The Mosaic sabbath had adjuncts connected with it, peculiar to itself. Death was the punishment which followed its violation, Exod. xxxi. 14; Num. xv. 35. But the penalty is no part of the decalogue; it belonged simply to the internal policy of the Jewish nation. The breakers of the first and second commandments were also ordered to be put to death by the Jewish law, Deut. xiii. 6-10; but no one would now contend for the infliction of death upon the worshiper of idols. Children who disobeyed their parents were stoned, Deut. xxi. 18-21. Are we released from the authority of the fifth commandment, because the punishment annexed to it proved it to be only Jewish and temporary? An objection has been drawn from Col. ii. 16: "Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days." Now, it is sufficiently plain, that by the word "sabbaths" here used-if the seventh day rest is alluded to at all, which is doubtful-is intended the Jewish sabbaths, which were to be no longer observed when the celebration of the first day of the week had come in their place. In Rom. xiv. 5, 6, and Gal. iv. 10, the apostle censures the observance of days, but he merely intends the festivaldays peculiar to the Mosaic law. If our Lord had intended to annul the fourth commandment, it is remarkable that he gave no hint of his purpose. He honoured the sabbath by his works of mercy and power, and cleared it from the encumbrances of tradition. When charged with its desecration, he invariably gave such an explanation of his conduct, as not only vindicated himself, but maintained inviolate the authority of the day. Let it not, then, be said, that the keeping of the sabbath is not a moral duty. Obedience to this commandment is the means of ensuring obedience to all the rest. Wherever the Sabbath is honoured, religion flourishes; and where the Sabbath is violated, religion dies. How many bold transgressors, who have gone lengths in sin, at which even the wicked tremble, have confessed, in some hour of remorse and agony, that their hearts were first hardened by the desecration of the day of God! It is the remark of Archbishop Stopford, "The fourth commandment is placed at the end of the first table, as the tenth is at the end of the second, as the safeguard of all the rest.” "O day most calm, most bright, The fruit of this, the next world's bud, The indorsement of supreme delight, Writ by a friend, and with his blood; The couch of time; care's balm and bay; The week were dark, but for thy light: Thy torch doth show the way." Blessed day of universal joy! It became Him, from whom comes down every good and every perfect gift, to confer a Sabbath on the world he had made! "Doth God take care for oxen ?" Yea, to them he hath appointed a weekly rest. On this happy day, all living things cease from labour. The tiller of the ground lays aside his plough. The husbandman leaves his vine unpruned. Silence reigns in the busy haunts of commerce. It is as though the hand of God were stretched forth to draw every man away from his labour and from his work, and as if he said;-Now turn to the contemplation of thy Creator's goodness -acknowledge the arm that defends thee, the eye that guides thee, the hand that feeds thee. "Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name." Alas! that man hears not the voice of God! The love of gain-the love of pleasure-the love of sin, rob the Almighty of the time which, from the beginning, he sanctified and set apart for himself. The rest of the Sabbath consorts not with the inclinations of the workers of iniquity. "The wicked are like the troubled sea: they cannot rest." And underneath the tyranny of sin "the whole creation groaneth." The cattle of our fields, those unresisting servants of mankind, are thus deprived of the repose secured to them by the appointment of the moral law. Whatever opinions prevail concerning the authority of this holy day, it is for us to remember that a blessing is inseparably connected with its observance. "God blessed the seventh day." It is the appointed season in which He has promised to confer special benefit and happiness on his creatures. We may yet receive the fulfilment of the prediction of Isaiah, which, as the connexion teaches, has reference to gospel times :-" The sons of the stranger that join themselves to the Lord, to serve him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, every one that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and taketh hold of my covenant; even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer," Isa. lvi. 6, 7. SPECIAL SUBJECTS OF PRAYER FOR OCTOBER. "If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in Heaven." -Matt. xviii. 19. It is the month on which our churches are urged to cast into the treasury of the Lord their offerings to British missions. Prayerless gifts were useless; therefore 1. Pray for Home Missions. What might not England do for the world, if she were in reality what she is in name-a Christian country? Like the "children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, she turns back in the day of battle; because she keeps not the covenant of God, and refuses to walk in his laws," Ps. lxxxviii. 