one day, from the first day of the week to the last of the preceding week. The modern Jews have introduced many changes and superstitions into all their observances, and we only refer to their practices where confirmed, or not contradicted, by the Scriptures; but it is clear that their practice of beginning the Sabbath from the preceding sun-set is the command of the Law (Lev. xxiii. 32); and it is equally clear, from Num. xxxiii. 3, that the day was previously reckoned to begin from sun-rise; for the morrow after the Passover is called the fifteenth, although the Passover was kept the preceding evening after sun-set, and that evening was then called the fourteenth, which under the Law would be reckoned the fifteenth. But under the Law the Passover day, which began at sun-set on the thirteenth, was kept as a sabbath of restraint, and the first day of unleavened bread was a sabbath of joy: two sabbaths thus came together; the first of which was the "high day," on which our Lord lay in the grave (John xix. 31); the second was the dEUTEρоTρwтov, or "second sabbath after the first" of Luke vi. 1, Matt. xii. 1. The early Jews adjusted the Passover so as always to fall on the Sabbath day, as the Western Christians do with Easter; and as our Lord ate the Passover the preceding night, and was himself the Passover for us, slain at the same time as the Paschal lamb, this was brought about, either by an accommodation of this kind, postponing the Passover one day, that it might coincide with the Sabbath; or by our Lord's keeping it on the real fourteenth day of the moon, while the Jews kept the observed fourteenth, which would be a day later. But the Passover being always a Sabbath in after times, and the first Passover of necessity admitting no legal Sabbath-for the fourteenth was the last day of their hard bondage in Egypt, the fifteenth the first day of their hasty flight-observances, which were impossible when the event took place, were enjoined to commemorate that event in every succeeding Passover, till the true Paschal Lamb should be slain, and, necessitating the sabbath interval which the first Passover admitted not, re-assert the Patriarchal Sabbath in its liberty and its joy. We need not inquire whether the Sabbath was kept in Egypt, or even whether the Patriarchs observed it: we in any case maintain, that on every possible supposition of its observance the change from sun-rise to sun-set threw it back a day, threw back that Sabbath which was appointed and blessed by God at the creation.

The fact thus established may be supported by many other considerations; as from the Sabbath being called the Lord's gift to Israel, given to distinguish them from every other people, given subsequently to their departure from Egypt, and a part of the Mosaic law. This is strikingly laid out in Ezek. xx. 12, on which Mede has a discourse, where the Lord, pleading with the

people, first declares his dealings with their fathers in Egypt in bringing them forth, saying; "I wrought for my name's sake, that it should not be polluted before the heathen among whom they were.....wherefore I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and brought them into the wilderness and I gave them my statutes, and shewed them my judgments, which if a man do he shall even live in them. MOREOVER ALSO, I gave them MY Sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them." More effectually to distinguish the children of Israel from the heathen, it has been often remarked that all the heathen practices were studiously deviated from, under the Mosaic law. To counteract idolatry, the making of images was forbidden: in contrast with the worship of the sun, the Israelites worshipped towards the west (Ezek. viii. 16; Deut. iv. 19): the beginnings of the year, month, and day were changed, as we have already remarked: and as the heathen had dedicated the Sabbath day to the worship of the SUN, the ruler of the heavens, as they deemed, God threw back his Sabbath from Sunday to the preceding day; that his people might in no respect partake with the heathen idolatries. Hesiod, as it has been remarked by Jennings (431), calls the seventh day" the glorious day of the Sun ;" and Tertullian calls the Lord's-day "Sunday*, and the leader of the week." Many of the fathers call the Lord's-day, "Queen of days," the title given by the Jews to the Sabbath; which we mention to prove that the name Sunday is not merely of Teutonic or local origin, but wide spread; and that we may conclude nearly to a certainty that this name preserves the memorial of that day of the week which had been regarded as the chief day, a memorial of the primitive Sabbath. But then, when the Lord shall have not only vindicated his dishonoured law by performing his word, which saith, "That which cometh into your mind shall not be at all, that ye say, We will be as the heathen, as the families of the countries, to serve wood and stone: as I live, saith the Lord God, Surely with a mighty hand, and with a streched-out arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule you;" but when he shall also have

We know that the Sun was worshipped by the heathen (2 Kings xxiii. 5; Job xxxi. 26, 27; Jer. xliii. 13; Ezek. viii. 16); and they dedicated their chief day of the week to the Sun, calling it Sunday, and 680μayetas, or leader of the week and hence some of them supposed that the Sun was the God of the Christians, as they kept holy the Lord's-day, the Sunday of the heathen. Alii plane humanius solem Deum Christianorum existimant quod inoluerit ad orientis partem nos facere supplicationem, vel die Solis lætitiam curare. Tertul. ad

Nation. 59.

To the same effect Justin Martyr says, "On the day called Sunday there is held a congregation;" and further on, "The day called Sunday we do all with one consent make the holy convocation, because on that day Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead." Apol. 2.

punished the heathen for their idolatries, and converted them by judgments to his service; then shall the Jews and Israelites re-assembled in their own land, return to the sun-rise commencement of the day (Ezek. xlvi. 14); to the original Sabbath, typified by the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles and of Ezek. xliii. 27: and then shall all the nations of the earth go up from year to year to worship the King the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles (Zech. xiv. 16), and there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord (ver. 21),

