But that this day was neither identical with the Jewish Sabbath, nor substituted for it by any formal act of transfer, is sufficiently proved by the remarkable circumstance, that there were in the primitive age Churches in which _both_ were observed—Saturday in remembrance of the Mosaic Sabbath, Sunday in commemoration of the Redeemer’s resurrection. By what right shall we assume that, when the former observance died out, the latter was invested with its distinctive attributes? or that, in congregations where the former had never been practised, the latter had been, all along, synonymous with an institution with which (to judge from existing records) they had never been made acquainted? Then, if this be so; if the Sabbath is an ordinance of the past; one of those “elements or rudiments of the world,” those “shadows of things to come,” of which “the substance and the reality is Christ;” in what sense do we still read in our Churches the fourth Commandment, and pray for grace to incline our hearts to keep it? How low and slavish a spirit is betrayed in this anxiety to have an express _law_ to show for our Christian Sunday. How opposite to that which is the distinctive feature of the Christian character—an earnest desire to catch every intimation, every indication, of our Master’s will, that we may do it not as His slaves but as His children. Enough if we found even a _human_ institution, which testified throughout Christendom, by a speaking sign, by an act at once self-denying and beneficent, our faith in realities unseen and future. Even _this_ would bind us to its observance. It would be an ordinance of God’s Providence for us. It would be our duty to submit to it, if it were but an ordinance of man, for the Lord’s sake. And surely it would bear upon its very front the impress of a will more than human: it would bespeak itself the creation of a Divine philanthropy. He who should presume to trifle with it—still more, he who should seek to abrogate or to nullify it for his neighbours or his countrymen—would be seen, even if this were all, to be fighting against God. But this is _not_ all. We think that we see indications, from the very earliest days of which the Scriptures contain the record, of man’s need of a periodical rest, and of God’s purpose to secure it to him.