.e. it is not to be a mere gala-day, as on the Continent with the Romanists, and, to a great extent, even with the Protestant and Reformed Communions. . [26.] That the civil power should interfere as little as possible with the observance of the Lord'sday, but that, a due regard being had to the compound nature of man, it may fairly prohibit on that day what offers men profound temptations to forget their souls or to wear out their bodies. Yet that, even here, care should be taken that there be not one law for the rich and another for the poor. That the subject of prohibitions should be approached both by legislators and by clergy, as practical men (so the preacher approaches it, having lived in a great city for years), and with a due consideration for the different circumstances of town and country, and for the exigencies of society. [28.] That care should be taken not to impose burthen's upon men's consciences which are too heavy to be borne, or to make that a matter of right and wrong which is really a matter of expediency. And this on two principles: 1st, that to break a merely supposed obligation while it is supposed to be a real one, has a weakening effect upon the character; 2d, that an advocacy of what is right on insufficient grounds is sooner or later exposed and called a pious fraud, and produces disgust of all pious injunctions, whether frauds or no. [29.] That such an injunction as the following, if used by those who are not absolutely satisfied of the soundness of the Sabbatarian ground, is (for truth can do no harm) a very faithless and timorous policy: Do not loosen men's adherence to the Fourth Commandment, lest they neglect the Lord's-day altogether.' . . . [32.] That in reference to such social questions as whether places of mere amusement or of secular instruction should be opened, or travelling permitted at all, or if at all in what degree, and the like, on the Lord's-day, principles should rather be sought for than exact rules. [33.] That, on the whole, the Lord's-day, being an institution so Divine and especially Christian, so commended to us by prescription and universal adoption, even from the apostles' time, so wonderfully preserved to us through many vicissitudes, so founded on moral obligation, so recommended to us by the analogy of the Jewish polity, so adapted a priori to the whole nature of man, so recommended a posteriori by the advantages which many ages have enjoyed under it, should be jealously guarded from vitiation, should not be made a yoke of bondage on the one hand, or a cloak for licentiousness on the other." It thus appears that Bramhall, Prideaux, and Baxter, are the writers with whom Dr Hessey most closely agrees. "From the moment," says he, "on which Christ 'overcame the sharpness of death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers,' the first day of the week was invested with an interest not before attached to it, and became worthy of the new title which it afterwards obtained from the partakers in and preachers of Christ's resurrection." Without claiming for it a place in the category of positive institutions ordained by Christ Himself, Dr Hessey ranks it with Confirmation, which, though

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usually called an Ecclesiastical ordinance, he believes on Scriptural grounds (Acts viii. 14-17, and xix. 1–6; Heb. vi. 2) to have had "an apostolic, and, so far as anything apostolic can be called divine, a divine origin. . . . It would appear, then," says he, "that if Confirmation has this origin (which is generally admitted), and yet is of Ecclesiastical institution, the word Ecclesiastical has, in reference to it and to ordinances contemporaneous with it and observed on the same grounds, a high and peculiar sense. In the Ecclesia and its authorities at that time were included inspired men, who, in reference to what they practised (I do not mean as men, but as regulators of the Church), and what they ordained, were unable to err. They might say, in a sense, what the Church could never say afterwards, it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.' Whereas, ever since the time when the canon of Scripture was closed, although the Church has power to decree rites and ceremonies,' and is represented in general councils, yet her councils, being assemblies of men whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God, may err, and sometimes have erred, even in things pertaining unto God.' In fact the Ecclesia afterwards was composed of uninspired men, who, though they might enjoin methods of procedure,—let us say for the carrying out of what appears in Scripture,—might not bestow upon their ordinances a divine and lasting obligation. We obtain, therefore, two distinct senses of the word Ecclesiastical-the one, co-extensive in the matters to which it applies with the term Apostolic, and in fact synonymous with it: the other, that in which it may be employed at the present hour, when, if deemed advisable, the Church might meet and make regulations, Ecclesiastical indeed, because they emanate from her, but only of human authority, and capable of being repealed the next day." And apostolic ordinances include " things ordained by the apostles, not merely in so many words, but by the precedents which they supply in their actions." (Pp. 31-34.) Now, he holds that the texts usually adduced from Scripture to prove that the Sabbath was tranferred from the seventh day to the first day, though giving no support whatever to that opinion, do show, "first, that peculiar associations would be necessarily connected in the minds of the apostles with the first day of the week; secondly, that on this day they were accustomed to meet, and recommended their followers to meet, and for certain religious objects; thirdly, that whether from such associations, or from the nature of the relation to their Lord into which they were thus brought on it, or from both united, the term 'Lord's Day' was actually applied by them to it. This, says he, I think will at least amount to a high probability that the day would be chosen by the apostles as characteristic of the new dispensation, and to an evidence that it was so chosen. At any rate, if we may judge from parallel instances, it is all that the nature of the case allows." (Pp. 37, 38.) It is to be observed, however, that though acquainted with Sir William Domville's Examination of the Six Texts, &c. (above, pp. 261, 357), he makes no attempt to meet the argu

