universal obligation, our Saviour, by the authority vested by him in his apostles, added his sanction to the appointment, and made it a law of his kingdom after the obligation of the Jewish ritual had ceased, with only the circumstantial change of the first instead of the seventh in the series, as the day of rest, in commemoration of his resurrection.

Not only is the Sabbath ordained by the authority of God, but it is consecrated peculiarly to his service. He claims it as being especially his own. The seventh day, he declares, is the "Sabbath of the Lord thy God." So also, by apostolical authority, we are instructed to call the Christian Sabbath, "the Lord's day." Every day is his, as it is allotted to us of his goodness, and should be spent in obedience to his will; but this is the day which he has consecrated to services. of which himself is more directly the object;-to the study of his character and will; to the exercises of his worship and the publishing of his name; to services in which peculiarly he is honoured, and hist people rejoice in him and are sanctified in conformity to his holiness. "If thou shalt call the Sabbath a delight and the holy of the Lord honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words," declares at once the design and end of the institution, and the manner in which it should be observed. In this manner, and for this end, accordingly, the day has actually been observed in all ages of the world, and under every form of dispensation, Patriarchal, Mosaical, and Christian; has been eminently their day of joy and blessedness; and the means of their preparation for eternal rest in heaven. Wantonly to profane it, is, therefore, open contempt of God; contempt of his authority and his worship; of his power and glory as our Creator, and of his condescension and grace as our Redeemer; of the riches of his mercy in inviting us to draw near to him; and of the example and persuasions of his people, calling us, with one consent and from age to age, to seek his face and glorify his name.

This is not a sin of ignorance. Those who commit it know what they do. There may indeed be a few men who seriously disbelieve in the moral obligation of the Sabbath, and others are blinded by custom in regard to the guilt of certain common violations of it, but it is undeniable that the great mass of those who are seen travelling on the high road Sabbath-days as on other days, for business or pleasure, or driving their boats and cars along our canals and railways, or loading and unloading vessels, fishing, hunting, and in other

forms innumerable, "doing their own ways and finding their own pleasure" on this holy day, know full well that they are sinning against God. They sin presumptuously. They deliberately and with determined purpose, pursue their business and pleasure, notwithstanding the known prohibition of their God. This is to incur guilt at a fearful rate. "The soul that doeth aught presumptuously," it is written in the law, "the same reproacheth the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from among the people. Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken his covenant, that soul shall be utterly cut off, his iniquity shall be upon him." And it is worthy of consideration, that the example introduced to illustrate this law, is that of a Sabbath-breaker; "And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness," (it is immediately subjoined to the law, as the form of expression intimates that the record respects a former transaction, and is here introduced, as I have said, for the sake of illustration,) "they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath-day." And it was of no consequence, as to the point in hand, whether he was gathering sticks or firing a town. The capital circumstance was, that he was sinning presumptuously; and perhaps he took occasion, from the trifling nature of the deed, in itself alone considered, to presume on impunity, in contempt of the authority of God. "And they that found him gathering sticks, brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him." The law respecting presumptuous sins was not at that time ordained. "And the Lord said unto Moses, the man shall surely be put to death all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp." Now under the Gospel we have no such penalty. But we live under the administration of the same God. And can it be supposed that He who ordained this penalty under the law, will have no solemn reckoning with those who knowingly and with determined purpose, are guilty of the numberless and nameless forms of profaning the Sabbath which are common at this day? Was it worse for a man under the dark dispensation of Moses, to gather sticks on the Sabbath, than it is now, under the light of the Gospel, for men to make the resurrection-day of Christ, a day of business and pastime? The sin of Sabbathbreaking is a great sin.

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Not only does this sin involve contempt of God, but it is also an outrage on the rights of men. In most Christian States, there are laws for the protection of society against it, which, at least in its more.

gross and public forms, it tramples under foot. It thus directly opens the door to universal licentiousness; enfeebles the laws of society generally, and more especially laws framed for the restraint of impiety and immorality. Apart from this, it tends more directly to destroy our best blessing, and blot out our dearest hopes. The known propensities of men, and the experience of ages, prove that the Sabbath is necessary to the perpetuation of true religion in the world. Without the Sabbath, the public worship of God could not be maintained; and without public worship, domestic and private worship would not long, and by any considerable number, be continued. The business and scenes of the world, crowding on the senses day after day, with nothing to summon the mind strongly to the consideration of the things of God and eternity, could not fail to supplant all realizing faith and living religion in the minds of men. This is the effect in vast numbers among us now, notwithstanding the Sabbath, and the constant recurrence of the public exercises of religion. What then would remain to hinder the same effect, or to repair the evil, were it once to proceed so far as to procure a general desecration of the Sabbath, and shut up the doors of the sanctuary? The consequence, probably, would not be paganism; for a people once blessed with the Gospel would be too enlightened to adopt such absurdities; and certainly a people that should have cast off the mild yoke of the Gospel, would never submit to such heavy exactions; but it would be downright infidelity-blank atheism-a dereliction of all sense of accountableness-all fear of judgment-all sense of a future being. Whatever importance, then, is in Christianity; whatever sanctifying influence, moral restraint, or supporting hope; whatever comfort to the afflicted, or peace to the dying; whatever blessings pertaining to this life, or glory in the life to come; of such importance is the Sabbath with its ordinances, on which all these are dependent, and proportionable is the evil of profaning it. Whatever evil there would be in blotting Christianity from the world, stopping the succession of redeemed souls, consigning future generations to universal ignorance of the gospel or reigning unbelief, and turning the whole tide of human population down the broad way to eternal death;-that is the evil which Sabbath-breaking tends to produce; for were it universal, this would be the result.

