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sins, while they are the signs, are not the measures of the sin within; and while they are terrible proofs that it exists, still leave us to discover its height and its depth, its length and breadth ;-they may graduate its tides and fluctuations, but they leave its depths unfathomed, and its shores unexplored. But if some powerful conjuncture of attractions should operate, we know not what tempests are lurking in its bosom, and ready to burst forth. Then, as there are different kinds of bodily, so there are of spiritual disorders. You will see some of an ardent and fiery constitution, whose complaint will shew itself by violent signs that cannot be mistaken; and they prove that sin and death are rioting within them, and withering their eternal health, by an ostentation of their depravity, by drunkenness or debauchery, or by blasphemy, riot, or revenge. These men have the signs of a raging fever, and they often proceed to that degree of derangement and delirium that they actually forget the difference between health and sickness, and fancy that all is safe at the moment they have attained the height of their disorder!

"But there are others of a milder temperament, where the signs are more silent and more treacherous; where the eye is bright and the countenance is florid, and the frame receives no shock, and the nerves remain composed, and the spirits tranquil; -and yet death is feeding upon the vitals! These are the men whose walk in life is generally decent and respectable; but the heart and the affections are fixed on perishable objects;-whose care, whose hopes, and whose dear delight, are things visible, that shall pass away;-souls that feed on ashes, and declare their kindred with the worm that perisheth by feeding upon perishable food-whose minds represent the tombs to which they are approaching, -whited sepulchres, that indeed are beautiful outward, but if you look within, you find nothing but death! These persons seem to descend into the grave with a fatal gentleness that causes no shock, to awake them; they waste away by a lingering consumption, and feel not that they are dwindling, and dwindling, into ruin; and they know not that where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also;' and that, therefore, if it be not set upon God, and heaven, and immortal things, thy eternal soul is wasting into destruction, and the worms are underneath thee, and cover thee!" pp. 311-315.

We cannot withhold the following spirited appeal to the wilful sinner; because, although we would hope that our readers are of a different class, the profit of the pas sage may be easily turned into their own bosoms. The author had been

remarking that the judicial interpositions of the Almighty occur with sufficient frequency to tell us that there is punishment; but yet so seldom as to shew us it is to come.

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"This is the sinner's chance,-that, even if that Bible which speaks to him terrible things were a falsehood, the very course of nature and the current of human affairs furnish the strongest possible proof of-judgment to come. "Out of thine own mouth wilt thou be condemned;'-thine own excuse will be thy condemnation. And which of us has not made this excuse? Which of us has not often said, in his heart, Thou wilt not require it;' and sinned in the face of the sentence registered against all iniquity,in the face of the sentence registered against fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry,—against anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication,-in the face of the sentence registered against all those that forget God? But you will say,-Surely, God is a merciful God! Are we not told that he is full of mercies and loving kindnesses, that his mercy rejoiceth against judgment, that he has sworn, as he liveth, that he hath no pleasure in the death of the sinner? True his mercy is indeed boundless and astonishing; amazing, beyond what eye hath seen, or ear heard, or hath entered into the heart of man to conceive.' But how has that mercy been shown? By visiting sentence to the very uttermost. He did not fling us his mercy indolently from his throne; but he executed sentence to the very uttermost upon his only begotten Son. His mercy does not consist in extinguishing his justice, but in executing it upon the head of the Son in whom he was well-pleased. Awful mercy! ter rible forgiveness! mercy that we must not dare to trifle with.

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Let us be ourselves the judges: if any man makes this mercy an argument for sin, what new punishment, what fresh torments, how many times must the furnace be heated for that man,-for him who dares to say, Because the Lord Jesus has died for me, I will follow my iniquities !-for him, who would thus make Christ the minister of sin! That blessed mercythat glorious manifestation of infinite love, was always used in Scripture as an argument for repentance, for holiness, and for all good; but any man that curses God's blessing, by turning it into an argument for continuing in sin,-how is he described in Scripture? He is the enemy of the cross of Christ;' and he crucifies the Son of God afresh, and puts him to an open shame!' It had been good for that man that he had never been born.' Every hour of sin that you add to your life, under this dispensation, is gathering over

