THE SABBATH. 



the appeal to experience. Sabbatical rigour has been 

 tried, and the question is: Have its results been so 

 beneficent so conducive to good morals and national 

 happiness as to render criminal every attempt to modi- 

 fy it? The advances made in all kinds of knowledge 

 in this our age by special cultivators are known to be 

 enormous, and the public desire for instruction, which 

 the intellectual triumphs of the time naturally and in- 

 evitably arouse, is commensurate with the growth of 

 knowledge. Must this desire, which is the motive 

 power of all real and healthy progress, be quenched or 

 left unsatisfied lest Sunday observances, unknown to 

 the early Christians, repudiated by the heroes of the 

 reformation, and insisted upon for the first time during 

 a period of national gloom and suffering in the seven- 

 teenth century, should be interfered with? To justify 

 this position the demonstration of the success of Sabba- 

 tarianism must be complete. Is it so? Are we so 

 much better than other nations who have neglected to 

 adopt our rules, that we can point to the working of 

 these rules in the past as a conclusive reason for main- 

 taining them immovable in the future? The answer 

 must be, No ! Within the range of my recollection no 

 German man would have ventured to assert of Berlin or 

 Dresden that its brutal iniquity, filth, and intemper- 

 ance filled every traveller with surprise and horror. 

 The statement would have been immediately branded 

 as a flagrant untruth. And yet this is the language 

 which, thirty years ago, when the Sabbath was observed 

 more strictly than it is now, was used by a Scot in 

 reference to the towns of Scotland. My Sabbatarian 

 friends, you have no ground to stand upon. I say 

 friends, for I would far rather have you as friends than 

 as enemies far rather see you converted than anni- 

 hilated. You possess a strength and earnestness with 





