and convince, and convert, God can rouse from their apathy, open their hearts to understand his word, and at a time, and in a way that shall make his own power and grace the most conspicuous. Prayer makes the doubting hope, the feeble strong. It gives humility and confidence in God. It makes every effort for the salvation of men spiritual and holy. "Prayer moves the hand that moves the world." Who would be insensible to the value of prayer?

28*

LECTURE XII.

THE OBLIGATIONS OF THE WORLD TO THE BIBLE FOR THE SABBATH.

EVERY reflecting man must, one would suppose, contemplate with grateful admiration, the great wisdom of the divine Author of the Scriptures in the institution of the Sabbath. I know of nothing like this observance in any other system of religion except that revealed in the Bible, unless it be some feint traditions of it in some pagan lands of remote antiquity. It is a weekly observance; fixed and permanent; hebdomedal from its original institution, and to the end of time. Some of the ancient pagan nations had something in the form of an hebdomedal observance. Hesiod, the celebrated Greek poet of Boeotia, who lived about nine hundred years before the coming of Christ, says, "the seventh day is holy." Homer, who flourished about the same period, and Callimachus, also a Greek

poet, who flourished in the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes, about seven hundred years later, speak of the seventh day as holy. Lucian also, a Greek writer, born at Samosata, who flourished about four hundred years after Callimachus, says, "The seventh day is given to the schoolboys as an holyday." Josephus, the celebrated Jewish historian, says, "No city of Greeks, or barbarians can be found which does not acknowledge a seventh day's rest from labour." In the earlier ages of Greece, the years were numbered by the return of seed time and harvest, and the several seasons of labour and rest; and the day divided, not into hours, but into morning, noon, and evening. The months of the Greeks were divided into decads, or three periods of ten days each; and I do not find any mention of a division of time into weeks among that people. There was no Sabbath among the ancient Romans. Their year was originally divided by Romulus into ten months; and afterwards, by Numa, into twelve. Their months, like those of the Greeks, were divided into three parts, kalends, nones, and ides. The custom of dividing time into weeks did not obtain until the reign of the emperor Severus.* Both the Greeks and Romans had their days of cessation from labour, but they were not hebdomedal. They were also religious observances; that

* Potter's Antiquities of Greece, and Adams' Roman Antiquities.

is, they were devoted to the honour of their pagan gods. They were days on which their altars smoked with sacrifices; days of festivity; days on which their public games were celebrated, and on which their temples, groves, and sacred fields were stained with blood and resounded with bacchanalian madness. When heathen poets and historians therefore speak of holy days, they mean days of mirth and wickedness. Such are the days of rest throughout all Mahomedan countries. A late correspondent in one of our religious periodicals, describes a Sabbath in Constantinople as a day of universal sport and diversion.* Modern missionaries, if I mistake not, uniformly testify, that there is no Sabbath in pagan lands. I have conversed with gentlemen of high intellectual and Christian character who have resided years in China and India, who have informed me, that they could never see any signs of a sabbatical observance in those vast countries. Nor have I been able to find any traces of a Sabbath among our own aborigines. The remark therefore, needs no qualification that the Sabbath, as its design and duties are disclosed in the Scriptures, is one of the strong peculiarities of a supernatural revelation. It was given to the great progenitor of our race while he was in a state unfallen innocence; it was the first command, taking the precedence in point of time even to the

* Cheever's Letters to the New-York Observer.

prohibition of the tree of knowledge; it rests on the essential relation of a creature to his glorious Creator. During the whole progress of the patriarchal age, you find traces of its observance. The manner in which its observance was revived and re-established before the commencement of the Mosaical economy and before the Israelites came to Mount Sinai, proves that it was an institution previously recognized, and had never been entirely lost. The authority and dignity given to it in the moral law affords decisive proof of its perpetual obligation. The allusions to it in the Psalms and in the Prophets, as well as its strict observance under the New Testament, show that it was destined to form a part of the gospel dispensation. The Saviour and his apostles honoured it, by honouring the ten commandments as of perpetual force and obligation; by respecting its sanctity in their own deportment, and by recognizing its continuance at a period when all obligation to a merely Jewish institution would long have ceased. Nor was any thing abrogated under the Christian dispensation with respect to the Sabbath, except those temporary and figurative enactments which constituted the peculiarities of Jewish age, and changed the Jewish Sabbath into the "Lord's Day."* The Sabbath therefore is one of the great peculiarities

* See these positions illustrated and defended in an able treatise on the Authority and Perpetual Obligation of the Sabbath, by Daniel Wilson, now Bishop of Calcutta.