THE SABBATH OF PERPETUAL OBLIGATION. 51 world were familiar, cannot be accounted for except on the supposition that that weekly division of time, of which the Creator set the example, was carefully upheld, and that in upholding this arrangement, all who feared God, as certainly rested on the seventh day, as they laboured on the other six. was made, and while he was yet without sin. (See Gen, ii. 1-3.) So little had it to do with Judaism as one of its peculiarities, that its obligations were not confined even within the history of this fallen world, but reach back to the state of innocence in which man was made. So that, had mankind never fallen-had they continued holy like the elect angels-had the (3.) A wide-spread practice prevailed among will of God been done all along on earth as it heathen nations, not only of dividing time into is done in heaven-the Sabbath would have weeks, but of regarding the seventh day as pebeen one of the most conspicuous institutions culiarly sacred--a practice which must have with which an innocent world would have been flowed from traditions of a date much earlier blessed, calling them every seventh day to than the time of Moses. As mentioned by Dr. cease from their labours, their light and happy Dwight, Hesiod says, "The seventh day is labours of an earthly kind, and to spend one holy." Homer and Callimachus give it the whole day of every seven in unbroken contem- same title. Theophilus of Antioch says, conplation of the works of God, and in nearer and cerning the seventh day, "The day which all uninterrupted communion with him. From mankind celebrate." Porphyry says, "The this fact two conclusions follow.-(1.) If, even Phoenicians consecrated one day in seven as to man in innocence, when every day was con- holy." Lenus says, "A seventh day is obsersecrated to God's service, it was needful to ved among saints or holy people." Eusebius have every seventh day more entirely freed says, "Almost all the philosophers and poets from the employments of the other six, and acknowledge the seventh day as holy." Josemore intensely devoted to acts of worship, as phus says, "No city of Greeks, or barbarians, the means of keeping man nearer to God; then, can be found who do not acknowledge a seventh surely, to man fallen and sinful, sunk in earth-day's rest from labour.” Philo says, "The liness and corruption, the Sabbath is still more seventh day is a festival to every nation." needful now, as a means of his deliverance This general and deep-rooted regard even from the power of this world and the bondage among the heathen to the sacredness of the of iniquity, and of his being brought back to seventh day, implies that traditions of its saGod, and made to set his affections on the credness must have been handed down among things that are above. (2.) As the Sabbath them from the commencement of their existexisted before the fall, it existed before all ence as distinct nations and tribes of men. types and ceremonies. They respect an atonement for sin, and could not exist till sin had entered. But the Sabbath did exist before sin entered, and so before all types and ceremonies; and therefore is not one of those types and ceremonies that were fulfilled in Christ's work, and so abrogated. 2d, There are various proofs that the Sabbath existed and was recognised throughout the period that elapsed from the creation of man to the commencement of the Jewish dispensation. (1.) The very fact that God had set the Sabbath apart, and pronounced a bless. ing on it, would lead such as had the Spirit of God to imitate so gracious an example, obey his virtual command, and seek his blessing, by hallowing the day which he claimed as specially his own. (2.) The familiarity of mankind, in those early ages, with the division of time into weeks, implies the appointment, at the beginning, of six days for labour, and the seventh for a holy rest. Thus, [1.] The term of seven days is noticed as the space intervening between the times when once and again Noah sent forth the dove to ascertain if the waters had subsided. [2] A week's rejoicing is spoken of in Gen. xxix. 27, 28, as habitually practised in connection with marriage. Such allusions as these to the weekly division of time, as a matter with which, in those ages, the inhabitants of the (4.) The first allusion to the Sabbath as it existed among the Jews, implies that it was an institution existing among them previous to the giving of the law at all, and one with which they were familiar, as handed down to them from their patriarchal fathers. The allusion is made in connection with the giving of the manna, of which they were told to gather twice the usual quantity on the sixth day, seeing that, as a matter of course, they were not to expect the descent of it, or to be employed in gathering it, on the seventh. (Exod. xvi. 23, &c.) The language employed in that passage is exactly such as was naturally used toward an institution already appointed and established, and the obligation to