GEORGE DAWSON, M.A. (Lond. 1856; 8vo, pp. 37). An extract from one of these pithy discourses will be given below.-Sermons preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton, by the late Rev. FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON; first series, 2d ed. (Lond. 1856, post 8vo). Sermon VI., preached Oct. 28, 1849, is on "The Shadow and the Substance of the Sabbath."-The same, second series, 2d. ed. (Lond. 1856). Sermon XIV., preached Nov. 14, 1852, is on “The Sydenham Palace, and the Religious Non-observance of the Sabbath." In the latter of these discourses Mr Robertson states his desire to be "to direct the minds of his congregation towards the formation of an opinion on the subject; not dogmatically, but humbly remembering always that his own temptation is from his very position, as a clergyman, to view such matters, not so much in the broad light of the possibilities of actual life, as with the eyes of a recluse; from a clerical and ecclesiastical, rather than from a large and human point of view. For no minister of Christ has a right to speak oracularly. All that he can pretend to do is to give his judgment, as one that has obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. And on large national subjects there is perhaps no class so ill-qualified to form a judgment with breadth as we, the clergy of the Church of England, accustomed as we are to move in the narrow circle of those who listen to us with forbearance and deference, and mixing but little in real life, till in our cloistered and inviolable sanctuaries we are apt to forget that it is one thing to lay down rules for a religious clique, and another to legislate for a great nation." His opinion is, that "no one who would read St Paul's own writings with unprejudiced mind could fail to come to the conclusion that he considered the Sabbath abrogated by Christianity. Not merely modified in its stringency, but totally repealed." In Col. ii. 16, 17, Rom. xiv. 5, 6, and Gal. iv. 10, 11, the apostle "struck not at a day, but at a principle. Else, if with all this vehemence and earnestness, he only meant to establish a new set of days in the place of the old, there is no intelligible principle for which he is contending, and that earnest apostle is only a champion for one day instead of another-an assertor of the eternal sanctities of Sunday, instead of the eternal sanctities of Saturday. Incredible, indeed!" The utility of the Lord's-day is the ground on which the preacher rests the duty of its observance. "The need of the Sabbath is deeply hidden in human nature. He who can dispense with it must be holy and spiritual indeed. And he who still unholy and unspiritual, would yet dispense with it, is a man who would fain be wiser than his Maker. We, Christians as we are, still need the law: both in its restraints, and in its aids to our weakness. No man, therefore, who knows himself, but will gladly and joyfully use the institution. No man who knows the need of his brethren will wantonly desecrate it, or recklessly hurt even their scruples respecting its observance. And no such man can look with aught but grave and serious apprehensions on such an innovation upon English customs of life and thought, as the proposal to give public and official countenance to a scheme

which will invite millions, I do not say to an irreligious, but certainly an unreligious use of the day of rest. This, then, is the first modification of the broad view of a repealed Sabbath. Repealed though it be, there is such a thing as a religious observance of it. And provided that those who are stricter than we in their views of its obligation observe it not from superstition, nor in abridgment of Christian liberty, nor from moroseness, we are bound in Christian charity to yield them all respect and honour. Let them act out their conscientious convictions. Let not him that observeth not despise him that observeth.-The second modification of the broad view is, that there is such a thing as a religious non-observance of the Sabbath. I lay a stress on the word religious. For St Paul does not say that every non-observance of the Sabbath is religious, but that he who not observing it, observeth it not to the Lord, is, because acting on conscientious conviction, as acceptable as the others, who, in obedience to what they believe to be His will, observe it. He pays his non-observance to the Lord, who feeling that Christ has made him free, striving to live all his days in the spirit, and knowing that that which is displeasing to God, is not work nor recreation, but selfishness and worldliness, refuses to be bound by a Jewish ordinance which forbade labour and recreation, only with a typical intent. But he who, not trying to serve God on any day, gives Sunday to toil or pleasure, certainly observes not the day but his non-observance is not rendered to the Lord. He may be free from superstition: but it is not Christ who has made him free. Nor is he one of whom St Paul would have said that his liberty on the Sabbath is as acceptable as his brother's conscientious scrupulosity. Here, then, we are at issue with the popular defence of public recreations on the Sabbath-day: not so much with respect to the practice, as with respect to the grounds on which the practice is approved. They claim liberty: but it is not Christian liberty. Like St Paul, they demand a license for non-observance; only, it is not 'non-observance to the Lord.' For distinguish well. The abolition of Judaism is not necessarily the establishment of Christianity: to do away with the Sabbath day in order to substitute a nobler, truer, more continuous Sabbath, even the Sabbath of all time given up to God, is well. But to do away the special Rights of God to the Sabbath, in order merely to substitute the Rights of Pleasure, or the Rights of Mammon, or even the license of profligacy and drunkenness, that, methinks, is not Paul's Christian liberty! On the other hand, he dissents from the views of those who would arrest, by petitions to the legislature on Sabbatarian grounds, the project of opening on Sunday such places of recreation as the Crystal Palace. "It is a return backwards to Judaism and Law;" and ultra-rigour of Sabbath observance, especially when it becomes coercive, brings a danger of injuring the conscience. It was wisely taught by St Paul, that he who does anything with offence, i.e., with a feeling that it is wrong, does wrong. To him it is wrong, even though it be not wrong abstractedly. Therefore it is always dangerous to multiply

