etousness, which is idolatry" is expressly defined as its most dangerous form. In a similar manner, other laws are reaffimed. Now, when we have definite and deliberate statements affirming the authority of the moral law as a whole, and when we have separate commandments thus reiterated, it is fair to assume that the principle of the Fourth Commandment is also thus reaffirmed, unless we find it definitely repealed.

Dr.

b. We do not find any such repeal. The burden of proof rests with those who assert it. Even so careful scholars as Dr. R. W. Dale and Dr. Washington Gladden make the assertion without giving the proof. Dale seems to teach that the famous words of Christ, "The Sabbath was made for man," mean " for the Jewish man." But he has the almost unanimous verdict of New Testament scholars against him. Dr. Gladden says, "One of the Ten Commandments was, as it seems to me, distinctly repealed by Our Lord," but he does not offer any proof of his statement. (The Church and the Kingdom, p. 51.) That Jesus reached the crisis of His conflict with the Pharisees in His assertion of His Lordship of the Sabbath and His abolition of their abuses of the day is undeniable. But that the deliverance of the day from bondage was the abolition of the commandment no more follows than that His deeper interpretation of the law of purity abrogated the Seventh Commandment.

C. But Jesus did free the law from its Jewish fetters. He treated the Fourth Commandment just as He did the rest of the Decalogue, rescuing it from the bondage of the letter and interpreting and enforcing its spiritual authority. Any code of law, even the Ten Commandments, must be a very imperfect expression of the Divine will. It will have its local and temporal limitations. Framed in general terms, it cannot exactly meet every case. Written in imperfect human speech, it cannot adequately express the perfect will of God. "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." The mistake of the Pharisees was in making the commandments the complete and final expression of the divine will. Jesus came into conflict with them upon an occasion when their literal interpretation of the sabbatic law would defeat its loving purpose, and deny the mercy of God in which it had its origin. He indignantly swept away the traditional interpretation which denied the very essence of the law. He found the day a burden: He made it once more a delight. But in so doing He reaffirmed its obligation and established it upon the broadest possible basis. The Sabbath was made for man, — for all men and for the whole man, - body, mind, and spirit. It is God's gift to His children. It is founded on human need and established in divine love. All who accept the authority of the Lord of the Sabbath must admit the force of such a declaration of the permanent obligation of the day of rest and worship. As the followers of Jesus Christ we are free from the bondage of the law. We are Christians and not Jews. For us His example is imperative, His word the final authority. Our observance of the Lord's Day as the Christian Sabbath must be based upon His authority; the methods of our observance must be determined by New Testament standards.

V.

The observance of the Lord's Day as the Christian Sabbath rests upon the authority of Christ and His apostles.

It must be admitted that we have no definite statute requiring the religious observance of the first day. It is also unquestioned that the earliest Christians, who were formerly Jews, retained the observance of the Sabbath, together with the rest of the Mosaic law. Paul tells James that the Jewish converts "are all zealous of the law." But when the Jewish rites were imposed upon Gentile Christians the principle of Christian liberty was vindicated, and Christianity forever laid aside the outgrown garments of Judaism. The language of Paul in Rom. xiv., Col. ii., and Gal. iv. refers to this attempt to compel Gentiles to observe the Jewish Sabbath. He asserts their freedom in terms so strong that they are frequently misinterpreted, without regard to context or occasion, and made the basis of denial of obligation to observe any day of rest and worship. We may even go farther and admit that the Christian ideal makes all time equally hallowed and all places equally sacred. John saw in his vision a city without a temple in which a Sabbath of loving service and highest worship is perpetual. Yet we have not ceased to consecrate churches and to seek help from the sanctuary." The absence of definite command need not surprise us, nor the gradual growth of the institution confuse our minds. The Lord's Day is no less divinely instituted because its observance was a natural growth, and not established by decree from a new Sinai. Prof. Smyth says with no less truth than eloquence: "The revelations of God's will in act and history are no less authoritative than specific commands. A principle which commands our reason is no less sacred and imperative than a statute. The Resurrection of Jesus was a divine act of commanding significance to the ancient church, and should be so to It may well be the foundation of a commemmorative observance no less obligatory than that required in the Decalogue. Redemption is a higher revelation of God than Nature."

us.