9, 10. An accursed thing in the midst of her camp weakens the hands of her strong men. Our missionary operations abroad are hindered by our own countrymen. Can a disciple of Christ cast his eye over the ungodly inhabitants of our towns and provinces, and not be moved, like his Great Master, "with compassion towards them, because they faint, and are as sheep without a shepherd "? Matt. ix. 36. If every private Christian would act the part of a home missionary, Five millions of as he had opportunity, much would be done. persons in England attend on no public worship. And of those who are present at the means of grace, how few there are who give evidence of a change of heart! Is there not, then, a great work needed at home? The heathen must not be neglected; messengers must "go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;" but, at the same time, shall we leave the slaves of sin lying at our feet, in fetters? Gloomy clouds are hovering over us; a night of darkness would fain arrest and recall the dawning of day. But there are ten righteous men yet in Sodom; and their "inwrought, fervent prayer availeth much," James v. 16. II. Pray for the Colonies. The sons of Britain are there: pray for your brethren. The children of pious parents are there plead the promises of blessing that rest upon the seed of the faithful. The ungodly offspring of the ungodly are there; ungodly, though their home is privileged England! Shall they be left to say, "No man careth for my soul"? Psalm cxlii. 4. Such is the crowded state of our country, that thousands are com pelled to emigrate. And whither? Shall the moral atmosphere of our colonies be as a fire-damp, to extinguish spiritual life? Shall it be that our young men, whose ardour and enterprise, if sanctified, might renew the face of the earth—must either stay here, and starve bodily, or emigrate there, and starve morally? Shall temporal death wait on one side, and eternal death on the other? Christian, answer the question on your knees. Mother! are you satisfied that the boy, whom, in his infancy, you consecrated to God, should be cut off from attendance on the ministry of the gospel, save once or twice a year? Father! with your knowledge of the dangers that surround the dawn of manhood, even when the mind is strengthened by holy influences, are you contented that your son should dwell in a land which “ne'er smiles when a Sabbath appears ?" Beseech of God to grant his blessing on the Colonial Missionary Society. III. Pray for Ireland. It is our sister isle-our fellow-subjects dwell on it a narrow channel is all that divides us from it. But it is an unhappy country; its wrongs are only outnumbered by its woes. Statesmen deliberate about Ireland; men of war lay their hands upon their swords when Ireland is discussed: to the Christian, let Ireland be a subject of earnest and humble entreaty with God. His hand alone can uplift her people from their depth of wretchedness and superstition. Shall an Irishman be to us as a stranger? No, verily. Our heart yearns over him as the heart of a brother; and we will not rest till to the deadly wound of his country have been applied the healing leaves of "the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”— Rev. ii. 7. IV. Pray for British Christians-that a renewed baptism of the Holy Ghost may teach them the "simplicity and godly sincerity" of apostolic times. Whilst the claims of British missions are thus urgent on the one side, and the claims of foreign missions are equally urgent on the other, it is not a time for them to be lukewarm and supine. Are they giving their all to God? Are they confessing themselves stewards of their Lord's money? Are they rightly admonished that riches bring with them immeasurable responsibilities? We have heard of a good man to whom a legacy of £10,000 was left suddenly. He felt himself unacquainted with the right way of managing so large a sum. He dared not keep it. He took it to a Christian friend, in whom he placed great confidence, and said, "I am ignorant how to spend this money for God-I entrust it to your charge, that you may employ it according to your knowledge of His will." Covetous professors of religion cannot estimate an act like this. They love wealth for its own sake, not because it furnishes the means of glorifying the Giver. Oh! that a false estimate of money may be rooted out from among us-and that the church of God may be kept free from that unblessed gold and silver, which are as burning caustic, secretly to corrode and to destroy the soul! EARLY CONSECRATION AND EARLY IMMORTALITY. Not in the grave our broken flower doth lie- Has found a shelter by the Saviour's side. THE brief life of Elizabeth Ann Delf commenced July 27th, 1826. She grew up in the midst of a happy and loving family, a fair, fragile, and cherished flower, to be transplanted by the all-wise Disposer of events to a brighter clime, just as increasing excellence and loveliness foretold the realisation of hopes indulged by those who tenderly watched her childhood, and received her as a precious gift from God to be trained for his service. Her young days passed joyfully away, darkened by no personal or relative calamity; to strangers she appeared lighthearted and volatile, but closer observers detected a sensibility and acuteness of feeling, which, while it rendered the possessor more attractive to others, proved to herself a source of suffering. Early taught to bend her infant knee to Jesus, there is reason to believe she was from a child the subject of religious convictions, death and judgment being the frequent themes of her meditation and apprehension. The fear of death awakened in her mind a painful struggle. Agonising as the conflict was, it was the way in which her heavenly Father brought her into his fold, and prepared her for that "fulness of joy" on which she has now entered. |