NEW ENGLAND SABBATH. 249 



doing not a little to vitiate public morals, and 

 impair that high sense of the Sabbath's sacred- 

 ness which it is of vital importance to have 

 maintained. 



If the spirits of some of those upright old 

 Puritans were now again to come among us, 

 and see the whale ships of New England 

 unscrupulously profaning God's holy day, steam- 

 boats and locomotives running, and stage-coaches 

 carrying the Sabbath mail, would they not be 

 likely to reproach us in accommodated language 

 like this ? " In vain we made ourselves exiles, 

 for conscience and the love of God, from the 

 servile kingdoms of Europe. In vain we crossed 

 the boisterous ocean, found a new world, and 

 prepared it for the happy residence of civil and 

 religious liberty. In vain we toiled ; we bled 

 in vain, if you, our offspring, thus need prin- 

 ciple and purpose to maintain inviolate the 

 sanctity of the Sabbath, and to defend the 

 observance of that hallowed institution, which 

 we kept so strictly, against the encroachments 

 of hurrying worldliness and greedy gain. The 

 blessed institutions we transmitted you cannot 



