THE SABBATH.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 300, 11 June 1898, Page 3

THE SABBATH.

WHY AND WHEN WAS IT CHANGED. SERMON BY DR. HOSKING. The Pev. Dr. Hosking preached in the Wesleyan Church, Cambridge, on Sunday evening upon the Sabbath question, and which day we are to keep. There was a large attendance. Reading from the lesson, Romans 14, the Dr. said, we were net to judge a weak brother, but bear with him. The Apostle was discussing the propriety of eating things offered to idols. If one man is a vegetarian, do not judge him ; if one wants a beef steak, let him have it. We hear people say, if you do not do this and that you will go to hell; do not listen to such a man, he cannot send you to hell. Speaking ot the 17th verse, he said, here you have a good bit of creed, sound theology. If I have these three things in my heart I an; all right—righteousness, peace and joy. After the singing of hymn 951, the rev. gentleman re<td for his text Romans 14, 5, and Colosians 2, 16. I invite your attention to these passages of Spripture for the purpose of dealing with one great phase of the Sabbath question. The Sabbath question having been raised in the Waikato some time ago, many honest men were considerably disturbed about it, so I thought it good for some Minister to review these doctrines of the Christian Church. If Christianity means anything, it means broadmindtdness. Bigotry and Christianity cannot sail in the same boat. So far as the Sabbath is concerned, there is a geod deal of bigotry on earth, whether from misrepresentation or misunderstanding I cannot say. Ton know evety day hi the week is a Sabbath for 3ome nations : The Greeks keep Monday; Tuesday is kept by Persians ; Assyrians, Wednesday ; Egyptians, Thursday ; Turks, Friday ; Jews, Saturday ; Christians, Sunday. Who is to say that only the Jews are right? My idea is that if we keep the seventh day we are right, and from one Sunday to another you have a seveuth day. You can keep it on Thursday if you like. If one keeps it oo a Saturday don't quarrel with him over it. If you are a Turk aud keep Friday, I can keep Sunday, but if you tell me I am going to hell because I do not keep the Sabbath that is the kind of bigotry a soul repudiates. Does it mean from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. One day in seven is God's law. One day in seven should be man's law. Sir Robert Peel used to say, "I never knew a man who worked seven days and did not break down in a few years." Into Auckland, many from the Waikato, are coining in for lunacy. I don't know where they come from in the Waikato. It was found out by the farmers iu the Old Country that this was so, and a physician said it arose from early rising. I reckon a man should have eight hours s'eep and one day in seven, and one year in seven for a matter of that. Now we are invited by some to go back to the old Jewish Sabbalh. Well, let us see. We must not light a fire on the Sabbath. I was with a Jewish Rabbi sitting in his room, I saw the fire-sticks and coals were laid and ready for to light. I said, "Why don't you light the fire ?" He said, " I dare not; don't you know our law ?" I raid " Theu I will light it for you." It was cold. He rang for the servant and she came in and lit it. I questioned that. Oh, he said, she was a Christian girl. If you are going to carry out the Jewish law you must not light a fire ; you must not bake or boil on the Sabbath, and we do both and with a good conscience. If you broke the Jewish Sabbath you were stoned, Ezekiel 21, 13. We can't stone them now, it would he hard to hang a man. It is impossible to keep the Sabbath in countries where they only have the sun for six months in a year. I want you to see the absurdity of it. Paul says the Sabbath wa3 abolished at the Cross, let no man judge you, etc. Here he warns them of keeping holy days, and the same Apostle warns the Galatians against the keeping of days. He (Paul) was in doubt of them if they did. I asked a person some time ago to eiug at a concert. I cannot, it is Lent. In Lent we have to live on a higher plane. I have no sympathy with a person who goes up during Lent and then goes clown after Lent. It is that kind of nonsense that keeps intelligent men out of the Church. Now, the Jewish Sabbath was intended only for the Jews. Thou earnest dowu Sinai and madest known, etc., Neh. 9. I gave them my Sabbaths for a sign, Ezekicl 20, 12. The deliveiance of the Jews from Egypt was what was commemorated by the Jewish Sabbath. We have not been delivered from Egyptian bondage. Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, therefore the Lord commanded thee to keep the Sabbath. But we are told that my second text does not refer to the weekly Sabbath at all. In the Old Testament the weekly Sabbath is time again, associated with new moons aud feasts. It is called Sabbath sixty times in the New Testament. In the sixtieth time some other word is used, to we are told, while 59 times the weekly Sabbath is spoken of. The Apostle tells us the Sabbath was a shadow of Christ; the body is Christ, Are we to run after the shadow ? Surely that is a step backward. We do not keep the Jewish Sabbath, because we are undtr the New Covenant, a new and living way: not under law, but under grace. The law was given by Moses, but grace ar.d truth came by Jesus Christ. You can abolish the whole Jewish law aud it won't make the difference ol a toss of a button. It is not a New Zealand Act of Parliament that makes us Christians. Wo are governed by principles of love, Gal. 3, 24. The word " school-master" in Galatians is not the right word. It does not mean a teacher, but a conductor. Suppose I had a large family of children and say to a gentleman, " Would you mind taking them to school, as they don't know the way, I haven't the time." The law U our leader to conduct us to school. Christ is our Schoolmaster. The law conducts us to Christ. When we are grown we don't need a schoolmaster. Not under a schoolmaster, that is when the children are grown they don't want anyone to go along and show them the way. It brings us to Him and leaves us with Him. So when we go back to the law wo are imbecile Christians, weakminded, weak-kneed Christians. Why should we keep the Sunday? To commemorate the resurrection of Christ. I think a day is a good memorial of an event. Sir Humphrey Davey, a gentleman in England, when he died left a sum to provide the children with a holiday feast upon a certain day. We thought him the grandest man that ever lived; that day was a memorial of himself, full of interest to the children. I think in setting apart a day he acted far wiser than if he had built a college at Jerusalem or erected a statue as high as Babel, This is the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, the grandest day of all, the day of triumph over death ; on this day Jesus established the fact of His resurrection and a future life, declared to be the Son of God with power. When He appeared to His disciples, to commune with them after His resurrection, it was the first day of the week, It became a day of joy aud gladness to the early Christian Church, and on this day the disciples received Christ with joy, begotten again to a lively hope. I said that Jesus met with His disciples ou the first day of the week. It is called the eighth day ; it means our Sun lay,_ it must do. The outpouring of the Spirit on the Christian Church was on this day, the first duy of the week. They made a collection in the church on the Sunday ; you read that in I. Cor., 16v., and you read in Acts 20 where Paul preached to

them. Now, although lie remained at Tioy seven days, it was on the tir.*t day, not the seventh, that lie preached. One hundivd P'l'.m is was offered for a proof that the day was changi d. lam a poor nan, but I think I can offer a pound i f you can give proof for tie keeping of Sabbath from Frid y sundown to S turday Mindou n. The ea thisro'iid. •nd you caiino', f •• it you i»«» r un 1 the world y< u a day. We have abundant proof that the Sabbath was ignored by Christ and His fipostlcs. Christ never cold us to keep it, nor have H s apostles commanded us cither. The Sabbath wvs made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Man is of more impoi tat.e than the Sabbath. He wbo says that the Sabbath is of more importance than a man is a fool, aud that is very mild The man who acts thus towards the Sabbath ads contrary to Divine order. We are told that the Sabbath ,vas changed by the Pope. It's the greatest piece of nonsense that ever came out of a rotten head. Perfect rot. I will give an an ay of evidence from the fourth century back to the frst. Do you mean to say that if the Pope changed the day that 15,000,000 of Christians would not know it ? Tie Adv. nt Review says " that the Sabbath was changed by the Church in the fourth century." We will go back to that time and I will civo you the very words from the Anto-Nicean library from the early fathers, Sonic say, " You don't believe these early fathers, do you ? " Well, I don't believe all I read. It does not follow that if die fathers had peculiar ideas of some tilings they were not to be tiken for anything. St. Augustine .vas a man that had more sense in his little finger than all the Seventh Day Adventists put together. In 321, the first Christian Empercr of Rome made a law " that all should rest on the venerable day of the Bun." Going back 30 years we reach Eusebius, the father of church history. He constantly and familiarly used the term Lord's Day, and that was a long time before the Sabbath was changed by the Pope. Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, said, '• Rut the Lord's Day we celebrate as a day of joy, because on it He rose again." That was 100 years before the Pope lived, who is said to have changed the Sabbath. Go back to A.D, 270 Anatolius, Bishop of Laodecia, says, " Our regard for the Lord's resurrection, which took place on the Lord's Day, should lead us to celebrate it on the same principle. A.D. 250, Cyprian says, " The eighth day, that is the first day, the Sabbath." Tertullim, a.d. 200, says, " We neither accord with the Jews in their peculiarities in regard to food nor in their sacred day." Clement of Alexandria, a.d. 194, " In fulfilment of the precept keep the Lord's Day." Rardesanes in his book " The Law of Nations " shows that Sunday was used as a day of religion. Diony-dus, Bishop of Corinth, one of Paul's Churches, mind, says, " We passed this holy Lord's Day, etc." Going back we have Barnabas saying, " We keep the eighth day with jcyfulness." Justyn Martyr, only 44 years after the death of John, said, " 1 was in the Spirit ou the Lord's Day." He says, " On the day called Sunday we gather together in one place." The first day of the week, mind you, was the day in which the wot Id'was created, and so the day in which the world was redeemed ; and then that remarkable book which has lately been discovered, " The Teachings of the Twelve Apostles," says, " But every Lord's Day do ye gather yourselves together and break bread." So that from the fourth to the first century you have a mass of evidence that cannot be denied. No man ought to be ignorant of the fact that the first day of the week was the Lord's Day, the Sabbath Day, and the day on which Christ arose. Were all these people liars, or must we be fools for 2000 years not to be able to tell we have been keeping the wrong day. I read from a book from J. N. Audrews, the best man the Seventh Day Adventists ever had, page 308, " The reasons offered by the early fathers for neglecting the observance of the Sabbath show conclusively that they had no special light on the subject by reason of living in the first ceutury, which we in this latter age do not possess." Put that alongside that the Pope changed the Sabbath in the fourth century, and the marvellous array of the fathers, and who are you to believe? The Sabbath was tried in the Reformation and it failed, tried by Seventh Day Baptists and it failed, and tried in New Zealaud with no good results. A wife says, " John, we have been keeping the wrong day, and I am going to turn over a new leaf and keep the Sabbath. All right, John says ; we won't quarrel about that. But all Johns are not like him, or there would not be any quarrels. Mary will not do anything ou the Sabbath, but when John goes to church on Sunday she washes and hangs out the

clothes. That has been done in New Zealand. It leads to division. You know how far a little fire goes. My advice to you Cambridge people is to throttle it ; hit it on the head. Our fathers have kept Sunday and they have gone to heaven, and we are going too. The Sabbath in its place is a blessing, but it was never intended to be our master. W r e are not made for the Sabbath ; we must consider ourselves of more importance than the Sabbath. It is a necessity, though, if we were mere machines, we could do without a Sabkath. \Ye have higher responsibilities, and God demands one day in seven. Make it a day of joy, and do not become its slave. Holiness, let us remember, is not for Sunday only, like a coat to be taken off on Monday. Every day should be a 6acred day ; every day should be a holy day to a true man. It is immaterial, I take it, whether he keeps Saturday for the Sabbath or any other day. A 6 a matter of fact, I work harder on the Sabbath. I keep Monday. I might for all that be a Greek. Monday, Wednesday, any day will do for me. I think it an exceedingly trivial matter. Let us leave these old Jewish dogmas. If you go back to one, go back to the lot. Let us think what the Sabbath is to be. Hebrews 4th verse, says : " There remaineth, therefore, a rest to the people of God." Let -us remember, no sorrow, do death. All these things will be abolished, and Christ will be all in all. PASTOR STEED'S REPLY. Pastor D. Steed addressed