What direction, then, does the effort take in the main? It will be granted that the plan of defense adopted is that of attempting to prove that the early church did violate the seventh, and did honor the first, day of the week. But with what success has the effort been attended? We know that it is stated several times that the apostles disregarded what the author is pleased to call the _Jewish_ Sabbath—after he had conceded the principle that that of the commandment was _Edenic_ in its origin—but did he make out his case? So far from it, in every instance where he has found them connected in the record with the Sabbath day, it has ever been in the performance of duties _religious in their nature_. For should we concede that he is right in supposing that Paul went into the synagogues to teach on the Sabbath day, simply because he would find hearers there, this, assuredly, would not prove that Paul was a Sabbath-breaker. Let me take the gentleman’s favorite illustration of a missionary in a foreign land, at the present time. Now suppose that his lot were cast in a country where the first day of the week, or the day of the sun, was regarded as holy by the natives, and he should be found on that day regularly teaching them in their places of assembly, would _that_ decide the question that he was necessarily a violator of the first-day Sabbath? You answer immediately in the negative. So, too, in the case of Paul. The fact that it can be shown that it was his custom to teach in the synagogues on the seventh day of the week, if it has no power to prove that he was a conscientious _observer_ of that day, cannot at least be cited as furnishing evidence that he _disregarded_ it. We ask, then, again, Has a scintilla of positive testimony been given that Paul ever broke a single Sabbath of the Lord, as contained in the divine precept? Once more it must be conceded that there has not. But is it not a little singular that in a history of thirty years, where the Sabbath is so often mentioned, not one single action has ever been discovered in the least incompatible with Paul’s veneration of the seventh day? We let the reader answer.