There is another view of this subject, which, though I cannot present it in detail, I would here suggest. There are those who, while they think lightly of religion, profess highly to value our free institu

tions. They boast of liberty, and of the sciences, the arts, the enterprise, the universal education of the people, and the general prosperity and happiness which they claim to be its fruits. And what is liberty? It is the unrestricted enjoyment of our rights, so far as this is consistent with the well-being of society. Those who are deprived of these, whether by a single despot or a lawless multitude, are enthralled. If I may not eat the fruit of my labor, or dwell quietly in my own domicile; if I may not speak my own thoughts, or follow the dictates of my own conscience, what matters it whether I am prevented by the arm of government and the terror of the inquisition, or by the fear of an assassin and the threats of a mob? What liberty, then, can there be among depraved men, without law to restrain their appetites and passions? or what efficacy can there be in law, without a corresponding moral sentiment in the community to sustain it? or what efficacious moral sentiment without religion? or what religion without the Sabbath? It is demonstrable that the Sabbath is no less indespensable to our privileges and hopes as a free people, than it is so all the blessings and immunities which pertain to us as heirs of eternity and accountable subjects of God.

Turn your eyes on those immense regions of the earth where the Sabbath is unknown, and what do you find the moral, social, and civil condition of men there? Shrouded with ignorance and besotted with sin, man there loses his rational character, prostrates himself before beasts and reptiles, stocks and stones; and is "filled with unrighteousness, covetousness, envy, murder, deceit, malignity; without understanding, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful;" a slave to an arbitrary despot; a slave to a superstitious priesthood; a slave to his own vile lusts. But see, over this miserable waste, here and there, verdant spots, fresh with the beauties of holiness, where intelligence, and social virtue, and domestic union, and civil order, and evangelical obedience, communion and hope, are beginning to appear. These have all been redeemed from the wide-spread ruin, by means of the Gospel and its institutions; and, among these institutions, by the Sabbath especially. No sooner did the missionaries of the cross plant themselves there, than they began the celebration of the resurrection-day of the Lord. When any of the heathen began to listen to their report, they taught them the nature and design of the day, and associated them with themselves in its solemnities; and by the divine blessing on the observance of it, the wonderful transformation has been accomplished. Hence, their schools, and colleges,

and sanctuaries, and seats of justice, and other blessings of civilized and Christian life.

See also those portions of the world where the Sabbath was once hallowed, but is now abandoned or given up to pastime. There, indeed, having once exposed the horrors of paganism, it has precluded the restoration of them in their naked forms. Still the desecration of the day has been followed by a degeneracy searcely less deplorable. The body of the people are either sunk in intellectual and moral degradation, as in Asia, or they are corrupted by an infidel rationalism, or a more absolute atheism, as in parts of continental Europe. The knowledge of God, the faith of the cross, the sense of accountableness, the expectation of eternal judgment, are, for the most part, excluded; and without these, men are either held together by the strong hand of despotism, or they are abandoned to whatever intrigue, rapine, or violence, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, may prompt them to. So far as this is not the case, it is prevented chiefly by what remains of a religious observation of the Sabbath among them. Without the Sabbath, the security, the confidence, the harmony, the order, the intelligence, and the civil freedom, which are so important to the happiness of life, are not to be enjoyed in this fallen world; and God, in the mean time, is neither sought nor found; immortality is neither an object of hope nor of dread. None ask for mercy, nor obtain it. Together they tread the downward road, and generation after generation goes down to the chambers of death

Thanks be to God that with us, and a multitude beside, the case is different. On us, of his abundant mercy, the Sabbath shines with its heavenly light. Often as the week returns, it calls us away from the cares and bustle of life, with still small voice, to the house of God. There we are taught to seek and serve our glorious Creator and Redeemer. There on the mercy seat he is inclined to listen to our petitions, receive our praise, accept our repentance, and forgive our sins. There he dispenses those glorious truths which form such as receive them to those kind dispositions, those sober habits, those principles of integrity and faithfulness, and that sense of accountableness to God, which unite men in an orderly and happy society; and which, at the same time, bring them to that peace with God, that conformity to his holiness, and that hope of glory, which alone can comfort them under the evils of life, sustain them in the hour of death, and prepare them for a blessed immortality. What then are