instead of one in seven, the experiment proved that the amount of productive labour was diminished by the change. It has been well ascertained that the proceeds of labour would, in any considerable period of time, be greater from six days in the week, than from the whole seven. "If there were two contiguous nations, the one of which observed a day of rest, and the other laboured every day in the year, and if in industry and the number of labourers they were equal, there can be little doubt that the profits of the former would be considerably greater than those of the latter." Facts might be greatly multiplied to show that the repose of the Sabbath is indispensable to the most healthful and vigorous exercise of the physical powers. In nothing has the Creator more obviously accommodated his government to the physical constitution of man, than in prescribing this weekly rest. Just as a beast of burden breaks down prematurely, that is worked every day in the year, will the powers of human life prematurely run down, if the toil of the week is not succeeded by the repose of the Sabbath. In an inquiry made a few years since before a committee of the British House of Commons in relation to the influences of the Sabbath, an eminent physician, who had practised between thirty and forty years, testified, that "men of every class who are occupied six days in the week, would in the course of life be gainers by abstaining from labour on the seventh." The Sabbath has been emphatically called "the working

man's friend." Who can doubt, that one motive which influenced its great Author to institute it was compassion to the poor? A manufacturing, an agricultural, or even a commercial community, deprived of the Sabbath, could not live out half its days. One reason why princes, ministers of state, and seamen do not live so long as other men, is, that they have no weekly day of rest. A few short years of vigorous, excited exertion, without the weekly intervention of this repose, and both body and mind lose their nerve and sinew. And there is nothing to refresh their languor and invigorate their debility, but rest. The mind can no more bear to be over-worked, than the body. It becomes oppressed and burdened, and sinks in depression, and not unfrequently from its mere neglect of this day of rest, wanders in derangement. The truest economy of human life will be found in the provisions of that day of mercy, which, for the time being, shuts out the contrivance, care, perplexity, and responsibility of business, and invites! to calm repose..

It may be seriously doubted whether this distinct design of the Sabbatical institution is sufficiently considered. It is a day of rest. No man has the warrant from heaven to make it a day of labour, except those who minister at the altar. "The priests under the law profane the Sabbath and are blameless." No, the Sabbath is not appreciated as a day of rest. There was no day in Paradise to be compared with that "seventh day which God

blessed and sanctified, because that in it he rested from all his work which he created and made." Light was never more beautiful, nor sounds more melodious, than when Eden was first lighted by the dawn of this day of rest, and listened to the voice that blessed the first-born Sabbath. Nor was the benediction recalled after ungrateful man had disobeyed his Maker. Man was cursed, and made to toil in the sweat of his brow; woman was cursed, and her sorrows multiplied; the ground was cursed, and doomed to thorns; but no curse alighted on this day of rest. "The Sabbath was made for man." Amid the deep depression and unmingled darkness of the fall, this day still remained, the unobscured, unequivocal pledge of some distant, though then unknown good.

The Sabbath may also be regarded as pre-eminently the means of intellectual advancement. It is worthy of remark that the original law ordaining the Sabbath, contains no explicit injunction that it be a day of religious observances, unless it be contained in the phraseology which requires that it be kept holy. Nor is there any injunction in relation to the religious exercises of the day in the Old Testament, except that a burnt offering of two lambs were on that day added to the morning and evening sacrifices. Reason itself teaches us that if God has reserved one day in seven as a sacred rest, that portions of it at least ought to be occupied in religious services. Hence we find, that under the old dispensation, God set apart the

entire tribe of Levi, one twelfth of the Hebrew nation, not merely to perform the rites and sacrifices which the ritual enjoined, but to diffuse over the great mass of the people religious and moral instruction. In sketching the characters and fortunes of the different tribes, their great Lawgiver says, "Of Levi, let thy Urim and thy Thummim be with thy holy one; they have observed thy word and kept thy covenant; they shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law." To them was the custody of the sacred volume consigned, with the ark of the covenant; and they were required to gather the people together periodically, men, women, and children, and the stranger within their gates, that they may hear, and learn, and fear the Lord their God, and observe to do all the words of his law." Hence, when Nehemiah assembled the Jews, after their return from the captivity, and restored their religious worship, "Ezra the scribe brought the book of the law before the congregation, and read therein from morning until mid-day. So they read in the book of the law distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused the people to understand the reading." They analysed the word of God, and expounded it at large, and showed its import and meaning. And the same usage prevailed under the New Testament. The Saviour established an order of men, whose peculiar office and employment were to teach and instruct the people in the great truths and duties of a supernatural revelation; to call up

their attention; to give them just apprehensions of what God has revealed, and to enforce upon them the obligations of his gospel. If you turn to the New Testament, you will find that this service was performed, regularly and specially, on each returning Lord's-day. And this is one of the great peculiarities of revealed religion, and one of the distinguished blessings of the Sabbath. Ministers of religion are indeed found in every community, pagan as well as Christian. Wherever idols are worshipped, there are altars and priests; there are soothsayers and diviners. But their duties are confined to the performance of religious ceremonies. They never attempt the religious and moral instruction of the great mass of the people, and never desire it. But the Sabbath of the Scriptures is devoted to different ends. In the performance of its appropriate duties in Christian lands, every man becomes a learner, and derives his instructions from the best and most important sources. He hears the Holy Scriptures; he listens to the instructions and counsels of wisdom from the house of God; he occupies a place in the school of Christ, and becomes familiar with subjects that interest his mind, that elicit thought and inquiry, and induce no small degree of mental discipline and capacity for intellectual effort. Ignorance and barbarism form no part of the character of men who revere the Lord's-day. You cannot consign to intellectual obscurity, a community that is sub jected to the illuminations of the Sabbath. Carry