is for any one to undertake this trust merely in compliment; how absurd to put little children (whose bond is not good in human courts) upon this weighty office; and also how ridiculous for those who have taken this duty upon them to think they can shake off this charge again, and assign it over to the parents.—Wheatly, p. 354.

I have thus, my Christian brethren, endeavoured to show you what is the teaching of the Bible and the Church on the important subject of baptism. And if this humble paper should have the blessed result of leading Churchmen to think as men ought to think of their privileges and responsibilities—to avoid equally the fever heat of superstition, and the icy cold of rationalism—I shall deem myself amply rewarded for the hours spent in its compilation. YOUR AFFECTIONATE PASTOR.

SABBATH AND SUNDAY.

PART III.

In this paper it is my purpose to consider the objection drawn from the Fourth Commandment against that view of the Jewish Sabbath which has been advocated in earlier essays.

The objection in question takes two shapes. It is argued that the Sabbath law must be of perpetual obligation, first, simply from its being in the Decalogue; and secondly, from the reason given for it in the Decalogue.

I. Now the first of these two forms of the objection manifestly depends on the prior assumption, that everything contained in the Ten Commandments is always and everywhere binding; and that the Decalogue is a formula of universal morality, to the very notion of which the admixture of any thing of a positive nature is essentially and demonstrably repugnant. If this assumption can be made good, the objection is unanswerable: if it cannot, the objection is worth nothing.

And the assumption cannot be made good. The Decalogue in fact neither excludes positive, nor exhausts moral duty; it neither confines itself on the one hand to those things which are binding always and everywhere, nor extends itself on the other to all those things. When we take it as a convenient summary of Christian duty, it is not as complete in itself, but as completed by our Saviour. In

deed, it is only in this view that it has any title to be considered as the Moral Law. At first, as originally delivered, it was rather a synopsis of Judicial Law, for the Jews under the Theocracy: it was a Table of Heads comprising the great outlines of the Mosaic Jurisprudence (delivered in detail in the sequel of the Pentateuch), and manifestly adjusted, directly and in the first instance, not to man as man, but to Jew as Jew.

The proof is clear. The characteristic form of the Decalogue is not preceptive, but prohibitory. It is not, Thou shalt do good,— but rather, Thou shalt not do evil. This accords with the fact that Law is the avenger of crime, but not the parent of virtue. Hence again, the Decalogue can hardly be said to touch on any virtues save those of Justice: Charity, Temperance, Almsgiving, Prayer,these duties, with their opposites, are passed unmentioned, being necessarily ignored by Law. Even the prohibitions which find a place are judicially limited. It is not, Thou shalt not cherish anger, -but, Thou shalt not kill. It is not, Thou shalt not commit fornication, but, Thou shalt not commit adultery. It is not, Thou shalt not defraud,-but, Thou shalt not steal. It is not, Thou shalt not lie, but, Thou shalt not bear false witness,-judicial lying, judicial fraud, what law can take hold of, what law can punish; not the genus, which falls under the province of Ethics, but the species, which falls under the province of Law.

On all these accounts it is very plain that the Ten Commandments require to be used by Christians simply as a text on which the gospel is the commentary, as an outline of which the expansion, as a letter of which the Gospel is the spirit. In its original destination it was Jewish and theocratic: it had to wait for the breath of life from a greater Lawgiver than Moses before it could become universal and Christian. The summary of duty supplied to the scribe is not the compressed Decalogue, but an independent Duologue. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul, and strength and mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.' And our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, most clearly teaches that the Decalogue true, and just, and good,' so far as it went, and as regarded its original destination, perfect,-nevertheless required emendation and supplement ere it could become a directory of duty to Christians. 'Ye know that it was said to the ancients-Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery; but' My precept is more stringent, more searching, and more spiritual: 'I say unto you

that whosoever shall be angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.'

I repeat, then, that when we accept the Decalogue as a convenient summary of duty, it is not as complete in itself, but as completed by our Lord.* And just as we might keep the Second Table, in its letter and first intention, and yet leave undone many things most necessary to be done, so a literal and servile obedience to the first, while it would certainly divert us from its higher construction, would imply our abstinence from some things which are perfectly innocent. As the Sixth and Seventh, so also the Second and Fourth Commandments, are to be taken not in the letter but in the spirit. Who indeed contends either that the Second Commandment proscribes the

*Think not,' says our Lord, in His Sermon on the Mount, 'think not I am come to annul the Law and the Prophets: I am not come to annul, but to complete them.' (πλnpwσai—S. Matt. v. 17.) And again: Be 6 ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.' (TEλELOL-Verse 48.) Each of the principal terms conveys a figure;-the first appropriate to the two systems, the Law and the Gospel; the second, to the two types of religious character in the men produced by either, Jews, that is, and Christians. Our Lord likens the Law to a half-filled vessel, which needed (not previous emptying, but only) an additional supply: the devout men living under that Law He likens, correspondently, to an unfinished piece of work, which needed, correspondently (not re-construction ab initio, but only) completion of its parts. Christian morals, in short, were to be a full system of duty, and Christian disciples to be finished men.

