born.

She died in my arms. I placed my ear near to her lips to catch her faint whisper. "God bless you!" were her parting words; and he has blessed me. I cannot help crying, and I should be ashamed of myself if I could, when I think of that death-bed scene.

Poor Edward, he went next; and a grievous sight it was to see him borne up the garden, with his brown curly hair hanging backward from his forehead, and the water dripping from it. We tried everything, but it was in vain. He was drowned. The stem was snapped while the flower was yet in bud. God required a sapling for his heavenly garden, and he took him-for I had hope in his death.

A heavier blow came next. Mary came home one autumn afternoon pale and trembling. Death had placed his icy hand upon her and she shook under it. And I shook at the thought of what was coming. It was a dreary time that. I crept silently about, and if anything fell and made a noise it seemed to shoot through me. Poor little Lucy, she looked so serious, and yet she scarcely knew why, for she was too young to have a full understanding of the cause of our grief. Sometimes she would forget and laugh, and then in a moment she would look grave and say: "I will laugh when mamma is better." The doctor looked more and more solemn every day, and at last he called me aside and told me what I had dreaded-that there was scarcely a hope of recovery. She died the next day; and though she could not speak, the look that she gave me as she gently glided away uttered volumes. It told of peace, love, faith within. It was the last glorious effulgence of the setting sun. I hope to see that smile again. Now that my tears are dried I will go on with my story. George went to Rugby, but I did not send him to college. He did not wish to go. He seemed bent upon being a missionary, and I gladly consented. Seventeen years ago I saw a white speck upon the horizon of the sea -it was the ship that was carrying him to his far distant home. I do not expect ever to see him in this world again. But I have his model often with me. His eldest boy is a frequent visitor at the old school-house, and I hope he will tread in his father's steps. He says he hopes so

too.

Lucy, poor Lucy! it grieves me to see

her, and yet she is very happy. It was a bad sprain, and her ankle is now immovably fixed; but let us be thankful that it was no worse. Her health is excellent, and she can walk a great deal faster than I can, and without the least pain. I could see her heart was full when Edward came to see her the first time after he had learned that she must walk lamely for ever. I watched them both, and I saw her cheek flush and her lip quiver as she said, "Edward, you have heard that I am slightly crippled for life, and I now consider you freed from your ties to me, if you wish to be so." How earnestly she gazed at his features, and how they crimsoned with animation, as he replied, "Lucy, banish such thoughts, for you wrong me by indulging in them." I heard no more, for I hastened out of the room; but as I closed the door a sound fell upon my ear, which, if it was not that of a kiss, was certainly the closest imitation of it that ever was made. A few months afterward they were married; and tell me where there is a happier pair than Edward and Lucy Vernon. I never saw one yet, and I am an old man. Little Lucy-for there is another Lucy nowcomes and climbs upon my knees to stroke my silvery hair, and I could almost fancy that it is a miniature model of Mary. She must have been just such another as Lucy when she was a girl. How strange it is that faces are handed down in this way.

Why, how I have been talking aloud to myself, and just as if I had a listener. I have got quite a habit of doing so it seems to bring the past more forcibly before me. How vividly some parts of my past life have flitted by! "Yes, and so you have had a listener, have you not?" said Edward, who had been sitting quietly in the room, with his book laid open on the table before him, earnestly attending to this monologue.

"Why, you went out of the room a short time ago. I never heard you return: I think my deafness increases."

"Why, really," he replied, "I thought you meant the story for me all the time."

on the morrow,) and continued his speech until midnight." Is it not clear to demonstration that Paul, wishing to meet the Church at Troas, waited there for seven days, until they met; that they did not meet until the first day of the week; and that, having fulfilled his purpose, Paul left them immediately after the Lord's day had closed?

Once more when Paul is writing to the Corinthian Church, he says: "Now concerning the collection for the saints upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." But why the first day of the week, if this were not specially the time when the Church assembled for its acts of religious service? Still later in the Scriptural record, and almost at the close of the first century, the Apostle John is in Patmos; and again, as on the day of Pentecost, the Spirit is poured forth on this favored disciple. "I was in the Spirit," he says, on the Lord's day." We hardly wonder that "a layman," who is opposed to the observance of the Christian Sabbath, has deemed it needful to occupy an entire volume of three hundred pages in the vain attempt of explaining away these conclusive texts.

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And on the authority of Origen, sanctioned as it is by the concurrence of Owen, of Dwight, and of Wardlaw, we may not unfairly assume that the argument in the fourth chapter of the Hebrews is not only confirmatory of these views, but decisive on the point. The apostle says, "for he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works." Ver. 4. "There remaineth, therefore, a rest [a Sabbatism] to the people of God. For he [that is, Jesus] that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his." Ver. 9, 10. This passage virtually declares that if God, resting from his work, appointed a day of commemorative rest, Christ, having accomplished a far nobler work, and entered into his rest, has also appointed for his people a Sabbatism as glorious and complete.