One point more remains to be discussed: How far is it lawful to keep both Sabbaths, the Jewish and the Christian, Saturday and Sunday? We answer, Not at all; that one only must be kept; that as it is sinful not to keep one, it is doubly sinful to attempt to keep both; for the attempt does in fact render both void, neither of them any longer a Sabbath. Two days in a week, two sevenths of time, commemorates nothing, typifies nothing; distorts and perverts every thing which the Sabbath was ordained to teach. It is like attempting to combine darkness with light, a dead with a living body, bondage with liberty; the one of necessity nega-. tives the other. Our Sabbaths are not a separable portion of our existence, which may be of one character while the rest of our life is of another character; but are the exhibition of our Christian life, the exponents of our daily walk and conversation in the world: our Sabbaths afford a sure criterion of our Christian course. Now as it is certain that the difference between the Law and the Gospel is that between darkness and light (John i. 5), between death and life (Rom. v. 20, vii. 5), between bondage and liberty (Gal. iv. 9, 25); so, unless any one will be absurd enough to say that he can at the same time be passing his time in darkness and in light, at once in death and in life, in bondage and in liberty, he cannot with truth pretend to keep both the Jewish and the Christian Sabbath; or to have six days of bondage in every week, represented by the Jewish Sabbath, and six days of liberty in every week, represented by the Christian Sabbath. But no one is thus absurd; for the error of observing two Sabbaths, which we lament to say is now very prevalent, comes from an inadequate, knowledge of the character of the dispensations, and a lowering of the true standard of each; attaching too little restraint to the Mosaic Sabbath, which God made so inviolably sacred that he commanded an Israelite to be stoned to death for merely gathering sticks; and, on the other hand, encumbering the Christian Sabbath with shackles forged under the Law, disgraceful to and inconsistent with the freedom of the Gospel. Those who talk of keeping the Law willingly, know not what they say. God has made the Law a bondage; has declared it to be a yoke, and beggarly elements; added because of transgression; a restraint

under which they were shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed: but those who are redeemed from under. the Law, who have received the adoption of sons, are no longer under a schoolmaster; are not children of the bond-woman, but of the free; and if they stand not fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free, Christ shall profit them nothing, Christ is become of no effect, they are fallen from grace (Gal. iv. 5).

But it has been argued, that the Apostles and first Christians kept both the first and the seventh day, and that we should do the same; but this is a great mistake. For the cases are not parallel; since the Jewish service and ritual then subsisted, and all the first converts had been, as Jews, bound to its observance, before they came to the knowledge of Christ; and as Christians, seeking the conversion of their brethren, were also bound to use all lawful means to win them, and especially not to offend them by open contempt of that Law, which, as long as the temple and priesthood and nation remained in the land, it was the duty of every Jew to obey. That the Apostles did not think themselves bound to keep the Jewish Sabbath, or any part of the Mosaic law, is certain from the whole tenor of their conduct, and from their repeated assertions: they would each one, with St. Paul, be ready to declare, “Though I be free from all, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more: and unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law as without law, that I might gain them that are without law: to the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all, that I might by all means save some " (1 Cor. ix. 19). These compliances of the Apostles are always to be considered in reference to the actual state of the Jews, then in their own land, and following customs commanded by God to their fathers, and practised by them after the manner of the fathers. But the case is wholly altered now, both with Jews and with Christians: Jews cannot now observe the Mosaic law in any degree, least of all the Sabbath; and it would be sinful in Christians to give place for a moment to any of the superstitious observances which the Jews have now substituted in place of the commands of God. Not one tittle of the many commandments for rightly keeping the Sabbath according to the Mosaic law can be possibly complied with in a strange land, without temple or priesthood; and the Christian who yields compliance to such inventions of man as the modern Jews follow, is little better than an idolater.

After the Jewish law was abolished by the death of Christ, and was wholly annulled by the destruction of Jerusalem and by the

dispersion of the Jews, the Christian church declared any following of the Mosaic rites a crime deserving of the severest censure. Even before the destruction of the temple the Apostles had decided that the Gentile converts were not to be troubled with the Law; and that it was tempting God to put upon them a yoke which none of the Jews were able to bear (Acts xv. 9,10); and that "the Holy Ghost laid upon them no greater burden than these necessary things: That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well." Here we have no injunction of the Sabbath, no legal ordinance whatever. And for the Jewish converts to Christianity instructions equally clear are furnished by the Apostle Paul, when referring to the same city, at a time just preceding the above. For Peter had come to Antioch and eaten with the Gentiles, disregarding the Mosaic law; but when some Jewish converts were come he "withdrew, and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation (Gal. ii. 12). Did Paul reprove Peter for not keeping the Law? Not at all he reproved him for pretending to keep it when he did not for doing exactly that which many converted Jews of our own time are doing, professing to keep the Law, when their consciences tell them that they do not and cannot keep it.

Paul" withstood Peter to the face, because he was to be blamed ;" and these modern Judaizers should be still more strongly withstood, and still more severely blamed for Peter could then have really kept the Law; and the keeping of it was not forbidden in the same positive manner as shortly after it was, in the writings of the Apostles and in the decrees of the church; but the modern Judaizers are obliged to acknowledge that they cannot keep the Law, and they do not really observe those forms which the Jews now call the Law; that they profess to do that which they never care to do; that their pretence, in short, is a mere mockery *. The Law was abolished in the death of Christ,

We were present, last Spring, at a discussion on keeping the Law, with upwards of twenty inquiring and converted Jews; who began with maintaining the necessity of a Jew, after conversion, still keeping the Law. In the course of discussion they all allowed that they had eaten ham and hares dressed on the Jewish Sabbath; and for thus breaking the Law in so aggravated a manner they pleaded Christian liberty, and said they kept the Law from choice, and not of constraint. They were then required to name any one Mosaic law which the Jews could now keep, to distinguish them from other Christians. The Fifth Commandment was first named, but immediately withdrawn; for all Christians are required to honour father and mother. The precept against mixing woollen and linen in their garments was also abandoned, when it was shewn that it was broken by the woollen garments being sewn or lined with linen, and that the VOL. IV.NO. I.

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