This supplementary relation of the Gospel to the Law is illustrated, as is shown above, by a reference to the Sixth and Seventh Commandments; and our Saviour is heard applying to two precepts, exempli gratiâ, that method of fulfilling,' completion, or perfection, which He has taught us it is needful to apply to them all. 'Ye know it was said to your forefathers by Moses;-but I say to you.—I give you a higher task, and require of you a deeper obedience. Moses forbade the murderous or the adulterous deed; I forbid the angry thought, or the lustful eye.'

The antithesis in these sentences is, of course, not that of good and bad, but that of good and better. Neither the Sermon on the Mount, nor the Summary in the Temple, is to be viewed as conflicting with the elder formula of duty. The Gospel did not repeal or displace the Decalogue; it carried it on to perfection. The Church, accordingly, after the example of her Lord, sedulously engrafts on its several precepts the entire compass of Christian duty; developes the judicial type into ethical completeness; and converts what was the code for the obedience of a nation into the rule for the conscience of an individual.

Fine Arts, or that the Fourth proscribes resting on Saturday? The spirit of the former precept is hostile not to sculpture, but to idolatry; the letter of it being hostile to sculpture only as it might be ancillary to superstition. A similar law of interpretation applies

equally to the latter.

The question in hand resolves itself into this-Is there, or is there not, an infusion of positive law in the fourth commandment? And this question is of very easy settlement. He must be a hardy controversialist indeed, who would assign, without reservation or explanation of any sort, the fourth precept to the same category as the sixth or seventh. Why is not that, like these, known to natural reason? Why does not that, like these, commend itself, by its own proper force, to the human conscience; instead of deriving all its sanction from the belief that such is the will of Heaven, under peculiar circumstances, it may be, and for a limited time?

The fourth commandment absolutely forbids all manner of work on the seventh day of the week. Now, if a man tells me that everything in the Ten Commandments is of perpetual moral obligation, I have to ask him, first, whether he keeps the Sabbath on Saturday; and secondly, whether he abstains on his Sabbath from all manner of work, for instance from using a carriage, or allowing food to be cooked, since of course qui facit per alium facit per se.

'No,' he will avow, 'I do neither. I keep my Sabbath on the first, not on the seventh day of the week, and I think myself at liberty to do or have done for me some manner of work, such as that now specified, on that day.'

'Well then,' I continue, 'you cannot believe that keeping the Sabbath on the seventh day, and keeping it so as to cook no food on it, are parts of the moral law. Consequently you must give up the principle of your objection: you must admit that along with something moral in the fourth commandment, by which you think yourself bound to abide, there is also something positive and ceremonial, with which you think yourself at liberty to dispense.'

It being thus demonstrated that there is an infusion of positive law in the fourth commandment, it is obvious that any subsequent question can only be one of degree. What is the true anatomy of the precept? How much of it is moral, and therefore binding on Christians? How much is ceremonial, and therefore binding only on Jews?

The partition proposed by Sabbatarians is capricious and irrational.

Surely the least reflection will convince any man that if it be merely ceremonial to keep the seventh day, it cannot be moral to keep one day in seven rather than one day in six or in eight; that if it be merely ceremonial to abstain from cooking food on the Sabbath, it cannot be moral to abstain from taking a walk. Let those who take this distinction shew a principle for it-a principle which will justify this arbitrary absolution from certain features of the law, and this arbitrary retention of other features exactly homogeneous to those which they dispense with. Or, to put the case otherwise, let those who think the Jewish law binding act up to it: let them refuse all letters which a Sunday mail has brought, all food which a Sunday fire has cooked, all conveniences which Sunday labour has ministered. They will then have a better title to controvert our belief that the law of holy seasons has been changed by the Christian religion; and may, with a show of decency, 'judge us in respect of Sabbaths.' But let us have no more of that patent hypocrisy which winks at the Sunday carriage, while it scowls on the Sunday railway; which strains at the gnat of public necessity, and swallows the camel of private indulgence.

The real distinction to be taken in the fourth commandment is simply this. It is moral and of universal obligation that man shall reserve time for the worship of God, and allow time for the recreation of his brother-man. But what portion of time shall be set aside for these purposes, at what intervals religious festivals and civil holidays shall recur, and in what precise manner such festivals and holidays shall be kept all this is shifting and positive. Jews and Christians are alike bound by the moral principle of the fourth commandment as now stated; but the appointments in which that principle resides have been totally different under the two dispensations. The law of time, due from man to God as matter of piety, and from man to man as matter of charity-this law is moral, immutable, and it lives: the law of the Sabbath is but one application, one form, of that higher law, which, purely ceremonial in its own peculiarities, has given way to the appointments of a higher economy. It is only by the inner truth of the fourth commandment that a Christian is bound: it is this and this only that he asks grace to keep'-to keep of course in that new expression and embodiment which 'this law' has acquired since the publication of the gospel.

II. But we are reminded that the perpetual obligation of the Sabbath, if not proved by the mere fact of its being in the Decalogue, is