278 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



The Sabbath excludcd ft-om tlie Model Sermon. 



and it fell : and great was the fall of it !" " He that hath Mij 

 'commandments/ and keepetli them, he it is that loveth me!" 

 The "Law" made notliing perfect, but/^the bringing in of a 

 hetter hope did.'"^ 



It is well observed by Bunyan : " In all that large and 

 heavenly discourse upon the law, you have not one syllable 

 about the seventh-day SahhatUr Is it not marvellous that 

 Jesus so utterly forgot a vital "moral" duty, as to lend not 

 even an approving glance at this "bright link of man with 

 man, and earth with heaven — the blessing of this world, and 

 the beacon-light of that which is to come?" What modem 

 Sermon (wiser than the Master's) could be held complete with- 

 out a glowing Sabbath eulogy, and an awe-toned reprobation 

 of the " Sahhath-hreaker f How shall we explain so startling 

 an omission? nay worse, how shall we comprehend an omis- 

 sion, pervading the whole New Testament ?f Irreparable 

 oversight ! 



* " If we will acknowledge Christ to be our lawgiver," says Bishop 

 Taylor, " and the Gospel to be his law, called in the New Testament 

 < the law of liberty,' ' a royal law,' then must we expect that our duty 

 shall be further extended than to a conformity in our lives to the *ten 

 words' of Moses. ... I know it is said very commonly (and the casuists 

 do commonly use that method), that the explication of the Decalogue 

 be the sum of all their theology ; but how insufficiently, the foregoing 

 instances do suf&ciently demonstrate ; and therefore how inartificially 

 will also appear in the violence and convulsions, that must needs be 

 used to draw all these dissonances into one centre." [Ductor Dubi' 

 tant. Book ii. chap. 2, rule 4.) 



f Vide *'Pkoposition IV." This unfortunate circumstanee of 

 course necessarily drives my friend to the remarkable position, that 

 the New Covenant does not in itself comprise a sufficient code of moral 

 duty for the Christian, " thoroughly to furnish him unto all good 

 works !" And that the Sabbath law shall not be the solitary exotic to 

 be transplanted into the Gospel garden, he endeavors to show hoAV 

 necessary it is to incorporate the secowf/ commandment also. "As 

 well," says he in his former Reply [p. 58), "mightyou raise the 

 same objection against the first commandmcnt, or the second, or tho 



