would deprive the child of what he feels, even thus early, to be a birth-right, if you were to compel him to go to the common school on the first day of the week; you would infringe on rights which every young man knows he has, if you were to insert in his indentures of apprenticeship that he was to work on Sunday. The Sabbath in this country can never be made a day of labor. Here and there, indeed, it may be by an individual, but it can never be by the community at large. Here and there a man may go into the woods to fell trees, but the sound of his axe will be different to him from what it is on other days; and in the stillness which reigns around him, when nobody else works, the echoing of his own blows will frighten him. Here and there a man will go into his fields to plough, but he will feel that the eyes of all his neighbors are upon him, and a consciousness of guiltiness will come over him, and he will let his plough stand still in some distant nook of his field, while his neighbor passes by on his way to the house of God. Here and there a man will open his store, but it will be with the uncomfortable feeling which one has always who goes against the general judgment of mankind. Here and there a man will go into his counting-room to post his books, or to write his letters, but he will wish to enter and come out by stealth, and at such times that he will not be likely to be seen. And here and there, too, a man will wander through a forest, or along the margin of a stream, with his fishing-rod or his gun, but the very stillness of the grove, or the warbling of the birds, or the sweet and gentle music of the rivulet, so much in unison with the worship of God, but so little with his own employment, will rebuke him. It is out of the question: this day cannot be made a day of business, or of school-teaching, or of travel, extensively in this land. Then I remark,

(3.) Thirdly, That one of two things is clear: it is to be, alike to the old and the young, an eminent blessing or an eminent curse. If a blessing, it is to be one of the richest that can be vouchsafed to us; if a curse, one of the direst that can come upon the nation. You cannot take out from human life one seventh part, and release all men from the necessity of toil, without producing some decided effect on their intellects and their morals. You cannot disband all your schools, and discharge your clerks and apprentices, and release all the working classes in a community on one day in every seven, without originating new influences that are destined to affect, for good or for evil, every individual and every social organization in the land. If to this discharged multitude, you open every place of amusement and vice; if you establish and legalize fountains of poison at every corner of the street, and along every pathway where they may choose to wander, you may soon bid farewell to everything that is dear to us as citizens and as men– to the whole purchase which our fathers made with so much treasure and so much blood. For we shall have a Sabbath. We shall have it as long as these streams run, and these mountains lift

their heads on high. If it is not a day of rest, and purity, and religion, it will be a day of amusement, and vice, and blasphemy, and crime. We must have the law of God reigning in this land on this subject, or the "Book of Sports;" we must have the quiet, and order, and peace of the Christian Sabbath, or the Roman Saturnalia; we must have a day of worship, or a day of military reviews, and horse-racing, and bull-fights; we must have the Puritan Sabbath, or a day for universal amusement, as at Vienna, a day for the ring, as at Madrid and Mexico, a day for theatres and military parades, as they have at Paris. The question to be determined is this, and this only, whether the nation can afford to have one day in seven as a day of riot and disorder-a Saturnalia occuring more than fifty times in a year, when Rome, in the most palmy days of her virtue, could scarcely survive the effects of one. This leads me to say,

(4). Fourthly, that this day may be made eminently conducive to the maintenance and stability of all that we value in this land. The proper observance of the Sabbath is fitted to make all our young men just such citizens as our institutions contemplate; temperate, intelligent, pure, patriotic, devoted to virtue, to their country, and to their God. The observance of this day is adapted to foster all those virtues which are essential to the purity of the elective franchise; tosecure just such instruction as shall fit every man to perform his duty as a citizen in the best manner; and to diffuse over our country just such a tone of morals as shall be adapted, under the great laws of God's government, to perpetuate our liberty. There is not a virtue contemplated by the Constitution as necessary to the permanency of the Republic, which would not be strengthened by the observance of the Sabbath; there is not a vice or crime, on account of which God has overwhelmed other nations, which would not be checked and restrained by such an observance; and there is not a vice or crime, on account of which God in his anger overthrew Sodom, Babylon and Herculaneum, which would not be fostered, hasting on our own destruction by the desecration of this day.

