tution; but if there never had been a Sabbath, and the supreme magistrate was about to appoint one by special statute, he would not say to-morrow is, but to-morrow shall be the Sabbath. The weekly rest, then, was appointed, and sanctified before the days of Moses. Have we any prior account of it? We have. Where is it? In the second chapter of Genesis, and no where else. The Sabbath, then, was instituted in paradise, and was only revived, when the bread of heaven fell round about the camp in the wilderness.

Thirdly; we are irresistibly led to the same conclusion, by the testimony of a long list of ancient writers, a very small part of which, only, can be brought within our narrow limits. We offer the following, just to acquaint our readers with the nature and variety of this testimony.

Homer and Hesiod both "speak of the seventh day as holy."

Porphyry says, "the Phoenicians consecrated one day in seven as holy."

Philo says, that "the Sabbath is not a festival peculiar to any one people, or country, but is common to all the world; and that it may be named the general and public feast, or the feast of the nativity of the world."

Josephus affirms, "that there is no city, either of Greeks, or barbarians, or any other nation, where the religion of the Sabbath is not known." Lampidius tells us, that Alexander Severus, the Roman emperor, usually went, on the seventh day, into the capitol, there to offer sacrifices to the gods.

The learned Grotius tells us, "that the memory of the creation's being performed in seven days, was preserved, not only among the Greeks and Italians, but among the Celts and Indians, all of whom divided their time into weeks." The same is affirmed by other writers, of the Assyrians, Egyptians, Arabians, Romans, Gauls, Britons, and Germans.

And how, we would ask every candid readerhow is this remarkable agreement of nations so remote from each other, and between many of whom little or no intercourse ever existed, to be accounted for? Will it be said, that they were all originally indebted to the Jews for it? By whom, then, was the Sabbath borrowed from that hated and despised people? Would the Egyptians permit themselves to be instructed by a nation whose civil and religious institutions they abhorred ? Would their mortal enemies, the Assyrians? Would the fierce and independent tribes of Arabia? Would those proud and mighty masters of the world, the Greeks and the Romans? Nothing can be more improbable. How, then, is the problem to be solved? By a recurrence to the original institution of the Sabbath in paradise. God having given it to our first parents, it became known, of course, to all the antediluvian patriarchs. From Noah, the last of them, it was handed down by tradition, through all the branches of his family; and thus, in process of time, the knowledge of it, though greatly obscured and mixed with fable, found its way into almost every part of the world,

just as traditional accounts of the deluge were spread among all nations.

Our first question, then, is answered; the Sabbath is from God; and the date of the institution is coeval with that of the world.

QUESTION II.

Was the Sabbath intended for all mankind, or· only for a part?

SECTION I.

That the Sabbath was not given to the Jews only, follows irresistibly from what has been already proved. They had no existence when it was instituted. Even Abraham, the "father of them all," was not born till 2000 years afterward. That it should be made peculiarly prominent, in the history of that nation, was natural, and even necessary, from the circumstance, that to them "pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving the law, and the service of God, and the promises." If any other people had been chosen, instead of the Israelites, the Sabbath would unquestionably have been made equally prominent in their ecclesiastical polity. But it could not be intended for one nation, more than another, because it was given to Adam, the great progenitor of the human family; and through him, to all his posterity.

If the Sabbath was needful for one branch of the human family, as a day of rest and religious improvement, it was needful for all. If the obser

vance of it was eminently calculated to promote the temporal and spiritual good of the Jewish nation, it is not less calculated to promote the good of all other nations. And if it was enjoined and sanctified, as a holy commemorative ordinance, from the foundation of the world, it must, in the very nature of the case, be obligatory upon all mankind.

Two great institutions originated from infinite authority in paradise;―viz. marriage, and the weekly Sabbath. Was the ordinance of marriage temporary, or perpetual? Was it intended for one nation only, or for all nations? And from what date, we beg leave digressively to inquire, did the law become obligatory; from the date of the statute itself, or from some recognition of it, two or three thousand years later? Surely that man's logic would be regarded with great suspicion, who should maintain, that the institution of marriage was meant to be obligatory upon a single nation only; and that not from the date of the institution, but in some far distant futurity! And with what greater consistency, we ask, can it be maintained, that the Sabbath, the other great primimitive institution so often mentioned, was made obligatory only upon a mere fraction of the human family?

SECTION II.

It is a settled principle, in all governments, that there are but two ways in which any law can cease to be binding upon the people. It may expire by

its own limitations, or it may be repealed by the same authority which enacted it; and in the latter case, the repealing act must be as explicit as the law itself. Now, we have it in proof, that the Sabbath was instituted by the infinite Lawgiver in paradise. In priority of time, it stands at the head of all his enactments. It is the very first statute, in that code of laws, which he has promulgated in the Bible. Of course, it has an authority entirely independent of the Jewish ritual, and is no more a part of that system, which has "waxed old and vanished away," than the sixth commandment is.

The law of the Sabbath can never expire by its own limitations; and for the plainest of all reasons, that it has no limitations. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it, he had rested from all his work, which God created and made. Now if this solemn act made the Sabbath binding upon mankind at all, it made the obligation universal and perpetual, as no limitation, or exemption, is hinted at. If the divine consecration of one seventh part of time, made it the duty of our first parents to keep it holy, it clearly imposes the same duty upon their posterity; no intimation, as we have already observed, being given, that the sacred rest was intended for a part of mankind only, or was to be observed only for a limited period. The law, then, still remains in force, and must remain to the end of time, unless God himself has seen fit, or shall hereafter see fit, to repeal it, there being no other authority in the universe that can strike out a letter of it.

Has God abrogated the law? If he has, the