betray an indifference to the HOLY DAY. As the means of grace have little practical influence upon them, a small matter induces them to dispense with the incumbrance. But the sincere Christian has his delight in the Sabbath, and in the public and private ordinances of religion; he is "planted in the house of the Lord;" HE IS AT HOME THERE; his best pleasures, his warmest hopes, his most tranquil repose, his plenary satisfaction of soul, his liveliest pledges and anticipations of a heavenly rest, are drawn from the sacred and most gracious institution, in the services of which he waits to be prepared and ripened for that upper temple, those heavenly mansions, where he " shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

SERMON IV.

THE SABBATH TRANSFERRED BY DIVINE AUTHORITY FROM THE SEVENTH TO THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK, OR LORD'S DAY.

REVELATION i. 10.

I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day.

We have completed all that is essential in the first division of our general subject. We have proved the divine authority and perpetual obligation of a weekly religious

rest.

We have traced it from its institution in Paradise to the time of the Mosaical dispensation. We have considered its insertion in the ten commandments, and the dignity assigned to it by Moses and the prophets, as of essential moral obligation. We have also shown that it was vindicated by our Lord from the corruptions of the Scribes and Pharisees, and left in more than its primeval importance and authority. We might now pass on to the second or practical division of our subject, if we were not called on first to consider THE TRANSfer of the DAY on which the Sabbath under the gospel is kept, from the last to the first of the week. As the stress of the law has from the beginning been shown to lie on the proportion of time between the working days and the day of rest, the mere change of the particular period in the week

when we celebrate our Sabbath, cannot in itself be considered important. So long as one day is sanctified out of every seven, the purport of the institution is accomplished. Still it is necessary to explain the manner in which the alteration took place. For as the seventh day in order was fixed by the Almighty himself after the work of the creation, and as the Jew observed the same, or at least considered his six days' work to precede, and not follow his Sabbath, it is important to show the authority which retarded its celebration under the gospel, and fixed it one day later than the Jewish usage. Any change in a divine command, though in a point of itself subordinate, requires a sufficient reason, or we shall be guilty of altering, of our own minds, an authoritative rule of Almighty God.

We shall show, then, in the present discourse, that our day of religious rest, under the gospel, is not the Jewish Sabbath, but the Lord's day. We shall show that the change from the seventh to the first day of the week, was made on the authority of Christ and his apostles. We shall show that the transfer took place naturally, and almost necessarily, from the events attending the accomplishment of redemption. These points will of necessity occupy time-perhaps more than any preceding topic. But they will deserve all our care; as the alteration in question, non-essential as it is in itself, has perhaps more disturbed the minds of uninformed Christians, and more aided the cause of those who oppose the divine authority of the Christian Sabbath, than all the other objections together.

To proceed, then, in order, we shall first direct your attention to several PREPARATORY CIRCUMSTANCES in the history of the law of the Sabbath, which lay a probable ground for the change of the day: and then, secondly, the manner in which THE CHANGE ITSELF WAS

GRADUALLY INTRODUCED.

I. The preparatory circumstances are numerous. For, first, the PROPORTION OF TIME, which we have more than once alluded to, is not only an obvious part of

the first institution in Paradise, but is so prominent in the wording of the fourth commandment, and in its different republications, as to lay a probable ground for the change of the day of celebration, if any paramount rea sons should occur. If out of seven days, one be sanctified to holy rest, the spirit as well as the terms of the law are satisfied. In the general course of nature, indeed, labour precedes repose; and in the primitive institution, the day of the Sabbath fell, from the order of creation and the example of the Almighty, upon the seventh, or last of the week. But even here the proportion of time between the working days and the day of rest, is laid as a foundation for the whole. The distribution of the work of creation over six days, marks the reason why the seventh was given to repose and shows that the essence of the institution would be preserved, if after six days of labour, one of rest should succeed. Accordingly, in the revival of the Sabbath at the period of the fall of manna, not one word is said of the last day or the first day. All you can collect is, that they were to gather manna six days, and make a Sabbath of the seventh. Again, the fourth commandment, as we have said, is so worded as to admit of the change of the day of rest, without at all violating the institution. And this the divine lawgiver doubtless so arranged, with a view to the alteration which the gospel would introduce. The Jew could never have determined from this command on what day his first Sabbath was to be kept. It enjoins no more than that the interval of time between rest and rest should be six days. The proportion of the days is the essential point. The Christian. Sabbath, in the sense of the fourth commandment, is as much the seventh day, as the Jewish Sabbath was the seventh day. It is kept after six days labour, as that was. It is the seventh day, reckoning from the beginning of our first working day, as well as their Sabbath was the seventh day, reckoning from the beginning of their first working day. So, in all the recapitulations

2

1 Exod. xvi. 22-31.

2" The fourth commandment does not determine which day of the week we should keep as a Sabbath; but only that we should

of the fourth commandment, the substance is the proportion of time which we dedicate to God-a seventh portion with respect to six days' labour-and therefore the six days' labour are always noted when the seventh is spoken of. The day when we begin to compute is, abstractedly speaking, of very little consequence. Our Lord's day may be called the seventh in relation to the six days' work, as it is called the first in reference to the Jewish Sabbath which preceded it. This single circumstance clears the whole question.

2. But there is, in the next place, the highest probability that the exact computation of time from the creation was LOST DURING THE BONDAGE OF EGYPT, and that the Jewish Sabbath was reckoned from some other daythe day of the Egyptian redemption, for example-and not from the day when the Almighty rested after the crea-' tion. If this be the case, we are thrown yet more completely upon the proportion of time. Two thousand five hundred years of an unwritten law, closed with centuries of oppression in the Egyptian captivity, had in all probability disturbed the exact reckoning of weeks. An irregular observation of the sacred day had crept in previously-the impossibility of generally celebrating it at all, was doubtless one consequence of their taskmasters' exactions; and thus, though the institution was by no means effaced from their memory, the order of weeks was most likely interrupted. Nothing is more difficult than to preserve, in an early state of science and civilization, the accurate calculation of festivals, especially when recurring so frequently as every seventh

2

keep every seventh day, or one day after six. It says, 'Six days shalt thou labour, and the seventh thou shalt rest ;' which implies no more than that after six days of labour, we should upon the next to the sixth rest. The words no way determine where these six days should begin, nor where the rest of the Sabbath should fall that is supposed to be determined elsewhere. The precept in the fourth commandment is to be taken generally of such a seventh day as God should appoint, or had appointed."―J. Edwards, and so Dean Milner.

2 Cogitavi in Egypto ubi serviabas, etiam ipso sabbato per vim te esse coactum ad labores.-Manasseh Ben Israel, on Deut. v. 15.