Hebrew Sabbath transferred to the Christian Sunday.* With these few explanatory remarks I proceed.

(1.) The first and most obvious duty appropriate to Sunday is a cessation from labor. This is a part of the fourth commandment, is of perpetual obligation, and has no connexion with the local and temporary Hebrew policy. The Sunday is a great and precious privilege. By this institution, those who labor with their hands are rescued from the severities and hardships of unremitting toil;-and those whose labor is chiefly of the understanding find in it a season of refreshment and renovation of strength and energy, of which they stand in equal need with those whose labor is performed by the hands.

Works of necessity and mercy, however, and the labor of attending and performing divine service, are recognised by the Saviour himself as suitable to the Jewish Sabbath, † and they are equally so to the Christian Sunday. The relief of Sunday to the laboring classes of mankind contributes greatly to the comfort and happiness of their lives, both as it refreshes them for the time, and as it lightens their six days' labor, by the prospect of a day of rest always before them. This could not be said of casual indulgences of leisure and rest, even if they occurred more frequently than Sunday. It is matter of experience, also, that days of relaxation which occur seldom and unexpectedly, being unprovided when they do come, with any duty or employment, and the manner of spending them being regulated by no public standard of propriety and established usage, they are usually consumed in sloth, or in rude, perhaps criminal diversions, or, still worse, in scenes of riot and intemperance. The Sunday is a day of rest and refreshment to the body and to the mind, but not a day of sloth and indulgence. The remark, moreover, must not be omitted, that it gives a day of rest and refreshment to the laboring animals, as well as to laboring man. Thus the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all the works of his hands."

(2.) But the Sunday includes much more than cessation from

*Levit. xxiii. 8, 42, &c.

Mark ii. 23-28; Mat. xii. 1 – 14.

Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 253.

labor, and rest, and refreshment of the body and mind. We are required to keep it holy, that is, to set it apart from a common to a special and sacred use. This requires the appropriation of it to an attendance on public worship, and includes the more general duty, of employing it in every suitable way, for the purpose of moral and religious improvement. Religious assemblies under the name of "holy convocations,"* were accustomed to be held on the Hebrew Sabbath; and we have full evidence, that a compliance with the same custom was considered a personal and universal duty on the Christian Sunday from the beginning. † Besides attendance on public worship, reading, meditation, private prayer, the instruction of children and servants, are the appropriate and important duties of Sunday. The latter class of persons, especially, must be instructed on this day, or they will, too probably, receive no instruction at all.

(3.) The appropriation of a part of the Sunday to the elementary moral and religious instruction of children, especially poor children, and of adults who stand in need of such instruction, and are willing to receive it, may justly be regarded as one of the greatest moral improvements of modern times. In Sunday schools, those humble seminaries of charitable education, many hundreds of thousands of children are nurtured in the ways of righteousness, not a few of whom would otherwise have been brought up in neglect, irreligion, and probably crime. These nurseries of education, morals, and piety are founded on the principle recommended by Solomon and sanctioned by all experience, of training up the child in the way he should go, that, when he is old, he may not depart from it. The experience of all times demonstrates, that the character of the man is built on the principles instilled into the mind of the child. In furtherance of the original plan, too, the conductors of Sunday schools, in this country, have very extensively instituted libraries of choice books for the instruction of the young under their charge; and they meditate no less an enterprise, than the elementary moral and religious education of the entire youthful population of the

Heb. x. 25; John xx. 19, 26; Acts xx. 6, 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2; Rev. i. 10.

United States, and the furnishing them universally, by libraries, with facilities for reading, both on Sundays and other days, of the most useful and attractive kind. The philanthropic mind is filled with admiration when contemplating an enterprise so beneficial and comprehensive. Besides, the good effect of Sunday school instruction extends not only to the scholars actually taught, but to the teachers, the parents, and even the ministers and congregations in which they are organized and properly sustained. In this way, by thus vastly augmenting the usefulness of the day, a new and before unknown value has been given to the institution of Sunday itself.

PART SECOND.

OUR RELATION TO OUR COUNTRY, AND THE MORAL DUTIES THENCE ARISING; THAT IS, THE DUTIES OF PATRIOTISM.

IT has sometimes been said, that "a Christian is of no country," that he ought to esteem all countries alike, and to have no attachment to one country more than to another; * but this sentiment will not bear examination when submitted to the test of Scripture, any more than when brought to the bar of reason. The Hebrew Scriptures abound with the most enthusiastic and even exclusive sentiments of attachment, on the part of the authors, for their native land. † In the New Testament, this enthusiasm and exclusiveness of attachment to country are not seen; still the sentiment and the duty of patriotism are fully recognised. Our Saviour instructed his disciples to render unto Cæsar all things which Cæsar might rightfully claim; that is, he instructed them to comply with all the lawful ordinances of civil government. While predicting the destruction of Jerusalem for its sins, he still accompanied his prediction with the most pathetic lamentations. § The benefits of his personal ministry, too, were confined to his own countrymen, || and those, who were commissioned to preach his Gospel, were enjoined to make it known first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. T St. Paul was especially commissioned to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles; still he recognises his obligation to make it known first of all to his countrymen. We are instructed to make supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings for kings, and all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all

**

godliness and honesty. This implies a cheerful and cordial submission to the government under which we live, as distinct from that of any other country. The truth is, Christianity adapts itself to human institutions and to the relations of human life as it finds them, and seeks to meliorate and improve all of them. t

Christianity has made obedience to civil government imperatively binding on the conscience, and there is no duty in regard to which it speaks in more decisive terms. "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake; whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with welldoing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men; as free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God." In Romans xiii. 1-7, St. Paul enjoins obedience in terms yet more imperative. Still, au thoritatively as these passages speak, they do not inculcate the unlimited obedience, much less the servile spirit, which has sometimes been ascribed to them. § They make civil obedience a branch of Christian duty, instead of a mere submission to superior force. The doctrine contained in them is applicable both to individuals and to associations of individuals, combined to accomplish any particular object. Every individual owes prompt and cheerful obedience to the lawful authority of his country. But he owes no obedience to civil government, in any instance in which the consequence must be a violation of his duty to God. Nor does he owe compliance in any instance or degree, in which authority has not been given to the magistrate, by the State, to require it. These limitations require no illustration.

But there is a great difference between an individual refusing to comply with an ordinance of government, and an association of individuals united to overthrow the existing government of a

* 1 Tim. ii. 1, 2.

1 Pet. ii. 13-16.

+ See Gisborne's Inquiry, Vol. I. p. 109–124.

§ See "The American Review," for 1811, Vol. I. p. 336.