sabbath has never come to them ; but they 
 understand the great moral principles of right and 
 wrong as perfectly as we do." — Page 242. (If by 
 '•we," he means the little sectarian cli(fue to which 
 the author belongs, it is probably true.) 
 
 " Jesus left no writing behind him as a rule for 
 others — he directed none to do so." — Page 244. 
 
 Thus infidelity marks the book from beginning to 
 ending. It totally repudiates the Gospel. This is 
 the book recommended by The Press, and which 
 led that paper into its false quotations. What select 
 company Colonel Forney keeps. 
 
INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Aflfections, religious cultivated 206 
 
 Atonement-day, a Sabbath 79 
 
 B 
 
 Baking, cooking, &c., on Sabbath 148 
 
 Bayonets only can keep order, where no Sabbath 135 
 
 Beasts protected by Fourth Commandment 156 
 
 Bible, its opposers bad; its friends good 44 
 
 Bow in the clouds, a sign 96 
 
 C 
 
 Christmas not a Sabbath 84 
 
 Commandments, Ten — no penalties in 77 
 
 Commandments, Ten, their matter proves them common to man 57 
 
 Commandments, Ten, organic, constitutional law 52, 55, 86 
 
 Covenant, adopting the Ten Words 27, 29 
 
 Cromwell's good government, owipg to Sabbatic observance 134 
 
 D 
 
 Day for Sabbath, first or seventh? 115 
 
 Decalogue, its age 39 
 
 Duties, Sabbath, family. Sabbath-school, sanctuary 150, 152 
 
 Duty, can't be forced Jf, 75 
 
 Eagle banner, a sign or token 99 
 
 Evening, not the beginning of the day 110 
 
 Expenses of irreligion 136 
 
 213 
 
214 INDEX. 
 
 F 
 
 PAQE 
 
 Feasts of the Jews, Sabbaths, but not the Sabbath 79 
 
 Feasts of the Jews, trumpets, tabernacles, etc 81 
 
 First day rest , 119 
 
 Fourth Commandment analyzed 62 
 
 French Sabbath, very costly 136 
 
 Freedom, not in doing as we please 162 
 
 G 
 
 Great Law of Penn 15 
 
 H 
 
 Health by Sabbath observance 128 
 
 Hebrew constitution 52 
 
 History of Sabbath 9, 19, 20, 21, 27, 37 
 
 Holy to the Lord 142 
 
 I 
 Idleness a sin 149 
 
 J 
 
 Jewish peculiarities no part of the Ten "Words 57, 69 
 
 K 
 
 Knowledge promoted by the Sabbath 130 
 
 L. 
 
 Labour, incessant impossible 127 
 
 Labour for six days obligatory 66 
 
 Law and penalty distinguished ..70,75, 104 
 
 Law, given at Sinai by Christ 31 
 
 Law, municipal distinguished from organic 44 
 
 Liberty, curtailed by laws of Pennsylvania 161 
 
 Liberty not licentiousness 162 
 
 Lord's day, name of Sabbath 123 
 
 M 
 
 Mankind, Sabbath made for 22, 23 
 
 Manna, occasions the restoration of the Sabbath 12 
 
 McLeod of Glasgow, bound for infidelity 18, 59 
 
 Mercy, in the Sabbath 144 
 
 Miracles accompany the Sabbath 31, 32 
 
 Moral character of Sabbath 9 
 
INDEX. 215 
 
 PAQK 
 
 Necessity in regard to works on Sabbath 144 
 
 Not for man to create, but God 144, 147 
 
 Negatively holy, not all 142 
 
 O 
 
 Objections, Sabbath has no history 16 
 
 Objections, Sabbath is a sign 95 
 
 Objections, you must take the penalty 101 
 
 Objections, you must take the seventh day 102 
 
 Opposers of Sabbath — their character an argument vs 45 
 
 Organic law purely moral 62 
 
 P 
 
 Passover, municipal law 80 
 
 Penalty, variable 76 
 
 Penalty, severe to all Jewish laws 77, 101 
 
 Penn's law on Sabbath 125 
 
 Permanency of Sabbath , 32 
 
 Positive duties of Sabbath 149 
 
 Prescription, Sabbath has a right by 40 
 
 Prosperity, even worldly, follows the Sabbath 140 
 
 Public safety in Sabbatic observance 134 
 
 R 
 
 Reason for the Sabbath, proof its moral nature 67, 95 
 
 Rest necessary 127 
 
 Rest proved by natural religion 34, 65 
 
 Representatives of Israel adopt the Ten Words 55, 56 
 
 Rush, Judge, on the reason of the Sabbath 68 
 
 S 
 
 Sabbath, beginning of Ill 
 
 Sabbath, benefits 127 
 
 Sabbath, extra Jewish — annual 79, 80, 81, 82 
 
 Sabbath, change of day 118 
 
 Sabbath, an organic law, not municipal 90, 93 
 
 Sabbath, name never applied but to holy rest 106* 
 
 Sabbath, first or seventh? 133 
 
 Sunday — name 124 
 
 Seventh day, never the name of holy rest 102 
 
216 INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Seventh day, a mysticalnumber of perfection 118 
 
 Sleep a blessing 127 
 
 T 
 
 Ten Words, uttered in thunder 15, 30 
 
 Time — same absolute portion, impossible 102, lOS, 109 
 
 Time, a mere plea for evasion 192, 108 
 
 U 
 
 Usury laws of Jews a charitable rule 74 
 
 V 
 
 Visiting on Sabbath 148 
 
 Voyage round the globe, westward converts a Jewish into a 
 
 Christian Sabbath 148 
 
 -w 
 
 "Washington on foreign influence 159 
 
 Will of God is law 137