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duce them to close their shops, their counting-houses, their offices, their books of account, on this blessed day. The divine favor will never prosper those who violate the divine command. The Lord's day is the tradesman's time of repose, of refreshment, of spiritual improvement. But I conclude. Accept, my dear friends, my best thanks for all your kindness. Pardon the unnumbered defects which have attended my honest efforts. Bear with me both as to the manner and matter of this address. It comes from my heart. Let mutual prayer bind us together more and more. We have seen things go forward now for nearly seven years with gratifying success.

Now is the season, then, for supplication to Almighty God, to animate, to quicken, to aid with his blessing these introductory measures. All depends on his grace and mercy in the first place, and then upon the spirit of union and love amongst ourselves; upon the simplicity of the gospel being preserved; upon the humility in which we teach and preach, and in which you hear and obey, the truth; upon the real conversion of souls which is carried on; upon the fruits of charity and holiness which we produce, upon the patience with which we sustain the trials, and the perseverance with which we discharge the duties of life; and upon the ascriptions of praise and glory which we offer to our God and Savior, for every thing good in ourselves and others.

But I will not proceed. I bid you farewell. I entreat your prayers on my behalf. We stand on the margin of eternity. I cannot long hope to have strength for any considerable efforts for your welfare. Whilst we have time, may we labor with all diligence; and may each Lord's day, as it revolves, be spent better than the preceding, and prepare us more for that "rest," that celebrating of a Sabbath "which remaineth for the people of God."

I am, your most affectionate Minister and Friend,

D. WILSON.

SERMON I.

THE INSTITUTION OF A WEEKLY SABBATH IN PARADISE, AND ITS CONTINUED AUTHORITY UNTIL THE DELIVERY OF THE MORAL LAW.

GENESIS ii, 1-3.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

THE glory of God is peculiarly connected with the due observance of the day which he is pleased to call his own, and on which he has suspended, in every period of the church, almost all the practical effects of that mighty salvation which he has provided for man. The Christian sabbath is one main distinction of the gospel dispensation, as the Jewish was of the Mosaical, and the patriarchal of the first revelation of the divine will to Adam. The profanation of that day goes to annihilate all the blessings of revelation. It leaves the world without any visible token of the authority of Christianity, and strips the church of the best means of openly testifying its faith and obedience. If the Sabbath be taken away from the mass of mankind, no time is left for religious duties, for the worship of Al

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mighty God, domestic piety, the instruction of children, the visiting the sick and needy, the reading and hearing of the gospel, the celebration of the sacraments, the preparation for that rest of heaven of which it is the pledge and foretaste. Without it, the remaining classes of society would never, in fact, allot a time for those duties, which being left open, would not be obligatory; nor could they sustain with effect the honor of religion in their families or the world.

Christianity is indeed abridged and summed up in the weekly return of the day, when its solemn services and duties are performed. As real piety declines in any country, this symbol of it is forgotten or contemned; as it revives in its doctrines and spirit, men awake again to the value of those means of grace, of which the Sabbath is the first in importance and dignity.

The divine authority of a weekly religious rest has ever been one of those primary truths in which the universal church has most generally agreed. Its institution in paradise and its insertion in the moral law, have given it an authority on the consciences of men which nothing has been able to shake. Christian states have hitherto, without exception, recognized it, and protected their subjects in the peaceable enjoyment of its repose. The disputes of controversialists have chiefly affected subordinate questions, and have left the divine authority undisturbed as an article of the general faith of Christendom. The neglect of its practical duties has, indeed, from the corruption of man, been but too common in every age; but open assaults upon the origin and continued obligation of the day itself, have been rare till of late years.

Now, however, the spirit of covert scepticism or lukewarm Christianity has not spared this most ancient of institutions. Not content with impugning the separate doctrines and mysteries of Revelation, it makes bold to call in question that sacred season when all those doctrines and mysteries are inculcated. The platform and arena of religion is taken from under our feet-the great external distinction of the Christian faith is annihilated-and man, erring sinful man, is deprived of his day of repose and recollection, and turned adrift to learn his Christianity and celebrate its rites, as chance may dictate and expediency

persuade. And though most of the opponents of the divine authority of the Sabbath are ready at present to allow its importance, and are loud in their admiration of those public services which custom and the laws of our country enjoin, yet the tendency of their writings is to sap the principle on which all this rests, to take men off from the firm footing of conscience and the command of God, and transfer them to the sandy ground of human recommendation and casual example.

The duty of the minister of the gospel, under such circumstances, is plain. He is bound to instruct the young with more care than usual in the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures on this great question. He is bound to examine the more popular and mischievous objections. He is bound to state what real difficulties rest on the subordinate points of the inquiry. He is bound to assure the poor and simple in his flock, that they may rely on the grounds of their former faith. He is bound to recal the intelligent and elevated classes from the fatal course on which they are seduced to enter.

And in honestly attempting this, he may look for the blessing of Almighty God, who only permits his truth to be assailed in different ages, by different classes of error, in order to prove and try our faithfulness,-in order to carry on, in fact, that system of moral probation and discipline which he has been pleased to establish in this world, and which is apparent, not in this question only, but in every other connected with the evidences, the doctrines and the precepts of Christianity. God has indeed left things so in the Bible, says Bishop Butler, that his will is plain to the humble inquirer, but obscure and difficult to the proud-that there is darkness enough on secondary matters and points not connected with our immediate duty, to be the occasion of excuse to the unwilling; whilst there is sufficient light to guide the sincere and docile. For it is to practice that the doctrine of revelation on this subject, as well as every other, tends. The day of rest, not in its theory, or even its divine obligation, but in its holy duties and in its peculiar blessings, is the object which it has in view. And to this we shall direct all our attention, as soon as we have cleared our way through those arguments which are necessary as an introduction to practical exhortation. In this respect it is that the theory and doctrine of the sabbath, its divine au

thority and perpetual obligation, are so important. They are wanted as a ground-work. When this is firmly laid, we raise our superstructure with safety.

The whole subject, then, of the Christian Sabbath divides itself into two parts-THE DIVINE AUTHORITY of a day of weekly rest-and THE MANNER in which that day should be observed under the Christian dispensation. The former question will occupy the first four sermons; the latter, the last three of the present series.

In the first division we shall have to examine the foundation on which the duty rests, that is, the grounds we have for believing that a seventh portion of our time, now termed the Lord's Day, and formerly called the Sabbath, is required by Almighty God to be dedicated to his immediate service; and the nature of the objections raised by our opponents.

In the second division we shall point out the practical duties of the Christian Sabbath, the unspeakable importance of observing them, the evils of the opposite neglect, and the necessity of personal and national repentance, if we would avert the Divine displeasure.

We enter, then, now on the first general branch of the whole question. Here the points which most decidedly establish the divine authority and perpetual force of a weekly day of rest, are--the institution of it in Paradise, its solemn insertion in the decalogues, the position it holds under the Mosaic law, the energy with which the prophets insist upon it as one of the primary and universal obligations of religion, and the observance of it by the apostles, divinely directed to found the Christian faith, and by all the primitive Christian churches, immediately instructed by them.

The chief difficulties which our adversaries oppose to these arguments are, that there are no vestiges, as they assert, of the observance of a Sabbath in the patriarchal ages--that therefore the narrative of its institution in the book of Genesis, is by anticipation; that it was not established, in fact, till the time of the ceremonial law, and then merely formed a part of that preparatory economy; that we have no express command for the observation of it, or of any day in lieu of it, in the New Testament; that our Lord repealed it by his doctrine and conduct, of which the change of the time of its celebration is, as they maintain, a sufficient proof; and that, finally, the example of the

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