any other. Nor is it an easy thing to choose exclusively betwixt the two venerable names; for, while SABBATH is laden with the sweetest ideas of peace and repose and antiquity older than antiquity, SUNDAY is doubly glorious, inasmuch as it speaks of the arising of the Sun of Righteousness as well as of the Sun of common Light. Both these arisings were the be ginnings of new divine epochs; both the openings of new creations; and they were both veiled, though effective, and hasting duly to be altogether revealed on the fourth days of Time. The latter was natural and symbolical; the former is spiritual and real; but the imagination marries and makes them one, and the new name of their union is Sunday; as dear to the conquering heart of England, as is its Sabbath-day to Scottish constancy and awe.

about the towns and country-sides of Judea, | expediency are surely argument enough for so or in foreign parts) forgot the Sabbath-day ceremonial a change as the mere day of the of their countrymen, while they did not for- week for the observance of the rest and holy sake the assembling of themselves together on convocation of the Jewish Sabbath. That the Sunday or first day of the succeeding primitive church, in fact, was shut up to the week, as the day of their Lord and Master's adoption of the Sunday - until it became es arising. The example of fidelity to the old tablished and supreme, when it was too late ways, of loyalty to Moses and the prophets, to make another alteration; and it was no of the tenderest patriotism in unison with irreverent nor undelightful thing to adopt it, charities so wide as to overflow the earth, inasmuch as the first day of the week was shown by Jesus himself, might almost make their own high-day at any rate; so that their one sure that they did not. Certainly the compliance and civility were rewarded by the tenor of Paul's epistle to the Hebrews, and redoubled sanctity of their quiet festival. indeed of all the Pauline writings, was Perhaps the Patriarchal and Hebrew Sabbath against any such self-assertion and insolence, needed this added charm to draw all the if not impiety, as so divisive a course would manifold nationalities, idiosyncrasies of race, have thrust upon the angry eye of those who and climatic temperaments of the vast and did not believe their report; and assuredly various heathen-world, to the love and obedithey would not be the worse of a true ence of it; and certainly the time-honored and whole Day of Rest and Old-Testament Sunday of our own forefathers is as good a reading, followed by ever so partial and Sabbath, just as it is as good a Seventh, as broken a day of New-Testament exercises. At the same time, the apostle of the other nations of the world always sternly insisted on the Jewish tests not being forced upon them; and a noble piece of charity and wisdom it was. They were to remain free, not only of all other particulars of the Mosaic ceremonial, but also of the particular day appointed by that authoritative lawgiver as the Seventh; and the particularity of the days elected, it must be evident, was the only thing that was purely ceremonial in the Fourth Commandment. It was therefore among those foreign converts, first called Christians at Antioch, that the consecration of the Christian, not Sabaoth or rest, but Sabbath-day arose. Like all the disciples, Jew as well as Gentile, they came together on their Lord's day (not having rested the day before, however, like their Thus, then, we stand before the patent and Hebrew brethren); but that very day was unavoidable, and really most curious fact, the Sunday of their heathen neighbors and that at least all Christendom has for hundreds respective countrymen, and patriotism gladly of years ended its work on the seventh day, united with expediency in making it at once and rested on the seventh day from its work, their Lord's day and their Sabbath. Wher- and blessed the seventh day, and sanctified ever Christianity appeared and triumphed it! Come it whence and how it may, that is and grew strong, accordingly, there the Day the fact; and this were the proper place to of the Sun became transformed, yea, transfigured into the Christian Sabbath-day; and, if our Cambridge Hebraist and his divines be right in their computation, that the Sabbath of the patriarchal dispensation was on one and the same day with the wild Solar holiday of all pagan times (the latter having, in reality, descended and degenerated from the former) then the restoration of the heavendescended resting-day of Paradise, of Enoch, and of Abraham, was as beautiful as it was natural and easy. On the other hand, if this speculation be but a chapel in the air, and if the authority of the Church is to be ignored altogether by Protestants, there is no matter; because opportunity and common

inquire whether anything can be said concerning the rational ground, on which this institution of an ever-recurring day of rest has been erected, before going into the actual position of the institution, and state of the Sabbath-question, in our own age and country. If this question were to be answered in full, the reasonableness of the Biblical day of rest would be expounded as threefold. Its natural or scientific, its ideal or philosophical, its spiritual or religious reasonableness, in the strongest sense of that term, would be dis cussed in succession and together; but it would be ridiculous to try the reaping of so broad and thick (and also so white) a harvest within the time of a Quarterly reviewer. As

