The multiplication of festivals and holidays would naturally bring the Sabbath into neglect, but what contributed more than anything else to destroy its influence over the minds of men, was the almost universal abhorrence in which the Jews were held. We are informed that multitudes of Christians, in the time of Adrian, abandoned all the rites and institutions of their religion that bore any resemblance to the Jewish ritual, for fear of being confounded with that people, who had become obnoxious to the prince, and were suffering the extremity of his vengeance. "Let us have nothing in common with that odious brood, the Jews," says Constantine, when issuing his edict for the observation of the Dominical day. Subsequently, the sabbath was condemned for the same reasons by synods and councils; popes and kings rose up in judgment against it. Perhaps they feared also that its observation would remind the people of that sacred volume, which the prelates chose, for their own convenience, to keep from the world, and in which their condemnation, as followers of the most detestable vices, would be so strongly marked. Moreover they were determined, in the plenitude of their arrogance, to give laws in both a temporal and spiritual sense; to govern the consciences as they ruled the actions of mankind. Nor was this all, some of these prelates actually aspired to stand, at least in the eyes of the multitude, in the place of God,—to divert the adoration, which should be paid to him, to themselves, or to the relics they had blessed, and the saints they had canonized. Would not the observation of the sabbath have tended to recall the minds of men to the Maker of all things, as the only true and proper object for religious adoration; to the fact that he alone was the moral governor of the universe; his laws the standard of perfection; himself of infallibility? History presents numerous examples of kings and tyrants, who have assumed the attributes of Deity, and demanded the homage of mankind; but, perhaps, a more impious imitation of his power, a more blasphemous assumption of his prerogatives, were never exhibited than in the conduct of these hierarchs. Did God appoint one mediator between himself and man,—behold the saints they canonized; did he bestow the Scriptures as his revealed will upon the world,—behold the canons of the church in which their authority is superseded; and did he institute and command the observation of the seventh day as a day of rest,—they substitute an other in its place. The Sabbath is reprobated as a Jewish institution: it is a wonder that we hear nothing of a Jewish religion, as Christianity certainly originated with that people; of a Jewish Saviour, since the Redeemer was of the offspring of David; and of Jewish apostles, as not one of the twelve were of the Gentile race. We must go to the Jews for the Bible, in which is contained the knowledge of God, and the hope of the world; we must go to the Jews for examples of