ability to perform, or it were not infinite,) unmindful of these principles, some have dreamt of I know not what figures and allegories in that part of the Mosaic history which describes the creation as a work performed in time and distributed into parts; imagining, in opposition to the letter of the story, that the whole must have been instantaneously accomplished. Others, with more discernment, have suspected, that when once the chaos was produced and the elements invested with their qualities, physical causes, which work their effect in time, were in some measure concerned in the progress of the business; the Divine power acting only at intervals, for certain purposes to which physical causes were insufficient, such as the division of the general chaos into distinct globes and systems, and the formation of the first plants and animals. These notions are indeed perfectly consistent with sound philosophy; nor am I aware that they are in any way repugnant to the sacred history: But from these principles a conclusion has too hastily been drawn, that a week would be too short time for physical causes to accomplish their part of the business; and it has been imagined that a day must be used figuratively in the history of the creation to denote at

least a thousand years, or perhaps a longer period.

In what manner the creation was conducted, is a question about a fact; and, like all questions about facts, must be determined, not by theory, but by testimony; and if no testimony were extant, the fact must remain uncertain. But the testimony of the sacred historian is peremptory and explicit. No expressions could be found in any language to describe a gradual progress of the work for six successive days, and the completion of it on the sixth, in the literal and common sense of the word " day," more definite and unequivocal than those employed by Moses; and they who seek or admit figurative expositions of such expressions as these seem to be not sufficiently aware that it is one thing to write a history and quite another to com

pose riddles. The expressions in which Moses describes the days of the creation, literally rendered, are these: When he has described the first day's work, he says "And there was morning and there was evening, one day;" when he has described the second day's work, "There was morning and there was evening, a second day;" when he has described the third day's work, "There was evening and there was morning,

a third day." Thus, in the progress of his narrative, at the end of each day's work, he counts up the days which had passed off from the beginning of the business; and, to obviate all doubt what portion of time he meant to denote by the appellation of " a day," he describes each day of which the mention occurs as consisting of one evening and one morning, or, as the Hebrew words literally import, of the decay of light and the return of it. By what description could the word "day" be more expressly limited to its literal and common meaning, as denoting that portion of time which is measured and consumed by the earth's revolution on her axis? That this revolution was performed in the same space of time in the beginning of the world as now, I would not over confidently affirm: But we are not at present concerned in the resolution of that question; a day, whatever was its space, was still the same thing in nature, a portion of time measured by the same motion, divisible into the same seasons of morning and noon, evening and midnight, and making the like part of longer portions of time measured by other motions. day was itself marked by the vicissitudes of darkness and light; and so many times repeated, it made a month; and so many times

The

more, a year. For six such days God was making the heaven and the earth, the sea, and all that therein is; and rested on the seventh day. This fact, clearly established by the sacred writer's testimony, in the literal meaning of these plain words, abundantly evinces the perpetual importance and propriety of consecrating one day in seven to the public worship of the Creator.

I say one day in seven. In the first ages of the world, the creation of the world was the benefaction by which God was principally known, and for which he was chiefly to be worshipped. The Jews, in their religious assemblies, had to commemorate other blessings the political creation of their nation out of Abraham's family, and their deliverance from the Egyptian bondage. We Christians have to commemorate, beside the common benefit of the creation, the transcendent blessing of our redemption — our new creation to the hope of everlasting life, of which our Lord's resurrection to life on the first day of the week is a sure pledge and evidence. You see, therefore, that the Sabbath, in the progress of ages, hath acquired new ends, by new manifestations of the Divine mercy; and these new ends justify correspondent alterations of the original

institution. It has been imagined that a change was made of the original day by Moses,

that the Sabbath was transferred by him from the day on which it had been originally kept in the patriarchal ages, to that on which the Israelites left Egypt. The conjecture is not unnatural; but it is, in my judgment, a mere conjecture, of which the sacred history affords neither proof nor confutation. This, however, is certain, that upon our Lord's resurrection, the Sabbath was transferred, in memory of that event, the great foundation of the Christian's hopes, from the last to the first day of the week. The alteration seems to have been made by the authority of the apostles, and to have taken place on the very day on which our Lord arose; for on that day the apostles were assembled, and on that day se'nnight we find them assembled again. The celebration of these two first Sundays was honoured with our Lord's own presence. It was perhaps to set a mark of distinction upon this day in particular, that the intervening week passed off, as it should seem, without any repetition of his first visit to the eleven apostles. From that time, the Sunday was the constant Sabbath of the primitive church. The Christian therefore who devoutly sanctifies one day in seven, although it