to the last of these heads, indeed, it is better | denominates, an analogon of demonstration ;

to keep away from it altogether, than not to express one's whole mind in a roomy and leisurely manner; the religious part of the subject having been sorely vexed, almost ever since the Reformation. The Roman Catholics find this element in the authority of the Church The Grecians and the majority of Protestants, in the authority of Moses in the moral law; and a large minority of Protestants, in the authority of Christian expediency and experience: not to divide divided Christendom too much at present. For ourselves we cannot but think that the Fourth Commandment as standing in the moral law of an inspired lawgiver like Moses, the lifelong practice of the Church, and that Church's experimental knowledge of the benefits of compliance with the Mosaic idea and of keeping up the old day, make a threefold cord, to gird the week withal, which shall never be easily broken; but we also profess it our opinion, that all the three strands are necessary to its integrity, and that on account of the change from Saturday to Sunday. Such, in brief, is I. The multifarious sevensomeness that is pretty nearly our notion of the Christian-re- so striking in the bodily life of man and in his ligious reasonableness of this service; and it immediate world, as has been shown above, is obvious that the natural-religious reason of should come in here as the van of the arguits fitness, from the nature of the case, must ment a posteriori; but it is needless to repeat spring out of the stem of philosophy and the illustrations. Nor must too much weight science, tree and bark, like a fruit: else it be laid upon them. Taken altogether, and inis non-extant altogether. The ideal, philo-creased by as many more instances as science sophical, or truly rational ground of the ne- may know, they do no more than furnish a cessity of every seventh day being given to broad and reiterated hint, to the effect that waking rest, in addition to the nightly sleep the periodicity of seven is deeply natural of every whole day, has never been opened up to the movements of the human being. This and demonstrated; and our own demonstra- pointed indication is only a preliminary busition is too little elaborated, and therefore too ness, though a thing that may well mean more long, for insertion here. The topic is merely than meets the eye; but it has no scientific mentioned in this connexion, partly to stimu- (that is, intelligible) connection with the last late this high kind of investigation by the hint or first day of the hebdomadal seven being of deep-lying treasures, and partly to sound a spent in rest. All that science has yet done note of defiance against all should-be philo- in this direction is probably summed up in sophical sneerers at our hebdomadal pause. the evidence of physiology and physicians, averring that the powers of the body need repose; that the bow of vitality must be unbent every now and then, if it is to keep its spring; that in these days of overtension during the six days the rest of the seventh has grown indispensable, in addition to the successive nights; and so forth. Now all this is undeniable, and the materialist will perhaps be the foremost to urge it home in his own way; but it is general, and cannot possibly condescend upon the proportion of time necessary or desirable for the kind of Sabbath it inculcates. When coupled with the Christian reason for the weekly rest, indeed, it is of much value; and it has been put before a parliamentary committee in that connexion. But when this general opinion of science, regarding the want of a daytime of rest now and then, is ingenuously viewed with the medium of the unfailing tendency to periodicity in the Con

and therefore we refuse to deal with a person who will not acknowledge it, as being an unreasonable fellow. Such precisely is the kind of service which science may one day be able to render to the cause of the weekly Sabbath, and that in full measure, heaped and running over; yet hitherto this great power has contributed only a few half-hewn and unplaced stones to the work. Unlike the religious and philosophical processes, this of science is a cumulative task, now fairly begun, necessarily slow, always to be going on; and every passing laborer may do his share of it, as he passes;-until some master-builder and his workmen take it all upon themselves, as in other departments. Revelation is like a coming of light; philosophical demonstration at least goes in a straight line; but the path of science, with its observations and inductions, is devious and very slow; and we have nothing better than a handful of uncut pebbles, fetched from no foreign brook, for our present offering.

