their sins, their blindness, is teaching us; shewing us in them, that it is indeed an evil and bitter thing to turn away from the holy commandments which He has given us!

I say given us.-For those ten commandments are as much God's law to us as they were to the Jews. Not like the ceremonial law, which is no longer obligatory, these commandments of the two tables are binding for ever. No Christian man is free from these precepts. They are the source of all the laws which we make for ourselves. They contain the eternal principles of right and wrong out of them we deduce the whole duty of man.

We shew our sense of the importance of this holy law, by the care we take to teach it. We write it up in our Churches-we read it aloud every Sunday-we see that our children learn it so soon as they are able to learn anything-together with the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles Creed, it constitutes the chief sum of what a Christian ought to know and believe to his soul's health. Even when from circumstances, our youths are hindered in obtaining other knowledge, we generally find that they know these Ten Commandments-commandments, which God spake of old for our learning, that it might be well with us, and with our children for ever!

Now of these great commandments the fourth is the one that I wish to speak of more particularly this morning—the last of the first table-the commandment which orders us to keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it.

Would brethren, that what I am about to say, may lead some of you to alter your practice with regard to the Sabbath! Would that you may be induced to look

at your conduct on this day not only as it may affect yourselves, but as it bears upon and affects others! Would that, at least in some of your hearts, a resolution may now be formed, that you will not any more put a stumbling block in your brother's path, by your way of dealing with this holy appointment of God-His command to keep holy the Sabbath day!

Now, I shall not go into a history of the Sabbath; nor discuss the question of the change of day from the seventh to the first day of the week. I have already done this on a former occasion. Neither shall I think it necessary to deal at any length with the objections sometimes raised, about the Sabbath being a Jewish ordinance -fitted to the wants of a peculiar people, at a peculiar time, but not fitted to our wants nor needed in our time.

I will assume that we are all here agreed that the commandment appointing the Sabbath is binding upon us-that it is an ordinance of God made for man as he is man-for Gentile as well as for Jew-for European as well as for Asiatic.

For, brethren, we must not pick and choose among God's commandments. If the law is wise and good in one part, so also is it in another. If the precepts-Thou shalt have none other God but Me.-Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image.—Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.-Honour thy father and thy mother-are bowed to, and acknowledged at once, as precepts from God, given us for our good-what right have we to start aside, and be offended, when the same law says in another partRemember thou keep holy the Sabbath day. Six days shalt

thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God?

But though we be all agreed about the authority of the Fourth Commandment, when we come to look at our practice, how sadly have we transgressed, and do transgress it!

The neglect of Sunday is, I fear, a growing evil in the land. Amongst ourselves in this parish, it is an evil of long standing, an evil inherited by many from their parents.

In other parts of the country more reverence is as yet paid to this holy day. I talked with a man the other day who was born and bred at a distance. He was an old man; and as often happens with the old, he praised the days gone by as better than the present days. "Every thing seemed changed," he said, "for the worse. Among the rest, Sunday was different. It was not observed as it used to be. He had seen men digging in their gardens and doing things on the Sabbath down here, which he had never seen done when he was a boy, in his own country."

I felt his words to be a reproach. Sunday is different to what it used to be. It is much less strictly, much less religiously observed than it was by our forefathers. I greatly fear this change is for the worse. I greatly fear that if we go on, as at present, taking down first one and then another barrier, which used to fence in the Sunday, as sacred and separate, from the other days of the week, we shall end by making it a common day like the rest-a day when not no work, but all work may

be done—a day no longer set apart for God, holy and honourable, but given up as all the other six are, to the service of mammon.

And then, when this comes to pass, who will be the chief losers by the change? You, brethren, who toil with your hands for your daily bread-you, the working classes-who most need the Sabbath-who want the repose, the leisure, the rest, the calm and quiet which the Sabbath was meant to bring you-you will be the chief sufferers by its being set aside, trampled on, and treated as a common day. You will have to fulfil your daily tasks as at present-and you will have this task over and above-you will have to give your twelve hours on the seventh day to whatever work your employers may put before you.

On your account, then-on all our accounts-but on your account most of all, do I feel we are concerned to make a stand against any further inroad on the Sabbath. It is on your behalf that I would protest against those, whose views, if carried out, would rob you of the sacred rest that God has provided for you in this holy appointment.

Already, already is that rest too much encroached upon-too much of it stolen for worldly pleasure, or worldly business. Already have we suffered by letting slip from us much of the old sacredness that belonged to Sunday-by doing on that day things which had better be left to other days, omitting to do in it what we can do on no other day so well.

And when I say this, I would not be misunderstoodI am not pleading-I never have pleaded, for a Jewish

observance of the Sabbath. I am free to grant that we may do many things on the Sunday which it would be unlawful for a Jew to do on his Sabbath.

I do not wish to restrict any man's liberty in harmless things; nor would I lay down rules for the exact way of spending Sunday. That must be left to each man's own conscience. What one may do without offence, would be to another a cause of grievous stumbling. To our own Master we stand or fall.

But when it is not a matter of detail, but one of principle-when the question is, shall the Sabbath be maintained as God's great boon to man-the day of rest—the day of religious worship--the day of rest, more especially for those who most need rest; the day of religious worship for those who have scant leisure for such exercise at other times-when such is the question we may all surely agree about the answer. We must all see that it is for our common good-our own good and the good of those who are to come after us-that it may be well with us and our children-to keep the Sabbath, from polluting it—to honour it and its great Author, by every possible means in our power. We must all alike feel that a restday which God Himself has consecrated to us-which He has given us not only in the law, but from the very beginning of the world; which so exactly suits the wants of our human nature—yea, and of the dumb beasts that we have made our slaves-is a day not by any of us to be called common-is a most precious part of our Christian inheritance, and one that we are bound to leave to those who shall come after us not the worse for passing through our hands!