longation of human life itself, depends on the like alternation of toil and repose. The springs of pleasure are thus augmented and purified. The satiety, the sameness, the weariness, the uniformity of human life is broken; and a blessed, hallowed period for religion is interposed. The interval between these seasons is neither so distant as to be ineffectual to its end, nor so near as to injure the real interests of our worldly callings-but, like every thing else in God's revelation, unites the prosperity of the soul with the highest welfare of the body and concerns of man.

How great, then, is the importance of every one's falling in with the designs of this institution! Can any one estimate adequately the soul, eternity, heaven and hell, God, Christ, salvation, pardon, hope, happinessthe whole intellectual, moral, and religious welfare of man, formed after his Creator's image, fallen from it by sin, called to the renovation of it by the blessings and duties of the Christian Sabbath!

See man

Look at the evils of the contrary abuse. sunk from his real honours into the rank of the brute; see him lost in appetite, vice, lust, pride, carelessness, with nothing to redeem, nothing to call him back, nothing to restore; the Spirit of God departed from him; a reprobate sense possessing and weighing down his soul. The main difference between heathen and Christian nations is the recurrence and due observation of a Sabbath. The violation of this day in Christian countries, is a brand upon the forehead of nominal religion. See the Sabbath-breaker opening his shop, writing his letters, preparing his accounts see him entering his office; see him imposing upon his servants, his clerks, his dependents, the yoke of unpermitted and unholy labour. Observe him in languid carelessness, idling away the morning hours, and disgracing, by excess and worldly company, the evening. Notice the effect upon his own mind and habits. He boasts of his liberty, his freedom from superstitious fears, his superiority to ordinary prejudices. But he is the slave of covetousness, of pride, of appetite. The violation of the

Sabbath draws with it the neglect of all other religious duties-prayer, family religion, reading of the Scriptures. Misery follows in the train. In vain he blusters, and protests and affects independence: the moral judgments of the Almighty overtake him-the selfish, earthly creature, vegetating rather than living, is lost in shifting speculations; diffuses mischief all around; neglects and corrupts his children and servants; has no corrective to his jealous and irritated temper, no cordial to his drooping spirits, no prospects to enliven the future, no friend, no Saviour to relieve him as to the past. The Sunday journal, the Sunday festival, the Sunday amusements, fail to please. He sinks into lifeless despondency, or frets with infuriated malice-all his noble capacities perverted, because his God has been contemned, and the day of religion abused.

And mark his inhumanity and want of sympathy with the feelings and miseries of his dependants, the poor, the weak, the depressed. He robs the vast mass of the human family of one of the best boons of heaven; he compels them to work when God allowed them to repose; he chains down in vice and ignorance three-fourths of mankind; he raises a barrier against the entrance of light, purity, salvation; he tends by his example to abolish Christianity, to deny God, to erect the vain idol of an imaginary deity, and to sink at last into a practical Atheism.

III. But we proceed to show, that the due observation of the Lord's day includes ALL THE APPLICATION OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, and, in fact, its preservation in the world; whilst the violation of it goes to the exactly contrary effect. For what is the Christian religion, without its means of instruction and grace? What is Christianity without the Bible, without the ministry of God's word, without meditation and prayer, without the education of children, without the familiar communication of truth to the poor and ignorant? And when and how are these means to be put into effect, if the day appointed for that very purpose is desecrated, dishonoured, lost?

And what is the application of Christianity by all these methods, but the grand point, the main end of that divine revelation? It was given to be made known, to be applied to the conscience of every human being. It was given to be an universal religion. It was given, not to be a theory in the schools of philosophy, but to be a grand practical blessing to the hearts and lives of men. In this view, it stands distinct from the Levitical dispensation, and in contrast with all the idolatries of the heathen superstitions. It is not a limited design of separating a single family or nation; but it extends itself to the whole world-the partition-wall broken down-the distinctions of tongue, and clime, and people abolished— the ceremonial observances swept away-and all mankind the common objects of religious care.

