And these, from their very nature, are of an obligation correspondingly universal and unchangeable, binding all men in all ages and lands. And such, we maintain, is the law of the Sabbath. It is made for man in the sense of being adapted to his constitution or nature, both as a boon to bless his life and as a law to rule his life. It is thus made for man alone of all the rational creatures, that is, the law is provincial and not imperial. This commandment is the only one of the Ten which is shown by the divine Lawgiver, in the very terms of the law, to be founded in the natural constitution of things.
Man lives in time.
In eternity there is no periodic repose. Through all its infinite duration, the wicked find no peace nor rest, while the ransomed of the Lord run and never weary, walk and never faint. But man is now the denizen of time. And there is therefore a peculiar fitness to his nature, a grandeur of appropriateness in the law which ordains, that in all ages and lands every son of man shall consecrate to God in a holy resting a stated portion of his time. This consecration of a part of our time is not a denial or evasion of the truth, that the whole of our time belongs to our Maker and Preserver.