SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATIONS.-N6. II. "And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it."-GEN. ii. 3. THIS is the announcement, by an inspired writer in after years, of a fact an actual transaction, which took place at the time when man was first placed upon the earth. We receive it on the unquestionable evidence of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. And seeing how fully all the other parts of our religious system are borne out by the evidence -we receive this statement unequi vocally, with the same confidence with which we receive the testimony of the evangelists that the Lord Jesus was crucified. "God blessed the Sabbath-day, and made it holy," i. e., attached to it a peculiarly holy and blessed character. This does not mean merely that the seventh day was so estimated in the mind of God; but it has regard to a real transaction or appointment in respect to man, viz., that when God placed man upon the earth, to spend a succession of days on its surface, he attached a peculiar character of sacredness to every seventh day as it recurred. Regularly as six days similar to those occupied in creation rolled away, and a seventh day returned similar to that on which God rested or ceased from his work which he created and made that seventh day was to be regarded by man, as a day in many important respects different from the other days. It was in a peculiar sense to be holy. There was a fact also in creation calculated, if not directly intended, to draw attention to the recurrence of the seventh day; and to lead men to divide time into periods of seven days. It is the periodical change in the appearauce of the moon-the earth's satellite the lesser light that was to rule the night. As it reaches the several quarters of its revolution around our planet, it assumes those distinct characteristics which have ever from their prominency been noticed by all nations, of the new moon, the first quarter, the full moon, and the last quarter. These changes in the phases of the moon, though attended with some little irregularity, must have either led the mind of man to the division of time into weeks, or periods of seven days; or tended to fix and confirm the custom to which the divine appointment gave rise; so that, in fact, the law of the Sabbath, or seventh day rest, was written on the face of nature; and the recurring changes of that interesting luminary, which cheers the darkness of the night, would ever suggest the memory of the early command to keep the seventh day holy. And the counting of the length of man's life by years, implied necessarily the counting also the more minute divisions of those moons or months, of which years are composed; and con sequently of weeks, or periods when the moon underwent her marked changes, that is, the recurrence of the seventh, or Sabbath-day, which was set apart as holy. In the few short chapters which chronicle the mundane history of above 2000 years, it could not be expected that much notice of the seventh day should occur; but there is even in that succinct record an incidental allusion to it, which is of value. In the crisis when Noah was watching the gradual decline of the waters, and had sent forth a dove, which returned to rest her wearied wing in the ark again," he stayed," it is said, "yet other seven days," as if he had previously stayed seven days between the sending forth the raven and the sending forth the dove, "and she came to him in the evening with an olive leaf in her mouth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent the dove forth again." Surely, when viewed aside of the direct command to set the day apart as holy, and also of the recorded piety of the patriarch, this short record would imply the habit of obedient observance of the Sabbatical rest. Noah delayed till another Sabbath was passed before he renewed his experi ment. The sound of intelligent, affectionate, and grateful Sabbatic devotion filled the ark as it floated on the declining waters; and then, warm in the fervour of that revived devotion, he addressed himself again to the experiment whether the Providence of God had yet called him to leave his strange shelter, and go forth again to tread the earth, from the face of which rebellious man had been destroyed. Even the tidal wave of ocean has its ebb and flow, influenced and marked by the septenary or septidiurnal character of the moon's relative position to the earth; and at a particular period of its course, position, and aspect, the waters would first recede from the high lands of Ararat, and discover to Noah the earth's restored surface. A reference to later portions of the one harmonious volume of the inspired revelation, developing as it does the purposes and plans of one consistent mind, must show us what is meant by sanctifying the seventh day. The same sacred writer, who records by inspiration the fact of the original and primitive consecration of the day, records the fact of the giving of the written tables of the law; and thus in the first table, which requires the love of God with all the heart, the command to remember the seventh day, and keep it holy, occupies a prominent position; not assuming there so much the character of a formal command, as a test rather of the real feeling of the heart to God. And subsequently the spirit in which the rest of that day was to be observed is very clearly stated as a "turning away the foot from doing our own pleasure on that holy day-the calling it a delight-the holy of the Lord honourable and honouring him by not doing our own ways, nor finding our own pleasure, nor speaking our own words." Now as God is without variableness, or shadow of turning, and one day is with Him as a thousand years, it is evident that passages of inspiration such as this are interpretative of the original command, and the meaning in perpetuity of the word sanctify." External circumstances, which affect the formal 66 strictness of the day, may vary. At times the manna must not be gathered on that day. At times the disciples of the Redeemer may pluck the ears of corn on that day. The great principles brought into action as to the septidiurnal rest, regulate all these minor points; but the grand unchanging character of the observance from the first, is the attaching that sacredness