It is in reference to such points as these, that every young man is to form his opinion, and regulate his conduct, in regard to the observance of a day of sacred rest. Every young man in view of his constitution and wants as an individual and as a social being; in view of the toils, the trials, the duties, and the temptations of life; in view of the fact that the most momentous interests of liberty and religion in the world are soon to pass into his hands; and in view of the fact that he has interests in other worlds at stake, compared with which all his interests on this globe are trifles, is to make up his mind whether he needs such a day of rest, and whether it may be made to contribute to his own future welfare.

Let me add one word in conclusion. It should not be a day of idleness; it need not be a day of gloom. There is enough to be accomplished in every soul, by duties appropriate to the day, to rescue every moment from tedium and ennui. If it were as pleasant

to man to cultivate his heart as it is his intellectual powers; if he felt it to be as momentous to prepare for the life to come as for the present world; if he delighted in the service of his Maker as he does in the society of his friends below, the difficulty would not be that it would be impossible to fill up the day, but that the hours on the Sabbath had taken a more rapid flight than on other days, and that the shades of the evening come around us when our work is but half done. Let this one thought be borne with you to your homes, if no other, that the appropriate work of the Sabbath is the heart-all about the heart-all that can bear upon it—all that can make it better and I am persuaded you will see no want of appropriate employment for one day in seven. See what there is in your heart, permanently abiding there, that demands correction. See what an accumulation of bad influences there may be during the toils and turmoils of the week, that may require removal. See how in the business of the world; in domestic cares; in professional studies or duties, the heart may be neglected, and there may arise a sad disproportion between the growth of the intellect, and the proper affections of the soul. See how, in the gayeties and vanities of life; the pursuits of pleasure; the love of flattery and applause, there may have been a steady growth of bad propensities through the week, not for one moment broken or checked. See how there may have been a silent but steady growth of avarice, pride, or ambition, all through the week, riveting the fetters of slavery on the soul, and bringing you into perpetual and ignoble bondage. See the tendency of all these things to harden the heart; to chill the affections; to stifle the voice of conscience; and to make the mind grovelling and worldly. See what an unnatural growth the intellect of man sometimes attains to, while all the finer feelings of his nature, like fragrant shrubs and beautiful flowers under the dense foliage of a far-spreading oak, are overshadowed and stinted. And then see what in nature and in grace is open for the cultivation of the heart. The worship of God, adapted to assimilate the soul to the Creator; the Bible, full of precepts and promises, bearing directly on the heart; the rich and inexhaustible treasures in our own English religious literature;-the lessons of morality, purity and benevolence, and the sacred effusions of the poetic muse, adapted to raise the soul to God. See a world of sinners and sufferers accessible to your benevolent efforts, and capable of being benefited by your counsels and your prayers. See the ignorant on every hand that need to be instructed; children in every city, village and hamlet, that need to be taught the way to heaven; a world full of the ignorant and the suffering, that demand your sympathy. Then contemplate your own soul--a soul immortal as God-to be saved or lost; its great work of preparation for another state of being perhaps not yet commenced; the whole business of being renovated, pardoned, sanctified, to be yet performed; death to be prepared for and to be met in a proper manner-look upon these things, and you will not say that God

has not given you enough to do on this holy day to rescue it from dullness and gloom. Every mind may be in such a state that the happiest day of the week may be the day of holy rest; and imperfectly as it is observed and enjoyed now on earth, I am persuaded that there is more pure joy, more solid and elevated happiness, more that approximates the enjoyment of heaven on this day, than on any other of the seven. In how many happy hearts on this day is that heaven begun in the soul which shall never end! There is many, many a heart that appreciates all the force and beauty of these words:

Sweet day, thine hours too soon will cease:

Yet, while they gently roll,

Breathe, Holy Spirit, source of peace,
A Sabbath o'er my soul.