Christ set his seal of approval upon the day by His Resurrection; His repeated appearances to His disciples, making their meetings on that day memorable and prophetic; and by the gift of the Spirit, calling into being the Christian Church, whose weekly commemoration of His Resurrection has never ceased. We do not know what instructions regarding the organization of the church He gave to His disciples during the forty days. But we do know that under the direct guidance of their risen Lord they directed the formation of its customs and institutions, and that, with their sanction and approval, the observance of the Lord's Day early arose and was universally accepted. The Mosaic method of institution cannot be more authoritative than the Christian. Sinai is not greater than Olivet, the tablet of the law more imperative than the seal of the Spirit. The obligations of Christian liberty are not less but greater than those of Jewish statute. Listen to the inspired caution of the Epistle of the Hebrews: "He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment . . . shall he be

thought worthy who hath trodden under foot the Son of God?" He who is Lord of the Sabbath has guided His church in the institution of the Lord's Day of rest and of worship. As of permanent value to man, He has asserted its perpetual obligation. Than this, what authority can be higher?

There are three divine revelations, in nature, history, and the written Word. I have but briefly and imperfectly glanced at two, in their bearing upon this theme. Did not time forbid, I would be glad to adduce the authority of history. I think it is Joseph Cook who has asked us to outline on the map of the world the lands where civil and religious liberty obtain, and then to mark upon a similar map the lands where the Christian Sabbath is best observed. Laying the two maps one upon the other, the two outlines are almost identical. The seal of the divine blessing has been set upon the observance of the Christian Sabbath. The ancient promises to Israel for their fidelity to the Jewish law are still fulfilled in spirit to those who recognize the wider obligation. Wherever, then, we see the handwriting of God, in the Word of His grace, in the Old Testament and the New, in the constitution of man and upon the broad pages of history, we see His affirmation of the obligation of the day of rest and worship. God forbid that we should deny or weaken its authority, and fail to inherit the blessings of the obedient.

ADDRESS BY REV. REUEN THOMAS, D. D., BROOKLINE, MASS.

The theme given me for my paper of twenty minutes in length is, "The Duty of Ministers, Churches and Sunday schools in Respect to Teaching Sunday Observance." The utmost condensation is necessary.

I.

First, I should say that our duty is to get ourselves intelligently right on the subject. From the beginning of the Bible records to the end we find references to days of work and a day of rest. Supposing we aggregate all the passages of Scripture bearing upon our theme; we are not only surprised at their number, but at their practical seriousness. References to this institution are found prior to the Mosaic period, during the Mosaic period, after the Mosaic period, specially in the reformation times of Nehemiah, and with an increased emphasis in the writings of the noblest and most spiritual of the prophets, as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and Hosea. When we pass over into the New Testament we find the words and customs of our Lord and his Apostles continuing and freshly illuminating the institution which has been in existence from the dawn

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ings of history, as far as the records which have come to us through Hebrew sources are evidence.

In order to our being sufficiently informed to be of service to others in helping them to attain to intelligent views on this subject, we must ourselves have the historical sense.

Whenever we find an institution appearing and reappearing in the long reaches of history, like a river flowing through a landscape, a glimpse of which the traveller gets only now and again on his journeying, the inference that it has continuity and perpetuity is just. This river of the water of life flowing through the ages, contrary to what many persons seem to think, is a broadening and deepening stream.

