would diminish its own influence in the world. Only suppose every man to argue so, and the pernicious effects which would ensue must strike you forcibly. If the general rule, then, be against such a mode of reasoning, where do you find the ground of exception which prevents its application to your particular case?

The aggregate effect of example, supposing the conduct of the majority of British travellers to be consistent in this respect, would be very considerable; and it is in your power to contribute towards the constitution of such a majority. But, besides this, no one can calculate the extent of influence which his single example may have on the minds of others; nor the numbers that may be hardened by its evil, or meliorated by its beneficial tendency.

It is true, that, as the satirist observes,

Citiùs nos

Corrumpunt vitiorum exempla-magnis
Cùm subeunt animos auctoribus:

and this consideration increases your responsibility, in proportion to your rank and consequence in the eyes of society. But let the man who thinks there is no harm in his going to a play or a ball on Sunday evening in a foreign country, because he is but a private individual, consider the numerous witnesses of his conduct; most of whom probably must be aware, that, in so doing, he accommodates himself to laxer principles than those of the religion which he professes to maintain. Is it not more than a chance, that, amidst so many observers, some would have leisure and inclination to reason upon his conduct? And is it not most natural that they should draw inferences from it unfavourable to his principles? The fact, that they ought rather to blame his indifference to those principles, does not affect the argument: for, in matters of example, we must have regard to what men certainly will think, as well as to what they ought to think; for which reason the Apostle charges his disciples to "abstain from all appearance of evil.”

Imagine a young foreigner, of a thinking and inquiring cast of mind and a certain degree of tenderness of conscience, in whom some casual information has awakened doubts about the propriety of secularizing the Sabbath, and a consequent inclination to enter upon a course of inquiry likely to lead to the most interesting and profitable developments of religious truth. Imagine such an one to have been told, that in our favoured isle the question, "What is truth?" may find the readiest answer. With

what anxious interest would he mark the conduct of one of its inhabitants on that point? And how would it deaden that spirit of investigation, and nip in the very bud the fair promise of opening conviction, to see the Englishman more tenacious of the dress of his own country than of its principles; a chamelion, not in skin, but in heart: distinguishable from those around him in matters of perfect indifference, but naturalized in their errors, and glad to renounce those points of distinction, as burdensome restraints, which ought to be regarded as high national privileges! Surely the person whose example has such an effect, is guilty of “putting a stumbling-block in his brother's way," and "walks not charitably." A little more of St. Paul's tender consideration for the weakness of others would give this argument wonderful efficacy; and if it appear weak and ineffectual to you now, let me entreat you to lay the fault less upon the ground of the argument than upon your own deficiency in the feeling, which would convince you of its having a strength of which you are not at present aware.

I know that the same acute observer, to whom I have before referred, remarks, "qu'on n'offense jamais plus les hommes que lorsqu'on choque leurs

cérémonies et leurs usages. Cherchez à les opprimer, c'est quelquefois une preuve de l'estime que vous en faites; choquez leurs coutumes, c'est toujours une marque de mépris." But it is to be doubted, in spite of the weight of his authority, how far he is borne out in this assertion by positive experience; and, at any rate, the avoiding to give such offence can only apply to matters of moral indifference; and in those where important principles are concerned, such offence may be given in a spirit of the truest kindness. To reverse the observation of St. Augustin," Mutatio consuetudinis, quæ novitate perturbat, adjuvat utilitate." Montesquieu's maxim, if its truth be admitted, may serve to check an officious active interference with the usages of foreigners, during a temporary residence amongst them: but there is a wide difference between that and the passive and silent reproof of a marked abstinence from the error of their ways. It is also one thing to offend harmless prejudices by an obstinate adherence to rules as much honoured perhaps "in the breach, as the observance :" another, to make a Divine law veer to every varying gust of human caprice, and compromise unquestionable duties rather than be guilty of an offence against a fashion.

I am aware of the convenient and accommodating arguments with which you may easily be supplied on the other side of the question, and of the facility with which the mind adopts what is so agreeable to it, and construes a determination of the will into a conviction of the judgment. But I believe every one of these arguments, traced fairly to its source, will prove to be the manufacture of one or other of the three powerful enemies against whom you pledged yourself to fight manfully at your baptism. You may well say, in such a case,

Timeo Danäos et dona ferentes.