observe which was already felt and acknowledged, but not the language which it would have been natural to use, had the institution been an entirely new one to the Jews. 3d, The perpetuity of the Sabbath is evident from the place which it has among the ten commandments. The other nine are perpetually binding on all to whom they are made known; and you might as well contend for setting aside the other nine as for setting aside the fourth. It will retain the same authority as the rest so long as the world stands. (1.) These ten commandments are spoken of in Scripture as distinguished from all those other statutes and ordinances which are not comprehended in them. They are denominated "the commandments." (Matt. xix. 17.) On the sum of these ten commandments hang all law and the prophets. (Matt. xxii. 40.) (2.) The great employment of all the prophets, as moral teachers, was just to explain and enforce these ten commandments. (3.) It was with evident reference to these ten commandments that Jesus said, "That sooner shall heaven and earth pass away, than one jot or one tittle of this law shall pass till all be fulfilled." (4.) By all God's professing people, Jews and Gentiles, with few exceptions, these ten commandments have been uniformly honoured, at least by outward marks of respect, as the great moral law. (5.) To show that this moral law of the ten commandments is still binding, the Apostle Paul, addressing the Christians at Ephesus, who were converts from heathenism, refers to the fifth commandment as the first commandment with promise (Eph. vi. 1–3); that is, as the first of the ten commandments which has a promise attached to it. In this manner he not only distinguishes them from all others, but leaves it to be inferred that they are all alike perpetually binding on all the followers of Christ. (6.) The moral nature and perpetual obligation of the ten commandments, and of course, of the fourth among the rest, may be proved by the altogether peculiar honour put on them by God. [1] God came down on Sinai, and from its summit published with his own voice these ten commandments, amidst the most solemnizing manifestations of his presence and his glory. [2.] By God's own finger, these ten commandments were then written on two tables of stone. And then [3.] these ten commandments, and they alone, were lodged within the ark. The ark was a type of Christ. The law in the ark was a type of the law in the heart of Christ. The law that was in Christ's heart was the moral law. The penalty of that law, incurred by us, he endured in our stead. The obedience to that law, due from us, was rendered by him on our account. Believers are now redeemed from the curse of that law, by Christ's having been made a curse for them. That law is now written by the Holy Spirit in their hearts. In evidence of their union to Jesus, they are now brought to offer to that law a daily increasing obedience. They delight in it after the inward man. In proof and illustration of all these holy and blessed truths, the law of the ten commandments, including the fourth, was deposited in the ark of the covenant, the type of Christ, and the symbol and pledge of Jehovah's presence with his people. As these ten commandments, and these alone, were published by the mouth of God, and written with his fingers, and placed by his direction in the ark of the covenant, we therefore conclude that they are honourably distinguished from all ceremonial and temporary ordinances, that have served their purpose, and then passed away. They are thus seen to be of a moral nature, and of perpetual obligation; and in all these glorious peculiarities the Sabbath law equally shares with the other commandments of the decalogue. 4th, The perpetual obligation to keep the Sabbath holy, is evident from the clear intimations of prophecy with reference to the Christian dispensation. Thus, in Isa. lvi., the promise is, "Every one that keepeth the Sab-| bath from polluting it, . . . . . even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer;" ... and the time referred to is evidently the time of the Christian dispensation, for it is declared to be, when God's "house shall be called an house of prayer for all people." (See also Isa. lviii. 13, 14; Ezek. xlvi. 1-4.) 5th, A weekly Sabbath was kept by the first followers of Christ. The first day of the week is again and again referred to in the New Testament, as their day of public worship and instruction, of alms-giving, and church-fellow-| ship. (Acts xx. 2; 1 Cor. xvi. 2.) The fact, which is indisputable, that from the day of Jesus' resurrection, and under the ministry of his inspired apostles, the Christian Sabbath was thus observed, is, of itself, sufficient proof that it was observed by divine authority. 