Italian," writes a correspondent. "Dr. C told me that if he had a thousand copies he should not have one too many." We must not omit to mention captain Sorzana. Having been compelled to leave his regiment, some time ago, on account of his active Protestantism, he was chosen keeper of the depôt of religious books at Genoa; but being persuaded to join Garibaldi in Sicily, he took the field at once as a captain of Volunteers and as a soldier of Christ. "All Sicily is free," he writes, "and one might begin anywhere to sow the word of God;"-"There is a great abundance of priests, monks, and nuns, whose God is an idol;"-"There is free access to visit the military, whether sick or wounded;"-" These would be precious moments to console so many poor perishing souls, and to conduct them to Christ."

And thus the work progresses. It is not, perhaps, in our province even to allude to kings or ministers of state; but this we feel persuaded of, that no obstacle will be interposed in the way of reformation. But what is to be done? "Help the Vaudois," say some; "Organize a church on the model of the church of England," say others. But we cannot help thinking that it will be best to let the reformed Italians organize that church which will be the most suitable to the circumstances of their case. Help ought to be given till the church, whatever it may be, shall be self-supporting. That church ought to have a constitution-free Italy has accepted a constitution. The Italian church, free from the bonds of Rome, ought to have a constitution likewise. The desultory efforts of well-meaning but not very wise men from this country have produced, we hear, evil instead of good in Turin, Florence, and Milan. The cry of "There must be no pope," is good; but the cry, "There must be no organized church," in the present state of Italy is an evil. We fully coincide with the Irish converts who said, "We prefer a Bible without a church to a church without a Bible." But in Italy we may have both ;a reformed church, and a Bible the basis of that church's doctrines and discipline.

Let fervent prayer arise from every christian heart for the outpouring of the Spirit of God upon Italy, and then Europe may behold, at no very distant period, a true " Italia Unita;" Italy united in the bonds of the everlasting gospel, as well as in votes of annexation to the Sardinian crown.

THE SUNDAY QUESTION: DR. HESSEY'S BAMPTON LECTURES,

Sunday: its origin, history, and present obligation. Being the Bampton Lectures for 1860. By James Augustus Hessey, D.C.L., Head Master of Merchant Taylors' School; Preacher to the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn; sometime Fellow of St. John's College Oxford, and Select Preacher in the University. One Vol. London: Murray, Albemarle Street. 1860.

THE Bampton Lectures preached in St. Mary's church at Oxford have taken up a new position of late. They have treated of subjects interesting to the public, and accordingly the public have read them. In 1858, Mr. Mansel exerted his logical mind against the German rationalism now making its advances in our country. Mr. Rawlinson followed in 1859, and brought modern discovery to bear on the history of the ancient world, and on the defence of the Bible from critics of the same school. In 1860, Dr. Hessey preached the lectures which we have before us, on "Sunday: its origin, history, and present obligation." "Great confusion of thought," he truly remarks, "exists on this deeply important subject." Some keep the day on right principles, but in a wrong manner; others on wrong principles, but perhaps in a right manner; and many, too, neglect or despise the institution altogether. We may thank Dr. Hessey for a clear historical account of the Sunday, from the apostles' time to our own. Dating its birth, as a Christian ordinance, from the morning of our Lord's resurrection, it retained life through all the persecutions of the first two centuries, and gathered strength with the edict of Constantine, from which event it was enabled to hold on its beneficent course till the reformation. Since then its authority has frequently been assailed. Still, however, Sunday has never ceased to be observed, partly through respect to its antiquity; partly from a general acknowledgment of its expediency, but still more, in this country at least, from a feeling deeply engrained in the hearts of the people, that it is God's special will and pleasure that every seventh day should be set apart for his own peculiar service. Six views of the Sunday question, says Dr. Hessey, are held in England at the present day. First, the extreme Purist view, that there should be no Sabbath-day, but that every day should be kept as one. This view "will find no advocate in the truly advanced Christian, but only in those who have been so absorbed in their imaginary self, as to lose sight of what they really are. The flesh still exists in us as well as the spirit, and its strength is always the greater in proportion to our unconsciousness of its existence, and therefore the louder and more confident a man's assertions that fixed times for assembling are superfluous, the stronger the proof that he needs them still." (Hengstenberg, quoted in p. 193.)

ness.

The second view is that of the extreme Sabbatarians, that the Jewish Sabbath should still be kept with all its former strictThe third is that held by the Puritan party, who would have the Sabbath kept with greater rigour than was ordered in the old dispensation, but would transplant it to the first day of the week. No such party, we must add, now exists in England. The fourth view, a modification of the third, makes Sunday the Christian representative of the Jewish Sabbath, keeping it as religiously as possible. "This view," proceeds the lecturer, "is at present extensively held amongst us, in spite of what I shall venture to call its undue assumptions, its logical and exegetical difficulties, and its inadequate support from the history of the early Christian church." (p. 9.)

The fifth is the Ecclesiastical view, which disclaims all connection between the old Sabbath and the Lord's-day, and will hardly allow that the latter was even hinted at in the apostolic age, but looks upon it as a purely ecclesiastical institution.

The sixth view, which is in the main held by Dr. Hessey himself, claims the Lord's-day as an apostolic ordinance, but adds (and it is here that the lecturer secedes from its principal defender, archbishop Bramhall), "that the weekly festival is rather changed from one day to another, than superseded by a new institution."