a large audience in the Public Hall, Cambridge, on Monday night, when he reviewed the Bermon of Dr. Hoskiug on the Sabbath question, delivered the previous evening. When closing his introductory remarks, Pastor Steed said that the Doctor had made about as good a case for Sunday keeping as the majority made, minus the objectionable language used. The Christian is the highest style of man, and the man who has become personally acquainted with Jesus, the author of this book, will realise a refining influence. When reading his lesson, Romans XIII, the Dr. dwelt upon verse 17. The thought he gave us was that, if I have three things in my heart, righteousness, peace and joy, I am acceptable with God, and that this constitutes true religion. What, then, is righteousness? Psalm 119-172, "Ail Thy Commandments are Righteous." The thing we are to have in our hearts is righteousness, Isa. 51-6-8. I read that the people who know righteousness cte the people in whose heart is God's law. Near the close of time, then, when the earth is growing old, the prophet sees a people living* with His righteousness, His law, in their hearts, which God says •hall not be abolished. Yes, that is good religion, and it is the Bible idea ol righteousness. When you take Christ into your hearts, you take in the law of God, for it is written in the heart of Jesus. That is what I believed as a Methodist: that is how John Wesley Bhook England. He pointed to the law of God, the Ten Commandments, as a rule of righteousness, and to Jesus as the One who saves us from our sin, the breaking of that law. Peace—how shall I get that? Isa. 48, 18th verse, " Oh, that thou hadst hearkened to My Commandments, then had thy peace been as a river." Can a man have the peace of God who disobeys God ? No, never. Yes, that 17th verse contains a good piece of creed, which teaches the perpetuity of God's holy law. The Doctor said, it Christianity means anything, it means broadmindedness. Bigotry and Christianity can't sail in the same boat. Will not the persons who heard his statements last night get the impression that I have threatened with hell-fire all who do not do as Ido ? But no one who has attended my meetings has heard me threaten the people with hell-fire. The text us«d, Romans 14-15, reads, ,' Another man csteemeth every day alike." Dr Adam Clark says reference is here made to the Jewish institution, and especially their festivals, such as the Passover, Pentecost, etc., but the Doctor said that this chap'er had reference to the offering of meats to. idols. Some men would eat the Passover after they had believed in Christ, not recognising that that feast was a shadow of Christ, not having faith enough in the substance, Christ, to give up the old ceremonial. The word "alike" in the text, Dr Adam Clark says of it, "We add 'alike 5 and make the text say, what, I am sure, was never intended, viz., that there is no distinc tion of days, not even of the Sabbath, and that every Christian is at liberty to consider even thi3 day to be holy, as he happens to be persuaded in his own mind. The word 'alike' should not be added, nor is it acknowledged in any MS of ancient version." Dr. A. Barnes says, " the word * alike' is not in the original, aud this can be seen by every English reader, because the worcl is in italics ; therefore, that word does not mean that a man is free to choose any day for a Sabbath. We were also told that every day in the week is a Sabbath to some nation. I know that the Turk calls Saturday the Sabbath, and Friday Assembly Day. The name of the seventh day in Turkish is ' Day, the Sabbath.'" In the languages of thr-se nations' names, the seventh day is called Sabbath. Christians know full well that the Sabbath is binding upon them, and many of us in this hall have kept Sunday, believing it to be the Sabbath. The doctor said who is to say that the Jews are right? I answer, the Christian minister who preaches the Bible. My faith is in Jesus of Nazareth, who was a Jew, and in that Bible, the writers of which were Jews. Is it a Jewish book, then ? The doctor said one day in seven is God's law. Is that true ? A barrister said to me once, preach the Act of Parliament, that will settle it. I will. It is the Fourth CommanrlmeDt, and it reads, " The seventh day." Which day? " The seventh d?y is the Sabbath of the Lord, thy God." Last night we were told it does not matter which day we keep ; whereas the only law we have in the Bible for keeping a day limits it to the seventh day. A deal was said about the need of physical rest, but the Sabbath was given before man needed it. True Sab-bath-keeping