only a relative one; an accommodation liable to modification and restatement, and in some more heavenly state perhaps quite superseded.

Then indeed we begin to feel that religion and the perception of spiritual things is not a matter for the head, but for the inmost heart, although the head necessarily provides a mould of some kind for religion, just as the lips supply an expression often poor and inadequate enough for the emotions of the heart; and as we see how often the best things of the Spirit are hid from the wise and learned, and revealed unto babes, we become more reconciled to our own limited intelligence, and to the very decided but very contradictory opinions of many theologians, only for ourselves we had just as soon sit at the feet of Jesus and hear the gospel preached to the poor, and go into the kingdom of heaven along with the little children, as be heralded in by all the orthodoxies of the schoolmen, and vouched for by St. Athanasius himself. And I doubt not that thoughts such as these, which are daily waking up in the breasts of so many honest and earnest people, will be somehow reflected ere long in a wider teaching, in a simpler ritual, and a deeper and broader faith;

a faith enlarged by every new discovery of science, and enriched by every genuine experience, and nourished by every brotherly sympathy, and chastened by every humble sense of failure and imperfection, and yet fed by a Divine communion, and sustained by a buoyant and unfaltering trust.

Such a faith and such a ritual we may not live to see, but the Church of the future is in our hearts, as the Christ of the future was in the heart of Simeon when he took up the infant Christ in his arms.

THE SABBATH.

328. A great difference of opinion seems to prevail as to what actions are right and what are wrong on Sunday. For a fuller discussion I must refer my readers to the sermon on the Lord's Day in my "Thoughts for the Times;" but I think it expedient to place again briefly the principal points. The uncertainty which prevails is bad, for people are made miserable unnecessarily, and their consciences injured, by the feeling that in doing something "secular" on Sunday they have necessarily committed a wrong action. The confusion between the

Sabbath and the Lord's Day is one great cause of this uncertainty, and half of this confusion would not take place in people's minds if they read their Bible and ecclesiastical history more carefully, or studied such a work as Dr. Hessey's Bampton Lectures on the Lord's Day. But the clergy never explain such a work from the pulpit, because they are afraid of throwing discredit on popular prejudices and Scotch Sabbatarianism, and that is considered “dangerous.”

To help us to come to a right conclusion with regard to Sunday observance, let us consider first the Jewish Sabbath. This in its beginning was a touching institution. It was proclaimed by Moses to a nation of slaves, who did not know what rest was; in fact, so difficult was it found to make the slave mind take in the idea of rest, that a man had to be stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath Day. Such a punishment seems hard, but it was necessary. The Duke of Wellington had a man shot for stealing a fowl during the Peninsular war. Such measures are required for rough people in rough times. There are times when needful rest must be enforced as a principle, and at some cost. As a case in point, I would allude to a

certain doctor, who, though generally advocating total abstinence from alcoholic liquors, prescribed for a literary man who would overwork himself, strong malt liquor in the middle of the day, so that when his patient went back to his books after his midday meal, he could not work, owing to the stupefying influence of the beer.

But when Christ came, He showed that even "the Sabbath or seventh day was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath;" and what we have to remember is that whilst the old Jewish Sabbath has been abolished, the law of the Sabbath Day has never been transferred authoritatively to the first day, or Sunday. Paul declared that the obligation of keeping the Sabbath was altogether abolished. Thus, in his Epistle to the Romans, while not prohibiting its observance (for he did not wish to offend the Jewish converts, who formed a large proportion of the Christians in Rome), he says: "One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (Rom. xiv. 5). And, writing to his Galatian converts, he blames them for retrograding so far as to "observe days, and months, and times, and years" (Gal. iv.

9, 19). In his letter to the Colossians, again, he tells them not to let any man judge them "in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days," since all these Jewish feasts were but "shadows" (Col. ii. 16). The Sabbath was a shadow of Christian rest and worship, but its authority passed away, and its rules were never authoritatively transferred to the Lord's Day.

66

Many persons in these days value the opinions of "the Fathers" very highly. Now Cyril (Bishop of Jerusalem, A.D. 345) forbids his converts to observe the Sabbath day, since to do so, he said, was to turn back to Judaism. Henceforth," he added, "reject all observance of Sabbaths, and call not meats which are really matters of indifference, unclean." Jerome (about 390) describes how the early Christians passed their time on Sunday. He says that, having been to church in the morning, they went about their ordinary work, as the making or mending of garments, &c.; and he sees no harm in their thus employing their time.

Then as to the Reformers. Luther told his co-religionists that if any one placed the observance of the glorious and refreshing day of