to the day that its hours must be spent for God, and not for man, separate from the distracting occupations to which the other six days of the week are appropriated. The voice of God by his prophet Isaiah is the true commentary on the verse in the 2nd of Genesis. It shows that what God required on the first Sabbath, or the 500th, was the same thing, the cheerful occupation of the seventh portion of time in the special devotion of the powers of the human mind to the worship and service of God, to meditation on his attributes, and to a reverential endeavour to approach him in more deliberate and sustained adoration. It is deeply interesting to read at the outset of the record of the human annals, and stated then as coeval with man's pristine existence, the notice of such an institution; for what could be more manifestly wise and suited to man's circumstances, whether fallen from, or maintaining, his original integrity and spirituality? In either case it was desirable, that in the long succession of days and nights, a certain fixed recurring period should be manifestly and unequivocally claimed for God, when even the justifiable works, and strenuous efforts and studies of men in various busy departments should temporarily cease; and the mind of universal man be directed in one higher channel; and led habitually to count that regularly recurring period of more direct godly devotion, "a delight." Even in a perfected state it were easy to conceive of the wisdom of a separated portion of successional existence appropriated for nearer and more intense devotion. And if so, how manifestly wise in its adaptation to our fallen condition is this sacred institution! Look at a great metropolitan gathering of men on a week-day, with all the bustle, and turmoil, and agitation of complicated businesses and occupations. What an unspeakable mercy is that arrangement which closes the mart of commerce and the court of justice, and the bustling exchange, which shutters up the shop and the bazaar, and seals the haunt of pleasurable dissipation, and bids the whole population bend the knee before the throne of the Eternal! Think of the amount of blessing, of moral and spiritual elevation and improvement, thus brought in to the human soul; the pause in the otherwise ceaseless round of the great secular machinery -the halt in the great pageant of life-the giving the human heart its hour of leisure to beat for God with at least something of the intensity of its throb for worldly care and strife. Let any one, on a Sabbath-day, walk through a London-an aggregate of millions-in a city wearing, as our London really does, much of a true Sabbath aspect; and then let him count the immense boon of that regularly recurring rest; the universal call-as the moon enters her quarter, and as the sun reaches its point in the graduated circle of 52 divisionsthe universal call to prayer. may trifle with the appointment; they may cavil at the restriction; they may filch away for secular objects its prohibited hours; but no man of philosophic mind, that has looked broadly at the capacities, and the tendencies, and the infirmities of man, but must admit the wisdom and benevolence of an arrangement which goes to secure the proper direction of the mind to godliness; and which has made it not only possible, but preferable, that the mundane system of support by labour should be capable of being effectively carried on thus in consistency with the reservation of a seventh day for the higher purposes of religion. All wise men, experienced in the realities of life, and the phenomena of human nature, must admit the advantage of the pause; and the premature breaking up of many strong minds among those who have rashly disregarded the divine Men injunction, seems to intimate that the human constitution is framed with a view to this appointed rest; that both are bound up together in the device for human happiness and prosperity; and that to trench upon the privilege of rest which the Creator has bestowed, is to trench also on the welfare of the being to whom, and for whose advantage, both in a subordinate and in a higher sense, that rest was enjoined. Given a sinless and incorrupt world, such as the Adamic creation-yet liable by external influences to go astray, what more direct and palpable way of preservation and safety than our Sabbatic institution, when the various occupations of the week are to be interrupted by an universal and sustained worship throughout the seventh day; or given a fallen world of beings alienated from the life of God, plunged into a sea of distracting cares, irritating agitations, or polluting indulgences; and surely no dispensation seems more suited to its amelioration, and return to God, than that which stops as it were at once the great wheel of business and of folly, and turns the whole moving power, the whole tide of thought, upon God and eternity. Only let a nation enter into the spirit of the institution, legislate as far as legislation is wise for its encouragement and observance, and enter individually and cheerfully upon its holy and characteristic duties, and you will see a people coming forth out of the valley of the shadow of death, and entering proportionally into the sunshine of the Divine favour. Only let it be clearly understood that the spirit of this holy observance is not formal and pharisaical. If it is approached in the disposition of those who would pay "tithe of mint and anise and cummin, while they neglect judgment and mercy," even this institution may lose its value in the loss of its salutary influence. Any legislation, which would go to make the Sabbatic observance a submission to compulsory statute would go far to rob the day of its true character as a freewill offering. It were perfectly justifiable to legis late against all open, intrusive, and notorious breaches of this primitive festival; but there is a wide range with respect to the essential characteristics of Sabbath duty, which must be left to the interpretation of the heart. The peculiar character of the command as it stands in the sacred decalogue, like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden, is a test of love. The whole first table resolves itself into "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." Now the injunction of a Sabbath, then, given most