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restrictions and requirements beyond what is essential, because men feeling themselves hemmed in, break the artificial barrier, but breaking it with a sense of guilt, do thereby become hardened in conscience, and prepared for transgression against commandments which are Divine and of eternal obligation. Hence it is that the criminal has so often in his confessions traced his deterioration in crime to the first step of breaking the Sabbath day: and no doubt with accurate truth. But what shall we infer from this? Shall we infer, as is so often done upon the platform and in religious books, that it proves the everlasting obligation of the Sabbath? Or shall we, with a far truer philosophy of the human soul, infer, in the language of St Peter, that we have been laying on him 'a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear?' -in the language of St Paul, that the motions of sin were by the law,' that the rigorous rule was itself the stimulating, moving cause of the sin; and that when the young man, worn out with his week's toil, first stole out into the fields to taste the fresh breath of a spring day, he did it with a vague, secret sense of transgression, and that having as it were drawn his sword in defiance against the established code of the religious world, he felt that from thenceforward there was for him no return, and so he became an outcast, his sword against every man, and every man's sword against him? I believe this to be the true account of the matter: and believing it, I cannot but believe that the false, Jewish notions of the Sabbath day which are prevalent have been exceedingly pernicious to the morals of the country." To some of Mr Robertson's views Dr Hessey objects in his Bampton Lectures, pp. 191, 429, 433; but in p. 496 quotes him with approval as to the necessity of Sunday recreation to labouring men.-The National Sunday League Record, established to promote the opening of the British Museum, National Gallery, Crystal Palace, and similar Institutions, on Sunday afternoon; edited by WILLIAM DUTHIE (London: published at the Office of the League, 4 Beaufort Buildings, Strand, 1856-59; 1 vol. royal 8vo, pp. 400). As to the National Sunday League, see above, p. 313. Many publications on the anti-Puritan side are sold by it.-Modes of Sabbath Observance left to the Decision of the Individual Conscience; a Sermon preached at the Unitarian Chapel, Newbury, Feb. 10, 1856, by the Rev. F. R. YOUNG (2d ed., Lond. 1856; 8vo, pp. 16).-The Sunday Question; being a Review of the "Leicester Prize Essays on Sunday Amusements" (Leicester, 1857; 12mo, pp. 24). These Prize Essays, by John Brooks, Joseph Needham, Samuel Foxon, and Elizabeth Needham, were published at Leicester in the same year.-Christianity without Judaism; a Second Series of Essays, including the Substance of Sermons delivered in London and other places, by the Rev. BADEN POWELL (Lond. 1857; post 8vo, pp. 263). Quoted above, p. 259; and noticed in the British Quarterly Review for April 1858. This valuable treatise is partly a reprint of the articles in Kitto's Journal, mentioned above, p. 356. The sermons of which it includes the substance were published in 1856 by the National