The natural or scientific argument (for argument it is, and nothing more) is greatly more accessible; and it has very often been drawn upon, though by no means exhausted at any of its streams. Like the argument of design, and all purely scientific arguments, it goes up from the facts to the conclusion of the case, not down from principles to details. Like those arguments it is cumulative and a thing of increasing probability, not direct and matter of demonstration. The greater the numerical and qualitative strength of the probability, the nearer to the nature of certainty; until the amount of probability become so large as to be tantamount to demonstration. The Copernican astronomy, even as it stands now, is raised on an immeasurable mountainous foundation of mere probability; not on logical demonstration, but only on so huge a sum of probability as is, what Kant

stitution of man, the presumption is strong is what nobody doubts; and it does not apthat such daytime should recur at regular pear that the historical world was ever better, intervals; and then that particular seven- either here or anywhere else. Yet there is a someness in human affairs, which has just natural indolence in him too, whereby he been animadverted on, puts in its claim for saves one part of himself to overstrain another; the hebdomadal period as being at least pecu- and the lazy trick preserves him from headliarly human, if not the best for the purpose. long ruin: the boxer does not use his brain, At all events, the combination of these three the student leaves his muscular system unscientific considerations must be held to con- taxed; and so things are kept as near the stitute a powerful moving barrier against all straight line as such an awkward squad can would-be rational encroachments on our keep. Taking this variegated and extravagant sacred institute, not easily resistible when ag- creature all in all, however, considering eight gressive and not to be broken down when hours as the average time he spends in sleep, honorably assailed. and allowing him two for his meals and little unbent occasions, the poor fellow gets only ten hours of retributive quiet instead of twelve: In fact, fourteen hours of activity in the twenty-four is on all hands, in Parliament and out of it, counted a just average distribution of the daily life of man, at least in Great Britain and Ireland. It is true and sad, indeed, that multitudes do not and cannot secure more than eight of rest; but doubtless there are just as many who take their whole twelve, and unprofitable servants they are: and if not a few of us scarcely make out our six, there are not a few who deftly manage to suck up eighteen, not knowing what to do! But even human legislation, to say nothing of divine lawgiving, bethinks itself of nations, colonies, and planted continents of men and women; and the true average there is only ten hours of repose instead of twelve. Now the defect of two hours a day for six days of labor is exactly made up, to the comprehension of an infant-girl lisping her first Sundayhymn, by the twelve of a weekly Sabbath daytime. It is, of course, understood that the whole twelve hours of the seventh night time are also sacred to rest; and this is the strong point of those Sabbatarians, who have been pleading with their countrymen, besieging corporations, and praying the legislature, for no canonical holiday, but for an undiminished rest and festival of the soul. In the meantime, however, it is but too clear, take it how one will, that in this overwakeful century, the stimulants and overaction have it all their own way; and hence-what do we see? Men not living half their days; men not reaching their legitimate fulness of development, in body or in being; men too fragmentary, too feverous, too one-sided, too busy and little-minded, excited but not strong, lively but not long-lived: and if men, then nations. Surely the sweet and solemn Sabbath-rest of yore were a true cordial, and the beginning of many subsidiary calmatives, for this chronic and outwearing fever of the world.

II. It has already been suggested that, when anything has to be said by science concerning man, it is man in the genus, or rather kingdom, not in the individual, the city, the nation, or the race: a broad average must be struck of the ways of man in all times, climes, and other circumstances. This cannot be done to perfection by the limited survey of fallen, and still growing and therefore boylike, humanity as it now is; but a nearer approximation must be always being aimed at in researches of this sort. It is accordingly impossible to tell with accuracy, by induction, how many of the twenty-four hours should be spent in the state of rest by the normal or ideal man; nor yet how many have been and are passed in rest by the average or actual men of history. We say Rest advisedly, for this period needs not be altogether spent in sleep or the completed trance of animal repose, any more than the waking period ever is passed in absolute wakefulness and erection of the whole being neither any more, nor any less; and this observation is important in the sequel. But it has here to be observed that the all-pervading law of dualism, which has been explained already, at once insinuates the hint that twelve hours are for work and twelve for rest, say rather, twelve for activity and the same for repose, for, of course, many modes of activity are neither creating nor making. Action and reäction are equal, except when free-will disturbs the balance. It is only in man and by him, that the law of equilibrium is broken. He is the sole sad occasion of either scale ever kicking the beam. Now, that in the present age, with his overlate and over-early hours; his coffees, teas, tobaccos, hops, alcohols, and opiums; his riotous eating of flesh on one side, and living on husks on the other; his frivolities and his toils; his unresting competitions, of the field, the workshop, the market, the theatre, the college, the forum, the church, the state, and even the drawing-room; his ambitions and fears; his grandiose anxieties and lowlived cares in one word, that now, with his legion of follies and sins, not uncompanioned by noble though exaggerated aims, man does not (or cannot) allow himself daily rest enough,

