286 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Concluding sentiments. 



mandment, like the rest of the Decalogue, is a universal and 

 perpetual Law :" and that Jesus "honored it as immutahle !" 

 He challenges iheir ''fundamental position'' with the defiant 

 " Efface it if you can ! Attempt it if you dåre !''* 



May the time speedily arrive, when my friend J. N. B. can 

 say with propriety: ''Our fundamental positionsare now the 

 same V when, " rooted and built up, and stablished in the faith 

 as he is taught'' in the Scriptures, instead of following " after 

 the tradition of men/' he shall discard ''vain strivings and 

 unprofitable contentions about ' the Laiof " and when no longer 

 "carried about with strange doctrines/' he shall "be ready to 

 give AN ANSWER, to every man that asketh a reason of the 

 hope that is in him/' 



I have more than accomplished my task; as I have more 

 than exceeded my proper limits. With sentiments of respect, 

 and unaiFected regard for my friend J. N. B., I take leave of 

 him, by a recapitulation and reaffirmation of my " Six Pro- 

 POSiTiONs/' as incontrovertibly established. 



I. The only weekly Sabbath enjoined or alluded to (directly 

 or indirectly), in either the Old or New Testament, is that of 

 Saturday — "the seventh day,'' indicative of "the sabbath of 

 the Lord" after his six days' labor. 



II. This institution was a " strictly Jewish and ceremonial" 

 one : — Jewish, in being " first made known to the Israelites 

 by the hand of Moses," in being commemorative of their de- 

 liverance from servitude, and in being a peculiar " sign of 

 their separation" from other nations; and ceremomal, in being 

 subservient to expediency, in being exactly parallel in its 

 claims to any other ritual observance, and in being intended 



* When my friend penned his concluding and doubtless earuest 

 aspiration (p. 194), "May crowns as bright [as those of Calvin and 

 Bunyan] be ours in the day of the Lord's coming!" — he must have 

 forgotten or abandoned his former dogma (p. 59), that whosoever 

 should break the foiirth commandment, " and teach men so, shall be 

 called the least in the kingdom of heaven !" 