6th, From the time of his resurrection, the blessing of Christ evidently rested in a special manner on the first day of the week, and on those who kept it sacred to the memory of his resurrection. On this day he rose from the grave. This was the day selected by him on which to appear once and again to his disciples, after he had risen. After he had gone to heaven, he selected this first day as the day on which to pour out his Spirit in such a miraculous manner, and to render the apostles' preaching the means of at once converting thousands. On this day, John was emphatically" in the Spirit." (Rev. i. 3.) And this same day has ever since been blessed, more than all the other days of the week, as the season of the manifestation of Jesus' glory in the conversion of sinners, and the edification of saints. 7th, The very name given to the first day of the week proves it sacredness as the Christian Sabbath. It is called in Rev. i. 3, "the Lord'sday." That Lord is Christ. His day is not the Jewish Sabbath, for on that day he lay humbled in the grave; and, besides, when these words were uttered, the Jewish Sabbath had passed away. His day is the first day of the week-the day on which he rose triumphant, and entered into his rest. That day is called "The LORD's Day," evidently to intimate, that now it is set apart as sacred to him, and to be held as sacred by all his followers. So long as he has a people on earth to own him as their THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE. Lord, they will not only celebrate the supper in honour of his death, but also sanctify the Christian Sabbath in honour of his resurrection. Nor shall it be parted with on any ground by his faithful followers, until it finally terminate in the uninterrupted and eternal rest that remaineth for the people of God. 8th, The perpetual observation of the fourth commandment, as of the others, is involved in the fact, that it is not typical or temporary in its nature and design. (1.) It is not typical in its nature and design. [1] At least it was not typical under the old dispensation of blessings to be enjoyed under the new. This was the case with the types and ceremonies of the Jewish ritual. They have all, as the shadows, been superseded, and made to vanish before the substance. But it was not so with the Sabbath as existing before Christ. There is nothing in him, or in his redemption, in which the Sabbath, as a shadow, has given place to the substance. [2.] The only thing of which the Sabbath was or is a type or emblem, is heaven, and the earthly Sabbath will disappear only when believers have entered on their heavenly eternal Sabbath. (2.) It is not temporary any more than typical in its nature. [1.] This is proved from the fact, that it was instituted in Paradise, immediately after man was made. This fact shows that it was intended to exist through all ages, irrespective of the changes and the passing away of this or that economy, which for a season God introduced and maintained in the midst of his people. [2] The same thing is proved from the ends which the Sabbath is intended to serve. It is intended to furnish mankind, especially the poor, with a regularly recurring day of rest from all their bodily toils. It is intended to commemorate the displays which God has made of his wisdom, power, and goodness, in the works of the visible creation. It is intended, further, to commemorate the most glorious of all God's works-the work of redemption. It is intended to be the special day on which man shall attain to the saving knowledge of the truth, and make advances in holiness of heart and life. And lastly, it is intended to furnish to all men the chief means of preparing for heaven, and some glimpses of its glory-some foretastes and earnests of its blessedness. And so the Sabbath will continue to be alike indispensable and useful to man, until the whole of the redeemed are qualified for, and safely and joyfully gathered into, the rest remaining for them on high. Such are the proofs which the Scriptures furnish of the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath. THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE-TWO FACTS. BUT again and here we present the Second Fact. 53 of words which enable us to discern, beyond the possibility of misapprehension, the knowledge of the Almighty God. His great aim, without doubt, was to reveal to us the eternal glories of the invisible world: not the barren secrets of that which is about to perish. Nevertheless, it often happens that an attentive ear discovers in his language a science which he seeks not to teach; but of which He, whose judgments are a great deep, cannot be ignorant. Not only does not the Bible never tell us, even passingly, anything false, but you will often discover words which betray the voice of the Creator of the world. Continually you will recognise a wisdom, a foreknowledge, and an exactness, which former ages could not question; but which only the discoveries of the telescope, mathematics, and science, have enabled the moderns to appreciate; so that its language bears, in these features, the indelible characters of the fullest inspiration. The wisdom and choiceness of its expressions-the nature of certain accounts, whose perfect