adultery, not to break faith, and not to betray trusts." This letter was written a few years after the death of the apostle John. We cannot doubt that this stated day, discovered by Pliny, was the Lord's day. Ignatius, the celebrated martyrbishop of Antioch, says, in his epistle to the Magnesians, written about A.D. 107 or 116, that this is "the Lord's day, the day consecrated to the resurrection, the queen and chief of all the days."

Justin Martyr, who died about A.D. 160, says that the Christians" neither celebrated the Jewish festivals, nor observed their Sabbaths, nor practised circumcision," (Dialogue with Trypho, p. 34). In another place, he says that "they, both those who lived in the city and those who lived in the country, were all accustomed to meet on the day which is denominated Sunday, for the reading of the Scriptures, prayer, exhortation, and communion. The Assembly met on Sunday, because this is the first day on which God having changed the darkness and the elements, created the world; and because Jesus our Lord on this day rose from the dead.”

The Epistle attributed to Barnabas, though not written by this apostolic man, is undoubtedly of early origin. This unknown writer introduces the Lord, as saying: "The Sabbaths which you now keep are not acceptable to me but those which I have made when resting from all things, I shall begin the eighth day, that is the beginning of the other world." "For which cause, we (Christians) observe the eighth day with gladness, in which Jesus rose from the dead," &c. (Eph. ch. xv.)

Tertullian, at the close of the second century, says, "We celebrate Sunday as a joyful day. On the Lord's day we think it wrong to fast, or to kneel in prayer."

Clement of Alexandria, cotemporary with Tertullian, says, "A true Christian, according to the commands of the Gospel, observes the Lord's day by casting out all bad thoughts, and cherishing all goodness, honouring the resurrection of the Lord, which took place on that day."

But, perhaps, the most important, because the most learned, and, at the same time, the most explicit witness, is Eusebius, the celebrated bishop of Caesarea, who was in his literary prime about the era of the Council of Nice, A. D. 325. In his Commentary on the 92d Psalm, which the reader will remember, is entitled "A psalm or song for the Sabbath-day," he says:

"The Word, (Christ,) by the new covenant, translated and transferred the feast of the Sabbath to the morning light, and gave us the symbol of true rest, the saving Lord's day, the first (day) of light, in which the Saviour gained the victory over death, &c. On this day, which is the first of the Light, and the true Sun, we assemble after the interval of six days, and celebrate holy and spiritual Sabbath;

even all nations redeemed by Him throughout the world assemble, and do those things according to the spiritual law, which were decreed for the priests to do on the Sabbath. All things which it was duty to do on the Sabbath, these we have transferred to the Lord's day as more appropriately belonging to it, because it has the precedence, and is first in rank, and more honourable than the Jewish Sabbath. It is delivered to us (agadedora) that we should meet together on this day, and it is evidence that we should do these things announced in this psalm."

The first church council which formally enjoined cessation of labour upon the Lord's day, was the provincial synod of Laodicea, held a little after the middle of the fourth century. The twenty-ninth canon of this body commanded that none but necessary secular labours should be carried on upon Sunday. But Constantine the Great, when he adopted the Christian as the religion of the State, had already enacted that all the labours of courts of justice, civil and military functionaries, and handicraft trades should be suspended on the Lord's day, and that it should be devoted to prayer and public worship. This suspension of labour was not however extended to agriculturists, because it was supposed that they must needs avail themselves of the propitious season to gather their harvests, or sow their seed without regard to sacred days. But the Emperor Leo (who came to the throne A. D. 457,) ultimately extended the law to all classes of persons.

The Christians did not for several hundred years, apply the word Sabbath to the first day of the week, but always used it distinctly to indicate the Jewish seventh day. Their own sacred day, the first day, was called by them the Lord's day, (μega nugiann) as they said, because it was dedicated to the honour of Christ, and because it was the head, crown, and chief of all the days. They also called it Sunday, (Dies solis, a phrase frequently found among the Latin Christians,) because, according to their interpretation of Genesis i. 3, the sun was created on the first day of the week, but still more, because on that day the brighter Sun of Righteousness arose from the dead, with healing in his beams. The objection often made by persons over puritanical, that it smacks of Pagan or Scandinavian profanity to say Sunday, because the word indicates a heathenish consecration of the day to the sun, is therefore more Quakerish than sensible. We are willing to confess that we always loved the good old name Sunday-name worthy of that day which should ever seem the brightest in the Christian's conceptions, of all the week, when the glorious works of the natural creation first began to display the honours of the great Creator, and when that new and more divine creation of redeeming grace was perfected by the resurrection of

Jesus Christ. But, in the application of the phrase, "Christian Sabbath," to the first day, the Westminster Assembly had a definite and truthful design, although the early church had not given it this name. It was their intention to express thus that vital head of their theory, that the Old Testament institute called Sabbath, which was coeval with man, and was destined to co-exist with all dispensations, was not abrogated, that it still existed substantially, and that Christians were now to find it in the Lord's day. To the Christian the Lord's day is the Sabbath, (such is the significance of the name) possessing the Divine authority, and demanding in the main the sanctification, which were formerly attached to the seventh day.

