256 ABROGATION OF THE SABBATH. 



Awful " Judgments" against Sabbath-breakers .' 



as a warning monument of an avenging Providence* — that 

 ^^glorions" institution which, in short, has been esteemed, in 

 the language of a distinguished apologist,f " the Sun of the 

 moral universer' and which my friend claims as "a. legacy 

 from the risen Lord/^ '^ the bright link of man with man and 

 earth with heaven, the safeguard of virtue^ the glory of reli- 



^ Exemplæ gratia: A popular juvenile "Sabbath Manfal," pub- 

 lished by the "American Tract Society," contains such arguments as 

 the following: "Another man in the same State, who had spent the 

 Sabbath in getting in his grain, said that he had fairly cheated the 

 Almighty out of one day. On Tuesday, the lightning struck his barn ! 

 He gained nothing valuable by working on the Sabbath." {page 74.) 

 Item: " Another man . . . spent the day in gathering his grain, and 

 putting it into a vacant building near his field. But the lightning 

 struck the building! and, with the grain, it was burnt to ashes." 

 {page 75.) Item: " But another man thought he had succeeded better. 

 . . . He had worked on the Sabbath all the year, and had thus gained 

 more than fifty days. But that very day the lightning struck his barn ! 

 and his Sabbath day gains and his weekday gains were burnt together." 

 {page 82.) Item : "A number of men at one time had mowed a large 

 quantity of hay. For a number of days it had been rainy. The Sab- 

 bath came, and was a remarkably pleasant day. One man stayed at 

 home, opened his hay, took care of it, and in the afternoon got it into 

 his barn." ... A week afterward, a cloud arose, "and moved on to- 

 ward the barn into which on the previous Sabbath the man had put his 

 hay. The lightning darted here and there, and by and by went down 

 into the barn ! . . His neighbors' barns on each side w^ere so near that 

 it seemed impossible to prevent them from being bm-ned. But . . 

 neither of them took fire, and the Sabbath-breaker's barn was burnt 

 out between them." {pages 2o^, 240.) Item: "A man in the State 

 of New York was accustomed to work on the Sabbath. . . While in his 

 field upon the Sabbath, treading down hay upon the stack, the light- 

 ning struck him! and he was a corpse." {page 243, &c. &c.) Nur- 

 sery Tales ? by the Revekend Justin Edwards, Doctor op Divinity. 



Of all the ten commands, ih.Qfourth appears to be the only one guarded 

 by the retributive thunderbolt ; and even here the lightning makes the 

 strange mistake of miraculously protecting the wrong day ! — the day 

 not "nominated in the bond !" 



f Dr. Beecher, of Boston. 