This enumeration, though not exhaustive, brings into prominence the most marked aspects of the Sabbath question. But for practical purposes they may be reduced to two, which are described as the Sabbatarian and the Dominical views of the question: the former taking the "legal" side of the question, and the latter the "liberal;" the one party naming the day "the Sabbath," the other party calling it "the Lord'sday."

As regards the name, we think that both parties alike may claim the word " Sabbath," which is, so to speak, the surname of the day; and both parties also may claim "the Lord's-day," which is essentially the "Christian name," and, as such, is doubtless the preferable name for general use. It is also the legal designation employed in all our Acts of Parliament and Royal proclamations.

Dr. Hessey is anxious to mark off the Lord's-day from the Jewish Sabbath on the one hand, and from all ecclesiastical festivals on the other. This latter point is attained by distinguishing between the two meanings of the word "ecclesiastical;" the first referring to what is ordained by the apostles, and having thereby the sanction of the Spirit of Christ; the second referring to what has been instituted by the church authorities since the apostles' days.

In the second lecture, the nature of the Lord's-day as observed during apostolic times is clearly set forth; and it is

gathered from various passages of the New Testament, that the Christians assembled on that day for prayer, for preaching, for breaking of bread, and love-feasts, and for almsgiving. Moreover, arguments are brought forward to show that "the Lord'sday" (Rev. i. 10) cannot mean anything else but the apostolic festival in commemoration of the resurrection.

The passages in St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians, Galatians, and Colossians, which point to the abolition of the Sabbath, are shown to be protests against the retention of anything Jewish as such; and a clear line is drawn between the weekly festival of apostolic institution, and the yearly festivals which have been ordained by the church in after ages.

Turning, however, to the other side of the question, we are told that," in no one place in the New Testament is there the slightest hint that the Lord's-day is a Sabbath, or that it is to be observed sabbatically, or that its observance depends on the Fourth Commandment, or that the principle of the Sabbath is sufficiently carried out by one day in seven being consecrated to the Lord" (p. 48).

In another place it is stated that "the Lord's-day is, as to its origin, much on a par with confirmation" (p. 31); that it may have been suggested by the Jewish Sabbath, and that the only moral idea contained in the Fourth Commandment is that of the necessity of set times for worship.

The

The Fathers of the first three centuries are adduced as "witnesses to the facts that the Sabbath was no longer of obligation; that it did not exist in the Lord's-day, i. e. that it was not transferred to it" (p. 176); and that "if any passages seem to imply anything opposed to these positions, they will be found on examination either to be of questionable genuineness, or to assert no more than is conveyed in such words as the following:-"The Jewish church had one day, the Seventh, for her worship, which was marked in a special manner. Christian church has given up that day; but she has a day-a more glorious day-the First, for her worship, and that not a Jewish worship" (p. 304). Dr. Hessey has shown a considerable extent of reading in this part of his subject; and without carping at minor errors in the arguments founded on the quotations, we may agree so far as to say that the prominent aspect in which the day is portrayed by the early Fathers is as Lord's-day," not as the Sabbath. And this is both natural and right.

the

The edict of Constantine is next discussed; and after stating the various opinions which have been held, the lecturer concludes that, in order to satisfy the conflicting elements of his empire, Constantine "selected for a day of rest for the whole empire a day already, as we believe, regarded by the Christians as a festival of Divine institution; calling it by its civil name,

as one which the Christians were well acquainted with, and did not scruple to employ, but which could not offend the heathen, as having nothing distinctively Christian in it" (p. 84).

The opinions of the writers of the next two centuries show that "a new era in the history of the Lord's-day" had commenced; but though trades and professions were ordered to be abstained from on the Lord's-day, the Fourth Commandment is not referred to as the ground of obligation " in any writer of these centuries, or in any public document, ecclesiastical or civil" (p. 114). In fact, "the transfer of the Sabbath to the Lord's-day," and "the planting of the Lord's-day on the ruins of the Sabbath," are considered "fictions of modern times" (p. 115), though it is worthy of remark that these "modern times" are pushed back immediately afterwards to the seventh or eighth century after Christ (p. 119). The reformers are quoted, some for and some against the lecturer's views; but the "unsatisfactory" view of the matter became common through the writings of the Puritans, who "were shocked at the forgetfulness of God, which manifested itself at all times, and on the Lord's-day especially." They consequently took the Bible into their hands, and decided that in it they would find a model of the true polity. Accordingly they enforced the Sabbath as a scripture doctrine (p. 270).

And now the question remains, "Is the Sabbath a new testament institution, or is it not? Is Dr. Hessey right in affirming that there is a complete severance of the Lord's-day from the Sabbath, and that the Sabbatarian and septenary principles are utterly contrary to the spirit of the New Testament? Dr. Hessey says, that in as far as the observance of the Sabbath is a moral precept, so far, and so far only, is it binding on Christians. We cannot altogether concede this; but practically we may admit that it is at present the battleground of the whole dispute.

"Moral precepts," says Paley, after bishop Butler, are precepts the reasons of which we see" (i.e. by the force of reason, without necessary assistance from revelation). Now we freely confess that though the idea of worshipping God is natural, and in a certain sense born with us, yet the idea of devoting to this worship one day in seven is not natural. But precepts, as the lecturer allows, are moral, if they are laid down as a positive command to universal man. Thus we are led to a discussion of Gen. ii. 3, where we read that "God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all His work which God had created and made." We may ask with Dr. Hessey, "What does this amount to?" To this question it is answered with naïveté, "It is merely an announcement of what God did, not a setting forth to man of what man should do." We wish that Dr. Hessey had advanced some argu