Not that they openly offer you these arguments as coming from themselves. They send them in neutral bottoms, or even under friendly flags. Charity, candour, moderation, humility, a spirit of accommodation, and twenty other vessels, are employed in this service; but if you would maintain your Christian privileges, such articles must be condemned as contraband, let them be sent as they will; and regarded with salutary suspicion, as not only coming from an enemy's country, but as stores to be used in the war which that enemy is carrying on against you. Only try such arguments by one simple principle, and see whether they will stand the test. Would they carry weight with you, if urged in favour of some acts of self-denial, instead of self-indulgence? Should you be led by a spirit of accommodation to adopt the fasts and penances of the Roman Catholic church? If not, beware how you attribute to such a spirit your adoption of its lax and unscriptural practices; for there is nothing that more certainly saps the integrity of the mind, than the habit it frequently has of practising these little half-delusions upon itself; nothing that hardens it more effectually, than this tampering with a false and sophistical plea; nothing that exposes it to greater contempt, than the assumption of a mask which every one can see through. "Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth." I suspect that this assertion of the Apostle is one of those passages of Scripture which has not unfrequently been used as a sedative to the conscience in these cases, though, rightly interpreted, it ought to be applied very differently. It is improperly construed, by people who argue thus, to mean, that so long as you are not aware that you are doing wrong, all is well. But it must be remembered, that this depends entirely on the question, whether your ignorance be necessary or wilful. St. Peter, speaking of those who scoffed at great and solemn truths, and "walked after their own lusts," says, "for this they willingly are ignorant of ;" and you may rest assured, that such ignorance will not serve as a plea

in remission of punishment at the bar of that God who "is not mocked." Before you apply this verse then to your own conduct, in shewing a disregard of the Sabbath, weigh the following arguments, which, for the sake of conciseness, will but embrace a part of what might be said on the subject.

Our Saviour has most expressly stated, in his sermon on the Mount, that he not only did not abrogate the Commandments, or diminish their force as a rule of life, but enjoined them, as such, upon his disciples in a far more spiritual and extensive interpretation than that in which they had been received by "them of old time." St. Paul, however strong, and necessarily so, in his statements of Christ's power and willingness to save those from the condemning force of the law who come unto God by him; however clear and decided in marking the supremacy of the covenant of grace; pointedly disowns the imputation of "making void the law by faith," and speaks of himself as being "not without law to God, but under the law to Christ." And St. James states, that "whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, is guilty of all. For," he goes on, "He that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill." And did not He who said, Do not kill," say also, "Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath-day?"-"Now," to use the Apostle's argument, "if thou kill not, yet if thou forget to keep holy the Sabbath-day, thou art become a transgressor of the law." For what is there in the nature of this particular commandment which makes its abrogation probable, or gives colour to the supposition that, distinguished as it was from the ceremonial law by its inscription on the table of stone by the finger of God, it is to vanish before the breath of fashion, or rise and fall in its claim on our obedience with the tide of popular opinion?

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Is it because it was a ratification of that solemn act of "blessing and sanctifying the seventh day," which took place at the creation of the world? Is it because to the remembrance of the work of creation the Christian is enabled to add that of redemption, and the glorious resurrection of Christ, by which it was completed? Have these works lost their interest in our eyes? Surely the release from Egyptian bondage, though effected by "a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm,' was a less cogent reason for keeping the Sabbath-day, than the release from the bondage of sin, effected by the Saviour of mankind. If "we, sinners of the Gentiles," have a hope that, from being a wild olive-tree," we are "grafted in among the true branches, and with them partake of the root and fatness of the olive-tree," becoming thereby Israelites in the Scriptural sense, why should we put away that which God declared to be "a perpetual covenant, a sign between him and the children of Israel for ever?" Which declaration he repeats by the prophet Ezekiel, saying, "I am the Lord your God: walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and hallow my Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God." Why, then, should not the solemn sanctifying of this holy day still distinguish the true worshippers of God, and be cherished by them as a sure token that he is the Lord their God?" Again there is nothing temporary or mutable in another of the grounds assigned in Scripture for this law: " Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest; that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thine handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed." The obviously merciful tendency of the institution of the Sabbath in this respect needs no comment. The heart cannot but own it with admiration. Would that our streets and roads bore less decided testimony to our bold, practical disregard of what we must admit to be so beautiful in theory! A Sabbathday's journey has long ceased to express the shortest that can be taken.

Could we make any probable calculation of the sum total of spiritual advantages, of domestic peace and comfort, and of mental and bodily refreshment, to which the Sabbath gives rise, as often as it recurs, even imperfectly observed as it is, we should find reason to own that it was indeed "made for man," made by Him whose counsels are wisdom, and whose commands are love. Would that this were not one of the many instances in which the obstinate folly of man frustrates the loving-kindness of his God!