In the Hebrew records the most emphatic words on its importance to the reformation and purifying of national life are in Nehemiah and Isaiah. Not in Moses, but in the evangelical prophet Isaiah, do we find that the Sabbath was a sign of God's covenant, and that its exaltation or demoralization would be the barometer of national prosperity and adversity. When we come into the New Testament regions we find our Lord and his Apostles in perpetual warfare with Pharisaism and Sadduceeism, even as we have to be in perpetnal warfare with Superstition and Rationalism. The Law and the Prophets had been superseded by the traditions of men. The Scriptures had been written all over and obscured by Talmudic literature and had become a kind of palimpsest. If we forget this, if we forget that Jesus was not in conflict with a true Hebraism, but with that Pharisaism and Sadduceeism which over-rode and misrepresented the true, it will be the easiest thing in the world to misinterpret the utterances of Jesus and the Apostles bearing upon our theme. I contend that on the part of some who have quoted our Lord's recorded words, "The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath,”— conveniently forgetting what follows, "therefore the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,"- there has been most unintelligent and unwarrantable misinterpretation. These words universalize the Sabbath institution. They take it from under the control of Pharisees and Sadducees, and give it to humanity. But they also assert most emphatically Christ's lordship over it. He claimed lordship over man and over everything necessary to the affirming and making effective of that lordship. In order that we may realize the lordship of Christ (i. e., the sovereignty of God) over our human life, a Sabbath is necessary in which man is man simply, and owes as man, in virtue of his relationship to God, an allegiance which can be given to none other. The Sabbath institution is a sign and symbol of this. Moreover, if we would be intelligently right on this theme, something else has to be clearly apprehended. Not only the eternal fact of the Divine sovereignty which, once lost out of our teaching and preaching, leaves us strengthless and without authority, not only must that be there, — something else must be there; something else which will relieve us from the unscientific attitude in which they are found who get the Sabbath law out of the Mosaic decalogue, by abolishing (virtually, if not in fact) the whole decalogue. Our Lord's words, "Think not that I am come to

destroy the law and the prophets; I came not to destroy but to fulfill," are founded upon that which we all must recognize, the absolute unrepealableness of any law which is moral, any law representing that which is permanent in the nature of God and in the necessities of the constitution of man.

The Mosaic decalogue contains ten laws, which recognize ten principles of moral relation between God and man, and man and man. They are founded in the nature of God and of man. In the fourth commandment are the laws of work and of rest. It is a moral law: it has relation to every other moral law. A complete moral manhood demands co-ordination with these principles of righteous interrelation between God and man and man and man. As well talk of abolishing the law of gravitation as abolishing laws that are essentially moral. Moreover, there is a morality towards God as well as towards man. The first part of the decalogue recognizes this morality towards God as the first part of the Lord's Prayer recognizes it. To get ourselves intelligently right on these recognitions is necessary before we can be of any service in helping others.

There is no doubt that among ministers and churches and Sunday schools a condition has ariscn which is far from being morally and spiritually robust and healthy. The indifference in regard to the right and wrong of things is but the sign of a lowered spiritual vitality. Our churches are full of kindly feeling and amiable disposition. Whether we have or have not attained to that genuine Divine charity "which suffereth long and is kind," we have any number of“ charities." But amiable people are sometimes the weakest and least effective people in the world. Christian love is not simply amiability. A religious life which acts simply from feeling and not from conviction can never be relied upon. It will fail us when most we need it. The conduct of too many of our Christian people in regard to the Sabbath institution, its preservation in dignity and power as something superior and apart, when everything that is noblest and best in our nature shall come to the front, that conduct does not commend itself as being informed by intelligence, controlled by an enlightened conscience, and animated by that quality of love to God and man of which St. Paul speaks so glowingly as of all conditions the most beautiful and manlike. When we have got ourselves intelligently right on this subject, so as to be able to speak and teach "with authority and not as the scribes," it will then appear in what sense and how truly in all ages, as saith the prophet, the Sabbath has been a sign between God and his people, — a sign of allegiance, a sign of the Divine presence with the people, a sign of national moralization, a sign for a completed redemption under the new, as it was a sign of a completed deliverance under the old, dispensation.

II.

These ideas are built on the historical facts of the Old Testament; they are also in accord with the facts of the Christian history. Gradually under Christian influences, as was to be expected, the Christian Lord's