propriety and divine accordance with the facts were not revealed until three thousand years afterwards the reserve of its language, sometimes its very boldness, and its unusual character for the times in which it was written-all these signs bespeak the Wise One, the Ancient of Days, who undoubtedly addresses his children, but who speaks like the father of the family, and who well knows all his household. When the Scriptures speak of the form of our earth, they term it a GLOBE. When they speak of the position of the globe in the midst of the uni verse, it is SUSPENDED UPON NOTHING, (x) When they speak of its age, not only do they put its creation, as well as that of the heavens, AT THE BEGINNING that is to say, before ages which they cannot, or desire not, to number-but they ar careful to place before the arranging of chaos, and the creation of man, that of angels, archangels, principalities, and powers, their trial, the fall and ru of some, and the perseverance and glory of others. When, afterwards, they speak of the origin of ou continents, and of the later creation of plants. animals, and men, they then give to this new world and to our proud race so recent an existence, that in every age, and among all nations, and even in our modern schools, there have been those who have daringly rebelled against it; but, nevertheles an age to which the learned and the vulgar have been compelled alike to yield, since the labours of De Luc, Cuvier, and Buckland, have so fully demonstrated that the state of the earth's surface, as well as the monuments of history and of science, incontestably authenticate it. When they speak of the heavens, they employ to designate and define them the most sublime and philosophical expressions; expressions which the Greeks in the Septuagint, the Latins in the Vulgate, and all the Fathers of the Church in their sermons, have pretended to improve, but which they have distorted, because they appeared to them opposed to the science of their times. The heavens, in the Bible are the expanse, expansum, y; it is the void, the ether, or boundless space, and not the firmamentum of St. Jerome; nor the rspiwua of the Alexandrian interpreters; nor the firm, solid crystalline, and incorruptible eighth heaven, of Aristotle, and all the ancients. And, although this remarkable Hebrew term occurs seventeen times in the Old Testament, and although the Seventy uniformly renders it by σripiwμa (firmament), the New Testament Scripture has never once used it in the sense employed by the Greek interpreters. When they speak of light, it is presented as an element, independent of the sun, and as anterior by three distinct periods to that in which this glorious luminary was lighted up, anticipating thus the systems of moderns, which lead us to suppose, with the great Newton, that the universe contains an ether, perfectly subtle, highly elastic, existing everywhere, whose contractions and dilatations produce not only the varied phenomena of light, but those even of gravitation. When they speak of the creation of plants, they exhibit them vegetating, increasing and bearing seed, before the appearance of the sun, and under conditions of light, heat, and moisture, which differ much from those which sustain vegetation in the present day; and it is thus that they reveal, many thousand years since, an order of things, which fossil botany has, in later times, established as incontestable, the necessity of which is attested by the gigantic vegetable remains which have recently been discovered in Canada and Baffin's Bay: some, like M. Marcel de Serres, to explain this, having recourse to a terrestrial magnetism, at that period more intense, or to a more luminous aurora borealis; others, like M. de Candolle, to a great inclination of the ecliptic, although, in reality (according to the celebrated theorem of La Grange), the celestial mechanism restricts this variation of the planetary orbs within very narrow limits. When the Scriptures speak of air, whose gravity was unknown before Galileo, they tell us that God giveth to the air its WEIGHT (p), and to the seas their measure. When they speak of our atmosphere, and of "the waters which are above," an importance is assigned to them which modern science alone could establish; since, according to its calculations, the force which nature annually employs, in the formation of clouds, is equal to a work which the whole human race could not accomplish in less than two hundred thousand years. And when they separate the waters which are beneath from those which are above, it is by an expanse, and not by a solid sphere, as both Greek and Latin translators have sought to show. When they speak of the mountains, they discriminate two classes of facts; they speak of them as created, and as rising, and as melting like wax; they speak of the sinking of the valleys; in a word, they speak of them as a geological poet would speak in our day: "The mountains ascend, O Lord! and the valleys descend to the place which thou