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 tempo- · rary 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.

of a supernatural revelation. And not only is it one of its strong peculiarities, but an institution for the existence and influence of which the world is under untold obligations to its great Author.

We may advert to this institution in the first instance, simply as a day of rest. One principal design of it was to give both man and beast one day's respite from labour out of every seven. It deserves our special notice, that the letter and spirit of the divine command require both man and beast to abstain from all servile occupations on this day. Rest constitutes one of the essential parts of this observance. In the language of the Scripture, to "profane the Sabbath" is the same thing as to labour upon the Sabbath, while to sanctify the Sabbath signifies to rest from labour. The Jews were so scrupulous in this particular, that they would not even take up arms in self-defence on this day; so that when Antiochus Ephiphanes and Pompey availed themselves of this conscientious tenderness, and attacked them on the Sabbath day, they became the victims of their fury without opposition. It was designed to be a day of respite from anxiety and toil; a day of refreshment both to the mind and the body; and though not required to be a day of feasting, was specially forbidden to be a day of fasting and sadness

And is there not wonderful wisdom and benignity in such an arrangement? Man was not made for constant and unrelieved employment. He was not formed for seven days toil, but for six. No

doubt it seems to many persons, that the mere fact of resting one day in seven can exert very little influence on the condition of our own race. To men who never labour, it is not strange that this thought should sometimes occur. To the mass of pagan lands, whose life is one of dreaming indolence and sloth, the periodical recurrence of such a rest would not make much difference in their condition. But to a man whose mental energy is in a state of perpetual excitement; to a laborious, working community; such a rest is like the soft slumbers of midnight when it covers with its gentle folds an agitated and trembling mind, and a body overpowered with toil. The command to rest, it will be recollected, stands not alone. "Six days shalt thou labour." It is in the combined and contrasted influence of such an arrangement only, that the Sabbath finds its appropriate place. There is nothing healthful that is still and stagnant; and there is nothing cheerful and placid where there is no cessation from the exhausting toil of this busy and care-worn world. God has given laws to this organic frame which cannot be violated with impunity. Man can no more labour a series of years without the Sabbath, than he can labour a series of days without nocturnal repose. The measure of weekly rest is as wisely determined by the Author of our physical constitution, as is the measure of our diurnal rest. When in defiance of the laws of nature and heaven, France abolished the Sabbath, and rested one day in ten,