230 EDITOR. 



Donald. That lawyer-man is evidently not making his smart speeches 

 or writing his clever circulars with an eye to the pecuniary interests 

 of the railroad. No person can know better than he knows, that the 

 company are running their Sabbath trains at a sacrifice of some four or 

 five thousand a-year. Were there not an hundred thousand that took 

 the pledge ? and can it be held by any one that knows Scotland, that 

 they aren't worth overhead a shilling a-year to the railway? No, no ; de- 

 pend on't, the man is guiltless of any design of making the shareholders 

 rich by breaking the Sabbath. He is merely supporting a desperate case 

 in the eye of the country, and getting into all the newspapers, that peo- 

 ple may see how clever a fellow he is. He is availing himself of the 

 principle that makes men in our great towns go about with placards set 

 up on poles, and with bills printed large stuck round their hats.' 



Two of my nearer neighbours, who had travelled a long mile 

 through the storm to see whether I had got my newspaper, had taken 

 their seats beside me, when I was engaged with my dream, and after 

 reading your railway report, they were now busied in discussing the 

 various speeches and their authors. My dream is, I am aware, quite 

 unsuited for your columns, and yet I send it you. There are none 

 of its pictured calamities that lie beyond the range of possibility, 

 nay, there are perhaps few of them that at this stage may not actually 

 be feared ; but if so, it is at least equally sure that there can be none 

 of them that at this stage might not be averted. 



We should hardly have known Miller for what he 

 was without reading this remarkable performance. It 

 will occasion astonishment to not a few. Puritanism so 

 austere, confronting us in the middle of the nineteenth 

 century, shows like a massive boulder, standing, grey 

 and stern, in the midst of a modern meadow. ' One 

 man esteemeth one day above another; another man 

 esteemeth every day alike : let every man be fully per- 

 suaded in his own mind/ This is Paul's deliverance on 

 the subject, and Calvin was content to accept it in all 

 its breadth of Christian liberty. Miller knew, however, 

 that in Scotland devout religion had for two centuries 

 been inseparably connected with Sabbath observance, 

 and he naturally looked upon desecration of the day as 

 leading to profanity and licentiousness. For the rest, 

 we are to recollect that, though the concluding words of 

 the ' Vision' prove Miller to have seriously believed 



