the mind of a man so calculated of themselves to beget enthusiasm, and to disturb the balance of the understanding; and yet never has there lived the man in whom sobriety was more conspicuous. Never has there lived a man whose natural temperament was so easy to be excited, or whose warmth of feeling subjected him to more violent emotions; but what man has been more distinguished for moderation? Shining with graces and gifts, he saw in himself little else than the infirmities of nature and the need of pardon. In others, it was his joy and his consolation to discern the beginnings of that holiness of which his modest spirit prevented him from seeing the accomplishment in himself: his distrust of his own sufficiency was in the same degree with his trust in the mercy of God; and by bringing his own title in continual comparison with the merits of the Saviour, he drew from his conscious weakness perpetual supplies of strength; from the renunciation of his own deserts a foretaste of his great reward; from present crosses an earnest of triumphant bliss; and from bonds, imprisonment, and the loss of all things, the expectation of an eternal weight of glory. So chastened, so exercised, so endowed, so in harmony with man, so in communion with God, the character of St. Paul has realized the

conception of that bright exemplar which has been rather desiderated than described in the foregoing pages. In him, the union of Christian soundness with essential politeness has completed the lineaments and furnished the model of that humble and heaven-taught grace of deportment, which awes while it delights, purifies while it pleases, and is at once in favour with God and man.

SECTION XVII.

THE SABBATH OF THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN.

HITHERTO the view taken of the Christian gentleman has related only to his conduct on ordinary days, or the days in which his own work is in progress: there is yet a day not touched upon, in which his own works are to be suspended, in order that the work of grace, or God's peculiar work, may be going forward in his heart. Happy day for the body and soul of man! The world's birthday; sign of an everlasting covenant between God and his faithful worshippers; day of Jehovah and his creation

and more honourable still our Christian Sabbath the birthday of the spiritual world; earnest of perpetual rest; day of the Lord, and the redemption completed. But, happy and honourable as is this hallowed day, man has not been wanting in endeavours to dash the cup of blessedness from his lips. He has been solicitous and ingenious to discover grounds for disputing the import and obligation of one of the plainest passages in the Bible, and to furnish himself with a pretext for renouncing a gift of God so full of grace and mercy, that none, save

the gift of himself in his mysterious work of redemption, may be compared with it. Mant has been studious to dissever a ligament designed to hold him in communion with heaven, and to let in the torrents of a polluted world upon that little spot where our Shepherd calls us to lie down in green pastures, and repose beside the still waters.

"On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and rested the seventh day from all his work which he had made; and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which he had made." Thus the Sabbath was instituted at the close of the creation, and enjoined upon all the families and posterities of the earth in words as plain as language affords. It was blessed, and appointed to be kept holy, or set apart (as the Hebrew may be read ;) and is it possible for an unprejudiced understanding to doubt of the perpetuity of the obligation? How can a boon be blessed but by being made a lasting source of good to follow upon the distinction bestowed? and how can it be sanc tified or set apart but by a continued observance and separation? and when was an observance to end which equally appertained and appertains to man in every generation? Is it a natural

inference, that a solemnity ordained by God to lead his creatures to consider the excellency of his works, and his goodness towards them, was intended to be less durable than the relation between the creature and his Creator? If the Sabbath was made for man, as Christ himself has declared, for whom, or for what period was it not made?

When we find such a man as Dr. Paley, in his anxiety to avoid the plain and palpable meaning of the second and third verses of the second chapter of Genesis, maintaining that, as the passage does not say that Jehovah then blessed and sanctified the seventh day, but only that he blessed and sanctified it because he rested from all his work, the Hebrew historian alluded by anticipation to the Jewish Sabbath, we can no longer wonder at any triumph of subtlety over sense, or of vanity over judgment.

But the Pentateuch is silent on the subject of the sabbatical observance by the patriarchs; wherefore," says Dr. Paley, "it is to be inferred that no such observance existed; and we are led to the presumption that, previous to the departure of the Israelites out of Egypt, the Sabbath was not an appointed solemnity." He admits that the institution was in existence before the promulgation of the tables; being expressly