we are writing these remarks, a change may have been effected in the Legislative enactments of the empire, that may materially af fect many of our social relations ;—without presuming to give an opinion upon the subject of the measure alluded to, one view we may venture on,—that should the legislature remove the political disabilities that now are connected with the profession of Popery, one check will we trust be removed to the Protestant exertions of a Protestant government, in the extension of religious education. In conceding so much of the civil rights to Roman Catholics as men, we trust that our Government will feel that they have recovered their own right of professing themselves to be Protestants; and that unshackled by fears, and undismayed by menances, which spring only from an hankering after place and its emoluments, they will support openly and manfully, but temperately, Protestant establishments and Protestant education. this subject, we quote the following just observations of our excellent author, whose little work abounds with many observations, and touches on many topics, that our deficiency of space prevents us from laying before our readers. On "If it shall be said, as it will be said by the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, that the adoption of this latter alternative would be to give a decided preference to the members of the Protestant churches, and to maintain and enforce by public authority, and even extend by new provisions, that interfere with the consciences of persons professing the Roman Catholic faith, the apprehension of which has already called forth frequent remonstrances from their clergy, the answer is threefold. “1. The question, therefore, is not respecting the introduction of a new condition to exclude the Roman Catholic population, but respecting a provision necessary to render the condition already existing efficacious and useful, by ensuring a compliance with it. "2. The preference given is not a preference of the Protestant people, to the people professing the Roman Catholic faith, but a preference of the Word of God, to the will and authority of man. "3. If it be still said, that it virtually is, and must be understood to be, the recognition of a Protestant principle, in contradiction to a Roman Catholic principle, the valid reply is that both principles cannot be supported, because they are directly opposed, and that in the selection of one of these principles, there is no room for hesitation on the part of the government; that the country is a Protestant country, and the king a Protestant king; that they have Protestant rights to maintain, and Protestant duties to discharge; among which the assertion of the paramount authority of Scripture, as the foundation of Protestant faith, is the highest and the most binding. "But farther, it is not the duty of the government to maintain a state of neutrality and indifference on a subject of such moment. As it cannot favor and seek to advance a religion which it considers to be false and dangerous, so it cannot, consistently, refuse its aid in supporting and extending that which it considers to be false and dangerous." We would close by quoting the following remarks, which harmonize perfectly with our often expressed opinion on the same subject;-let but the Government keep the agitator from the people, and by the blessing of God, the Bible and the school-master will be more than a match for the priest.* "The considerations which I would submit to their attention rest on the following assumption; that the continuance of the Roman Catholic religion in Ireland is one of the greatest evils, or, to express my sentiments more clearly, is the great and distinctive evil which afflicts and depresses that country, and is the parent of its many miseries, and that the most effectual means ought to be used for abating the dominion and power of that religion; secondly, that the influence of the political agitator and demagogue, superadded to the influence of the Church of Rome in Ireland, is a powerful instrument co-operating at present with the latter, in obstructing the moral progress and amelioration of the Irish peasantry, and that without this alliance, the power of each of those agents, over the people, would be comparatively ineffectual; and, thirdly, that till the country of Ireland is placed in a state of internal tranquillity and safety, a steady progress cannot be expected in the education of the peasantry, or in the means intended to effect that important end." RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATIONS. THE SABBATH. IN a preceding Number, we took occasion to offer a few remarks upon the perpetuity of the Sabbath, and to show on what grounds we accounted it to be as obligatory under the Christian as under the Levitical dispensation. It remains for us now to state briefly, somewhat concerning the manner of its observance. And here then, we would remark it to be a thing which has often struck us as strange and hard to be accounted for, the exceeding laxity of interpretation which many professing Christians allow in themselves, when explaining that portion of the Decalogue which refers to this sacred day of rest. For surely reason would • As a specimen of the Unity of the Church of Rome, we subjoin the following extract. "The state of the Roman Catholic schools in Glasgow suggests likewise some interesting considerations of the same nature. These schools have been established by a Society of Gentlemen, for the benefit of the children of the poorer classes of Irish, who are so numerous in that city, and they are supported in great measure from private contributions. They commenced about ten years ago, and they are now five in number, dispersed in the city and suburbs. According to the last Report of this Society, the number of scholars in attendance is 1409, of whom 635 were reading in the Scriptures. All the teachers are Roman Catholics. The Old and New Testament are both read, in the authorised Protestant version, by all the children capable of reading; and those who have attended regularly are permitted, when they finally quit the school, to take their Bibles with them. These schools have the countenance of the Roman Catholic priest, and the system is administered with entire cordiality." seem to indicate, that whatever canon of interpretation was adopted for the setting forth the real import of one part of the Ten Commandments, must be that which should apply to the other part of them also. Now this confessedly is admitted concerning nine of them—that they are to be observed according to the letter at the very least; there being required also an observance of them according to the spirit, still more close and searching. Thus it was, that the Redeemer himself stated the matter, when having alluded to certain of these precepts, "Thou shall not kill," "Thou shalt not commit adultery," he shows that there was a breadth and depth about them, extending to the thoughts of the heart and the words of the mouth, and which brought in many a person as guilty, who judging according to the bare and literal wording of these injunctions, could not strictly be pronounced transgressors. On what principle can it be shown then, that the remaining precept, concerning the Sabbath, forms a solitary exception to this system of explanation; and that in this particular clause of the code, the letter is more strict than the spirit? Is not this we ask, a most unwarrantable anomaly of exposition? We sincerely think it to be so. And therefore we would lay this down as a primary position concerning the Sabbath, that, we are bound to observe it according to the letter, as in the case of the other commandments of the two tables. This we are aware, will prove a very startling proposition to some of our readers;—and already we hear by anticipation, the objection-"Why this is to bring us back to the Jewish sabbath!" And so it is precisely. For our parts we must honestly confess, we can see no reason for ever departing from the Jewish mode. That the apostles made an alteration as to the day for the observance, we believe, and Scripture warrants the conclusion; that they made an alteration as to the manner of it, we do not believe, nor does Scripture insinuate even any thing of the kind. But it will be said, did not our Lord reprove the Jewish teachers for their austerity in the keeping of the seventh day, and when pronouncing in their ears that, "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," distinctly convey that a less rigid attention to the minutia of that season, would be expected of his followers, than was to be seen among the Jews? He conveyed, as we conceive, nothing of the kind. When, for instance, he expostulated with those who condemned him as a Sabbath-breaker, because he healed the sick woman in the synagogue, of her infirmity, his argument did not go to show, that the time was come when the Sabbath was to lose its strict hold, and that things might hence-forward be allowable, which hitherto had not been so on that day. Far from it. He calls on them to confess, that in extending mercy to a human being, he did no more than what they themselves allowed of in the case of the beasts of the field. The works of a necessary charity to the domestic animals, were admissible on the Sabbath, even under the Jewish economythis he presses on them, "Doth not each one of you on the Sab bath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering?" It was a principle which they recognised-but as the Saviour reasons, if in the case of the inferior creatures, how much more in the case of man. "And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day ?" There is no mention made or hint conveyed, of any approaching abrogation of this portion of the code of laws, but merely an appeal to reason, for the extension of that particular clause of exception attaching to the Sabbatical precept, to a subject which so eminently required such an extension. "I will have mercy and not sacrifice"-this was the great rule laid down by the Divine wisdom, for the determining all cases of difficulty, in which the observance of a legal injunction seemed to clash with human happiness. Christ condemned those partial judges, who would apply the principle to the animals which were their property, and by the death of which themselves would suffer loss, while they overlooked the pressing claims of a fellow-creature. A mitigation of the Sabbatical observance might be pleaded with effect in certain cases, even under the old dispensation, so it may under the present state of things; beyond this, we do not see how any person is warranted in proceeding-whatever God required of the Jew in this matter, assuredly will be looked for by him at the hands of the Christian. Such a Sabbath then, as was required of every member of that ancient Christian church, (for the Jewish was none other,) which looking forward to the coming Messiah, exclaimed, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord!" even such a Sabbath is required of every member of that present church of Christ, which looks back upon the Messiah as having tabernacled among us, and is enabled to say, "Mine eyes have seen thy salvation!" Whatever exceptions they might plead under the Divine sanction, so may we, and nothing farther. And this principle laid down, there is a test afforded at once, as to the propriety or impropriety of many things now debated among professors of the Gospel. Would they have been allowable under the ancient system? if not, neither are they now. We shall not here enlarge at all upon the manner in which this. view of Sabbath duty condemns at once, not only those more notorious violations of the commandment which disgrace the profane, but also those tolerated transgressions which custom seems to have sanctioned, even among professors. This is evident, that the precept if taken, (as we have argued it should be taken,) in its simple literality, implies a degree of abstinence from those secular concerns which form the business or the pleasure of the other days of the week, not ordinarily seen among the followers of Jesus in the present æra. But when we add to this, that this commandment about the Sabbath admits of a spiritual extension of its demands, as do the other commandments; that there is a sense too concerning it, in which though all that the mere words require were fulfilled, yet that the substance of a sincere and ade. quate observance might never be presented; if we look at the matter in this point of view, the subject assumes a degree of importance to which nothing perhaps in the entire range of the believer's duty is of superior magnitude. This spirituality of the precept, is to be found enjoined in the fifty-eighth chapter of the prophet Isaiah, "If thou turn away thine foot from the Sabbath, from doing my pleasure on thy holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words." Clearly this embraces a species of devotedness not implied apparently in the words which we find written in the Decalogue,-what a day then should the Sabbath be, to those who would keep it aright, What a perfect exclusion of all earthly concerns-what a holy communion with the unseen realities of the world to come-what a waiting upon God in the singleness of a full abstraction from the things of time and sense, is involved in the right observance of the Lord's day of rest. It may be observed, that in proportion as duties are weighty, so the blessings connected with their fulfilment are great and abundant. In few things has this been more perceptible, than in the matter of the Sabbath. Who was there ever, that set himself with his whole heart upon the right keeping of this sacred day, that did not find a return of grace and spiritual strength, beyond what his most ardent expectations could have divined. The Sabbaths rightly kept, are the glory of the church, and the blessedness of individuals, "The sundays of man's life, On Sunday, heaven's gate stands ope, More plentiful than hope.” So sang one who knew well how to cultivate them. So we are persuaded will all, who do the same. Even in this life, the careful Christian shall reap the rich reward of his diligence; tasting by blessed anticipation, the sweetness of that coming season, when having laid aside for ever the things which now disturb and distract him, he shall be enabled to devote the whole contemplations of his soul, to the perfections of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in that "rest which remaineth for the people of God." ON NEW LIGHT. WHAT is this 66 new light" in religion about which I hear so much now? asked an ignorant, but enquiring youth, to an efficient |