distinctly, and wearing to the unthinking observer so much of the aspect of a formal commandment, is just the means of bringing the individual soul to a test of its love. God the Creator, who demands rightly the supreme love of his creature, thus brings the matter to a point. "He that loves me will thankfully observe this appointed rest, which is the palpable and open, and universally required proof of loyalty." The loyal heart will not value, in this matter, the views of expediency, necessity, or example: but will spring to the duty, and hail the sacred hours with delight, as the appointed time and manner of association with the best and kindest friend. Much of the previous six days is necessarily fettered down to earth and its vanities and cares. These are the hours of holy elevation, of seeking refuge in the contemplation of infinite goodness, of affectionate drawing towards the source of all blessing. All the superior characteristics of such service must be left to the spontaneous dictations of the spiritual mind; and, therefore, legislation, if it is too minute, will fail of its object. Sabbath observance, in its highest character, will be the measure of heavenly-mindedness and love. The outward regulations of a nominally Christian country, where business ostensibly ceases, and public worship gives a prominent aspect to the day-this is good as far as it goes; but far within that range is the true observance of the Sabbath. It is the going forth of the heart to God-the alacrity with which its hours are appropriated to affectionate meditation and worship-and happy, truly happy, is that mind which, in such a consecration of the hours of this seventh day rest, can realize a foretaste of the eternal rest in glory; and, perhaps, even then count upon the perennial maintenance of this sacred festival in a perfected dispensation; when even the highest accustomed attainments and enjoyments of the soul in the even routine of a blessed eternity, shall be still diversified and crowned with the privilege of some yet recurring period of superior delight. CEPHAS. Review. PROPHETICAL LANDMARKS; containing data for helping to determine the question of Christ's Pre-Millennial Advent. By the Rev. H. Bonar, Kelso. London, Nisbet. Pp. 399. 12mo. Our Author very strikingly ob serves "On the early morn of jubilee, men were stationed on the eastern hills about Jerusalem to catch the first gleam of sunshine silvering the cloud or the mountain-top afar off, that they might announce it to the priests waiting in the temple with their silver trumpets to proclaim it to the expect ing city, from which the tidings, caught up by the watchmen of the surrounding hills, were echoed from mountain to mountain till all Judea hailed the welcome note. So are we to take our stand on our prophetic watchtower that we may catch the earliest glimpse of approaching glory, and proclaim it over earth as glad tidings of great joy to a groaning crea We To those who cannot avail themselves of more elaborate treatises, we strongly recommend the little volume now before us. Its style is singularly interesting and elegant; its spirit moderate and undogmatical. Every reader may not be able to come into the author's creed regarding the pre-millennialadvent of Christ; but no reader, we are persuaded, of a devout and serious frame of mind can read this work without the greatest interest and advantage. cannot but think that Mr. Bonar's Scriptural proofs of the personal advent are very strong; but even if we cannot satisfy our minds on this point, how much of common ground exists of the deepest and increasing interest? There are few who doubt that there will be a glorious period of millennial blessedness, preceded by the tremendous overthrow of antiChristian powers, and the restoration of God's ancient people. The forerunners of these mighty changes are distinctly verified and predicted in Scripture; and if in the passing events of our days there is a singular identity with those predictions, how can we be otherwise than on the very tiptoe of expectation regarding those things that are coming upon the earth. Mr. Bonar is of opinion that the signs of the times warrant the call to the Church," lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." Our readers, we are persuaded, will not quarrel with us for laying before them in full, the fourteen signs which our author has noted: "1. The maturity of the Papal Antichrist. Popery itself is no new thing in the earth, so that its mere existence is no peculiar sign of the last day. But its progress and prevalence are entirely new. There is a maturity about it which, in other ages, it could not claim. It is rising in stature, and fast hastening to its consummation. In extent of circle she stretches far beyond the territories of other days. In all regions of the earth she is planting her banner and claiming dominion over the nations. Never did she shew herself more thoroughly in earnest, and never did her earnestnesss seem to be attended with more marvellous success. She is flinging her chains across the globe and no man obstructs or arrests her. Her sudden increase of energy, as well as of prosperity, may startle us. With stealthy foot she has been advancing step by step, till now she walks abroad at noonday with the sound of the trumpet, lifting up her head in bold defiance, and exulting in the consciousness of recovered mastery. Her hand, like Amalek's, is upon the throne of the Lord;' and she acts and speaks as if in nothing she would be restrained, of all that she has imagined to do. "2. The diffusion of Infidelity, This at least is new. Our fathers knew comparatively little; and our fathers' fathers almost nothing. An Infidel was rare indeed in their day; a man wondered at and shunned. Towards the close of the last century infidelity burst forth in France, and partially extended itself elsewhere. Of late years it has developed itself with prodigious swiftness, and assumed a bold and lofty attitude of assault. Its extent is incredible. The masses are thoroughly leavened with it. It has insinuated itself everywhere, and is eating out the heart of everyvery thing like deep principle among men. It has corroded the cement by which society hangs together, so that nations and communities are now like walls or towers without mortar, ready |