THE SABBATH. 313 



etc. These holy men were full of that strength already referred to as 

 imparted by faith. They needed no natural joy to brighten their 

 lives, mirth being displaced by religious exaltation. They erred, how- 

 ever, in making themselves a measure for the world at large, and in- 

 sured the overthrow of their cause by drawing too heavily upon aver- 

 age human nature. " This much," says Hallam, " is certain, that when 

 the Puritan party employed their authority in proscribing all diver- 

 sions, and enforcing all the Jewish rigor about the Sabbath, they ren- 

 dered their own yoke intolerable to the young and gay ; nor did any 

 other cause, perhaps, so materially contribute to bring about the Res- 

 toration." 



In 1646, the " Confession " being agreed upon, it was presented to 

 Parliament, which, in 1648, accepted and published its doctrinal por- 

 tion. There was no lack of definiteness in the Assembly's statements. 

 They spoke as confidently of the divine enactments as if each member 

 had been personally privy to the counsels of the Most High. "When 

 Luther in the Castle of Marburg had had enough of the arguments of 

 Zuinglius on the " real presence," he is said to have ended the contro- 

 versy by taking up a bit of chalk and writing firmly and finally upon 

 the table, '^IIoc est corpus meum.^'' Equally downright and definite 

 were the divines at Westminster. They were modest in offering their 

 conclusions to Parliament as " humble advice," but there was no flicker 

 of doubt either in their theology or their cosmology. " From the be- 

 ginning of the world," they say, " to the resurrection of Christ the 

 last day of the week was kept holy as a Sabbath " ; while from the 

 resurrection it " was changed into the first day of the week, which in 

 Scripture is called the Lord's day, and is to be continued to the end 

 of the world as the Christian Sabbath." The notions of the divines 

 regarding the " beginning and the end " of the world were primitive 

 but decided. An ancient philosopher was once mobbed for venturing 

 the extravagant opinion that the sun, which appeared to be a circle 

 less than a yard in diameter, might really be as large as the whole 

 country of Greece. Imagine a man with the knowledge of a mod- 

 ern geologist uttering his blasphemies among these Westminster di- 

 vines ! " It pleased God," they continue, " at the beginning, to create, 

 or make of nothing, the world and all things therein, whether visible 

 or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good." Judged 

 from our present scientific standpoint, this, of course, is mere nonsense. 

 But the calling of it by this name does not exhaust the question. The 

 real point of interest to me, I confess, is not the cosmological errors 

 of the Assembly, but the hold which theology has taken of the human 

 mind, and which enables it to survive the ruin of what was long deemed 

 essential to its stability. On this question of " essentials " the gravest 

 mistakes are constantly made. Save as a passing form, no part of ob- 

 jective religion is essential. Religion lives not by the force and aid 

 of dogma, but because it is ingrained in the nature of man. To draw 



