With regard to those passages in which “the language employed is” said to be “that either of indifference to its retention, or even of rebuke for its revival,” we apprehend that the intention of the apostle was neither to condemn the observance of the Jewish Sabbath, nor to intimate that Christians were under no moral obligation to keep any Sabbath whatever. If he was speaking exclusively of the Jewish weekly Sabbath (of which there is no sufficient proof), his object was, either to vindicate Gentile Christians from the obligation of its observance, or to condemn the self-righteous spirit in which it was kept. “Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbaths” (or sabbatical appointments.) {13} All these were _Jewish_ ordinances, from which the council at Jerusalem, guided by the Holy Ghost, had declared _Gentile_ believers to be free. They were local and national, and the various sacrifices and offerings connected with them could be presented only at Jerusalem, and by Jews or proselytes. They were therefore declared to be of no obligation to the Gentile believer. On the contrary, these observances became injurious both to Jewish and Gentile Christians, if they were kept in a self-righteous spirit. “I am afraid of you (says St. Paul to the Galatians), lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.” “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.” Was the apostle rebuking his brethren for the revival of what had “died out?” Was he not rather blaming them for observing in an antichristian spirit, what they were not _bound_ to observe at all? In his epistle to the Romans, he declares that the observance of these days is in itself a matter of indifference. “One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it to the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it.” {14} How then could he be rebuking the Galatians for simply doing what he himself declares might be done with a good conscience, and acceptably to Christ? Besides if the language of the Apostle must necessarily be understood as conveying rebuke for observing the Sabbath, and consequently be a valid proof, that the obligation to observe it is done away, much more might the same argument be deduced from the still stronger language employed by God in the book of the Prophet Isaiah: “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.” {15} What would have been thought of a Jewish teacher who should have affirmed from this passage, that the rites here enumerated were for ever abolished? And yet such a view would have had more to support it, than the doctrine attempted to be established by the