consists in a spiritual rest. It was said that if we - kept the Sabbath, we cannot light a fire that day ; but the Fourth Commandment does not prohibit the lighting of fires upon the Sabbath. It is true the children ot Israel were not allowed to light a fire when journeying in the warm climate of Arabia, a lestriction which was only local in application. That the Rabbi will not light a fire to-day, is no proof that they did not litht fires in Jerusalem ; they have added 401 restrictions to the Fourth Commandment. Can anyone find in the Bible the expression " Jewish Sabbath ?" No one in this world, because it never makes such a statement. The Sabbath was no more made for the Jew than it was for the German : it was made for man, namely, all mankind. Now, there was a death-penalty attached to every Commandment in the Decalogue. Idolatry, adultery, blasphemy, etc. were all punishible with death. The ministration of death, the civil power, has passed away ; we have no theocracy today. Although it is night for six months in the far north, they do not lose the count of the days, os is evidenced by the ability of our explorers in keeping a record of time. They know when the sun sets, although they do not see the sun itself. Is the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment a shadow of Christ? Decidedly not. It is a memorial of creation. The text says, "Let no man judge you, in respect of an holy day, i.e. a feaßt day or of the Sabbath-days, which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ." The Passover feast, with its Sabbath, was a shadow of Christ our Lord. When Israel was about to leave Egypt, her

salvation depended upon the sprinkling of the blood of the Passover-lamb upon the lintels and door-posts. The blood had to be between them and the destroying angel. That Sabbath was a shadow of Christ. "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us." You can only be saved by being sheltered behind the blood of Christ. These ceremonial Sabbaths, which were annual Sabbaths, were, beside, the Sabbath oftheLord. Lev. 23-3 S. Writing of Coloss 16 : 2, Dr. A. Karnes says :—" If he had used the word in the singular number, the Sabbath, it would then, of course, have been clear, that he meant to teach, that that commandment had ceased to be binding." "No one of the ten commandments could be spoken of, as a shadow of things to come." The Galatians were idolaters, and it was the return to their snn-wnr-ship that led the Apostle to be in doubt of them. I keep the Sabbath, because Jesus Christ created the world in six days and rested on the Sabbath. Call it Jewish, made by Jesus Christ ! He made it ages before He became a Jew. Yes, 2500 years before there was a Jew on the earth. 1 call it the Lord's Day as the Bible does. I understood last night that the Sabl>ath belonged to the Jews, yet I read in Dr. Hosking's tract, that it was ordained at creation and not of a temporary character ; that it was co-cval with the existence of man and that Cain offered sacrifice on the Sabbath and he was not a Jew ! I have a valuable chart that shows the unchanged order of the days in 150 languages, in 103 of which, the seventh day is called the Sabbath, or rest. When the scripture says, in Nehemiah, that God made known unto the Jews the Sabbath, it cannot mean that they never knew of the Sabbath, prior to that, for both the doctor's tracts and the Bible show the human race have known it from all time. P.zekiel 20 : 12, tells how r.he Sabbath was given to be a sign between the Lord and them, that they might know that He sanctifies them ; the Sabbath, then, is a sign of. sanctification. We cau be delivered from the bondage of Egypt ; everyone of you has been in the house of bondage. The love of God is expressed by keeping Bis commandment. To the Christian every commandment is a promise. " Thou shall not." It is in character, prohibitory to the sinner ; but a promise to the true Christian. He never wants to steal, take the name of God in vain, or break the commandments, while He has Christ in his heart. We were told that when we go back to the law, we are imbecile, weak-minded Christians. If a man has no idol, but worships God only, is be a weak-minded person ? It he does not take the name of God in vain and honours his parents, is he a weak Christian ? His only anxiety, is, to get rid of the fourth commandment, and in order to do that, he would sweep away the whole. Did the Disciples receive Christ w„ith joy, when He rose from the dead ? The Gospel says, " They weie terrified and affrighted." When told, He was raised from the dead, they would not believe