are centered, where they ought, upon things heavenly and eternal, the whole service of the Lord's day administers the most refined enjoyment, in addition to which there are recreations in abundance which may be harmlessly and lawfully enjoyed. All diversions, indeed, are not admissible, and I have attempted to draw the line of distinction according to the spirit and declarations of scripture. But far be it from any minister of the Gospel to lord it, in this matter, over the consciences of men. It is a subject which may well admit some difference of opinion. Even while agreed in the general principles, some diversity may exist in their application to individual instances. Such minor differences have ever been, and ever will be, and should therefore be mutually forgiven, in pity to the weakness of our common nature. They ought to be merged in the unceasing ardour to preserve the fundamentals of our faith, without being suffered to violate the bond of peace, in the search of unattainable unity. Little is the justice, and less the charity of that man, who severely censures another for matters, in respect to which God has given no explicit directions. 'Let us not, therefore, judge one another any more; but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling-block, or a occasion to fall, in his brother's way.'

So long as there is nothing in the conduct of a brother flagrantly contrary to the word of God, though he may be weak in the faith, yet we ought to receive him, but not to doubtful disputations.' We may be truly charged with being angry with him without a cause, if we are offended merely because we cannot consent to join him in certain recreations on the Lord's day. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; it rejects all harsh judgment; at the same time we are to mark and avoid those who cause divisions and offences contrary to sound doctrine; and, as we value the welfare of our souls,-as we prize the glory of God, and the honour of his name, we must fly from all who evidently act from impure motives, and who, in the hour of relaxation and amusement, are guided by a spirit of profaneness and impiety.

"Little is the stern and unrelenting disposition to be commended, which severely censures those ranks of society who gain subsistence by their daily toil, if they devote a larger portion of the day to recreation, than those who, in the world's estimation, are accounted their more fortunate brethren. The Sabbath was intended to be in part a day of refreshment to the industrious classes, which it cannot be, if made a day of puritanical rigour and mortified restraint. Those who are engaged in wearisome and unwholesome occupations, inay well be excused if

they take advantage of the leisure afforded them to refresh their strength and spirits by innocent amusements; and those who are confined to the noxious atinosphere of populous cities, are not to be rudely condemned, if, issuing forth among the pleasant villages and farms,' they recruit their harassed natures with rural pleasures, and a purer air. Provided they avoid all intemperance and riot, and tumultuous mirth, and suffer not recreation to interfere with the duties of the day, nor to disturb that sobriety of mind which it was intended to preserve, they cannot be culpable in accepting the offered boon of harmless pleasure. Sunday cannot be wholly passed in the devout offices of the church and the closet, nor would it accord with its destination to render it, by unnecessary austerity, dismal and forbidding. While, therefore, we earnestly contend for the fulfilment both of the public and private duties of religion, let us not forbid what Providence has allowed to all, according to their respective ranks and avocations-seasonable intermissions for rational indulgence."—pp. 392-395.

After this, who can be surprised at the scenes exhibited in the Park, and at the tea-gardens of the metropolis, when London vomits forth its thousands on the day of sacred rest?

Mr. Holden thinks his sentiments annihilate the arguments of the sabbatarian.

،، If the opinion here advocated, that the numerical day of the Christian Sabbath is not definitively established by divine authority, the sabbatarian controversy will be of very easy determination. There have been, and still are, some who still keep the Saturday as a Christian festival instead of Sunday. The rise of these sectarians, if they can be so called, is not clearly ascertained: in the primitive church, it was the custom of certain individuals to observe both the Lord's day and the Saturday, in compliance with the prejudices of the Jewish converts, as is now practised by some members of the Abyssinian and Greek Churches; but since the Reformation, there have been, both in this and other countries, some perfect sabbatarians. The historian, Fuller, makes mention of some who held these tenets towards the beginning of the seventeenth century; and the subject was controverted during this age with much heat and asperity, as appears from the publications of Brabourne, Bampfield, and other sabbatarians, as well as from those of White, Prideaux, Wallis, Shepard, Batteley, Chafie, Brerewood, Dow, Byfield, Lowe, Twisse, Heylin, &c. Two congre

Book of Revelation, is very extraordinary. After saying what After saying what he could to shake the reader's confidence, that John in that expression means the Lord's day, he proceeds,

"After these remarks, my reader will be not a little surprised, I suppose, at my saying that I have no doubt that the phrase in question really does mean the common Sunday, and no other day. But I make the avowal on a ground which, I fear, will greatly shock him, considering the opinion of people in general relative to this subject. In short, I am fully persuaded that the Apostle John did not write those words--that they are an interpolation, and that a very late one -perhaps about the time of Constantine the Great. I proceed to give my reasons for holding a sentiment so different from that of Christendom at large."--pp. 199.

We should have supposed that a man of Mr. B.'s learning and good sense, after making such an assertion, would have immediately produced a long array of MSS. Versions and fathers, to justify the expulsion from the sacred text of this obnoxious phrase. No such thing. The clause is omitted in no Greek MS., no ancient version, in no ecclesiastical writer, who quotes the passage to which it belongs. What then is Mr. B.'s reasoning in support of such an extraordinary proposition?