your head-in judgment. The goodness of God, in not cutting you off with your sins still green and fresh, is turning every day into wrath. For what says the Apostle? Despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance; but, after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God?' Here you see two things: first, that the goodness of God, in bearing with you thus long, in not blotting you out from the face of the earth while you were engaged in the last sin that you committed, was leading you to repentance it cannot lead to mercy but through repentance: secondly, you see that every time you neglected and refused, 'you have been treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath.' There is a treasury of vengeance in heaven: and day by day, and hour by hour, you have been casting in your mite. When will your cup be full? Perhaps at this moment it may be overflowing; perhaps the plain, simple warning that you hear this day may be the last that the Lord God will ever vouchsafe to your soul. This at least is certain, that the next time you return to your sin it will be in deliberate defiance of the wrath of the Almighty. Who shall say, whether you will be allowed to make the trial a second time? Probably your cup may then be full-and he may strike you dead upon the spot. Or if not, he may let you live as a monument of his vengeance; and as Pharaoh was allowed to live, after he had resisted all the means of grace, that the Lord might openly manifest his power and his justice upon him, God may prolong your life only that men may see a sinner gasping without hope upon his death-bed,-and, as they look upon the horrors of your dying countenance, they may smite their breasts and say, God be merciful to me a sinner.'" pp. 421-424.

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One extract more from these striking discourses shall close our series. The one we select is from that sermon in which, after exposing the wretched unfitness of the natural man for the joys and occupations of that heaven into which he yet professes on earth his hope and belief that he shall enter, and picturing him a forlorn and bewildered stranger among the saints that rest not day nor night, crying "Holy, holy, holy," anxious to break away from the band of these blest Intelligences, after the first glow of admiration has subsided, and the first swell of their

anthem has died away on his ears, he unfolds some of the conceivable sources of their inexhaustible joy. We are not indeed sure, because Scripture does not unfold that to us, how far intellectual pleasures, and the contemplation of the wonders of the material world, will constitute a part of the employment of heaven; but we give the passage without mutilation.

"It is no stupid and senseless worship in which they are engaged; no idle clamour, or servile adulation. But they sing with the Spirit, and they sing with the understanding: they know wherefore they praise Him; it is because they are becoming more and more acquainted with Him who only is inexhaustible. Every other subject of thought would be drained by eternity but Him, boundless and unfathomable, they learn, and study, and

adore for ever and ever!

"It is no heartless inquiry into abstract science; no cold and merely intellectual disquisition; but the pure and glorious delight of a celestial spirit observing Infinite Wisdom carrying into effect the designs of Infinite Benevolence; the thrill of admiration that arises from being allowed love and goodness are for ever issuing in to contemplate the source from which

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They see and pursue him in the works of nature, and are permitted to discover his glory in the heavens, and his handywork in the firmament. They are finding out, by his permission, secret after secret in the vast scheme of the universe; and are taught how he guides the sun in his course, and ordains her journey for the stars, and how he upholds them aloft, and moon; for what purpose he made the makes them his servants; and thousands

of mysteries, of which we never dream, are they discovering in his works; and at every discovery they fall down and cryHoly! holy! holy!"

"But more especially do they study him in his work of grace and redemption; (for these are things which angels desire to look into;') they remember that he forsook his throne and left his glory to look for a guilty and outcast world, that had wilfully plunged into darkness; they remember that he took upon him our vile and loathsome nature, bearing our sins and carrying our infirmities; they remember that be was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; that he was wounded for our sins, and bruised for our iniquities,' and tasted the bitterness of death for our sakes they see him afterwards ascending up on high, and leading captivity captive, and bestowing gifts on man; and behold

him seated at the right hand of the Father, and making intercession for the transgressors; and all this for beings who had deserted his pleasant pastures-who had flung away his rod and his staff, and leaned upon broken reeds; and (what is most astonishing), had actually lost their taste and relish for immortal things; and yet talk of hoping to go to heaven, without waiting to inquire what heaven is, or what it means. This work of mercy do the blessed inhabitants of heaven study for ever and ever: for it is inexhaustible as the works of creation itself. New beauties and fresh glories are discovered at every view. Effects, which perhaps never occurred to the human imagination, may be developed from time to time; and at every new discovery of love the whole heavenly host brighten with immortal gratitude, and lay down their golden crowns before the throne, saying, Iloly! holy! holy!'" pp. 316–318.

