SERMON V.

THE SABBATH.

GENESIS ii., 3.

"God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.”

From these words of Divine Inspiration we derive the lesson that God has reserved oneseventh portion of our time as His own peculiar right. Six days we may devote to the various occupations of our earthly calling; but each seventh day is, by a Divine commandment, set apart (not only for purposes of repose, not only for a cessation from life's ordinary cares and toil, but, also and mainly,) for a hallowed rest and the cultivation of that peace of mind which results from communing in worship with the Almighty. "God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it!" He invested it with a peculiar and pre-eminent sacredness over all other days. He "sanctified it. He portioned off its hours, as periods of

special worship, from all other intervals of time. Men were always to "turn away their feet from it," as from that, which was especially God'snot theirs—and on which the finger of Jehovah had traced the ascription-" holiness to the Lord!" This Providential provision for the maintenance of holiness in the soul of man was not restricted to the time of his happy continuance in Eden. It prominently appears among the Divine ordinances, which, after the fall, foreshadowed from age to age the coming of Messiah and opened for fallen man a way, through faith in Him, to the attainment of the Heavenly inheritance that had been forfeited by sin. Thus, amid the terrors of Sinai, the law of the Sabbath was re-enacted, and the sublime strains of subsequent prophecy proclaimed "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, honorable, and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasures, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to 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."

Under the Mosaic dispensation it was, accordingly, the recognized will of God that an abstinence from pursuits, which are lawful and customary upon other days, a withdrawal from ordinary sources of amusement,-and a special recourse to the Scriptures and to worship (so that he should speak God's words, rather than his own, and adopt God's thoughts in lieu of his own,) were to characterize each believer's Sabbath. God's ancient people were taught that, whilst every day and every moment ought to bear the impress of the faith which knits a godly man's soul to Heaven, there should on the Sabbath day be more than ordinary reference of the thoughts to God. On working days revealed truths would enter into, and give a character to, the servant of God's dealings with an uncongenial world, and prove him to be not of it, though for a time his lot is to live in it; but, on this great day of sacred observance, his soul, freed altogether from the "lets and hindrances" of that uncongenial intercourse, was to rise above the concerns and interests of earth, to the unrestricted and uninterrupted enjoyment of communion with the powers of Heaven! Then was man (so to speak,) to "ride upon the high places of the earth," when his consoled and strengthened spirit found

the "Sanctuary" to be indeed the "House of God;" and his eyelids closed in sleep at nightfall all the more refreshing for the Sabbath retrospect "this is the gate of Heaven!"

Such was the will of God, and such was each believer's privilege, unquestionably, under the old dispensation. No one, who reads the Bible, can dispute that! But how stands the case now? Has the Gospel swept away the Sabbath ordinance, together with the ceremonial law, and made the words of the text, "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it," dead letters so far as we of these last days are concerned? These are questions which we may often hear mooted. And, inasmuch as the application of a divine law to ourselves is involved in the subject, nothing can be more important than that we should arrive at a clear comprehension of it; for we know that, whatever words God hath revealed, "the same shall judge us at the last day." Let us, then, with all the earnestness which such a thought imparts, enquire whether the Sabbath was, or was not, intended to be observed by all generations of mankind for ever.

The text leads us at once to the conclusion that it was so intended, For, observe when and wherefore it teaches us that the Sabbath was

ordained. It describes the Sabbath as being instituted at the completion of the creation, and for the purpose of commemorating it, centuries before either Abraham was called, or Israel was delivered from Egyptian bondage. Wherefore the Sabbath could not have been designed exclusively for the family of Abraham, or for the nation of the Jews; seeing that it was to commemorate events which equally affected the rest of mankind, and equally called for commemoration on their part. Every child of Adam is as greatly interested in the goodness and mercies and providential power, which beam forth from the work of creation, as were the Patriarch himself, and the Israelites his descendants; and from the one, as much as from the other, the grateful acknowledgment must be due; and the fact that the Divine directions, for such acknowledgment to be made, were given at the time of man's creation and in connexion therewith, is a decisive intimation in itself that the Sabbath was designed for all the families of mankind to the end of the world. "The Sabbath was made for man;" not for any one race, or nation, or family, but for "man" for all of us for the entire posterity of Adam, in whose person they receive from God the