believe the theory now set forth to be less exposed to objections than any other theory. My two next Lectures. will enter upon the controversies which have beset the subject on the Continent and in England from the Reformation until now. And the last Lecture will be occupied with the Question, How shall the Lord's Day be so observed as to benefit man both in body and soul, until he pass

"To where beyond these voices there is peace.

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LECTURE VI.

JEREMIAH V. 10.

GO YE UP UPON HER WALLS, AND DESTROY; BUT MAKE NOT A FULL END; TAKE AWAY HER BATTLEMENTS; FOR THEY ARE NOT THE LORD'S.

Ανάβητε ἐπὶ τοὺς προμαχώνας αὐτῆς, καὶ κατασκάψατε, συντέλειαν δὲ οὐ μὴ ποιήσετε. ὑπολίπεσθε τὰ ὑποστηρίγματα αὐτῆς, ὅτι τοῦ Κυρίου εἰσίν.— Jer. v. 10: ex Vers. LXX.

GO YE UP UPON HER BATTLEMENTS, AND DESTROY; BUT MAKE NOT A FULL END; LEAVE HER UNDERWORKS; FOR THEY ARE THE LORD'S.

You will remember that at the conclusion of my Third Lecture I made this statement: "That the Reformation found the Lord's Day obscured by a sort of Sabbatarianism established on an Ecclesiastical foundation." I explained this to mean, that by the time that movement commenced, the Church of Rome, having forgotten the Apostolical and Divine origin of the Lord's Day and its singular claim to the regard of Christians, had surrounded it with a crowd of other days obviously of inferior claims to regard, and loaded both it and them with most vexatious restrictions. Having done this, she had found herself obliged to discover some sanction for them which should bind men's consciences. The attribute of infallibility indeed, which, in her view, invests with Divine authority what we should call Ecclesiastical in the lower sense of the word, might

M

have answered her purpose. She might, consistently enough, have rested on this only. But man's reasoning powers could not be entirely ignored, or his desire for something like Scripture precedent entirely repressed. Besides, it seemed a safer course not to exercise directly her assumed right of adding to the Word of God. The same object might be attained by accommodation of the enactments of the older dispensation to that of Christianity. The number of special days, and the observances provided for them, were such as already to exhibit a likeness to Judaism, and in fact were a conscious or unconscious imitation of Judaism. It was but one step further to lay down, formally, that Christian institutions were the legitimate and antitypical successors of those of the Jews, and, mutatis mutandis, to inculcate as far as possible, not merely the scriptural, but the traditional manner of observing Jewish institutions.

So far as the elaboration of a system went, the Church of Rome was perfectly successful. Christian men were thoroughly entangled in it, and if they tried to carry it out, to live it, (so to speak), they were hampered at every turn. So far, however, as practice went, the strictness of the provisions supplied produced an effect the reverse of what was intended. Human nature rebelled against it. The days now made co-ordinate, or nearly so, both as to origin and as to observance, with the Lord's Day, were either not kept at all as holy days, (they were too numerous for that,372 compatibly with the business of life), or they became holidays of the worst kind, mere excuses for licentiousness. And the desecration of these involved with it the desecration of the Lord's Day. The multitude did. not pause to make subtle distinctions. Perhaps the Lord's Day was even worse observed than the other days, for, in spite of the Church, men had a vague impression that it was one of specially allowed intermission of ordinary

employments. This they interpreted to mean of more special permission of dissipation than the other days. noted in the kalendar.

Irregular and partial protests about this state of things, (which was the growth of centuries), had from time to time, as we have seen, been uttered. But it was reserved for the sixteenth century to witness a more general protest against the Church of Rome, both in this matter, and in other matters which need not be entered upon here. How that general protest affected the Lord's Day upon the Continent, what it did and what it omitted to do, to what causes such omission is to be traced, and with what lasting results it has been attended, and finally, what has been the state of feeling and practice on the subject from that time to the present, I propose to consider to-day. The contemporary history of England must be reserved for my next Lecture.

The text, which of course you will have surmised, is intended rather as a motto than as a text strictly so called, expresses negatively, at least, the manner in which the Continental Reformers dealt with the Lord's Day, especially if it is explained by the Version of the Seventy.

"Its

When viewed in combination with each other, the two Versions present the following ideas: Punishment and partial overthrow are pronounced by the Almighty against Jerusalem. The executioners of His wrath are desired to "go up upon the walls of that city and destroy." But their commission to destroy is limited by an accompanying caution; they are "not to make a full end.” battlements, indeed, are to be taken away, for they are not the Lord's," they have been added without His sanctionthey are evidences that Judah has trusted rather to his own devices than to Him without whom "they who build the house do but lose their labour." But "its underworks

(Úπоσтηρíуμата) are to be left; these are the Lord's "they were constructed with His sanction, and they are therefore intended to remain, both as a memorial of Him and as a basis for future defences. The meaning of course is, that while God would destroy whatever was sinful in Jewish practice, He would not at that time do away with the Jews as a nation.

The application of this to our purpose is obvious. The Continental Reformers, generally, were persuaded, and we find no fault with them for this, that the time was come for purifying the Church of God, that great Christian Institution of which Jerusalem was a type, both in its calling and in its backsliding; both in its original construction by the guidance or permission of a Divine Artificer, and in its having had unauthorised and sinful additions made to it according to the devices of man. But they forgot, the majority of them at least, the limitations under which, (and a canon for which is supplied in the text), all such reforms should be conducted. Hence, while sweeping away what was human in doctrine and practice, they trenched in various particulars upon what was Apostolical and Divine.

A multitude of instances crowd upon me, but I will only mention a few. The low views entertained by several foreign Protestant communions of the grace of Baptism and of the Holy Eucharist are cases painfully in point. If the Church of Rome had made the former of these a charm and condensed the latter into an idol, there were those who in their reforming zeal, and in the not unnatural reaction produced by a sense of liberty, reduced the one to a rite of initiation, the other to a mere metaphor. And so of other things. If Orders had been unscripturally multiplied, and Ordination and Confirmation raised to a dignity co-ordinate with that of the "two Sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel;" if the doctrine of Penances