When will my pilgrimage be done,

The world's long week be o'er ?

That Sabbath dawn, which needs no sun;
That day which fades no more?

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER'S LAMENT.

"And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it."-LUKE xix. 41.

THE Son of God, the Savior of the world, in tears, was a most touching and affecting spectacle. Since his ascension to heaven, earth has seen nothing like it. What a spectacle, to see divine compassion weeping over a world in ruins! The cause for weeping still exists. Innumerable multitudes are still in their sins, and impenitent, and perishing by millions every year. And never does the Christian minister appear more to possess the spirit of the compassionate Savior, than when he is seen with weeping eyes, endeavoring to persuade men to be reconciled to God, and flee from the wrath to come.

Every minister of Christ is distinguished by an anxious concern for the salvation of men. His heart's desire and prayer to God for his hearers, is, that they may be saved. Having been qualified for his office, and appointed to the discharge of its duties by Christ, he is influenced by the Spirit of Christ; and in nothing is this more manifest than in his display of that compassionate feeling for miserable men, which appeared in the Redeemer when he wept over Jerusalem. Strong are the desires, many the thoughts, and earnest the reasonings, that rise in his mind on this subject. The one, great, intense, all-absorbing passion of his spirit is that he may win souls to Christ. He would compel men to come in; and, while he is blowing the trumpet of the gospel, he anxiously waits to see the people gather around the standard of the Shiloh. To

this object all his talents are directed. His clear understanding of the Scriptures-his aptness to teach-his ability to illustrate and enforce divine truth, so as to render it both intelligible and impressive--his evangelic unction-his zeal, seriousness, and tenderness of spirit-his jealousy for the Lord of Hosts-the hallowed and fervid eloquence with which his lips have been touched by the live coal from the altar of devotion-the faith and love which render his work solemn and delightful to himself, and cause him to concentrate upon it the best energies of his intellect and heart, are all subservient to this one purpose. And his feelings are perfectly natural; for this is the object of his labors. The very form into which his message is cast is scarcely anything else than the words whereby we must be saved. His theme is the common salvation. With the Baptist he cries in the ears of his auditors: "Flee from the wrath to come."

Regarding his talents, his time, his energies, his whole life, as marked by the seal, as bound by the vow of consecration to Christ; believing himself to have been chosen by the Captain of our salvation to active service in the Christian warfare, with what anxiety does he look for the success of his labors! How much is he gratified to see that the word of the Lord has free course and is glorified-to find that he does not labor in vain, nor spend his strength for nought! With what pleasure does he hear those to whom he has faithfully delivered his message show the power with which it has been received, by crying out, in the language of conviction, "What must we do to be saved?" And, on the other hand, how bitterly does he lament the want of success! How much does he experience of the sadness of disappointment and the sickness of hope deferred, when the words he proclaims become like water spilt upon the ground-as seed sown by the way side, or in its growth choked with thorns; like characters traced on the sand, or a ship's track in the sea, that soon disappears; exclaiming, in the language of the prophet, "Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?"

The field of a Christian minister's benevolence is eternity; he builds for eternity-he studies, labors, prays, instructs, warns, invites for eternity: all that he undertakes relates to eternity. His object is that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Time in his estimation derives its importance from eternity, since it affords the opportunity of sowing that seed of the Spirit which shall grow up into everlasting life, and be gathered as the never ending harvest of the soul, the immortal reward of piety and faith. The interests which he pleads are so illimitable and vast-the evils to be avoided are so appalling, and the good to be secured so transporting-the pit from which the sinner is drawn up so dark, so deep, so dreadful-the throne to which he is to be raised so glorious, so high, so blissful-the realities of another world partake so much of the character of infinity, that the benevolence of a Christian minister is generally a sublime emotion, an absorbing