timorous policy; "Do not loosen men's adherence to the Fourth Commandment, lest they neglect the Lord's Day altogether."

That, since much will,67 after all, be left to individuals, the law of charity should induce every one who can rest when he likes, to promote and procure rest on the Lord's Day for those who are otherwise circumstanced.

That the present state of the controversy respecting the observance of the Lord's Day is owing to these facts: first, that each side overstates a truth by the implied addition of the word exclusively; one side saying, "Men's souls are to be cared for [exclusively]," the other, "Men's bodies are to be cared for [exclusively];" and, secondly, that while the Sabbatarian ground is wrongly presumed to be the true and only ground on which the care of men's souls can be maintained, the Dominical ground is unfairly charged with leading necessarily to exclusive regard for men's bodies.

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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.

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 cloke for licentiousness on the other.

We shall, if God permit, begin our formal discussion in the next Lecture, taking as our startingpoint the moment indicated in the text. The last Sabbath of the old dispensation, that is, the Saturday of our Lord's lying in the grave, (called afterwards by the ancient Church the Sabbatum Magnum), has passed, and with it the honor of the seventh day has passed away. It is very early in the morning, the first day of the week. The sun has risen. The Sun of Righteousness has risen also. The first day of the week has become "The Lord's Day."

LECTURE II.

MARK XVI. 1, 2, 5, 6.

AND WHEN THE SABBATII WAS PAST, MARY MAGDALENE, AND MARY THE MOTHER OF JAMES, AND SALOME, HAD BOUGHT SWEET SPICES, THAT THEY MIGHT COME AND ANOINT HIM. AND VERY EARLY IN THE MORNING THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK, THEY CAME UNTO THE SEPULCHRE AT THE RISING OF THE SUN. AND ENTERING INTO THE SEPULCHRE, THEY SAW A YOUNG MAN SITTING ON THE RIGHT SIDE, CLOTHED IN A LONG WHITE GARMENT, AND THEY WERE AFFRighted. AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, BE NOT AFFRIGHTED: YE SEEK JESUS OF NAZARETH WHICH WAS CRUCIFIED: HE IS RISEN.

Καὶ διαγενομένου τοῦ σαββάτου, Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ Μαρία ἡ τοῦ Ἰακώβου καὶ Σαλώμη ἠγόρασαν ἀρώματα, ἵνα ἐλθοῦσαι ἀλείψωσιν αὐτόν.

Καὶ λίαν πρωὶ τῆς μιᾶς σαββάτων ἔρχονται ἐπὶ τὸ μνημεῖον, ἀνατέλλοντος (v. 7. ἀνατείλαντος) τοῦ ἡλίου

Καὶ εἰσελθοῦσαι εἰς τὸ μνημεῖον, εἶδον νεανίσκον καθήμενον ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς, περιβεβλημένον στολὴν λευκήν· καὶ ἐξεθαμβήθησαν.

Ὁ δὲ λέγει αὐταῖς, Μὴ ἐκθαμβεῖσθε· Ἰησοῦν ζητεῖτε τὸν Ναζαρηνὸν τὸν ἐσταυρωμένον ἠγέρθη.

It is very early in the morning, the first day of the week. The sun has risen. The Sun of Righteousness has risen also. The first day of the week has become "The Lord's Day."

With these words, you will remember, I closed my first lecture. Perhaps you may be inclined to suppose that I meant to imply by them that at the moment to which they refer, or almost immediately afterwards, the Lord's Day began to be

observed as an ordinance of the Christian Church, and to presume that our blessed Lord, either by the very fact of His rising from the dead on the first day of the week, or by instructions given to His Apostles during "the Great Forty Days," sanctified and set apart that day for His own service for ever. Now I meant nothing of the sort. I cannot see, on the one hand, how an act or a fact can establish an ordinance not necessarily connected with it, unless it is declared by the agent, (as in the case of the Sabbath), that it is intended to give sanction to it. On the other hand, I find no Scriptural authority for asserting that though Christ did, during the interval alluded to, speak to His disciples of "the things pertaining to the kingdom of God," this subject was amongst those upon which He held high converse. The extent of my meaning was this, that from that moment, the first day of the week, on which Christ "overcame the sharpness of death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers," 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. Besides, I hold that the Lord's Day is, as to its origin, much on a par with Confirmation." And this, while it would at once exclude it from the category of positive institutions ordained by Christ Himself, would also enable me to claim for it, (on this ground alone, whatever others may be

adducible), an Apostolic, and, so far as anything Apostolic can be called divine, a divine origin.

Now we usually call Confirmation an Ecclesiastical ordinance, and point to certain places in Scripture from which we argue that it was a custom introduced by the Apostles, and esteemed by them an element of the religion which they were divinely commissioned to declare to man, and, as far as it required immediate organization, to organize. For their practice in this matter we refer to Acts viii. 14-17 and xix. 1-6, which recount the proceedings of St. Peter and St. John in Samaria, and of St. Paul at Ephesus. For their estimate of the custom we refer to Hebrews vi. 2, where "laying on of hands" is mentioned among "the principles of the doctrine of Christ," as a specimen of the fundamental points of Christianity. It would appear then that if Confirmation has this origin, (which is generally admitted), and yet is of Ecclesiastical institution, that 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 that the Church could never say afterwards, "it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." Whereas ever since the time