Much less is it the confused and groundless theory of a superstitious idolatry, ignorant of all the principles of truth, wasting itself in interminable controversies, confined to the schools of learning as to its real tenets, and leaving the multitude in the gloom of a cruel and debasing bondage. No; Christianity flows from the Father of lights; it brings plain, interesting, all-important truth to man. It reveals a scheme of infinite love for the recovery of apostate, sinful creatures, in the death of the eternal Son of God. It promises the divine and effectual grace of the Holy Spirit. It erects a system of means, in which man is to wait upon God, and where God has promised to communicate himself to man. These means, simple, unostentatious, easy to be employed, are the great medium between the infinite God and his feeble creature. As the substratum of all these methods of instruction the HOLY SABBATH is constituted-this gives the time, the space, the monitory call, the privilege, the motive for the employment of them.

There stands Christianity-it speaks in the Bible, the inspired book of God, "able to make man wise unto salvation," which every one is bound to read, to search, to meditate upon. But when? On the day of the Bible, the day which the very first history in its pages institutes and hallows. Blot out the Sabbath; you make the regu

lar and deliberate study of the Scriptures impossible to the vast body of mankind.

Christianity stands forth-she designates an order of men to preach her blessed tidings-she institutes the ministry of the word-she bids the faithful pastor, evangelist, and ambassador of grace, go into all the world, preach the fall and recovery of man, take out truth from the written volume and apply it to the conscience, open it to the understanding, press it upon the heart of man. There stands the minister of Christ, as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." He vindicates truth, he clears it from the subterfuges of human folly, he sets forth its genuine importance. Then he convokes the assemblies of men, he calls them to repentance and faith, he forms them into churches; he meets them for the purposes of edification, exhortation, comfort. But when is all this to be done? Who is to form the agreement for the time and place of meeting? What is to oblige, invite, persuade men? Who is to suspend the ordinary business of life, and make it possible for the great body of mankind to assist at religious convocations ? The HOLY CHRISTIAN SABBATH. Without the Sabbath, all is confusion, distraction, defeat. You have no regular public ministry, no time for calm attention to the preaching of the word, no place for the grand instrument of awakening souls, and building up the Christian temple.

But public and private supplication, confession, giving of thanks, intercession, are essential to the application of Christianity. What is religion without prayer? Where is the profession of the faith of Christ, without holy supplication, in assembled bodies, to seek the divine favour, to honour the divine majesty, to avow our dependance on the divine grace? How are the blessings of revelation to be obtained, without that humble suit and united petition, to which God has been pleased to attach them ? The Sabbath abolished, neglected, dishonoured; prayer is blotted out from the earth; Christianity is paralysed; the humility of heart which distinguishes the faith of the Bible from all other creeds, is no more. For it is the

day of rest which gives time for prayer, which calls to public and private and domestic devotion, which shuts out the world, and brings man before the presence of his God.

And when, again, are the blessed sacraments of Christ's religion to be administered, if the Christian Sabbath be obliterated, which is destined for the celebration of them, and without which they can never be decently and devoutly attended? These are the external symbols and pledges of the redeeming blood and sanctifying Spirit of our Lord. They are the peculiar channels and means of grace. They follow the Bible, the ministry of the word, and prayer. They are the bond of communion between Christians and their divine Head. They constitute a grand branch of the profession of the Christian religion. But they stand upon the platform of the Sabbath, and expire with its fall.

And what will become of the education of children, and the familiar communication of truth to the vast body of the poor and ignorant, without a time and space for those duties, banked in from the wild waste of worldly cares? Look at your Sunday schools, your infant schools, your adult schools, your catechetical lectures, your books and tracts for the young and the poorer classes. Look at the open spot left by the Sabbath for the erection of this spiritual machinery, and for its easy operation and blessed fruits. Abolish the Lord's day, and you abolish the education of the population, the inculcation of primary truth, the diffusion of religious knowledge, the amelioration and safe elevation in the scale of intellectual and moral being, of the very classes for whom the Saviour came, to whom he declared his gospel to be best adapted, and whose welfare, temporal and spiritual, he especially consulted.

Consider, then, the unspeakable obligation of the Sabbath. On the means enumerated no one will dispute that the application of Christianity depends-to these means God promises his blessing-in and by these means the Holy Spirit works. We do not speak too strongly when we assert that the efficacy of our