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ments there urged against the sufficiency of the texts to prove either that the apostles were accustomed to meet, and recommended their followers to meet, for certain religious objects, on the first day of the week, or that the term "Lord's-day" was ever applied to it by them. Among the reasons adduced by Dr Hessey against the opinion that the law of the Sabbath is moral, the following is stated in p. 134: Had it been one of the laws of nature, there would not, I humbly conceive, have been assigned as reasons for its observance, in one passage, a fact which could not have been known except by revelation, 'God's working six days and resting the seventh;' in another, a fact which occurred long after man was created, and in which not humanity in general, but one nation only was interested. God brought thee forth out of Egypt, therefore God commanded thee to keep the seventh day' (Deut. v. 15)." But he nowhere discusses the question, which of the two copies of the Fourth Commandment wherein these two reasons severally appear, is to be received as genuine. And although he agrees with Baxter (above, p. 31), that in the first three centuries the day was reverenced "as an ordinance existing in and dating from the lifetime of the inspired apostles," (see Hessey, p. 88; and his extract from Baxter in p. 386), yet he does nothing to parry the objection so forcibly stated by Domville (i. 302-313, and Suppl.), that none of the ecclesiastical writers of the first three centuries has attributed the origin of Sunday-observance to either an injunction or the example of the apostles, although other reasons, some of them inadmissible and even absurd, are assigned. Of sundry historical details presented by Dr Hessey in the course of his Lectures, I shall avail myself in the Supplement to the first volume of the present work. Such of them as relate to the growth of ecclesiastical Sabbatarianism in the Church of Rome during the fourth and fifth centuries have already been referred to above, p. 383-4; and on another point, reference was made to it in p. 340. The book has been criticised in several theological and literary journals, including The Christian Remembrancer and The North British Review, both for January 1861.Christianity and its Counterfeits; a Word for Jesus, by THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS (post 8vo, N.D.), vol. ii., parts 5 and 6, on "the Sin of Judaizing," and "the Sin of Sabbatizing, and the Lord's-day Festival."-The True Scriptural Sabbath vindicated and enforced, and the Anti-Scriptural Character of what is called "The Christian Sabbath" exposed: being a review of Professor Miller's late pamphlet on the Physiology of the Sabbath;" by ROBERT HAMILTON, M.D., Edin. [1855]. Here "the true scriptural Sabbath" is regarded, "1. as the believer's sabbatism, essentially enjoyed by every one who has fled from the wrath to come, and has found a hiding-place

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*This series of tracts on Christianity and its Counterfeits is not sold, but may be obtained gratuitously by sending a written request for it, or any of its parts, to J. R. E., care of Mr Maclaren, bookseller, Princes Street, Edinburgh.

from the storm and tempest, in the sacrifice once offered upon Calvary's cross; 2. as the Christian's life; and 3. as the Lord'sday Festival, appointed by Christ in connection with the Lord'sday." This book ought to have been named before.