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We must now take leave of this interesting volume. We could longer dwell, did our limits allow, on the ardent thoughts and holy feelings by which the author's pulpit addresses are distinguished. The deeper recesses of controversial divinity are not indeed explored in them, nor even all the profundities of acknowledged truth. The people among whom this brilliant meteor shone needed another sort of light-the very light he shed on them;—and we are glad to leave while the barren tract along which our duty sometimes compels us to walk, in the train of "polemical divines," to refresh our minds by the more fruitful contemplation of practical theology like this: and in the satisfaction with which we commend the perusal of the present volume to our readers, we shall pass over various matters respecting style and taste, which present themselves to our minds. We dismiss the volume, with the hope that the persuasive sermons which it contains will be effectual through the blessing of God, to conduct many, both of those who knew and those who knew not this distinguished young minister, to the everlasting joys which, we doubt not, are his present portion among the saints in light.

The Christian Sabbath; or, an Inquiry into the Religious Obligation of keeping holy one Day in Seven. By the Rev. George HOLDEN, A. M. 8vo. pp xx. and 515. London: Rivingtons. 1825.

HAVING not very long since devoted a distinct review (see Christian Observer for 1824, p. 175,) to two works on the Obligation and Observance of the Christian Sabbath, and our volumes being enriched by many valuable papers on the subject from the pens of our correspondents (see especially the papers of Mr. Hey, in our first volume, pp. 351, 417, 489, 559, and one by the late Mr. Scott, in our volume for 1817, p. 345,) we should not so soon recur to the topic, if it were not one of the greatest importance, and one which the circumstances of the times require to be well understood. Several recent works have been published, in whole or in part, on this subject; from which we select, for notice, that of Mr. Holden as far the most full and elaborate, and particularly so in the quotations from the primitive fathers which he has collected, and which shew, at least, the opinions of the early Christian church respecting. this sacred institution. We shall not at present enter again fully into the question; but a recapitulation of a few of the general principles involved in the inquiry may not be unacceptable to those of our readers who have not hitherto considered the bearings of the subject.

It is an extraordinary fact, that, notwithstanding we are in possession of the clearest revelation ever made by God to his creatures, the question, whether he did indeed institute a Sabbath on the seventh day of the world, should be a matter of dispute in its fifty-eighth century. It is well known, however, that there are still some persons, who maintain, that the Sabbath was altogether a Jewish institution, never observed till the time of Moses, and only mentioned by that historian in

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If it were granted that in the history of the patriarchal ages no mention is made allusion to it, it would be unfair to conof the Sabbath, nor even the obscurest clude that it was not appointed previous to the departure of the children of Israel the memory of it night have been forgotfrom Egypt. If instituted at the creation, ten in the lapse of time, and the growing corruption of the world; or, what is more probable, it might have been observed by of it in the narrative of their lives, which, the patriarchs, though no mention is made however circumstantial in some particulars, is, upon the whole, very brief and compendious.

his account of the creation proleptically, as marking the great occasion to which reference was afterwards made when the Sabbath came to be instituted. To this opinion Paley, in his Political and Moral Philosophy, has given a currency which perhaps it otherwise would not have attained. We shall endeavour, on this as we did lately on another argument drawn from the early Mosaic records, to state the alleged difficulties of the question briefly, yet clearly, and to exhibit those reasons and .considerations which influence our own judgment upon it.

The first point urged by the opponents of the primitive appointment and perpetual obligation of the Sabbath, is the total absence of all proof that it was observed by the old patriarchs. There is certainly no direct allusion to any observance of the Sabbath in the Bible till we come to the wandering of the children of Israel in the wilderness. Yet it is remarkable, on the other hand, that, when an observance of the Sabbath is first recorded, the Ten Commandments had not been given. The command to observe it was delivered when the manna was promised; and it was then delivered not in the form of an original institution, but in a manner that excites the idea of conformity to an existing law. "I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather after a certain rate every day; and on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in. It shall be twice as much as they gather daily. And it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers for one man; and all the rulers of the congregation came and told Moses: and he said unto them, This is that which the Lord hath said. To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." With respect to the silence observed in regard to the observance of the Sabbath before that day, it appears to us, that Mr. Holden has given the right answer.

