The Lord's day, far from being the Sabbath, is the first day of the week, not the seventh, and rests on quite different foundations. When you come to test the would-be teachers of the law, their zeal is soon seen to break down in practice; and they are easily convicted of introducing changes and modifications in order to suit the time, country, climate, and people; that is, to suit themselves in the things of God. This theory of mitigation, and of a flexible law, can never stand a fair scrutiny. On the other hand, those who hold that the Lord's day is a new thing, in no way connected either with. creation or with the law, are under no difficulty, because they see that the same God who sanctified the Sabbath originally, and gave the law to Israel, was pleased to put special honor on the first day of the week, in commemoration of redemption accomplished in the death and resurrection of Christ; but they see it as having its own proper character, and not as confounded with the Sabbath. The Lord's day calls for no mere rest which you may share with your ox or your ass; and so far from its due honor consisting chiefly in bodily quiet, I believe that if a Christian were on that day enabled to walk twenty Sabbath-days' journeys on special services for the Lord, he would not only be at liberty to do that work, but it would be most acceptable to the Lord. Each day is separated from other days by divine authority; but in other respects they differ as decidedly as law from grace, or the old creation from the new.
There is a peculiar solemnity about the Lord's supper, as about the Lord's day. He who pretends that the Lord's day is the Sabbath, and that the Lord's supper resembles a Jewish ordinance, does not know what the two most characteristic Christian institutions mean. The Lord's day differs from every other day, the day of grace and resurrection (the Sabbath being the token of creation and of law). So with the Lord's supper; in it the Lord sets before the believer his perfect deliverance, the blood and the broken body of Christ, and gives the witness to his soul that he is free from all condemnation.