it, and when on the way to Emmaus, they bewailed His loss. They had no thought that He was coming to them that night. The first day of the week, Jesus appeared to them. The doctor said, " It was called the eight day." It is not called so in the New Testament. The text says, after eight days. It is certain that could not be the following Sunday. When speaking of the transfiguration, it says, " In about an eighth day," while in another passage, it says, "After six days," so that He could not have met with them, earlier, than the Tusday. The Saviour never met with his Disciples, but once, upon the first day of the week, and then He partook of a common meal. The New Testament no where says that the Day of Pentecost fell on Sunday. Mr Steed here quoted from Prof. PI. B. Haekett, Dr. A. Barnes, Olshause, Dr. A. Clark and Dean Alford, using his blackboard to count up the fifty days as described by these writers. One of the audience, counting up the number, the fiftieth day came upon Saturday. Mr Steed said, 1 cannot tell which day Pentecost fell upon, because Luke has not told us. We were told, that a collection was made in the churches on Sunday ; the Apostle Paul never mentions the first day, but once, and then he expects a man to be at »vork. In 1 Corinthians, 16 chapter, he says, " He is to lay by him in store " or " By himself at home," or, as the Spanish version renders it, " Take care of it, in your own house." There is, therefore, no reference whatever in the text to a public service. Then we were told, that the Sabbath was ignored by Christ and the Apoatle3. That Christ never said anything about the Sabbath. Luke 4 : 16 chapter, tells how Jesus kept the Sabbath. Matthews 24 : 20 chapter, tells, how that for forty years, He expected that His Disciples would be keeping the Sabbath, He expected them to pray every day about it. Christ said just as much about the Sabbath as about any other commandment. Read the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation and you always find Christ and the Apostles speaking of the law as one already in full force, and as binding upon all men. Jesus in His first sermon says, " I came not to destroy the Law or the Prophets ; but to fulfil." The Prophets had said, that He would magnify the Law, and this He did. He taught a man could be guilty of killing, by hatred, and of adultery without committing the overt act. Did Christ ignore the Sabbath, did He ever keep Sunday ? Did He ever put His blessing upon any other day, but the Sabbath. Emphatically, no. The Apostle Paul, " As His manner w'as," kept the Sabbath ; we have a record of 84 Sabbaths that he kept and we find him preaching to the Gentiles on the Sabbath-day. When they requested Him to preach to them, he made no intimation that they were to worship on any other day. His repeated claim, was, " That he had committed nothing against the customs of his fathers," to which the Jews, at Rome agreed. Next,the Doctor told us, that man is above the Sabbath ; that is putting man above God's law. When Jesus put that law in my heart, I do not want to break it. If there is one commandment, I dare not break, it is the fourth. God claims that clay for Himself. If I use it for my pleasure, I steal God's time. 1 dishonour my Heavenly Father, I fail to keep Holy, that which He has made Holy. I believe with thApostle, that it is not simply the breake in? of a Sabbath-commandment, that brings sin, for that Law is so wonderfully framed, that if you break one, you freak the whole. Paid, the doctor, we are told, " The Pope changed the Sabbath." The doctor has never learned that from a Seventh-Day-Adveutist-Minister to make such a statement, and when the doctor read from our paper, it stated, " That the Sabbath was changed by the Church, in the fourth century." I have read to you statements made by the writers of every denominations, stating that the Sabbath was chauged by the Church, without any direct command from the Lord. I have read to you the claim by Rome, that she changed it, and the histories that verify her claim. Yes, the church changed the Sabbath. Then the Doctor, failing to find any evidence in the Bible, for the observance of Sunday, turned for authority to St. Augustine and others who were founders of the Catholic Church and its theology. We quite agree that these men kept Sunday, and yet from the same writers you can get as much evidence for keeping the Sabbath, They, as a reformer said, blow hot and cold upon the san.e subject. Justin Martyr, a no-law, no Sabbath-writer, who never called Sunday the Lord's Day,. was quoted as an authority. In fact, it is very doubtful whether the men whose names are attached to these epistles ever wrote them. Neander says, "It is impossible that we should acknowledge the epist'e of Barnabas to belong to Barnabas, the companion of St. Paul. He was

