36 THE SABBATH. 



and instruction. We see there described the efforts of 

 the best men then existing to civilise the rude society 

 around them. Violence is restrained by violence medi- 

 cinally applied. Passion is checked, truth and justice 

 are extolled, and all in a manner suited to the needs of 

 a barbarian host. But read in the light of our age, 

 its conceptions of the deity are seen to be shockingly 

 mean, and many of its ordinances brutal. Foolishness 

 is far too weak a word to apply to any attempt to force 

 upon a scientific age the edicts of a Jewish lawgiver. 

 The doom of such an attempt is sure, and if the de- 

 struction of things really precious should be involved 

 in its failure, the blame will justly be ascribed to those 

 who obstinately persisted in the attempt. Let us then 

 cherish our Sunday as an inheritance derived from the 

 wisdom of the past, but let it be understood that we 

 cherish it because it is in principle reasonable and in 

 practice salutary. Let us uphold it, because it com- 

 mends itself to that ' light of nature ' which, despite 

 the catastrophe in Eden, the most famous theologians 

 mention with respect, and not becausa it is enjoined by 

 the thunders of Sinai. We have surely heard enough 

 of divine sanctions founded upon myths which, however 

 beautiful and touching when regarded from the proper 

 point of view, are seen, when cited for our guidance as 

 matters of fact, to offer warrant and condonation for 

 the greatest crimes, or to sink to the level of the most 

 palpable absurdities, 1 



1 Melanchthon writes finely thus : ' Wherefore our decision is 

 this : that those precepts which learned men have committed to 

 writing, transcribing them from the common reason and common 

 feelings of human nature are to be accounted as no less divine than 

 those contained in the tables of Moses.' (Dugald Stewart's transla- 

 tion.) Hengstenberg quotes from the same reformer as follows : 

 * The law of Moses is not binding upon us, though some thinga 

 which the law contains are binding, because they coincide with the 



