This argument, it will be perceived, would be addressed with much fitness to men, whose error, in relation to the Sabbath, leaned to the side of an over-strained and impracticable severity; and who had just been urging it as a complaint against our Lord’s disciples, that, in passing through a field on the Sabbath-day, they had relieved their hunger by plucking a few ears of corn. These cavillers are reminded, therefore, that, in the economy of salvation, all outward ordinances are to be viewed in the light of things secondary and subservient; their mode of observance to be interpreted in harmony with the ends for which they were ordained; and that, with regard to the Sabbath especially, care must be taken to avoid both the hypocrisy that would make the day to be honoured by a rigid ceremonial exactness, and the presumption that would overlook its eternal sanctity as standing in the will of God. It is in this last view that all the ordinances of religion, when clearly of Divine appointment, acquire a character of deep and momentous interest. Their foundation is in the will of God; but that will, as we know, has, as its ever-guiding and controlling rule, a sacred regard to the highest interests of man. Nothing can be more dishonouring to God, or more untrue, than to speak of outward ordinances as if they were mere arbitrary appointments, without significance and without benefit, as only so many meaningless enactments designed to test the willingness of human subjection; so far otherwise, they are means framed upon a wise and loving regard to all the aptitudes of our moral nature, and calculated, in their reverent use, to help man through all the difficulties of his course and to educate his immortal spirit for the employments of the world to come. _The Sabbath was_ MADE FOR MAN. Brethren, you are aware of the reasons which induce me, at the hazard of going over much of familiar argument, formally to review the grounds on which we hold that a PROPER MORAL SANCTITY does attach to the CHRISTIAN SABBATH:—that the institution itself has an origin, an object, a typical significance and value, which are independent of all economies, and will endure to all time; and, therefore, that any nation which shall presume to tamper with its unalterable sacredness, is drawing down upon itself those awful maledictions which, by an undesigned coincidence, have been so often recited in our ears this morning as the just retribution of POLLUTED SABBATHS. {5}