Divine things, and, among them, Divine laws? Is it not the office of the Spirit to lead men to see from within the wisdom and goodness of the commandment, and lovingly to adopt it; showing to the soul of man the wisdom of the Divine constitution in everything, and securing, not a formal, but a loving adhesion to it; abandoning entirely the system of formal prohibitions and penalties, as inconsistent with the method of grace and of love? Does the absence of a Divine testimony against theft or adultery, in Christ’s epitome of the commandments, legalize theft or adultery? And does the absence of a renewed formal announcement of the original Divine provision for man—the Sabbath-day—mean that God ceases to care for it, that He annuls the first constitution, and leaves man to work on till death like a brute? On the contrary, it means that the Spirit of God, and not the law, has taken charge of the institution, and that He will make its power felt and its worth acknowledged, wherever He bears witness within human souls. But it is a very terrible sin to take it out of His charge, and make it law again, by presenting it in any other way than He presented it to the early Christian world. Has not the Lord’s day come down to us just as we should have anticipated—through the Spirit? Was there not a deep reason beneath the old institution, Exodus xxxi. 17—“_It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever_: _for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth_, _and on the seventh day He rested_, _and was refreshed_.” Is there not as deep a reason underneath the new? Is it not the _Lord’s day_? The Jewish day commemorated a creation complete; the Christian Sabbath, a creation begun. The one a last day—the finishing of a work—looking backwards to the original condition and constitution; the other a first day, with the week days, the ages, the eternities before it, commemorating a new condition and constitution, or the old one transfigured, to bear fruit through a future eternity. For myself, I would handle as reverently the Lord’s day which the Spirit has delivered to us through the Church, as the Jew his Sabbath, protected by the penalties of the law. Only, as Christians, we are bound to go further back than the Jew could go, dared go, even beneath and behind the commandment, and enter into the counsels of Him who gave to us the Sabbath day. We are to regard the purpose and spirit of the Sabbath. A man who goes to church twice and worships, and thinks that therein he has fulfilled the law of the Sabbath, and brands him as a law-breaker _ipso facto_ who has never been to church at all, fearfully misunderstands the matter. The thing is good; its goodness is now its argument; and that observance which is not in full tune with its goodness, may be worth much before men, but is worth nothing before God. A father who has children at home, in early years compels them by law to