hast appointed for them. When they speak of the human race, of every tribe, colour, and language, they give them one sole origin; and although the philosophy of every age has determinedly revolted against this truth, moderns have, at length, been constrained to acknowledge it. When they speak of the internal state of our globe, they declare two great facts of which learned men were long ignorant, but which have been rendered incontestable by their late discoveries-one relative to its solid crust; and the other, to the abyss of waters which it encloses. When they speak of its solid covering, they inform us, that if its surface yields us bread, yet beneath (n), the earth is ON FIRE; that, moreover, "it is reserved for the fire," and that, at the last day, "the earth, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up:" and when they speak of the waters which our globe contains, they render the sole explanation, at least in this relation, of the immense overflowings under which (upon the evidence of scientific men themselves) it has, at various periods, been long and completely submerged. And whilst these men tell us of the little depth of the sea, and affirm that an uprising of only two hundred yards, or half as high again as the tower of Strasburg, would suffice to dissipate the Baltic, the North Sea, and St. George's Channel; and that if Mont Blanc, or at least Chimborazo, were thrown into the Pacific Ocean, it would be lofty enough to constitute an island; whilst La Place has felt justified in concluding, from the height of the tides, that the mean depth of the ocean does not exceed a thousand yards (the height of Salève, or Hecla); and whilst they would demonstrate to us the absolute insufficiency of the seas for the vast submersions which our globe has undergone; the Scriptures tell us, "the earth has been drawn out of the water, and that it subsists amongst the waters," and that its solid crust encloses a GREAT ABYSS (), whose fountains were broken up (P) at the time of the deluge, as at that of chaos, and the innumerable ages which preceded it. When they speak of the flood, they suppose inundations and disorder, such as infidels of former times have ever considered too mighty for belief; and yet, in the present day, geologists rather feel them to be insufficient to account for all the devastation they find in examining the earth. When they recount the circumstances and the progress of this immense submersion, they reveal facts which the science of moderns has not yet universally adopted, but which it cannot contradict any more than it can other facts -an internal fire, which, by increasing the tem-] perature of the mighty waters, would, on the one hand, cause an excessive evaporation and impetuous rains, as if the barriers of heaven were removed; and on the other, an irresistible rarefaction, which not only raised the waters from their retreat, broke up the fountains of the GREAT DEEP, and swelled the overwhelming waves to the level of the highest mountains; but which caused immense deposits of chalk, under the double action of excessive heat, and of a pressure equal to 8,000 atmospheres! When they describe the state of our globe, anterior to its being called into form, they attribute to it internal¦ heat and fire, and cover it entirely with water, in its state of liquidity. When they narrate the creation of birds and fishes, they give them a common origin; and it is known that modern naturalists have proved that between these two classes of animals there exists very intimate relations; not indeed appearing outwardly to the eye, but which their anatomy has disclosed, and even to the microscopic form of the globules of their blood. When they arrest the course of the sun (that is to say, the earth's rotation), in the days of Joshua' the son of Nun, they are careful to stay the moon also, in the same proportion, and by the same cause; a precaution which, as Chaubard shows, no astronomer, ignorant of our diurnal motion, could have imagined; since, after all that has been said, this miracle involves nothing more than the prolongation of the day. When they tell of the Lord's arrival as lightning, "in the twinkling of an eye," at the last day, they bear an additional testimony to the earth's rotation, and to the existence of the antipodes; because, at that solemn interval, it will be day for one part of the world's inhabitants, and night for the other. When they describe the bygone and future riches of the land of Canaan, to which a marvellous power of vegetation is promised in the last days, it is termed rich, not only in fountains, but in "subterranean waters;" and they seem to anticipate the idea of draining, by which the moderns have learned to fertilize a barren country. When they speak of the languages of men, they give them a primitive unity, which seems to be contradicted by a cursory view of the varied speech of nations, but which a deeper examination confirms. When they narrate the deliverance of Noah, they give to