Sunday League, as a pamphlet with the same title, Christianity without Judaism. The volume contains: I. General Statement of the Subject. II. On the Application and Misapplication of Scripture in general. III. The Law and the Gospel: 1. The Primeval Dispensations; 2. The Judaical Law; 3. The Ministry of Christ; 4. The Teaching of the Apostles; 5. Views of the Law and the Gospel held in the early Christian Church; 6. Later Views; 7. General View of the State of the Question at the present day; 8. On the Use of the Old Testament by Christians; 9. On the Inspiration of Scripture; 10. Appendix containing extracts and documents referred to, and a Note on Hugh Miller's "Testimony of the Rocks."-Sabbatism: A Heresy of the Modern Christian Church; inconsistent with the Genius of Christianity, opposed to the teaching of Jesus Christ, unwarranted by the example of the Apostles, condemned by St Paul, and not to be found in the writings of the early Fathers, or the customs of the Primitive Church: Being a Reply to a Sermon preached by the Rev. Robert Maguire, Incumbent of Clerkenwell, by J. BAXTER LANGLEY (Lond. 1857).-" The Sabbath was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath ;" and "Three Ways of Spending Sunday:" Two Addresses delivered in Rochdale, Feb. 1857; with a Preface to the Religious Public; by HENRY W. PARKINSON, Nonconformist Minister (Rochdale, 1857; 8vo, pp. 24).—The People's Sunday: a Lay Sermon in opposition to the Superstitious Heresy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London and Winchester, and other Clergymen, who have denounced the Sunday Opening of the Crystal Palace; by HENRY J. SLACK, F.G.S., Barrister at Law (Lond. 1858; 12mo, pp. 21).-Discontinuance by Act of Parliament of the Ten Commandments in the Church Service (Lond. 1859; 8vo, pp. 16).-Bones for the Sabbatarians to pick, Texts for Inquirers to chew, Nuts for Mr Woodman to crack; in an Appeal from the Prejudices to the Judgments of the thinking Inhabitants of Pembrokeshire on the Sabbath Question, by B. S. NAYLER (Haverfordwest, 1859; 4to, pp. 64). An acute, lively, caustic, yet genial discussion, conducted in a somewhat eccentric style. The writer argues strenuously for the objects of the National Sunday League. Comparing the effects of British and Continental Sunday-observance he says: "I have spent upwards of twenty-eight years on the Continent of Europe; yet, while there, I never saw such sights, never heard any reports of such Sabbath-breaking, drunkenness, and debauchery, as I have witnessed at home-such as I can read every week in the police reports, published in this boastedly civilised, enlightened Christian country of ours" (p. 40). But not to set up his own knowledge of the keeping of Sunday on the Continent in opposition to the notions of men who have never been there, he quotes, in confirmation of his statement, Bishop Copleston, Dr Thomas Guthrie, Mr Duthie, Mr Brough, and the Vienna correspondent of the Times. The following is a characteristic passage: "Safely encased in his pulpit, Mr Woodman may tell his congregationIt is a remarkable fact, that our Lord ever discriminated most distinctly between the Moral Law and the Ceremonial Law of the

Jews. Just observe his style. He does not say simply, that our Lord discriminated, but, that he ever discriminated; not that he discriminated distinctly merely, but most distinctly-EVER DISCRIMINATED MOST DISTINCTLY! and yet, despite this doubly emphatic style, it will puzzle him to find a single text to support his imposingly expressed assertion. Nor does he stop here; he goes a-head, regardless of discretion and truth, adding'When He came to the Moral Law-the law of the Ten Commandments—the law of which the Sabbath is a part-He, by teaching the most explicit, and words the most emphatic, pronounced that law to be an eternal law-ever in force-world-wide in its obligations, and always holy'! No fewer than FIVE swaggering assertions, not one of which is true! all of them false! I demand chapter and verse. I stand pledged to the public to vindicate Truth against the assaults of Error; and I now charge my self-constituted opponent (the voluntary champion of Sabbatism) with misrepresenting the Scriptures-which, if not done in sheer ignorance, may Heaven pardon his guilt!"-The Lord's Day NOT the Sabbath: a Sermon preached in Holywood Church, August 10, 1856, by CHARLES PARSONS REICHEL, D.D., late Donellan Lecturer in the University of Dublin (Dublin, 1859; 8vo, pp. 46). In his preface Dr Reichel says: 'I have been accused of wishing to do away with all observance of the Lord's-day, because I have argued that the Lord's-day of Christians is not the Sabbath of the Jews. It is partly to vindicate myself from this monstrous misconception of my meaning-in so far, at least, as it it is not wilful—that I now print, nearly verbatim, a Discourse preached so long ago as 1856. But the vindication of my views from misconception and misrepresentation is a trifling object in comparison with the setting forth of important truth. Of course, I can claim no originality whatsoever in my views, and but little in the arguments by which I support them. My views are those held unquestioned in the early Church, before Romish corruptions were introduced those held by the great Reformers in England and on the Continent: those held by the greatest names in the English Church, from the Reformation to our own times. But what is more the principle involved in these views is the very same which St Paul discussed and settled in the Epistle to the Galatians: the great principle that CHRISTIANS ARE NOT BOUND BY THE CEREMONIAL LAW. Let us by all means observe 'the Lord'sday' (as St John calls it) as a day of rest from task-work of all kinds, mental as well as bodily. But do not let us call it the Sabbath (a name never given to it in the New Testament*); do not let us appeal to the Fourth Commandment on its behalf; because thus we tempt God,' in the language of St Peter, 'by putting on the neck of the disciples a yoke, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.' (Acts xv. 10.) For if we

"This is admitted even by the Assembly's Catechism, which says, that in the New Testament the Christian Sabbath is called the Lord'sday.'"