all lands reverted to their original proprietors. On that day the slave was emancipated! The Lord had decreed, "The land shall not be sold, for the land is mine!"* By this Sabbatical institution of the Jubilee, no demoralised parent could entirely deprive his offspring of the inheritance of their ancestors; the curse of destitution no man could entail on his posterity. Equality of fortunes in the conditions of men, a political reverie in all other governments, seemed to have been realised in the small sacerdotal and agricultural Republic of Israel; and perhaps served as the model of that famous government which the Jesuits attempted to establish in Paraguay. The sublime legislator of the Hebrews to prevent the oppressive accumulation of wealth, in individuals, and the multiplication of debts without limit, and the perpetuity of slavery, decreed that nothing should be perpetual but the religious Republic itself! This greater Sabbatical institution was an expedient to check the disorders which flow from the monopoly of property. It produced a kind of community of goods among the people, and in some respects combined the theoretical politics of Plato and Socrates with the more practical systems of real property and per* Levit. xxv. 23.

sonal possessions of Aristotle and Cicero. Too exquisitely benevolent for the selfishness, and the pride, and the indolence of man, the passions of mankind would revolt against this code of philanthropy, adapted to a small community; it was an Agrarian Law without its violence, and an Ostracism without its malignity. While Israel possessed their Holy Land, all the Sabbatical institutions were religiously observed, till the destruction of the first Temple by the Assyrians. When the captive Jews, returning from Babylon, sought their fatherland, they beheld their tribes confused together, and many of their brethren were wanderers in far-distant regions. The glory of their Temple had for ever passed away, the feelings of patriotism were cold in a desolated country,-the magic had dissolved-and the Seven Sabbaths of Years for ever vanished!

Such is the history of the Sabbatic institutions of Moses. The seventh day, consecrated to the universal repose of all nature, may be said to have entirely disappeared, except among this ancient people, who still preserve it with all its rigours. Even Mahomet in perpetuating it among his Moslems, changed it to a weekly feast-day, and " the most excellent day on which the sun rises" as it is described, is

the sixth of the week. The Mohammedans esteem it a peculiar honour to Islam, that Friday has been appointed for them, and that they alone enjoy the blessing of having first observed it.*

The observance of the Sabbath-day became a subject of controversy, only among the religious of the Protestants of our country; a subject which requires our investigation.

* Sale's Preliminary Discourse to the Koran, 197.

CHAPTER XVI.

OF THE OBSERVATION OF THE SABBATH

UPON SUNDAYS.

THE superstitious discipline of the Jewish sabbath, as practised by the tyrannical Pharisees, was one of those burthens of the old law which the new removed.

The founder of the Christian Religion in the severe reprimands to his rabbinical persecutors, by his words and by his actions, testified that with the abrogation of the Mosaic ritual, the ceremonial performance of the Sabbath was dissolved. Jesus announced himself to be "Lord of the Sabbath," and declared that "the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath," doubtless alluding to its arbitrary superstitions. "This man is not God, because he keepeth not the sabbath-day," said the haughty Pharisees of Jesus; and when Jesus was accused of a breach of the sabbath, according to the pha

risaical strictness, by healing a sick man on that day, Jesus replied, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I also work."* The Apostles comprehended the intention of their Lord, otherwise they would have preferred enduring the keenest hunger rather than have plucked the ears of corn in passing through a field on the sabbath. This was the point of time, at which the ceremonial of the sabbath was manifestly dissolved-or as Lightfoot, deep in Hebraic lore, that "Christian Rabbi" as Gibbon happily designates this prodigy of erudition, quaintly expressed it, this was "the shaking of the sabbath."

Christianity was not established at once, this miracle was denied the world; and the children of the Gospel required the indulgence of tender converts whose consciences, and customs and imaginations could not be weaned on the sudden from those Mosaic rites which for so many ages they had held as imprescriptible.

A strong light is thrown on this expression of Jesus, as well as on our present subject, by Justin Martyr in his eccentric dialogue with Trypho the Jew-" You see that the Heavens are not idle nor do they observe the Sabbaths. If before Abraham there was no need of circumcision, nor the Sabbaths, &c. so now in like manner there is no need of them since Jesus Christ." Sect. xxiii.