the rainbow dimensions which, at the first aspect, we find too limited; which we should have multiplied a hundred-fold, had we been charged with the recital; but which mature study of the fact has established as sufficient. When they speak of the number of the stars, instead of supposing a thousand (1,022), EVANGELICAL SOCIETY OF FRANCE. like the catalogue of Hipparchus; or exactly 1,026, like that of Ptolemy (whilst, in the two hemispheres together, the most experienced vision cannot discover more than 5,000; whilst, previously to the invention of the telescope, the eye could not count more than a thousand, under the most favourable circumstances); the Scriptures declare that they are INNUMERABLE. (Gen. xv. 5.) They compare them, as Herschel has done, to the sand of the sea; they tell us that God has scattered them with his hand, like dust, throughout the immensity of space, and yet that "he calleth them all by their names."When they speak of space, hear with what profound wisdom and sublimity it is portrayed; how careful in its noble poetry, how wise in its sublimity!"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the EXPANSE showeth his handy-work. There is no speech nor language, nevertheless their voice is heard." When they speak of the relations which the stars bear to this sublunary world, instead of supposing then animated, as did the ancients; instead of even attributing to them any influence upon human affairs, as was so long persisted in by the Christian states of France and Italy, even to the period of the Reformation, they tell us that they are inert matter; luminous, indeed, but arranged and dependent; the heavens, even the heaven of heavens, proceed with order, with the oneness and unity of an army which advances to the conflict. "Lift up your eyes on high, and behold, who hath created all these things? He who bringeth out their host by order, and who calleth them all by their names; not one faileth. Why then sayest thou, O Jacob, My way is hid from the Lord, and my God sustains not my right ?" When they describe the heavens, they carefully discriminate a three-fold character:-in the first place, the heaven of the birds, of tempests, of the powers of the air, and of spiritual wickednesses; then the heaven of the starry host; and lastly, the third heaven, the heaven of heavens. But when they speak of God, whose handy-work all this is, how exalted, yet how gentle is their language! "Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters"-"Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee". "Within what bounds will you confine Him ?" "To what will ye liken God?" "He has set his glory above the heavens, and he humbleth himself even to behold the things that are in heaven ?"-" If you would take the wings of the morning, and fly with the rapidity of light, whither would you go far from his face, or flee from his presence ?" And when they have thus dwelt upon these visible glories, they tell us farther, "Lo, these are but parts of his ways; how little the portion that is known of him!" And, finally, having, as it were, exhausted language in recounting all his greatness as Creator, they add: "He telleth the number of the stars, yet he healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds;" "admirable in counsel, and wonderful in means, yet he puts our tears into his bottle;" "a sparrow falleth not to the ground without his permission, and the very hairs of our head are all numbered." "This eternal God (O righteous man) is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms"-" O Lord, how manifold are thy works!" and thou hast magnified thy mercy above thy glory! And now, in the midst of all these marvels, "where shall we find wisdom-and where is the place of understanding? The abyss saith, It is not in me; and the sea answers, It is not with me. God alone understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof; for he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven. When he gave to the air its weight, and to the waters their just measure; when he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder; then did he see wisdom, and explored its depths; then he said unto man, To fear the Lord, that is thy wisdom; and to depart from evil, that is understanding." Such is, then, the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures; and it is thus we find only the reflection of heavenly radiance, where some have thought to discover a stain. If with a calm and reverential hand you draw aside the veil which appears sometimes to shroud these truths from your view, you will discover a majestic splendour; for the Scriptures, descend, like Moses from the holy mount, bearing to us the tables of testimony. Where you have dreaded obscurity, there you find light; where there has been raised an objection, God converts it into a witness; where there has been a doubt, there rests an assurance. A BENEDICTION FOR A CHILD. What, in the labour, pain, and strife, What, in the grave, and in that hour |