for example, puts the authority of the Lord's day on the same ground with that of Holy Thursday, Christmas, and other days which the Church has thought proper to appoint as sacred ones in the exercise of the power of the keys, or the power of binding and loosing, granted by Christ to his first followers, and through them to their successors. In contradistinction to this, M. Vinet's view of the ground of the sacredness of "Sunday" places it in perfect independence of ecclesiastical legislation, identifies it with the very essence of Christianity, and thus gives it a position into which no other day can be introduced without sacrilegious usurpation. Still, even he asserts that the Sabbath is abolished: Le Dimanche, the Lord's day, is not a Sabbath. That institution, which was ordained by the Maker of the world, for the benefit of mankind, before the generations began, and without the appropriate influence and advantage of which the spiritual life, in such a world and in such circumstances as ours, can not be perpetuated-did Christianity, indeed, abolish this institution by setting aside that system of Judaism which, for its own purposes, appropriated the Sabbatic principle and invested it with secular authority? Did an institution, having its ground in the spiritual nature and necessities of man, pass away with a mass of institutions, the ground of which was local, temporary. and, after its day had passed, illegitimate, and impossible to be retained? Did Christianity abolish an institution as old, as radical, and as necessary as marriage, because it was its lot to be taken, for special reasons, into company with the shadows and symbols of Moses' law?

This question may be thought to be unimportant, since the sacredness of Sunday, the Lord's day, is put into such high and commanding relief by the doctrine of our author. Indeed, according to this doctrine, the Sabbath, in its essential idea, is not abolished; it is retained; it is advanced into more full and perfect power and life: Nothing is abolished but the laws of Moses respecting the Sabbath : This was, indeed, a small thing; nay, it was a good and a necessary thing, that these laws should have been abolished. Had they remained to regulate the observance of the Sabbath under the

Christian dispensation, they would have militated against the whole genius and purpose of that dispensation: But not less hostile to these would have been the setting aside the influence and sanction of the exact idea, and the intrinsic law and life of Sabbatism. Not without reason was true piety, under the Old Testament, resolved into Sabbatism-the keeping of a Sabbath. There was more than a mere symbol in Sabbath-sanctification; there always has been more; there always will be more: When all the shadows and all the changes of time shall have found their end, Sabbatism will remain, as comprising the substantive and immutable piety of the heavenly state : απολείπεται ΣΑΒΒΑΤΙΣΜΟΣ τῷ λαῷ τοῦ θεοῦ. — Heb., iv., 9. All will be Sabbath forever in heaven: that is to say, the piety of saints, such as it is when it exercises and expresses itself in the form of genuine Sabbath-sanctification-this piety perfectly developed under this form, as it will be in heaven, gives us the ideal, and is most completely identical with the very essence of the piety of heaven. And if the most perfect exhibition of the piety of heaven was needful or desirable in advancing the cause of Christianity, it were strange, indeed, that Christianity should deprive itself of this advantage, as it certainly has done, if it has strictly and absolutely abolished the SABBATH.

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It is the change of the day, nothing besides this,* that has suggested the idea of abolition: But not to assume with some a position not tenable, that the day has not been changed, except to change it back to that which had been observed from the beginning until the time of Moses, we ask whether there be any thing in the identical twenty-four hours between the termination of Friday and the beginning of Sunday which would involve the abolition of Sabbatism, if any other hours than these should be taken in their stead? Would there not be in this case a most gratuitous application of the principle, the letter killeth-a principle which, as much as any other, may be termed a fundamental one in hermeneutics? If Christianity retains the whole of the Sabbatic institution, except the sanctification of these identical hours-if, with all the fullness and power of its mighty life, Chris * Gal., iv., 10, and Col., ii., 18, do not refer to this subject.

tianty has declared itself in favor of exactly that essential thing which constituted the all in all of Sabbatism at the beginning, except that, for high and necessary purposes, it has assigned to it a place in the run of the week different by one day from that which it first held-if this is all that Christianity has done in modifying the ancient Sabbatic institution-if, with this one exception, it has advanced the idea of Sabbatism, together with all the particular ideas which this comprises as entering into the unchangeable and eternal essence of piety, far, immeasurably far, beyond its original sphere-is there any warrant, any justification, for the use of such language as this: Christianity has abolished the Sabbath?

