At least, such was the history of ancient Greece. Greece was the home of the Arts, the sacred ground on which the worship of the Beautiful was carried to its perfection. Let those who have read the history of her decline and fall, who have perused the debasing works of her later years, tell us how music, painting, poetry, the arts, softened and debilitated and sensualized the nation's heart. Let them tell us how, when Greece's last and greatest man was warning in vain against the foe at her gates, and demanding a manlier and a more heroic disposition to sacrifice, that most polished and humanized. people, sunk in trade and sunk in pleasure, were squandering enormous sums upon their buildings and their esthetics, their processions and their people's palaces, till the flood came, and the liberties of Greece were trampled down for ever beneath the feet of the Macedonian Conqueror.

No! the change of a nation's heart is not to be effected by the infusion of a taste for artistic grace. "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.' Not Art, but the Cross of Christ. Simpler manners, purer lives; more self-denial; more earnest sympathy with the classes that lie below us; nothing short of that can lay the foundations of the Christianity which is to be hereafter, deep and broad.

On the other hand, we dissent from the views of those who would arrest such a project by petitions to the legislature on these grounds.

1. It is a return backwards to Judaism and Law. It may be quite true that, as we suspect, such non-observance of the day is not to the Lord: but only a scheme of mere pecuniary speculation. Nevertheless there is such a thing as a religious non-observance of the day: and we dare not "judge another man's servant: to his own master he standeth or falleth." We dare not assert the perpetual obligation of the sabbath, when an inspired apostle has declared it abrogated. We dare not refuse a public concession of that kind of recreation to the poor man which

VOL. II.

Q

the rich have long not hesitated to take in their sumptuous mansions and pleasure-grounds, unrebuked by the ministers of Christ, who seem touched to the quick only when the desecration of the sabbath is loud and vulgar. We cannot substitute a statute law for a repealed law of God. We may think, and we do, that there is much which may lead to dangerous consequences in this innovation: but we dare not treat it as a crime.

The second ground on which we are opposed to the ultra-rigour of sabbath observance, especially when it becomes coercive, is the danger of injuring the conscience. It is wisely taught by St. Paul that he who does anything with offence, i. e. with a feeling that it is wrong, does wrong. To him it is wrong, even though it be not wrong abstractedly. Therefore it is always dangerous to multiply restrictions and requirements beyond what is essential, because men feeling themselves hemmed in, break the artificial barrier, but breaking it with a sense of guilt, do thereby become hardened in conscience and prepared for transgression against commandments which are Divine and of eternal obligation. Hence it is that the criminal has so often in his confessions traced his deterioration in crime to the first step of breaking the sabbath-day and no doubt with accurate truth. But what shall we infer from this? Shall we infer, as is so often done upon the platform and in religious books, that it proves the everlasting obligation of the sabbath? Or shall we, with a far truer philosophy of the human soul, infer, in the language of St. Peter, that we have been laying on him "a yoke which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear ? in the language of St. Paul, that "the motions of sin were by the law," that the rigorous rule was itself the stimulating, moving cause of the sin: and that when the young man, worn out with his week's toil, first stole out into the fields to taste the fresh breath of a spring-day, he did it with a vague, secret sense of transgression, and that having as it were drawn his sword in defiance against the estabshed code of the religious world, he felt that from thence

forward there was for him no return, and so he became an outcast, his sword against every man, and every man's sword against him? I believe this to be the true account of the matter and believing it, I cannot but believe that the false Jewish notions of the sabbath-day which are prevalent have been exceedingly pernicious to the morals of the country.

Lastly, I remind you of the danger of mistaking a "positive" law for a moral one. The danger is that proportionably to the vehemence with which the law positive is enforced, the sacredness of moral laws is neglected. A positive law, in theological language, is a law laid down for special purposes, and corresponds with statute laws in things civil. Thus laws of quarantine and laws of excise depend for their force upon the will of the legislature, and when repealed are binding no more. But a moral law is one binding for ever, which a statute law may declare, but can neither make nor unmake.

