t day of the week, and from the
resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week"; but
this proposition would be as hard to prove as the contrary assertion,
still maintained by some obscure religionists, that the change of day,
for however sufficient and sublime a reason, was beyond the capacity of
the Church of Christ to enact.

Amid these conflicting opinions the doctrinal formularies of the Church
of England are characteristically guarded and prudent; but her
worshippers are bidden to seek mercy from the Lord for past violations
of this law, and an inclination of heart to keep it in the future; and
when the Ten have been recited, they pray that "all these Thy laws" may
be written upon their hearts. There is no doubt, therefore, about the
opinion of our own Reformers concerning the divine obligation of the
commandment.

In examining the problem thus presented to us, our chief light must be
that of Scripture itself. Is the Sabbath what the Lutheran confession
called it, a mere "Mosaic ceremony," or does it rest upon sanctions
which began earlier and lasted longer than the precept to abstain from
shell-fish, or to sanctify the firstborn of cattle?

Does its presence in the Decalogue disfigure that great code, as the
intrusion of these other precepts would do? When we find a Gentile
church reminded that the next precept to this "is the first commandment
with promise" (Eph. vi. 2), can we suppose that the tables to which St.
Paul appealed, and the promise which he cited at full length, were both
cancelled; that in so far as a moral element existed in them, that
portion of course survived their repeal, but the code itself was gone?
If so, the temporal promise went with it, and its quotation by St. Paul
is strange. Strange also, upon this supposition, was the stress which
he habitually laid upon the law as a convicting power, and as being only
repealed in the letter so far as it was fulfilled by the spontaneous
instinct of love, which was the fulfilling of the law.

The position of the commandment among a number of moral and universal
duties cannot but weigh heavily in its favour. It prompts us to ask
whether our duty to God is purely negative, to be fulfilled by a policy
of non-intervention, not worshipping idols, nor blaspheming. Something
more was already intimated in the promise of mercy to them "that love
Me." For love is chiefly the source of active obedience: while fear is
satisfied by the absenc