The Almighty has manifested the importance which He himself attaches to the Sabbath in various ways. In the miracle by which a double portion of manna was given on the day before it: " See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days: abide ye every man in his place; let no man go out of his place on the seventh day." In the capital punishment inflicted on the Sabbath-breaker in the wilderness, by his express command. In his expostulations with his people on the subject: Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the Sabbath-day? Did not your fathers thus; and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath." In his threats: "But if ye will not hearken unto me, to hallow the Sabbath-day, and not to bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath-day; then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched." In his judgments: "The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised, in the indignation of his anger, the king and the priest.' And most particularly in his promises: "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath A delight, The holy of the Lord, Honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

I am aware that these quotations are only applicable by inference and analogy to the Christian Sabbath; but the inference is so direct, and the analogy so striking, that they must weigh with those whose object it is to know the mind and the will of God, and who look to the spirit of his law as the rule of their conduct. Had the observance of the Sabbath been simply a Jewish institution, it would have been abrogated with the rest of the ceremonial law; and we have reason to suppose, that, in such a case, it would never have found a place among those "ten words," nine of which are indisputably, as Archbishop Sharp says, " of everlasting obligation to all mankind all the world over." And, to use the same author's reasoning on the subject, Christ's "mentioning the Commandments so often, and laying stress upon them, and never once excepting or excluding the Fourth out of the number, is an argument that he meant that all these, as they stand in the decalogue, should have authority with us and certainly this is the sense of the Church of England worship; because in her public offices these Ten Commandments are given us as the measure of our duty both to God and man; and in the rehearsal of them, in the Sunday service, we do as much ask pardon of God for the breach of the Fourth Commandment, and implore his grace that we may keep it for the future, as we do with respect to any of the rest; and yet, if there be any thing at all required in the Fourth Commandment, it is the setting apart one day in seven to God's service." You cannot have joined in the use of our admirable Church service, without thus acknowledging your CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 379.

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subjection to this commandment as a rule of life; and if you have really prayed to God "to incline your heart to keep this law," you surely will not dispute your obligation so to do.

(To be continued.)

ON THE AUTHENTICITY AND TENDENCY OF THE NARRATIVE ENTITLED THE "SECOND SPIRA."

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

THERE is a popular tract, entitled "The Second Spira; or, a Narrative of the Death of the Hon. Francis Newport, Son of Lord Newport," which has appeared in numerous publications, and been extensively circulated, during many years, in a variety of forms. It was first published by the eccentric bookseller, John Dunton, in the reign of William the Third; and Dunton himself, in his Life and Errors," says that he received the materials from Richard Sault, a coadjutor with himself and Mr. Samuel Wesley, the father of the founder of Methodism, in the Athenian Mercury and other literary speculations; that Sault pretended to have received his materials from "a divine of the Church of England," from whose pen he pretends to give a letter and preface; that he refused to name the author, or to afford any authentic reference; that when the pretended Original Memoirs' came to be examined, they were found in Sault's hand-writing, but disguised; and, lastly, that Sault, being afflicted with religious melancholy, had contrived this terrible story, as a picture of his own state of mind. No man can have pleasure in believing that this painful narrative was true; and if not true, it fails in one great end of such a story, which is, not to drive sinners to despair, but to lead them to the Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness. A real narrative ought not to be garbled for the sake of eliciting a moral. If not edifying, there is no necessity for publishing it, and it ought not to be published; but if published, it should be published correctly. But in a professedly religious tale of fiction, or of fiction grounded upon fact, edification is the great object; and if this be not secured, the narrative had better not have been composed.

Now, in every view, the Narrative in question is exceptionable. It is exceptionable in pretending to be a record of facts, when it is not so, but, at the utmost, only a tale illustrative of them; and it is exceptionable in so constructing that tale as to lead to an unscriptural inference; as if there were no hope for the returning penitent, even at the eleventh hour; and as if the blood of Jesus Christ cannot cleanse the soul from the darkest stains of sin. True it is that God is a jealous God; true it is that whoso hardeneth his neck shall suddenly perish, and that without a remedy; but the very characteristic of such a state of mind is, that the remedy is wilfully rejected-not that God cannot, or will not, save. There are doubtless cases in which despair is a portion of the punishment; but even this despair is itself a sin, for it is grounded upon a distrust of God's mercies; and though such cases may exist, it is a very different thing to invent them for the sake of a supposed moral. It would not be for edification to invent a narrative of a condemned murderer dying in religious raptures, even if such a case may have occurred in fact; and why should it be really more edifying to invent a tale of the opposite kind,—of a man wishing to repent, but being unable; and desiring to apply to the blood of Christ, but feeling himself excluded on account of his past transgressions? Such a tale may terrify a trembling penitent, and perhaps harden an unbeliever, but it is not likely to frighten a sinner into repentance.

R.