This rite was usually practised on the first day of the week, when the disciples met to commemorate the resurrection of their Lord, and to worship together. The custom of meeting on a stated day for worship has been continued ever since; and the day has been wisely set apart for purposes of rest and refreshment to body and mind. An institution so simple for purposes so salutary will probably, however abused, be of very long standing, even after it is more generally allowed than at present, not to be a Divine appointment. The Jewish Sabbath was a Divine ordinance for the use of the Jews; and by them alone has the last day of the week been regarded as sacred. The Lord's Day, or, as it sometimes called, the Christian Sabbath, is a totally different institution, and one which is professedly arbitrary, though subservient to very important objects. If the Jews were encouraged by their Messiah to look to the final purposes of their sabbatical institution, much more ought we, the subjects of a more enlarged dispensation, to bear in mind that all external observances are but means to ends; ordinances of which it is certain that they were made for man, and not man for them. Whatever may be the diversity of opinion among Unitarians respecting the ground of the three ordinances just referred to, there is none with regard to those institutions whose period appears to have been determined at the moment of their origin. The institution of Apostolic Ordination, which the Roman Catholic Church holds to be of a permanent nature, we believe not to have been designed to outlive the Apostles. We perceive no intimation in the various instructions given them which can lead us to imagine that their office was intended to be or could be bequeathed. They were chosen to be witnesses of the circumstances of the life and death of Christ, and the depositaries of miraculous powers after his ascension; but as the assistance of the Holy Spirit, that is the power conferred from on high, was only a temporary sanction, the peculiar office with which it was connected could also be only temporary. The evidence which we possess on this very important subject consists of the words of Christ himself, addressed to his Apostles respecting their mission, their own incidental observations, and the facts which ecclesiastical history presents. From all these sources of evidence we derive our belief that the office of _witnessing_, which is absolutely untransferrable, was the peculiar office of the twelve Apostles; that they were especially qualified by it for the task of preaching and establishing the new Gospel, and that to enable them to do so with sufficient effect, among the many and great difficulties which the state of the world then presented, the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were granted to them, with power to impart them to whomsoever they would, and that this miraculous power was coexistent with the apostolic age,--with what is variously called 'the age,' 'the