is the LORD's day, the Day of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, the first and not the last day of the Week; it is the weekly commemoration of the first great Easter Day, and of every succeeding Easter Day, just as every Friday is the weekly reminder of that awful first Good Friday, and of every succeeding Good Friday. Sabbath Day was a day of rest. was its chief characteristic.

The

That

The LORD'S

Day, Sunday, is a day of Praise and Thanksgiving, a day of Eucharist, it is a day to be early with our Blessed LORD at His Altar, and not to rest in bed: a day of worship, and loving greeting of the Risen LORD, but also a day of innocent recreation, a day to be looked forward to, and not to be dreaded for its gloom, and cheerlessness: a day of calm, and quietness, but also of unfeigned joy, and mirth. How can there be sadness, and darkness, and coldness, upon that day, the first day, the Day of Days, when GOD said, "Let there be light: and there was light... And the Evening and the Morning were the first Day!" How

ought we not to worship GOD with our acknowledgment of His Divine Presence in the Blessed Sacrament with our tribute of Light! Whether in the quiet early morning when all nature seems rising to greet the Risen LORD, or in the bright mid-day with Psalms, and Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, we welcome His Presence on His Altar Throne-always the central idea of the LORD's Day is Worship, the Worship of Praise and Thanksgiving! Still, it may happen that we are sometimes, by no fault (as far as we know) of our own, deprived of the brightness of our LORD's Day, and either His Presence is withdrawn from us, or we are pained at the irreverence and profanity with which it is treated, or we are disappointed and feel an aching void when we hear joyful services, with the very centre of that joy, absent,-in short we sometimes have our LORD's Day degraded to the "beggarly elements" of the Jewish Sabbath-then what are we to do? Then, indeed, we have need of patience, then we must make Him a Tabernacle in our hearts,

then our hearts must sing to Him in silence, and enjoy spiritual communion with Him, and we must wait on until He restore to us the Brightness of His Presence, when and how it seemeth to Him best. Alas! for the thousands whose only idea of the LORD's Day is the day of rest, not to say of idleness and drunkenness; and not less alas! for the many who turn it into a morose, dismal, unreal, not to say hypocritical Sabbath, a way of observing the LORD's Day which re-acts upon themselves, and often produces its effect upon their children, so as to make them hate or abuse the LORD's Day when they arrive at manhood. The Sabbath had its office until the LORD came, but when He came CHRIST was all in all, and "LORD even of the Sabbath day."

There shall indeed be another Sabbath, but that will be unconfined to one day, it shall exceed even a thousand years, as it is the Eternal Rest, or Sabbath, for the people of GOD!

SEVENTEENTH TUESDAY AFTER

TRINITY.

CXXII. On the right use of Sunday.

S. LUKE xiv. 1.-"JESUS went into the house of one of the Chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day."

WE should remark that the healing of the man who had the dropsy took place on the Sabbath day. This was the day the LORD specially chose to work many of His Miracles, and also the day on which His enemies "watched Him,' as it is written in the Gospel for this week, "It came to pass as JESUS went into the house of one of the Chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath day, that they watched Him." No less than seven times on the Sabbath day, that is, on the Saturday, our LORD healed the sick of different diseases, and not only so but on each of these occasions (one only perhaps excepted) the cure was wrought in a place of public resort, or at least in public, as for instance in a Synagogue, coming out of a Synagogue, at the pool of Bethesda,

orco ming out of the Temple, or at a public entertainment, as in this passage.

Moreover it is to be noticed that on more than on one of these occasions our Blessed LORD subjected Himself to be openly branded as a sinner by the Pharisees, that is by those who were reputed to be amongst the most religious of the Jewish sects. They say as S. John records of Him, after He had healed the man blind from his birth on the Sabbath day, "give GOD the praise: we know that this Man is a sinner : and, on a former occasion when our LORD healed the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath, it is written, "therefore did the Jews persecute JESUS, and sought to slay Him because He had done these things on the Sabbath day."

How passing wonderful it is that the very LORD of the Sabbath, the LORD of Mercy, should draw down upon Himself the insults, and the persecutions of the very men who were most zealous in the cause of religion, as they under