Christian grace finds perpetual room for its exercise. But for its exercise under circumstances not allowing the ordinary man, unless in the rarest cases, that nearness of access to the things of God, that directness of assimilation to the Divine life, which belongs to a day consecrated to spiritual opportunity. So the grace and compassion of our Lord have rescued from the open ground of worldly life a portion of that area, and have made upon it a vineyard seated on a very fruitful hill, and have fenced it in with this privilege, that, whereas for our six day work the general rule of direct contact must for the mass of men be with secular affairs, within this happy precinct there is provided, even for that same mass of men, a chartered emancipation; and the general rule is reversed, in favour of a direct contact with spiritual things. I do not enter upon the question how far the considerations here stated bear upon the case of Festivals other than the Lord's Day. They do not all of them seem to fall into the same category, one with another, by reason of the great difference between the determining epochs of the Incarnate life of our Lord, and some minor commemorations. None of them are in precise correspondence with the case of the Lord's Day, though by analogy they are carried very near its substance, and fully correspond with its occasion, so that we are at once reminded of that similar case in the Hebrew records, where the great annual festivals of the Israelites are held to be sometimes comprised under the description of Sabbaths. Neither do I advert, as I write for our own insular case, to diversities of idea and practice prevailing in branches of the Christian Church other than our own. Finally, the very last idea that I should desire to convey is that the idea of the Lord's Day, which has here been suggested, is novel or original. The case is rather thus: it is an idea which, through the want of precision in the habitual thoughts of men, has fallen into the shade, and given place to other ideas presented in a shape more sharply defined. I cannot here do better than take refuge under the authority of one of the very greatest Doctors of the Church, I mean St. Augustine. In many places he touches upon the Sabbath. Our Sabbath, he says, is in the heart; in the peace of Christian hope. It is the work of God, not our own.* Our "Sabbatism" is an entry upon that life "which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath the heart of man conceived"; it is the bliss of immortality. Its fundamental idea is "rest"; rest inhabited by sanctification. Ibi Sanctificatio, quia ibi Spiritus Dei. The soul can have rest only in God, and the love of God is perfect sanctification, the Sabbath of Sabbaths. § "Even now my Father works," says our Lord. Yes, but not in carnal work, and here is the removal of the veil. This is the rest promised to the faithful in doing good works, ¶ and walking in newness of life, even as God works while He rests. What chiefly brings the people together on the Day of Rest, is hunger for the Word of God.** The fulness of Divine *St. Augustine, Enarr. in Psalm xci. † Ibid., Serm. 259, on the Octave of Easter. § Serm. 33, on Psalm exliii. De Genesi, Book i. ¶ De Genesi, ad litt., Book iv. ** Serm. 128, on John v. benediction and sanctification is the highest Sabbath.* The Lord's Day anticipates the time when we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise, in the end that has no end. It is undeniable that throughout St. Augustine treats the day as a whole, that he postulates an entire withdrawal from worldly occupation, and that he regards this as the basis of a rest and of an activity, which prefigure both of those in Heaven. In more than one place, too, censuring a contemporaneous Jewish laxity, he declares that useful labour on the Day of Rest would be preferable to the frivolities of recreation. And now having brought St. Augustine before the reader to explain the basis of Lord's Day observance, I feel that there can be no more appropriate moment for withdrawing myself from his attention. *De civ. Dei, xxii. 4. † Ibid., 5. XII. GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO SHEPPARD'S PICTORIAL BIBLE.* 1891. I. IT sometimes happens, in the crisis of a great engagement, that the fiercest of the conflict rages round the standard, which the one party is struggling to capture and the other to save from the grasp of hostile hands; and it is even so at the present day with reference to the subject of this prefatory notice. There is a banner which waves, and which is seen to wave, on high, over the whole of that field-the widest and by far the most noteworthy in the world-on which is being fought out the battle which is the greatest of all battles, and which ultimately may be found to include all the rest: the battle of belief in Christ. Is there, or is there not, one great and special revelation of the will of God to mankind, vital to the welfare of the human race? This banner is the banner of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Vast and essential as is the living agency by which the work of the Gospel is to be carried on, and to which indeed it was first committed by the Saviour, that living agency is for the present broken up into fractions, which seem to maintain or *Printed in the United States, at Chicago. even to consolidate themselves on their separate bases, and no one among which commands the adhesion of a full moiety of the entire body. But there is no division, or at the least there is no great and vital division among Christians even as to the older Testament; as to the Testament of the Gospel, or the new covenant, there is no division at all. There was a preparatory period after the ascension of our Lord, approaching three centuries in extent, during which the several books of the New Testament were exercising a profound and comprehensive influence, although the Canon, or complete list of the books acknowledged as due to divine inspiration, had not yet been completed. Even after that preliminary stage, paganism had enough of remaining strength in its death agony to continue its partial and spasmodic efforts, which can hardly be said to have altogether ceased when the sword of Mahomet and his successors invaded and seriously curtailed the territory that had been already won. Yet, upon the whole, the boundaries of the Church, through the course of many centuries, were greatly widened. Not indeed without many and sad diversities of experience: aberrations in doctrine, ruptures of communion, extravagant assumptions of authority, and frightful corruption of manners acknowledged on all hands. Yet the life from within could not be repressed, and more and more lands were added to the Gospel profession. In modern times, the process of occupying the earth has been carried on more largely by growth of population and by emigration than by bringing new nations within the fold. But during the nineteenth century there has been some renewal of activity and progress. Doubtless the kingdom of God within us |