Some treatises which could not well be classified as either Sabbatarian or Dominical remain to be mentioned. Both sides are argued in The British Controversialist, vol. iv. pp. 8, 48, 88, 127 (Lond. 1853); in a Discussion at Exeter Hall on the Sunday Question, between the Rev. ROBERT MAGUIRE, M.A., Incumbent of Clerken well, and J. BAXTER LANGLEY, Vice-President of the National Sunday League, on 16th and 17th Dec. 1857 (Lond. 1858; post 8vo, pp. 71); in a Discussion between Mr J. BAXTER LANGLEY and Mr ROBERT COURT, representative of the Glasgow Protestant Laymen's Association, in the City Hall there, on 10th, 11th, and 18th Nov. 1858 (Glasg. [1858]; post 8vo, pp. 94); and, to some extent, in The Sabbath, the Sunday, and the Paisley Coffee-Room; being Controversial Letters by the Rev. JOHN THOMSON, of Free St George's, Paisley, and Mr JAMES J. LAMB (Paisley, 1858; 8vo, pp. 48).-In an article (by the late Dr SAMUEL BROWN) headed Sunday in the Nineteenth Century, in the North British Review for Feb. 1853, the subject is somewhat peculiarly handled.-The Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th ed., vol. xix. (Edin. 1859) contains an article SABBATH, in which, while the primeval origin of the institution is asserted, the writer seems to think that the Lord's-day is not the Sabbath. " Although," says he, "it was, in the primitive times, indifferently called the Lord'sday or Sunday, yet it was never denominated the Sabbath; a name constantly appropriated to Saturday, or the seventh day, both by sacred and ecclesiastical writers. Of the change from the seventh to the first day of the week, or even of the institution of the Lord'sday festival, there is no account in the New Testament. However, it may be fairly inferred from it, that the first day of the week was, in the apostolic age, a stated time for public worship.... Thus it would appear from several passages in the New Testament [Acts ii. 1; xx. 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2], that the religious observation of the first day of the week is of apostolical appointment; and may indeed be very reasonably supposed to be amongst those directions and instructions which our blessed Lord himself gave to his disciples during the forty days between his resurrection and ascension, in which he conversed with them, and spoke of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. Still, however, it must be owned that those passages, although the plainest that occur, are not sufficient to prove the apostolical institution of the Lord's-day, or even the actual observation of it. In order, therefore, to place the matter beyond all controversy, recourse must be had to ecclesiastical testimony. When the empire became Christian, Constantine and his successors made laws for the more solemn observation of the Lord's-day; they prohibited all prosecutions and pleadings, and other juridical matters, to be transacted on it, and also all unnecessary labour; not that it was

looked upon as a Jewish Sabbath, but because these things were considered as inconsistent with the duties of the festival." In the Supplement to vol. i. of the present work will be found quoted a strange argument of the writer against the astronomical origin of weeks.-The State Church, a Sermon preached before the University of Oxford on 5th Nov. 1850, by the Rev. BADEN POWELL, asserts in regard to Sabbath-keeping and other religious observances, that the State cannot legislate on any other ground than the real or supposed beneficial influence of its measures, and has no right to do so upon any abstract plea of religious obligation, which many may not recognise, and of the truth or grounds of which the Legislature cannot be judges.-A little treatise published several years ago, and entitled The Christian Sabbath, or Rest in Jesus, by ROBERT MACNAIR (Lond. N.D., Trübner & Co.; 12mo. pp. 83), discusses with great ability and knowledge the questions, 1. Is the Christian Sabbath a day? and, 2. If not a day, what is it? After considering all the passages of Scripture that bear on the subject, he concludes that Christians are not bound by the command to keep one day in seven, and that the true Christian Sabbath "is for a man to be united to Christ, and by this union to give up his own will, to cease from, or become dead to sin, and being made free from sin, to become a servant to righteousness." -Another deserves to be mentioned: Days of Rest for the Human Labourer: : a Prize Essay on the Necessity and Advantage of periodical Cessation from Labour; argued from the physical and mental constitution, the social relations, sources of enjoyment, and means of subsistence, of Man, by HENRY KIRBY ATKINSON (Lond. 1850; 8vo, pp. 60).

The following elaborate volume, in which the strictest Sabbatarianism of the Scotch Presbyterians is advocated and enforced, was published too late to be mentioned under the proper head: The Sabbath viewed in the Light of Reason, Revelation, and History, with Sketches of its Literature, by the Rev. JAMES GILFILLAN, Stirling (Edin. 1861; cr. 8vo, pp. 571). Contents: I. Sketches of Literature and Controversies: 1. Prior to the Reformation; 2. From the Reformation to the present time. II. Adaptations and advantages of the Sabbath: 1. Relation of the law of sacred rest to the physical nature and well-being of man; 2. Adaptation of the Sabbath to the constitution and improvement of the human mind; 3. Moral and religious influence of the Sabbath; 4. Economy of a weekly holy day; 5. Influence of the Sabbath on the respectability and happiness of individuals; 6. Its domestic benefits; 7. Its advantages to nations. III. Divine origin and authority of the Sabbath: 1. Proofs from its adaptations and advantages; 2. Divine institution at the Creation, and observance by the Patriarchs; 3. Promulgated from Sinai as one of the commandments of the Moral Law; 4. The Sabbath under a change of day, a Christian ordinance and law; 5 and 6. Duties of the Sabbath, namely sacred rest, sacred service, public worship; 7. Divine estimate of the importance of the Sabbath. IV. The Sabbath in history: 1. Traces of septenary institutions