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There are omissions in the sacred history much more extraordinary. Excepting Jacob's supplication at Bethel, scarcely a single allusion to prayer is to be found in all the Pentateuch; yet, considering the eminent piety of the worthies recorded in it, we cannot doubt the frecumcision being the sign of God's covenant with Abraham, was beyond all ques. tion punctually observed by the Israelites, yet, from their settlement in Canaan, no the circumcision of Christ, comprehending particular instance is recorded of it till a period of about 1500 years. No express mention of the Sabbath occurs in the Books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, the First and Second of Samuel, or the First of Kings, though it was doubtless regularly observed all the time included in these histories. In the Second Book of Kings, and the First and Second of Chronicles, it is mentioned only twelve times, and some of them are merely repetitions of the same instance. If the Sabbath is so seldom spoken of in this long historical series, it can be nothing wonderful if it should not the patriarchal ages. be mentioned in the summary account of

of their devotional exercises. Cir

"But though the Sabbath is not expressly mentioned in the history of the ante-diluvian and patriarchal ages, the observance of it seems to be intimated by the division of time into weeks. In relating the catastrophe of the Flood, the historian informs us, that Noah, at the end of forty days, opened the window of the and again he sent forth the dove out of ark; and he stayed yet other seven days, the ark: and the dove came in to him in the evening, and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf, plucked off. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the dove, which returned not again unto him any more.' The term 'week' is used by Laban in reference to the nupweek, and we will give thee this also, for tials of Leah, when he says, Fulfil her the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years."" pp. 36-38.

In fact, there was no, occasion which called for an express allusion to the Sabbath, till the Divine re

cognition of it in the miraculous dispensation of the manna brought it prominently forward, and perhaps operated as a rebuke from God to the people of Israel for the neglect into which it had at that time fallen. Among other omissions in the early sacred history equally surprising, if indeed the fallible judgment of man were the standard of what it was befitting that God should reveal-might be mentioned that of the original institution of sacrifice.

The next argument urged in favour of the Mosaical origin of the Sabbath, is the mode in which our Lord acted in respect to it. He is thought by many to have relaxed the severity of the Jewish code in regard to this particular enactment, while on other points he enforced or even extended its provisions. It is held moreover, that his declaration-" The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath"- -was of ominous signification, and portended the abolition of that restraining law. We should rather say, that he discountenanced those superstitious perversions of that primitive appointment which prevailed in his own day, and reduced the duty to the standard of the original command: and there is at least one passage, where he may seem to reason on the assumption of its primeval appointment. We allude to John vii. 22, 23. The argument in this passage proceeds evidently on the assumption, that the covenant of circumcision was prior to the Law of Moses, and probably that the ordinance of the Sabbath was prior to the rite of circumcision, while yet the necessity of observing the Law of Moses, the last of these appointments, was so sacred as on some occasions to supersede even the law of the Sabbath, the first and greatest: and the principle which solves the paradox is this; that, as they are all appointments of the Divine will, the observance of each of them must be so adjusted, that the main scope of

the whole may be answered. Hence, as our Saviour builds up the argument to a still further consequence, if the great law of the Sabbath may be broken, in order that the lower law of circumcision may be complied with, how much more safely may it be neglected, in order to fulfil the Divine law of mercy! "If a man on the Sabbath-day receives circumcision, that the Law of Moses should not be broken, are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath-day?"

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It is not our purpose, however, to concern ourselves with this argument further than as the duty of the Sabbath is involved in it. It throws some light on that sacred appointment, and determines its rank and importance. It seems to remind us (for we by no means press the above construction indubitably correct), for example, that it was ordained before the Law of Moses, or the covenant with Abraham; and if so, it is clear, that when the ritual law was superseded by the Gospel, and the Abrahamic privilege suspended by the calling of the Gentiles, the sacredness of the Sabbath was not affected by those alterations, being founded on a prior law, and ratified by sanctions of remoter antiquity. That institution was in fact coeval with the creation: for it was then that God, having ended his work, which he had made in six days, rested on the seventh. The reason of it therefore extends to all who were created upon the earth; and the duty of it will remain to the end of time; nor can it cease, unless the law be expressly repealed by the same authority by which it was at first enacted.

That no such act of repeal has passed, and particularly, that the new state of things introduced by the death and resurrection of our Saviour, cannot be construed into such an act, will be apparent, if we compare the appointment of the Sabbath with another appointment. to which it is parallel.

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