guards, of what, even in spite of yourselves, is blessing you.

But let us attentively consider some of the religious principles which have given and hitherto preserved this holy day to us. Such an inquiry will form a useful matter of self-examination, and will aid us in the holy life.

I. In the first place, "the first day of the week" is a day of mighty memories-memories that we cannot let die! It is the appointed memorial of the most considerable facts in the history of the world. It is the standing register and monument of the influence of those facts upon the wellbeing of mankind. It is a perpetual declaration, on the part of Christian peoples, that they "remember their Creator;" and that they all things and all beings

are the creatures of God. It is an utterance of the faith that "all souls are His," that all worlds are His; that "the firmament declares His glory," and "the earth is full of His goodness;" that He made us, and not we ourselves. It is, accordingly, a profound confession of dependence, of obligation, of gratitude. This cessation of all other work, this freeing of the mind from other thought, this washing of the hands from worldly care, meant originally, and (wherever it is a religious act) still expresses, a humble desire to enter into the rest of God, to acknowledge His claim and His power, as well as to share in His glorious satisfaction and repose.

Without entering into any of the theological con

troversies on the moral appointment of the seventh day for these high purposes, or the transference of the sabbatic rest from the Jewish Sabbath to the Lord's-day, I may say that Christianity, in its doctrine and its institutions, in its work and worship, is the heir of all previous dispensations, and has gathered up into itself all the desires of the nations. I may remind you that those requirements which were made on the world's gray fathers at the dawn of time, in the way of worship and sacrifice, and that the sorrows and aspirations, the symbols and the life, the struggles and the sins of Israel, have all been more or less sanctioned or fulfilled in the great work of Christ. Not one jot or tittle has failed from God's law,-all is being fulfilled.

(1) The celebration of the Lord's-day has never lost sight of that prime fact in all revelation and all religion, namely, the creation of the world and of man, and, consequently, all the claim of God's law upon our conscience, and of God's goodness on our gratitude.

The main, the prime idea of the sabbatic rest is, that man should occasionally lift his eyes from the clods of earth, and gaze upwards into the face of his Creator; that he should awake up to a conviction of that intimate relation that subsists between him and God, and ponder with reverent awe, with freedom of mind, and openness of eye, the link which binds him to the throne of God. It is, that with the most determined effort, man should emerge from

the tyranny of the senses and the crushing cares of the world, and claim his heavenly relationship. This hushing of the power-loom, and closing of the shop, the office, the bank and the theatre, is as a mighty whisper that goes over England and the world, saying, We are the creatures of God,-He made us, both body and soul.' The bell-ringing of the Sunday morning, and the various other tokens of the day of rest, are voices of God, saying, 'Oh, ye children of men, forget not that ye are the creatures of My hand, the sheep of My pasture, the subjects of My government, the children of My love.' My brethren, if God means this by it,-if, by the special providences which have preserved for you the Patriarchal sabbath, the Jewish holy-day, the Christians' feast of praise, He does thus lovingly appeal to you every Sunday; then it is strange treatment of God that any of you should be utterly thoughtless about Him throughout its hours. If there is a God, and if we are His creatures, it is a great delusion, an awful folly, to forget and ignore HIM. There are hundreds of millions of our fellow-creatures who have no clear notion of a God, who have deified each other and themselves, and who offer the most willing sacrifice to the most worthless objects. We mourn over and pity them, we long to rend the veil which hides the awful oneness of creation from their view,- -we tremble at their fate. But what is to be said of the millions of Englishmen who say they believe in one holy, living, eternal Creator, the God of all

spirits, the Father of mercies, but who never recognize His claim upon them, never tremble at His word, never try to lisp His praise?

(2) The first day of the week is full of the memories of redemption. Insignificant and rebellious creatures of God, knowing, but not doing His will,— seeing, but not feeling His divinity,—believing, but not obeying His requirements,-exposed to sin, and not avoiding the evil of it,-certain of death, but not prepared for it, we should have been utterly undone, we should have been without God and without hope in the world, if He, in His incomparable love, had not voluntarily delivered us from the empire of sin, and screened us from the fiercest darts of death. The creation of the world is a baffling and sublime thought, the redemption of it is still more so. Now the redemption of man from sin and death dates from, and centres round, an event that was enacted upon our earth. He whose heart was charged with the destinies of the world,-He who was the embodied hope of mankind, the incarnate love of God, and the representative of all our need,-He who carried all our sorrows,—was “delivered for our offences," was "obedient unto death," and "Himself took our infirmities," at length "died, and was buried." Yet if that were all, if the grave of Jesus had been for ever sealed, the hopes of our race would never have emerged from it. But the jubilance of angels over our rescue, and the words "He is not here, but is risen" have been pealing over the ages ever

since the moment when those hours of awful suspense were consummated,-hours during which our world, which had become the grave of the manifested God, had rolled darkly and awfully along its destined way. Yes, "the first day of the week" has been ever since that wondrous morning the glad memorial of the fact that once when sin and death were carrying the hearse of human souls slowly on to the depths of hell they that bare it stood still; that then there was a great earthquake, and the Prince of Life arose in His majesty to quell for ever after all the power of the destroyer. Now, as the first-fruits of them that sleep, He stands by the deserted sepulchre, the accepted Patron and Priest of humanity. "The first day of the week" is a perpetual utterance of the great fact, "that Christ died for our sins, and rose again from the dead on the third day, according to the Scriptures." As the light of the Sunday morning steals over the world it awakes in millions of hearts the Divine remembrance that Christ is risen from the dead,-that God has accepted His own sacrifice for sin,—that past sin need no longer be a barrier between us and God,-that, all sinful as we are, we may begin at once to adore His unfathomable love, we may forsake our sins and find mercy. Has the sacrificial death of Christ no interest for you? Has the glorious resurrection of Christ no fascination for you? Have you no sins that need forgiveness? Has death no terrors? In that grim enemy, which lurks and hovers over your home,