"I cannot doubt the fact of the interpolation in Rev. i. 10. when I consider that St Ignatius, the most ancient of the Christian Fathers, who urges the Christians in the strongest terms to show particular regard to the first day in honour of Christ's resurrection, though the cotemporary of the Apostle John for thirty years, and his disciple, in calling Sunday Lord's-day,' (if he ever calls it so,) never once pleads the authority and example of his master for this practice. It is perfectly incredible that this celebrated man, whose talents, learning, and piety, were thought so much of, as to be the means of exalting him to a bishopric in the ecclesiastical sense of the term-this holy martyr--should call the first day Lord's day,' and the Queen of days, without ever mentioning the words as a quotation from the Revelation, which he must have known to be there, had they been there in his days. If he had, after quoting the words, com

mented upon them, in his master's name, in the manner usually done, the comment

could not have been received or treated as equivalent to inspiration by any consistent Protestant; but it would at least have tended to promote his design far more than all his eulogies and vebemence, There is no modern writer that agrees with him in his view and aim relative to the first day, who does not quote the passage in Rev. i. 10., and in whose work, far from being omitted, it does not exhibit a conspicuous and splendid figure.

:

"No writer, except St. Ignatius, even mentions the expression Lord's day' till towards the close of the second century much less quotes it from Rev. i. 10. for as to the Epistle of St. Barnabas, and the Ecclesiastical or Apostolical Canous, the last of which works contains the words Lord's day,' (though not as quoted from the Revelation,) the first would have formed a part of Revelation, had it been really written by the Apostle Barnabas; and the latter work is by no means so ancient as the title imports. Justin Martyr calls the first day

Sunday,' and never intimates that it did or ought to go by another name. He says nothing about the passage in the Revelation, nor produces it in support of the divine authority of that religious regard, which, according to him, was paid by the Christians at Rome to a part at least of the first day. Had the pas sage existed and been known to him, he would most likely have thought it as much to his purpose to quote it, as to tell us that the Sun of Righteousness arose on Sunday.' The Fathers and Councils subsequent to that time call the first day Lord's day' as well as 'Sunday,' and by its appropriate name, and are as solicitous as St. Ignatius for its observance but are equally silent with him respecting the words attributed to the Apostle John. The most learned advocates among the moderns for the first day, in applying Rev. i. 10. to that day, never refer to any writer earlier than the fourth century that quotes it; which they would have done, if they could have found any and therefore I suspect, as I mentioned before, that the interpola tion, as I think it is, was made after or about the time of Constantine the Great, possibly with a view to support the edicts of that prince in favour of the first day, which take no notice of the religious regard hitherto paid to the seventh day as much as to the first day, in all the Christian churches, except those of Rome and Alexandria."--pp. 201--204.

After something more, which is not to the purpose, he comes to his conclusion, as follows:

"The manuscripts to which we have

treated in it, is of vital importance; and the author has discussed it in a way which is calculated both to inform the minds of his readers, and to warm their hearts.

The propagation of the Gospel is a work which, in the present day, calls forth and combines the energies of Christians of every name; and the success which has attended their exertions is such as to afford the amplest encouragement to persevere in their work of faith, and labour of love. But though past success is encouraging, it does not constitute the ground on which the propagation of the Gospel ought to be pursued. It is a provision of mercy for mankind; it is the intention of the God of mercy that it be proclaimed as widely as the effects of the curse are felt; the proclamation of it is committed as a trust to those who have themselves received the boon. It is laid upon them as a debt of gratitude, to testify to others what God has done for their own souls. Selfishness is the very opposite of the spirit of the Gospel. It breathes throughout disinterested kindness, and infuses the same spirit into all who receive the love of its truths, and calls forth that spirit in exertions for meliorating the condition of our fellow-men. It leaves us not to devise means ourselves for the accomplishment of this end. Had we been left to do this, the experience of past ages, and the mournful vicissitudes in human affairs with which history presents us, might well tend to paralyze our efforts, and lead us to suspect that there could be but little rational hope entertained of future success. But the Divine Philanthropist, who "so loved the world, as to give his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but should have everlasting life," has furnished us a scheme, on which he has suspended the brightest display of his glory ever given

to the universe a scheme which embodies his manifold wisdomcontaining every thing which adapts it to the magnificent end to be accomplished by it, and, proceeding on which, we have the pledge of his faithfulness, that the dark places of the earth, which are full of the habitations of horrid cruelty, shall be enlightened by the light of life, and rescued from the pangs of that soul-destroying superstition and delusion, under which they were so long allowed to writhe, without apparently an eye to pity them, or an arm to reach them any help. Here is the end; he has furnished the means by which it shall be accomplished; and, pointing to the perishing nations, he says to those who are in possession of the means " The same Lord is rich unto all that call upon him. For it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher ? and how shall they preach except they be sent?" Human instrumentality is here represented as necessary; and a solemn responsibility is implied, as attaching to those who refuse to delay to join issue with the God of grace in his plan of mercy to our fallen family. On the subject of this responsibility, there are many strong appeals to professing Christians, in the work before us. We quote the following.

"From the charge of rejecting the Saviour, the heathen world shall stand acquitted: for to them, it was as if he had never come into the world, and had the guilt must rest somewhere; and since they are set aside, the condemnation mest fall upon a comparatively small number: for true it is, that Christ did come, and

never suffered and died. Still, however,

that he did become obedient unto death,

even the death of the cross: true it is,

that he presented himself to the faith of