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If fidelity to the truth does not require this affirmation, we think it should not have been made. Words are things. Luther, in order to express in the strongest manner his abhorrence of legalism, employs these terms in regard to the observance of Sunday: "Keep it holy, for its use' sake both to body and soul! But if any where the day is made holy for the mere day's sake—if any where any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to feast on it-to do any thing that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian spirit and liberty." For the observance of Sunday, in Luther's conception, there was no ground of obligation excepting expediency: no inviolable law of God required it So he taught with all the power of his mighty tongue. His end was good: So, with his views of the sacredness of Sunday, he was, perhaps, right in teaching: We say he may have been right in teaching as he did if Sunday truly have no other ground of sacredness than expediency, according to man's ideas of expediency. M. Vinet had no such conceptions as to the foundation of Sunday sacredness; but in saying that the Sabbath is abolished, it is to be feared that he opens the door, by possibility at least, to the legitimation, to an indefinite extent, of Luther's teaching on this point. If we say the Sabbath is abolished, do we not virtually make expediency the rule of Sunday sanctification, unless, indeed, we assume Whately's position, that Sunday should be kept from regard to ecclesiastical prescription or recommendation. M. Vinet rests the sacredness of

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the Lord's day on the same foundation on which Christianity itself rests herein he is right; but that which has a firm foundation may still need law to inform, to regulate, and direct it; and, taking mankind as they are, to remove the authority of positive law from religious institutions, to place the claims of these institutions to our regard on any other ground than that of the peremptory authority and inviolable command of God, is a virtual desecration of them.

NOTE I, page 185.

By the Translator.
On Liturgies.

THE question whether the spirit of the evangelic life or Christian dispensation desires or needs a Liturgy in worship; whether this spirit prefers or consents to bind itself to forms of prayer, prescribed or imposed by ecclesiastical authority or prudence, requires to be examined anew on its merits, unless we are to surrender the final disposal of it to predominant sentiment. Whether it be from the new appearance of formalism, or from desire for a more chaste and cultivated manner in conducting public worship, or from defect of the spirit of free prayer in these times, or from all these causes combined, there are indications, not to be mistaken, that a preference for the stated use of Liturgies is prevailing to some extent in denominations which have hitherto thought it, among themselves at least, inexpedient: And as the tendencies of this preference in these denominations seem to us unfavorable to the interests of Christianity, on the whole, we should scarcely be true to ourselves if we should leave our author's remarks on Liturgies without at least indicating our judgment.

Though he

Let us not misapprehend our author on this subject. says, when speaking of the performance of the service, "Le ministre est lié à la Liturgie qui ne lui appartient pas, qui est la voix même du troupeau et à laquelle il ne fait que prêter sa voix individuelle," he had said before, "Des paroles à la fois humaines et préscrites ne me sem

blent pas réaliser l'idéal d'une Liturgie: Si la parole humaine devait s'y mêler, je l'aimerais mieux libre et individuelle." Taking both these passages together, and interpreting them as we feel bound to do, without making our author inconsistent with himself, we obtain, as M. Vinet's judgment, on the whole, that, while the officiating minister, as the minister of a flock that has prescribed to itself forms of worship, is to be tied to the Liturgy of the flock, and not to use his own voice except as that of one individual thereof, there is, nevertheless, in this mode of worship, something inconsistent with the ideal of a Liturgy. "It appears to me," he says, "that the ideal of a Liturgy can not be realized in words at the same time human and prescribed. If human words are to be admitted, I prefer that they should be free and individual." As there are "human words" in all extant Liturgies, it is M. Vinet's impression that the ideal of a Liturgy is realized in no Liturgy; that is to say, if we understand him, that liturgical worship, such as it is every where in fact, involves more or less of inconsistency with the just idea of worship. This he might believe, and yet, on the whole, think this mode of worship expedient-expedient as being less objectionable than free prayer.

And yet free prayer he thinks more congenial with the ideal of a Liturgy than prayers precomposed and prescribed by man. In the nature of free prayer as such, there is nothing incongenial with this ideal: In prescribed forms, on the contrary, the ideal can not be realized: Free prayer, then, has this advantage, and it is surely no ur important one, that, in its just and complete exercise, the ideal of worship may be realized: It will be realized if those who offer free prayer are not in fault; it can not be in the other mode of worship. If, then, it be feasible to have free worship, unobjectionable as to manner and spirit, or just in proportion as this is feasible, the preferableness of free worship is unquestionable.

Dismissing for the present the question as to this feasibility, we return to the other point-the incongeniality of Liturgies with the spirit of Christianity-the ideal of Christian worship: With such views of this spirit as our author has so forcibly and beautifully expressed, it was impossible for him not to have felt the incongeniality, the incon