III. But is the Sabbath then, it will perhaps be retorted here, to be a day of sheer animal repose? Is it set apart for sluggish quiet? Must great Christendom imitate the frugality of the maid of all work, and spend

the unescapable necessity, imposed on every man of woman born, of living two lives, an outer and an inner, a lower and a higher (or else a lower still) it is never to be doubted but that the sight and companionship of wife and children, the soft extension of his allowable couch, the quiet, unattended meal, the high bible-reading, the serenity and depth of the public service, the canticle sung at home to the music of Handel, and the early hours of a Mosaic day of rest, might well be more than half the battle on the side of God and the Right; and England, with all her lands, would rise up and call him blessed.

her weekly holiday in sleep? By no means. | above his fellows does not absolve him from In the first place, excessive as is the activity of some one or more parts of the nature of almost all men during the week, the whole nature of almost none is ever awake an hour on end, from the beginning to the close of life. We are sleepy and conservative, as well as wild and wasteful, though not wisely. What is wanted, then, in a physiologically conceived Sabbath is the going to sleep of the weekday propensities, sentiments, and faculties; and the awaking, rather, of such as are too latent from busy day to day: and hence & natural right of each individual to the choice of his Sabbath occupations and enjoyments, always within proper social or sacred limits. Yet are there two principal things, common to nearly the whole race: firstly, the poor body, in one part of its organism or another, is overworked; and secondly, it is with secular things and forms of thought that men are overbusied during the week. Thence the two plain indications of bodily rest, on one hand, and the conversation of the mind with the higher order of ideas within the reach of man's apprehension, on the other, as the natural avocations of the seventh day of the week. It is change of occupation that is true rest. For the laborious artisan, for example, what a restful alternation to be sweetly attired, to sit at home, to open the family-classic leisurely morning and evening, to sing the immortal songs of King David and the other inspired psalmists with all his neighbors in church or chapel, to send his aspirations to heaven winged by his brethren's prayers, to caress and teach his Sunday-dressed children, to pray down the blessed Spirit of God into his lowly home, and, this low life almost forgotten, to take the sleep of the beloved in an unwearied bed this one dear night of the week! The student, too, possessed by the one thought of his work day after day, chased by it through his fitful day-sleep, pursued by it all the night, never without its image before him or ready and eager to come forward in a trice, his brain and nerves thrilling all over with it, rules of health given to the winds, many natural movements of the heart bidden away, a rush into society of an evening, his one unwilling and rarely pleasing change, were surely a whole world the better of the pause, the altered circumstance, the sociality, the homeliness, the common joys, the blessed associations, the church thoughts and feelings, the pure air, the moony evening peace, the less turbid sleep, the swift low-voiced parenthesis, of his and all men's predestined Sabbath-day. Or could the great minister of state forget his greatness, and his burdens, and his dread responsibilities, and his cares almost too heavy for a man to endure and live, commending them heartily to God for a day, as remembering that the beneficent elevation to which he is raised

Such is the sort of change or rest, not only prescribed by the commandment, and prac tised during at least two dispensations in the church, but deducible from the latest conceptions of physiological science ;— not, indeed, that science would by this time have discov ered the natural necessity of a seventh day of such rest, and drawn out its formula as a rule of life, but that the thing being almost as old as time, science comes into the world and sees that it is good, and can honestly plead for its conservation and extension. At the same time, we are disposed to go further than some of our Sabbatarian friends in behalf of the first element of the world-old Sabbath, namely, bodily rest, intending that of brain and nerve, as well as that of bone and muscle; and this is the element with which the state has to do, intent upon refreshed and healthy citizens against the day of need. The body has far less to do with the manifestation of humanity than the phrenologist supposes, but far more than anybody else suspects. It is mentioned with lyrical emphasis that, when Israel went forth of Egypt, "there was not one feeble person among their tribes."'* wild Sunday of the great Pagan nations of antiquity was no Sabbath, and they are gone; the Jews were always disobedient, idolatrous, and Sabbath-breaking, though singularly persistent too, being a living contradiction, and they are scattered; the gay and turbulent Sabbath of continental Christendom is liker the Pagan Sunday than the quiet feast of Christian people, and they are the prey of despotism, that many-headed vulture. In short and urgent fact, the nations want a genuine day of rest, else they perish; and we Britons need it more now than ever, being the advance-guard of humanity in Europe; and that almost alone now, needing all our self possession and well-rested strength. The whole physiology of the country craves repose; and that man is no faithful keeper of the Sab bath-day, who expends it in an excess of even bible-studies, passionate communings in the closet, church-services and sermons, prayer

* Ps. cv. 37.

The