clearly a different person." Barnabas, an authority for keeping Sunday, who wrote "that Abraham understood the Greek alphabet, which had no existence until 300 years after Abraham was dead." The Doctor must surely have been hard up for evidence, and it would puzzle him to make any sense out of the very chapter from which he quoted Here is a specimen of Barnabas' writing : "Moreover, thou shalt not eat the hyena." He means, " Thou slnlt not be an adulterer, because that animal annually changes its sex, and is at one time male and at another time female." Does any one suppose that was the Barnabas of the New Testament? Then, there was a quotation n.ade from the teachings of the twelve Apostles. The only mistake the Doctor made was, that the teaching of the Apostles was never written by the Twelve Apostles. He said it was written, probably, early in the second century, but the fact is that it b?ars the signature, "Leon, notary and sinner," and the Greek date 6564, which equals Ad. 1056. The doctor is only 800 years out, and quoting from an epistle that will allow men to steal, if they are in need. Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, in the fourth century, changed the title of the first day, calling it the Lord's Day. Eusebius, who was a flatterer of Constantine, says, " All things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have trail ferred to the Lord's Day." Who ? Sylvester Constantine, Eusebius, and the Church Council. The true Protestant will have the Bible only for his rule of faith ; what cannot be proved thereby should not be required of any man. Like Luther, we waited for a " Thus saith the Lord," but we heard it not. Luther said, " You are waiting for your adversaries' answer. It is already written, and here it is : The Fathers, the Fathers, the Fathers ; the Church, usage, custom ; but of the Scriptures, nothing." Some time ago a minister wrote to the Rev. Dr. Dobbs, stating " that he often was compelled to prove something when he had not anything to prove it with." The doctor wrote in reply " that ho was happy to say that he had bestowed a good deal of thought on this very point, and he was sure it could be done." Said he, " Proving one thing clearly, and then skillfully assuming that you have proved something else, is a master stroke." I regard, however, a judicious use of the Fathers as bping on the whole the .best reliance for anyone who is in the situation of my queriest. The advantages of the Fathers are twofold : First, they carry a good deal of weight with the masses ; and, second, vou can find whatsoever you want in the Fathers. I don't believe that any opinion could be advanced so foolish, so manifestly absurd ; but that you can find passages to sustain it, on the pages of these venerable stagers. And to the common minds one of these is just as good as another." " Yes, my brother, the Fathers are your stronghold,they are Heaven's best gift to the man who has a cause that can't be sustained in any other way." Yes, I believe what Dr. Dobbs Bays,in the National Baptist,l take my stand upon the Bible and the Bible only ; upon the teaching of the Christ, who said, " It is easier for Heaven and earth to pass, than for one tittle of the law to fail." " Whosoever, therefore, shall break one of these least commandments and shall teach men so, shall be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven, and whosoever shall do and teach them, shall be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven." Let the Saviour decide who is teaching according to Heaven's plan. In closing, the doctor said, " Theic remaiueth, therefore, a rest to the people of God." The text is in Hebrews 4 : 0 chapter, and to the marginal reading, I would point you, and to the Revised version :—" There remaineth, therefore, a keeping of a Sabbath to the people of God." I searched from Genesis to Revelation, and I find the Sabbath in the Patriarchial age, the Mosaic and the Christian, and thai when we reach our eternal home, all flesh will keep the one clay, the seventh-day,the only day that is the Sabbath. The Saviour said, "He that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth then, I will liken to a wise man, who built his house upon a rock, which when the storms came stood immovable." Hear the vo : ce of Jesus coming down through the ages, " He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments."