Father's right hand. John recollected that touching scene when he rose from the Mount of Olives, and a cloud received him out of sight; and he may have recollected the voice that came from the cloud, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye here gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." John also recollected the prophecy of our Lord, recorded in Matthew xxiv., and he saw that prophecy in all the terrible results of its performance to the very letter. John had seen the Roman eagle spread its wings where the cherubim were; he had beheld the firebrands of Cæsar's soldiers blazing amid the carved work of the sanctuary of God; he had viewed the slaughter of the Jews-so great that the streets ran with their blood; and he had seen the refugees who escaped from Jerusalem dispersed and scattered through every land-evidences to heaven and earth of the faithfulness of the promises and the reality of the threats of God. John, too, had seen the arch raised by Vespasian to commemorate the destruction of the Jews, and the remains of which are to be seen to this day, on which is represented the shewbread and the seven candlesticks. He had seen also the coins that were struck, some of which are still preserved in the collections of numismatologists, on which Judah is represented seated under a palm-tree, weeping, with these words. written beneath "Sudea Capta"-struck to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem. And thus the very wrecks of Jerusalem reveal the record, "Thy word is truth;" and the pæans and shouts of victory raised by Cæsar's soldiers announced that Jesus was the Messiah. All this John had witnessed, but from the midst of it he saw issuing a new and glorious power, despised by the great and the wise of mankind, which was destined to transform the world by its touch, to prevail against the craft of Satan, against the wiles of statesmen, against the wisdom of philosophy, against the policy of princes, against the power of Roman eloquence, and not to rest in its progress till the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. John saw this mighty principle-the Gospel of Truth-prevailing in various lands, erecting churches in Thessalonica, in Berea, in Athens, in Derbe, in Antioch, in Jerusalem,

in Syria, in Galatia, in Ephesus; leavening all classes with its principles, and snatching trophies from Cæsar's household, and the vine that was sown in Jerusalem beginning to twine its tendrils around the sceptre and add new beauty and new glory to the diadem of all the Cæsars. John saw that "mustard-tree," a sapling that was destined to grow and spread till it overshadowed the whole earth; and that spring from the Rock which was to prove a mighty stream, and to go forth and water every region of the world, till it merged in the everlasting and glorious. main. John saw, too, what he must have regarded with great grief, intermingling tares of error and of superstition blending with Christian truth; heathen ceremonies grafted upon the simplicity of Christian worship; the humble fishermen of Galilee hoping to be the lords, and labouring to become the despots of the world; dark shadows settling on that clear horizon; weeds bursting into vitality and mingling with that auspicious field; a small cloud, "like a man's hand," spreading and expanding till it threatened to cover the whole canopy of heaven; and the seed of that upas-tree sown, under whose baneful influence all have perished that have placed themselves beneath it, and the consumption and destruction of which has been the desire and the prayer of, as it has been the promise given to, all the people. of God.

Thus then John looked upon the past, and he saw the fulfilment of God's threatenings in the destruction of Jerusalem. He looked around at the present, and saw the spread of the gospel of Jesus; he looked into the future, and saw looming into view that dark superstition which Paul described when he said, "The mystery of iniquity doth already work." After having thus then looked at the position of John, and at what one may suppose to have been John's views and feelings, let me explain what is meant by the phraseology here employed, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." I conceive that this means simply, “I was under the influence and special direction of the Spirit of God." Thus in the Gospel of Mark we read of one "who had an unclean spirit;" but in the original it is "in an unclean spirit," plainly showing that the expression "in an unclean spirit" is equivalent to being under the influence of an unclean spirit; and

the parallel expression in the Apocalypse, "I was in the Spirit," plainly signifies, "I was under the influence of the Holy Spirit of God." I do not think, therefore, that such explanations as have been given by some commentators are correct, that John was in a trance, or an ecstasy, however well meant these expositions may be. As far as the word ecstasy means "being out of self," it may be properly used, for John was in the Spirit, and, in that sense, not in himself; he was under the special inspiration and guidance of the Spirit of God. Scenes too bright to be borne by man, prospects of grandeur and beauty which man could not foresee, shadows which man dared not forebode, were all to be unfolded and made conspicuous to the mind of John, and it needed that supernatural unction to enable and prepare him to behold and bear supernatural scenes. John was "in the Spirit" on a special day" on the Lord's day." I wish to allude to this circumstance particularly, because it is evidence of a great truth that some are disposed to deny, that the Sabbath was observed by apostolic precept and apostolic example, not upon the seventh but upon the first day of the week. The word occurs in several passages of the New Testament. The change began as early as the day of Pentecost, when we read that the apostles were met together "on the first day of the week," and the Spirit of God was poured out upon them. We find it mentioned that the disciples met together on the first day of the week "to break bread," i. e. to communicate. Again, we have Paul incidentally telling the Corinthians to lay aside, or make their collections for the poor on "the first day of the week," language which implies that it was a well known day, disputed by none, but observed and hallowed by all. So we read here in the very commencement of the Apocalypse, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day," meaning that day which was consecrated to the worship and service especially of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is alleged, however, that the fourth commandment makes the seventh day obligatory. I answer, it makes obligatory two things, the moral part, or a seventh portion of our time; the ceremonial part, or a recurring seventh day on which to hallow that seventh portion of time. What is moral is permanent as the stars; what is ceremonial is changeable as the clouds that pass over them. The moral part

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of that commandment may be observed in every country, age, and clime; the ceremonial part cannot be observed precisely at the same moment in every part of the globe. For instance, our Sunday here is not Sunday at the antipodes. The farther east you go the earlier the day begins; so that persons who are not noting very carefully the chronology, and making allowance for change of longitude, will in sailing from the antipodes lose a day, or miscalculate the days of the week. It is plain, therefore, that if the seventh day was obligatory, that day which was the seventh to the Jew could not be that period which would be the seventh day to the inhabitant of the other side of the globe. But the kingdom of God is not meat, nor drink, nor ceremony, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." The moral part of the commandment therefore, requiring a seventh portion of our time, is obligatory everywhere; the ceremonial part is to be fixed by apostolic precedent, or by the exact and indisputable prescription of God. We find that immediately after the resurrection of Jesus, converts from the Jewish religion observed both the Saturday and the Sunday, though the Gentile converts unanimously observed only the first day of the week. Let me quote from the earliest Christian writers one or two short illustrations of this. I do not quote the Fathers as a Tractarian would quote them, as if they formed part of our rule of faith, or as if their expositions of the Bible were equal to those even of a Matthew Henry, a Scott, a Barnes, or any other intelligent commentator. The fact is, we can quote from the Fathers sentiments and explanations contradictory of each other. As expositors of the Scripture they are excedingly imperfect; as witnesses of facts their testimony is most invaluable. We care not whether it be Julian the Apostate, or Porphyry, or Justin Martyr that witnesses to a fact; we accept the fact on competent testimony. We reject for several reasons their expositions of the Scripture. Justin Martyr, who wrote forty years after John, but who was born before John died, makes the following remark: "On the day called Sunday all Christians meet together for religious worship." (Apology, c. ix. 17.) The word apology, I may add, is used in an ecclesiastical sense, and means a defence; thus Watson's Apology does not mean that the Bible needs a

modern apology, but simply a defence or vindication. So Justin. Martyr, in vindicating the Christians to the emperor, gives an account of their principles and ceremonies. Another of the five apostolic Fathers says, "We observed the eighth day with gladness," i. e. the first day of the week, on which Jesus rose from the dead. Another Father, who wrote about one hundred years after the death of John, says, "We celebrate Sunday as a joyful day, and on that day we think it wrong to fast or to kneel in prayer: we always stand in prayer on the Lord's day." And Ignatius, who, as I told you last Lord's-day evening, was the friend and disciple of John, thus writes, "Let every one who loves Christ keep holy the Lord's day." These are evidences, then, that this day was, by the example of our Lord, and by the precedent of the apostles, acquiesced in as the Christian Sabbath, and from that day to this has been revered and treated as such. There is far more involved in the hallowing of the Sabbath than many are disposed to allow. The enemies of the Christian faith have failed to extirpate Christianity from the world. They have signally failed to invalidate the claims of the Bible to be a communication from God; they therefore try now to degrade and blot out and expunge the Sabbath from the veneration of saints and from the fear of sinners. They do so, not by fagot and flame, which, thanks be to God, in our free land, they cannot employ; nor yet by argument, and logic, and fact, which, thanks to the same God for the reason he has given us, they cannot successfully employ; they labour to extinguish the Sabbath by other and more seductive means-by the railway, the steamboat, the tea gardens, the various scenes of folly, and dissipation, and amusement, and profit in the neighbourhood of a great metropolis. It is a painful fact that more people leave London on Sunday morning by the rail and the steamboat than meet together in all the churches and chapels that are in it. Sad it is that God in his providence should have given us such instruments of rapid communication, and instead of making the additional time they leave us a reason for hallowing his Sabbath, we turn them into reasons for greater desecration of it. It was not Voltaire alone that deluged Paris with atheism, but the extinction of its Sabbaths before he was born. It was not Frederic the Great that destroyed