I. The general concession that the weekly Sabbath is a needful, wise, and valuable institution. Being a weekly rest from secular business and labor, it contributes to the health and vigor both of man and beast, encourages habits of cleanliness and decency, gives opportunity to cultivate the social virtues, makes man acquainted with man, and inspires a mutual regard for the interests of society; and, what is much more, it furnishes a proper and necessary season for mental improvement, public worship and instruction, private meditation and self-examination, the training up of children in the knowledge of God and of Heaven, and the deepening of our impressions of the value of time, and of the importance of preparing for eternity. These and similar considerations sensibly arrest the attention of sober and enlightened Christians, and secure a conscientious regard to the institution. This fact evinces the importance of being able to bring a _divine sanction_ for a day so evidently desirable, and so generally esteemed--of being assured that it rests upon no doubtful authority, that it is not a mere human provision or a matter of expediency and accommodation, but that in observing it we are conforming to the clearly-manifested will of God. It is evident, that this consideration will give a value to the institution which can be supplied by no other, and secure a love and respect for it, and a delight in it, which nothing else can so effectually produce. Hence the question is presented, with a high and impressive claim to a true and definite answer, Is any other than the _seventh_ day of the week sustained by the important and indisputable sanction of _divine authority_? If this, and this only, be the Sabbath of God's appointment, for general and permanent use, then, by the substitution of another day, the institution is shorn of its chief excellence and force--yea, it is virtually annulled. It no longer exists as God ordained it, for the express reason that he gave for it. This is a point which it becomes Christians seriously to look at.