But if this assumption be unsound, then all of the gentleman’s talk in regard to the necessity for a change of days, in order to the suitable commemoration of the resurrection of Christ and the completion of the work of redemption, is without force. For, assuredly, if he is right in supposing that God’s rest in Eden, on the seventh day, can he commemorated as well on the first day as on the seventh, then the same principle will hold good in regard to the events which transpired on the first day of the week, _i. e._, they can be kept in remembrance by the hallowing of the seventh day as well as by that of the first. But this being true, his argument for the necessity of the change of Sabbaths is gone, and his philosophy of the change proved to be unsound. The only purpose which it has served in this controversy has been the revelation of that which is really the conviction of its author, as it is that of men generally, that there is no time in which great transactions can be so suitably commemorated as that of the day on which they took place. When the nation wishes to celebrate the anniversary of its independence, it sets apart for this purpose the fourth of July, which answers exactly to the day of the month on which the Declaration of Independence was made. Substitute for this another day, and you have marred the impressiveness of the occasion. So, too, with God’s rest on creation week; it must be so celebrated that all the associations connected with it will be calculated to lead the mind back to its origin and object. Turn it around, as the gentleman proposes to do, _i. e._, substitute the first day of the week in the place of the last, and you have precisely reversed God’s order. You have put the rest-day first, and cause the six laboring days to follow; whereas, God, knowing that rest was only needed _after_ labor, worked six days and then rested the seventh, not because he was weary, but because he desired to put on the record for us an example to be strictly followed. The gentleman, however, without the slightest warrant, has, with a rash hand, laid hold of the divine procedure, and now says that the order pursued was not necessary to the inculcation of the great lessons which God designed to impart. To this, I reply, 1. That God’s actions are never superfluous. 2. That, if we err at all, it is safer to err on the side of the divine example. 3. That if the idea of God’s working six days is in any way connected with a proper Sabbath rest, then it is indispensable that the Sabbath should follow, and not precede, the working portion of the week. 4. That if the rest of God, merely, is the object which we should keep before our minds by a proper regard for the Sabbatic institution, the gentleman has himself shown, by the logic which he has employed, that the only suitable period for the keeping of that rest is found in that portion of the week on which God ceased from his labors.