those doing, whose conduct and example go to take from us and from the world these blessings? With what abundant reason might we remonstrate with such in the language of Nehemiah and say, evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the Sabbath day?"

"What

2. Civil laws to protect the Sabbath from open violation, are just and proper. Besides the moral law graven on stones, and given to the congregation of Israel, in common with others, as the universal law of Jehovah's kingdom, there was a national code appropriated to them as his peculiar people; and in this we find the law of the Sabbath incorporated and enforced by civil penalites. On this ground it was that Nehemiah went to the magistrates of Jerusalem and charged them with guilt in forbearing to exercise the authority which God had vested in them to restrain profanations of the day. Equally incumbent is it on every other community, which has authority over its own members, whether it be a family or an empire, to protect the Sabbath from desecration. The fourth commandment directly enjoins this upon the head of a family. Its terms are, "in it thou shalt not do any work, neither thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates." By parity of reason, the same obligation rests upon the heads of families collectively, who compose a state or nation, so far as the power of making and executing the laws is in their hands; and in governments where this power is not vested in them, the obligation rests on these to whom the power belongs. It is not optional with them whether or not they shall throw the shield of law around the day which God has sanctified; but so long as the fourth commandment shall remain, he will hold them accountable for this, in respect to all those, whether citizens or strangers, who are within their gates.

Nor is there any thing in this unjust, or aside from the proper scope of the laws of society. To enforce a spiritual observation of the Sabbath is not, indeed the province of civil authority. With duties appropriately religious, it has no direct concern. These it must leave to the higher authority of God, and the conscience of every individual. But to protect those who are disposed religiously to observe the Sabbath, in the peaceful enjoyment of the privilege, is no less just and proper, than it is to protect them in the enjoyment of any other right or privilege. No right can be more sacred-no privilege dearer, in theirview, than this; because it takes hold directly of their highest-their everlasting interests: and nothing short

of absolute prohibition can be more incompatible with their enjoyment of it; nothing a greater outrage on their feelings and their peace, than an unrestrained desecration of the day. They, too, are the mass of the community. The great majority, at least in this nation, profess to be a Christian people. Though there are individuals in almost every part of it, who avow their disbelief of Christianity, and their disrespect for the Sabbath, they are few in the comparison. Ninety-nine hundredths probably would consider a general disregard of the Sabbath destructive to their bests interests. Such being the fact, to require that no laws for the protection of the Sabbath be made, or that, having been made, they be a dead letter; to require that the mass of our citizens yield to the few, and be governed by their wishes, is a position which, on any other subject of legislation, would not, for a moment, be tolerated. There is nothing unjust in those laws. They are no more of an infringment on any man's liberty than are hundreds of other laws in every well-regulated community in which the few are required so to conduct their personal concerns as not to interfere with the interests of the many.

Further If there is any truth in the observations which I have before made, we owe it not only to the authority of God, and to the individuals who reverence the Sabbath, but to society itself, to see that no servile work be done on the Sabbath, and consequently no other public violations of it. There is no important interest of society, taken as a whole, which is not promoted by the Sabbath. Those who spurn at its requisitions, are yet sharers with others in its benefits;in the good resulting from industry and sobriety; the intelligence and kind feelings; the civility and good morals; the institutions of learning and administration of justice; the security of persons and property; as these are promoted by a religious observation of the Sabbath. Indeed the very frame-work of society among ourselves depends very much on the Sabbath. Our government could not long be sustained without it. It depends, as all agree, on the virtue of the people. But that virtue has its foundation in the Christian religion; and this requires for its inculcation and efficacious influence on the mass of the people, their joint observation of the Sabbath. A despotic government may be sustained by the vigor of the arm that wields it; but a free government-a government founded in the will of the people-when once the people have cast off the government of God, is dissolved. A free government, where the mass of the people are Atheists or Infidels, the world never has, and never

will have, seen. In every view, then, laws for the protection of the Sabbath are just and right. They are according to the will of God. They belong to the province of civil society. They are necessary to its vital interests.

