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clear that the duty towards God is learned from the four first commandments; the duty towards our neighbour, from the six last. The question then goes on-" What is thy duty towards God?' or, in other words, What is the lesson taught by the four first commandments? And the answer, as we may all remember, says not one word of keeping the Sabbath; it is not this, according to our Catechism, which we learn from the fourth commandment, but, "to worship him, to give him thanks, to put our whole trust in him, to honour his holy name and his word, and to serve him truly all the days of our life." It does not then appear, merely from our reading the fourth commandment in our Church service, that we are obliged to keep it, without question, as the law of God to us, and to keep holy the seventh day, while we do, in fact, keep holy the first.

All this, I think, is quite true; and yet we are bound to keep holy the Sunday; and it would be great wickedness or great folly to give up the observance of it. We are bound, by the spirit of the fourth commandment, because we are not fit to do without it. God commanded his people, in the old times, to keep holy the Sabbath day. He commanded them this when they were very ignorant, and very worldly-minded; when, had he told them to worship them every day in the spirit, they would have spent every day without worshipping

him at all; their hearts were too hard for a devotion so pure. Now, God having given this command to his people, it is manifest, that so long as they are in the same state as when he gave it them, they are bound to keep it; so long as the same sickness remains, they will need the same remedy. It was intended that the Gospel should put us in a very different state, so that we should need the command no more. It was intended so, and St. Paul hoped fully that it would be so; and therefore he writes to the Colossians, "Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." Such were his hopes for his fellow Christians, and to show that God designed them to be free from the Law, the command, in its letter, was kept no more; the seventh day, the Jews' sabbath, was no longer observed by Christians. But St. Paul's hopes were disappointed, and the gracious designs of God were thwarted. The state of Christians was not changed; the old sickness was not thrown off; and therefore the old remedy was still needed. As then, the change of the day from the seventh to the first shows us what God designed for us, shows us the heavenly liberty to which we were called; so the long and unvaried practice of the Church in keeping the first day holy, shows us their sad

feeling and confession that they were not fit for that liberty; that the Law, which God would fain have loosed from off them, was still needed to be their schoolmaster. If, then, any man will say, I am not under the Law, the Sabbath is but a shadow of things to come; but now that Christ, who is the substance, has appeared, what need have we of the shadow ?—if any man so speaks, and claims so high a measure of the Spirit of Christ, let him examine himself most carefully, to see whether indeed the free Spirit of Christ be in him: let him consider whether the Spirit of Christ has so perfectly overcome the weakness of his flesh, that evil desires are dead in him; that indolence, that passion, that covetousness, that whatsoever exalts itself against the obedience of Christ is become quite weeded out of his nature. If he be such an one, so rich in the love of God in Christ, so perfectly conformed to the Spirit of God; no doubt he needs not for himself the aid of carnal ordinances, nor needs he the help of one day out of seven to enkindle his heavenly affections, when all his life is passed as if he were in heaven already. And yet, even could such a man be found, were it no dream that he existed amongst us, yet even he could not profane the rest of our Christian holyday, and be blameless. For still there would apply to him the charitable counsel of St. Paul, in a similar case, Take heed, lest by any means

this liberty of yours become a stumbling-block to them that are weak. For if any man see thee who hast knowledge, despising the ordinances of the Lord's day, shall not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to despise them also, and, through thy knowledge, shall thy weak brother perish, for whom Christ died. But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak consciences, ye sin against Christ." Not the holiest and most perfect Christian, therefore, could, without sin, profane the Lord's day; because he would be tempting others, by his example, to despise a help which they most needed. But for us, in general, not for others only, but for ourselves, do we require to keep holy the Lord's day. To us, the bond of the commandment, broken by Christ's Spirit, has, through our unworthiness, closed again. We still need the Law; we need its restraints; we need its aid to our weakness; and, though Christ's blood has freed us from its bitter penalty, yet we may not refuse to listen to the wisdom of its voice, because the terror of its threatenings is taken away from the true believer.

SERMON XXIII.

THE HOLY ANGELS.

MATTHEW, xviii. 10.

Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.

It is not one of the least wonderful peculiarities of the Scriptures, that although their whole subject relates to God, who is invisible, and although, in the New Testament especially, their whole tendency is to lift us up in heart and mind from the things which are seen to those which are unseen, yet there is in them so little of that which furnishes food to the fanciful and the superstitious. When we look around us and above us; when we consider what an almost infinite variety of beings, quite beyond the reach of our unassisted senses to discover, the powers of science have made known to us, descending to atoms so minute as hardly to