THE SABBATH. 11 



Still one can hardly look without despair on the 

 passions excited, and the energies wasted, over ques- 

 tions which, after ages of strife, are shown to be mere 

 fatuity and foolishness. Thus the theses which shook 

 the world during the fmt centuries of the Christian 

 era have, for the most part, shrunk into nothingness. 

 It may, however, be that the human mind could not 

 become fitted to pronounce judgment on a controversy 

 otherwise than by wading through it. We get clear of 

 the jungle by traversing it. Thus even the errors, con- 

 flicts, and sufferings of bygone times may have been 

 necessary factors in the education of the world. Let 

 nobody, however, say that it has not been a hard educa- 

 tion. The yoke of religion has not always been easy, 

 nor its burden light — a result arising, in part from the 

 ignorance of the world at large, but more especially from 

 the mistakes of those who had the charge and guidance 

 of a great spiritual force, and who guided it blindly. 

 Looking over the literature of the Sabbath question, as 

 catalogued and illustrated in the laborious, able, and 

 temperate work of the late Mr. Robert Cox, we can hardly 

 repress a sigh in thinking of the gifts and labours of in- 

 tellect which this question has absorbed, and the amount 

 of bad blood which it has generated. Further reflection, 

 however, reconciles us to the fact that waste in intellect 

 may be as much an incident of growth as waste in nature. 

 When the various passages of the Pentateuch which 

 relate to the observance of the Sabbath are brought 

 together, as they are in the excellent work of Mr. Cox, 

 and when we pass from them to the similarly collected 

 utterances of the New Testament, we are immediately 

 exhilarated by a freer atmosphere and a vaster sky. 

 Christ found the religions of the world oppressed almost 

 to suffocation by the load of formulas piled upon them 

 by the priesthood. He removed the load, and rendered 