Now when men are rigorous in the enforcement and reverence paid to laws positive, the tendency is to a corresponding indifference to the laws of eternal Right. The written supersedes in their hearts the moral. The mental history of the ancient Pharisees who observed the sabbath, and tithed mint, anise, and cummin, neglecting justice, mercy, and truth, is the history of a most dangerous but universal tendency of the human heart. And so, many a man whose heart swells with what he thinks pious horror when he sees the letter delivered or the train run upon the sabbath-day, can pass through the streets at night, undepressed and unshocked by the evidences of the widespreading profligacy which has eaten deep into his country's heart. And many a man who would gaze upon the domes of a crystal palace, rising above the trees, with somewhat of the same feeling with which he would look on a temple dedicated to Juggernaut, and who would fancy that something of the spirit of an ancient prophet was burning in his bosom, when his lips pronounced the Woe! Woe! of a coming doom, would sit calmly in a social circle of

English life, and scarcely feel uneasy in listening to its uncharitableness and its slanders: would hear without one throb of indignation, the common dastardly condemnation of the weak for sins which are venial in the strong would survey the relations of the rich and poor in this country, and remain calmly satisfied that there is nothing false in them, unbrotherly and wrong. No, my brethren! let us think clearly and strongly on this matter. It may be that God has a controversy with this people. It may be, as they say, that our Father will chasten us by the sword of the foreigner. But if He does, and if judgments are in store for our country, they will fall,-not because the correspondence of the land is carried on upon the sabbath-day: nor because Sunday trains are not arrested by the legis lature: nor because a public permission is given to the working-classes for a few hours' recreation on the day of rest but because we are selfish men; and because we prefer Pleasure to Duty, and Traffic to Honour; and because we love our party more than our Church, and our Church more than our Christianity; and our Christianity more than Truth, and ourselves more than all. These are the things that defile a nation; but the labour and the recreation of its Poor, these are not the things that defile a nation.

MARRIAGE AND CELIBACY

I CORINTHIANS vii. 29-31.-"But this I say, brethren, the time is short it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away."

THE subject of our exposition last Sunday was an essential portion of this chapter. It is our duty to examine

now the former and the latter portions of it. These portions are occupied entirely with the inspired apostolic decision upon this one question-the comparative advantages and merits of celibacy and marriage. One preliminary question, however, is to be discussed. How came it that such a question should be put at all to the apostle? In the church at Corinth there were two different sections of society; first there were those who had been introduced into the church through Judaism, and afterwards those who had been converted from different forms of heathenism. Now it is well known, that it was the tendency of Judaism highly to venerate the marriage state, and just in the same proportion to disparage that of celibacy, and to place those who led a single life under a stigma and disgrace. Those converts, therefore, entered into the Church of Christ carrying with them their old Jewish prejudices. On the other hand, many who had entered into the Christian Church had been.converted to Christianity from different forms of heathenism. Among these prevailed a tendency to the belief (which originated primarily in the oriental schools of philosophy) that the highest virtue consisted in the denial of all natural inclinations, and the suppression of all natural desires; and looking upon marriage on one side only, and that the lowest, they were tempted to consider it as low, earthly, carnal, and sensual. It was at this time that Christianity entered into the world, and while it added fresh dignity and significance to the marriage relationship, it at the same time shed a splendour and a glory upon the other state. The virginity of the mother of Our Lord -the solitary life of John the Baptist-the pure and solitary youth of Christ Himself—had thrown upon celibacy a meaning and dignity which it did not possess before. No marvel, therefore, that to men so educated and but half prepared for Christianity, practices like these should have become exaggerations; for it rarely happens that any right ideas can be given to the world without suffering exaggeration. Human nature progresses, the human mind goes on; but it is rarely in a straight line, almost always through