4. Another most interesting and practical head of the Sabbath argument remains, from its practical necessity, as a means of securing man's corporeal and mental health, his morality, his temporal success in life, and his religious interests. This is the department of the discussion which has been more particularly unfolded in the "Permanent Sabbath Documents," published under the auspices of Dr Justin Edwards, and more recently in the remarkable essays on the Sabbath, produced by working-men in Great Britain. It is now by so much the best understood part of the Sabbath discussion, that we should not have introduced it all, except that it was one of the stones in the arch of our attempted demonstration, that there is a natural necessity in man for a Sabbath rest. The Creator, who appointed the Sabbath, formed man's frame; and all intelligent observers are now agreed that the latter was adapted to the former. Either body or mind can do more work by resting one day in seven, than by labouring all the seven days. And neither mind nor body can enjoy health and continued activity without its appointed rest. Even the structure of the brutes exhibits the same law. Again: as a moral and social institution, a weekly rest is invaluable. It is a quiet domestic reunion for the bustling sons of toil. It ensures the necessary vacation in those earthly and turbulent anxieties and affections, which would otherwise become inordinate and morbid. It brings around a season of periodical neatness and decency, when the soil of weekly labour is laid aside, and men meet each other amidst the decencies of the sanctuary, and renew their social affections. But above all, a Sabbath is necessary for man's moral and religious interests. Even in paradise, and in man's state of innocence, it was true that a stated season, resolutely appropriated to religious exercises, was necessary to his welfare as a religious being. A creature subject to the law of habit, of finite faculties, and required by the conditions of his existence to distribute his attention and labours between things secular and things sacred, cannot successfully

accomplish this destiny, without a regular distribution of his time between the two great departments. This is literally a physical necessity. And when we add the consideration that man is now a being of depraved, earthly affections, prone to avert his eyes from heaven to the earth, the necessity is still more obvious. Man does nothing regularly for which he has not a regular time. The absolute necessity of the Sabbath, as a season for the public preaching of religion and morality, as a leisure time for the domestic religious instruction of the young, as a time for private self-examination and devotion, is most clear to all who admit the importance of these duties. And now, it is most obvious to practical good sense, that if such a stated season is necessary, then it is proper that it should be ordained and marked off by Divine authority, and not by a sort of convention on man's part. To neglect the stated observance of a religious rest, is to neglect religion. And when there is so much of mundane and carnal affection, so much of craving, eager worldly bustle, to entice us to an infringement of this sacred rest, it is certain that it will be neglected, unless it be defended by the highest sanction of God's own authority. Nay, do we not see that this sanction is insufficient, even among some who admit its validity? Again, if such a stated rest is necessary, then it is also necessary that its metes and bounds be defined by the same authority which enjoins the rest itself. Otherwise, the licence which men will allow themselves in interpreting the duration of the season, and in deciding how much constitutes the observance of it, or how little, will effectually abrogate the rest itself. If then, the necessities of human nature require a Sabbath, it does not appear how God could ordain less than we suppose he has done, in requiring the whole of a definite length of time to be faithfully devoted to religious exercises, and in making this command explicit and absolute.

ART. II.-The Tecnobaptist: A Discourse wherein an honest Baptist, by a course of argument to which no honest Baptist can object, is convinced that Infant Christians are proper subjects of Christian Baptism. By R. B. MAYES. Boston: Printed by John Wilson & Son, 22 School Street, 1857. Pp. 172.

THIS is a piratical little book. It sails under false colours. It purports to be an argument in support of infant baptism. It is in fact an argument against it. The reader is not per

pared for a trope on a title-page. He presumes that the word infant is used in its literal sense, and that "infant Christians" means children born within the pale of the Christian Church. He takes up the book, therefore, under the impression that he is about to read the process of argument by which a Baptist was converted into a Pædobaptist. Every thing favours this impression. The book is a colloquy. The interlocutors are Mr A., an Episcopalian; Mr C., a Presbyterian ; and Mr B., a Baptist. Mr B. allows Messrs A. and C. to have everything their own way. They begin the argument; lay down the premises; and draw the conclusions. Mr B. seems to be entirely at their mercy. He lies still, as Napoleon did at Austerlitz, and permits his adversaries to gather their forces all round him, and to feel sure of victory. All at once the scene changes. Mr B. takes things into his own hands. Admits the premises of his opponents, as he has allowed them to be stated, and then runs them into all manner of contradictions and confusion. Poor Mr A. particularly is made to flounder ridiculously in very shallow water. Mr B. acknowledges himself to be in favour of infant baptism, but by infant he means a babe in Christ. He is the advocate of the baptism of those born of the Spirit, as soon as they give satisfactory evidence of regeneration. The maxim that all things are fair in war, our author has transferred to polemics, and he has certainly outmanœuvred his antagonists, and gained over them not only a complete, but an easy triumph. It is, however, hardly fair thus to mystify his Pædobaptist readers. They open their lips for a bonbon, and he inserts a lump of aloes. The consequence is that the aloes is rejected with an emphasis which an honest pill would not have provoked. We do not think that our author has gained much by his ruse. be admitted, however, that the thing is well done. The book is very adroitly written, and is the best Baptist argument we are acquainted with. We do not propose to review it in detail. The principles involved in the discussion may all be presented, as we hope, more effectively, by avoiding the specialities of refutation. The whole of the author's argument is condensed in the following statement, to be found on page 93.

It must

"In the Old Testament Church.-1. The carnal descendants of Abraham were the chosen people of God. 2. The carnal descendants were begotten with carnal and corruptible seed. 3. The carnal descendants were carnally generated, and entered the kingdom of God, or the Church, by a carnal birth. 4. The outward sign of membership was circumcision, a cardinal ordinance, performed by cutting the flesh of the subject. 5. The carnal descendants were required to be circumcised not before nor at, but after their carnal birth.

"In the New Testament Church.-1. The spiritual descendants of