EVENING XI.

MANNER OF KEEPING THE SABBATH.

Mrs. M. We will continue our conversation, this evening, about the MANNER of keeping the Sabbath.

Private devotion, reading and meditation make a part of the duties to be performed on the Sabbath. They ought, especially, to follow the worship of the sanctuary. It will do us little good to join in public prayer and praise, and hear a sermon, if we go home and converse about improper subjects. Some persons, when they return from church, converse about the dress worn by their neighbors, or what acquaintances they may have met, or what strangers they have seen. Others spend a good deal of time in criticising the sermon. It is too long, or too short; too practical, or too doctrinal; too plain, or too elegant. They are rarely just suited. This habit of finding fault destroys all the good which public worship might do them or the younger members of the family. It is a bad practice, and ought to be abandoned at once.

Much better would it be for them to go to their closets, as soon as they reach home, and pray that what they have heard may do them good; that they may not forget it; that it may fit them to per

form duty, to bear trials, and to resist temptations during the week. If their minds are made serious by the public services, they ought to pray that their seriousness may continue; and if they have formed any good resolutions, that they may have grace to keep them.

Many persons would know little about the Bible if they had not leisure to study it on the Sabbath. Persons employed in factories, day-laborers and domestics, often cannot devote as much time to the study of the Bible as the good of their souls demands. George. But do not these persons need to rest on the Sabbath?

Mrs. M. One end of the Sabbath is rest to the body and the mind, and we ought not, when we can avoid it, to get weary and fatigued on the Sabbath. But persons who work with their bodies during the week, can rest while they read the Bible and think upon serious things. A change of labor is sometimes a refreshment. A man who is tired of one kind of exercise, can often engage in another without feeling weary. It is a pleasure for one who has been hard at study all day, to cut wood, or walk, or ride on horseback. So a man who has been wearied by bodily labor can exercise his mind without fatigue. And God has so made the mind, that when men are weary by thinking of one kind of subject, they can often think of another without feeling weary. A distinguished judge

in a neighboring state, used to study mathematics to refresh his mind when he had become weary with thinking about some difficult point of law.

There is a great variety in the duties of the Sabbath. Persons in health will not often be in danger of getting weary, if, when they are tired of one duty, they set about another.

I remember when most people had very few books to read on the Sabbath but the Bible. There were not many commentaries in the land, and there were among the common people no maps and books to explain the customs, and manners, and antiquities of the ancient nations, which are so often mentioned in the Bible. There was only here and there a religious biography, and there were no religious periodicals to give information about the kingdom of Christ. I suppose you wonder how we could contrive to make the Sabbath interesting and profitable.

It is strange that parents take so little pains to get books to aid their children in the study of the Bible. Scarcely any are so poor that they could not afford the trifling expense. When there were only a few books in the world, and those few were very dear, a learned man advised his friend to sell one of his eyes and buy a certain book, and read it with the other. Without any such sacrifice, parents might furnish their families with all the books necessary to explain the Bible.

Family instruction is another interesting duty on the Sabbath.

You may regard mankind as separated into three great divisions. One division is that of individuals. In this division every man stands by himself. The second division is that of families. This division includes several individuals who live together under the same roof. The third division is that of communities. This division is made up of a greater or less number of families living under the same government and laws.

The division into families was made in the garden of Eden, at the same time when God sanctified the Sabbath. The Sabbath is fitted to this division of men into families, and this division of men into families is fitted to the Sabbath. Like twin sisters, each aims to promote the welfare of the other.

It would be very strange, therefore, if when God gave the ten commandments, he had forgotten or overlooked this early division of mankind into families, which he had himself made. Nor did he forget or overlook it.

The first three commandments point out men's duties to God. The last five point out men's duties to the community in which they live. The fourth and fifth commandments point out, specially, men's duties as they live together in families. The fourth commandment, to be sure, includes social worship,

and the fifth includes the obedience which men owe to rulers as well as parents. The fourth commandment has been fitly called a "Family commandment." It mentions the parts of which fami lies are composed more particularly than any other commandment of the ten.

Except in the hours of public worship, the bonds which bind families together into communities are dissolved on the Sabbath. It is as if the world was made up only of families, and there was no other society. The duties which men owe their families are very important and interesting. If children are not governed in the family, they will grow up restless and ungovernable. If they are wicked and irreligious in the family, they will be apt to continue wicked and irreligious all their days. I suppose that a large part of those who become pious, become so while they are children, and living under their father's roof. If the duties of the family are neglected, societies cannot be happy, and prosperous, and moral.

God has devoted a considerable portion of one day in seven to these important duties of the family. On other days the laborer is obliged to be absent from his family a great deal, and sometimes he must be absent the whole week. The mother is occupied with many cares, and cannot instruct her children so much as she wishes; and the children, too, are often either abroad at work, or at school,