MR. TAYLOR' S SECOND REPLY. 133 



The Sabbatb discarded from the moral tcachings of Jesus and the Apostles. 



In that mountain sermon, so remarkable for the comprehen- 

 siveness of its moral application, we hear no intimation of the 

 necessity of keeping six days less holy than the seventh ! 

 In the corresponding summaries we occasionally find in the 

 Epistles, there is the same impressive silence concerning that 

 ^' safeguard of virtue, that glory of religion, that pillar and 

 prop of society,^^ — the holy Sabbath ! {Rom. xiii. 7 — 9 ; 

 James i. 27 ; ii. 10, 11); while, on the other hand, in all the 

 eatalogues of crime and unholiness, we meet with no allusion to 

 that dark profanity " JSahbath-hreaJcm// F' (1 Cor. v. 11; vi. 

 9, 10; GaL v. 19—21; 1 Tim. i. 9, 10.) What moral law 

 has been or could be so neglected throughout the Christian 

 Scriptures ? What moral delinquency has been, or could be 

 so wholly unvebiiked ? (2 Tim. iii. 17.) *' Methinks,'' says 

 BuNYAN, " that Christ Jesus aud his apostles do plainly 

 enough declare this very thing : that when they rcpeat unto 

 the people or expouud before them the moral law, they quite 

 exclude the seventh-day Sabbath : yea, Paul makes that law 

 complete without it!" (^Dis. on the Seventli-day Sabbath: 

 ques. ii.) 



'' I take it for grauted," says my friend (p. 56), "that two 

 men of average iutelligence and candor, with the same sources 

 of evidence open before them, could not come to such opposite 



is the rest of tlie Pentateuch whicli comprises statutes that are a rule 

 of duty, either more or less supcrfluovis, and might well be spared. 

 The argument that these commands are perjjetual because they were 

 'engraven in stone,' will not weigh much with anj one Tvho knows 

 that all important laws of ancient times were engrayen on stone or 

 metal, in order that they might be both a public and a lasting monu- 

 ment of what the legislative power required. . . . It is plain 

 from a bare inspection of these ten commandments that they comprised, 

 and were designed to comprise, only the leading and most important 

 maxims of piety and morality. To deduce more from them than thisy 

 is to force on them a construction which they will not fairly bear." 

 (Htbrew Chrestomathy, part ii. no. 27, Notes, p. 146,) 

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