But it is said that the apostles observed the Jewish Sabbath. All that the Scriptures intimate is, that they availed themselves of that day to come in contact with the people, just as the Apostle Paul is

found constantly in the Jewish synagogue; for there is no trace whatever in Scripture of Christians, as such, convening for purposes of worship on the Jewish Sabbath. Convenience, as well as prepossession, would have been in favor of such meetings for Christian as well as Jewish worship on the seventh day, and not on the first, had there not been the intervention of authority in favor of the change sufficient to insure that the difficulty in the way of adopting it should be surmounted. It is further said that the apostle, in his Epistle to the Colossians, declares-" Let no man, therefore, judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath." But certainly this is not inconsistent with the view we have adopted, for our argument admits that the Jewish Sabbath, which, with other ordinances of that economy, the Jewish converts were desirous of enforcing on the Gentiles as Jewish institutions, had been superseded. But independently of this, many commentators, on grounds which deserve serious consideration, have agreed in the opinion that the " Sabbaths" referred to in this text were Jewish feasts, and not the day of holy rest.

It is further alleged, and with a show of triumphant assurance, that when the Gentile converts at Antioch appealed to the apostles, who were assembled at Jerusalem, as to whether the Jewish ordinances were still binding, they were informed, under divine direction, that it was sufficient if they abstained" from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood." Acts xv, 20. And it is contended that, as the Sabbath is not included in this enumeration, the text includes its virtual abrogation. But it must not be forgotten that the whole argument in favor of a subsisting Sabbath rests upon the fact of its being an institution independent of Judaism, and anterior to that economy, though for a time incorporated with it.

We are not desirous of laying undue stress on the testimony of the Christian Church, though undoubtedly it possesses much value; nor is it unimportant for the candid inquirer to satisfy himself whether tradition has any value in the determination of religious truth. The Roman Catholic assumes that our knowledge of Christianity is chiefly dependent on revelation, but is also derived from oral tra

dition and the authoritative decrees of the Church. Amidst conflicting claims and doubtful evidence, it stands apart as God's appointed arbiter, not only a witness for divine truth, but the judge whose decision is dogmatic and irreversible. The Anglo- | Catholic, on the other hand, feeling that the Church, as it is at present constituted, cannot be regarded as an infallible judge, looks back with vague unsatisfied longing to the Patristic Church for guidance and direction. But to all these claims, whether of Rome for its living power, or of Oxford for the irrefragable verity of the early Church, we boldly reply with Milton, "Let others chant while they will of prerogatives, we shall tell them of Scripture, of acts and statutes, still of Scripture, till the quick and piercing word enter to the dividing of their souls, and the mighty weakness of the gospel throw down the weak mightiness of man's reasoning.'

Yet we conceive that there is an opposite extreme which implies that the Bible being in itself a sufficient guide, the opinions of the primitive Church are of no value whatever to the student of Holy Scripture. On the contrary, we believe that history, whether of facts or of opinions, may afford great assistance to the sincere inquirer, if he do not with slavish submission absolutely yield to its dictation. The New Testament, for instance, leaves some questions of ritual observance in comparative obscurity; and how they were expounded by the practice of the early Church cannot be a matter of indifference. Christ washes the disciples' feet, and couples it with an ambiguous command, and we abide by the evidence which Church history affords us, that this institution was not intended to be one of permanent obligation. It commands the communion of faithful men at the Lord's Supper, and equally from reason and the example of the universal Church, we conclude that female communicants are entitled to the same privilege. We read of the agape, or feasts of love, in the Epistle to the Corinthians; but we are satisfied from almost uniform testimony that this ordinance was not intended to be binding on the whole body of the faithful. We appeal therefore to such facts, not as concluding inquiry, but as a portion of that proof which the mind must diligently weigh, test by Scripture, and either accept or reject, as the balance of evidence requires. And

in this spirit only let us refer to the testimony of the early Christians, with reference to the observance of the Lord's day. It must not be forgotten that one of the most constant difficulties to which the early Church was subjected arose from a tendency in the Jewish converts not only to retain, but to enforce some of the rites and observances of their own law, unmindful of the dispensation of liberty into which they had entered. And this practice was met by the uncompromising resistance of Gentile believers. And hence, in the writings of the early fathers, the Jewish Sabbath, as one of these enforced observances, is continually discountenanced, while the maintenance of the Lord's day is strenuously encouraged. Barnabas, in the first century, says, in the name of Christ, 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 observe the eighth day with gladness, on which Jesus rose from the dead."

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In the same century, the heathen Pliny writes to the Emperor Trajan, "That the Christians were wont to meet on a certain day, and sing hymns to Christ as God, and bind themselves with a sacrament to do not evil, and afterward partake of a common feast."

Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, in the same age, exhorts the Magnesians " no longer to sabbatize, but to keep the Lord's day;" and elsewhere he says, "That all who loved the Lord kept the Lord's day as the queen of days, a reviving, lifegiving day, the best of all days." Justin Martyr, (the apologist for Christianity,) who lived during the first half of the second century, says, in his celebrated Apology, "We all meet together on Sunday, because it is the first day on which God, having changed darkness and the elements, created the world, and on this day Jesus Christ, our Saviour, arose from the dead;" and elsewhere, in the same Apology, he writes, "On the day called Sunday, all that live in the city or country meet together, and the writings of the apostles and prophets are read to them, after which the bishop or president of the assembly makes a discourse to the people, exhorting them to follow the good things we have heard; then we all rise and make common