3. For a due execution of these laws, men, clothed with the authority and the influence to do this, are answerable to God, and incur great guilt by neglecting it. It is but too little considered, that rulers are accountable to God for their official as well as their private conduct. Receiving their appointment by the voice of the people, they are apt to consider themselves accountable to the people alone; satisfied to have subserved their pleasure, and received the reward of their approbation. But are they not also ministers of God; and as such, accountable to him for a faithful discharge of the duties of their office? Is it not by the appointment of God that, whether by the voice of the people or in any other way, one man has the power to coerce the will, and compel the subjection of his equals? and is it not by his Providence, as presiding over all human affairs, that one man receives this power rather than another? and having received it, for what can he be reasonably supposed to be accountable, if not for his conduct in so important and solemn a betrustment? Is the sentinel of an army, who neglects to give warning of an approaching enemy, justly considered answerable for the slain? Though he may not have desired the evil day, yet becoming a guilty cause, must he die, as though he were the immediate perpetrator? And shall not ministers of God, ordained by him in the constitution of society, for the punishment of evil, be answerable to him for the consequences of their unfaithfulness? On this ground it was, that Nehemiah charged on the nobles of Judah the profanation of the Sabbath, which they forebore to restrain; and on the same principles, the officers of government now, both those who are appointed to make presentment of such breaches of law as come to their knowledge, and those who are sworn duly to prosecute such as are presented, take upon themselves the guilt of all the Sabbath-breaking which they tolerate; and should the consequence, at a future day, be the prevalence of irreligion, the prostration of law, the undermining of our best institutions, and the ruin of unnumbered souls, they, with others, must bear their burden; and certainly it cannot fail to be one, which, if repentance do not prevent, will sink them in woes unfathomable.

I have said nothing of their official oaths. The fact of their being

clothed with office, binds them to discharge its duties. Irrespective of their oaths, they cannot neglect the duties prescribed without guilt. Nor can they avoid it by turning away their eyes from transgression, and saying, "Behold, we know it not." But how much greater must their guilt be, when to the sin of unfaithfulness is added the sin of perjury! The voice of wisdom cries, "I counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of God."

It is, I know, extensively felt and said, that laws for the protection of the Sabbath must be given up to the will of their enemies; that the times are gone by in which they might be executed; that public sentiment now would not allow it. If it be so, clear it is, that such laws ought not to exist. So long as they remain, I see not how any informing officer can answer it to his conscience to forbear presenting the violations of them which he sees; at least, until he have made full proof that, go where he may, his complaints would be unheard. It is indeed a hard lot with the ministers of justice, when public sentiment is really and firmly set against the execution of the laws; when society, having made the laws, appointed the men to execute them, and bound them, by their oaths, to all due fidelity, abandons them if they oppose the will of the lawless; when the wealthy and the powerful, unless they desist, join to reproach and persecute them; and the people collectively give them no protection or redress. In this case, the responsibility is transferred from the ruler to the people, and therefore I have said that men of influence, as well as men of authority, incur great guilt, when they connive at profanations of the Sabbath: and if there is a people under heaven to which the ancient warning may pertinently be addressed-" If ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the Sabbath day, then will I kindle a fire in the gates of Jerusalem, and it shall devour the palaces thereof, and it shall not be quenched," I know not where it shall be found, unless it be the people which has itself the legislative power, and selects, at his own will, the guardians of the laws.

But let not the friends of the Sabbath hastily throw off the sense of responsibility. Although in some places it were vain to attempt its protection by the civil arm, it may not be so in all; and in those where the attempt might have been vain in times past, we have no warrant to act on the presumption, without palpable evidence, that it would be so now. Public sentiment may have changed. Evils which had excited no considerable alarm, some time at last rouse

the feelings of the community against them; and sometimes there is a concurrence of favourable influences to strengthen the hands of the just. How extensive and glorious, for a number of years, have been the effusions of grace in our country! And shall these not be felt in the work of arresting the tide of irreligion that is sweeping over it? When the enemy cometh in like a flood, is it not the office of the spirit of the Lord to lift up a standard against him? In how many towns and villages there are hundreds of individuals-many of them heads of families, and all of them constituting the great majority of intelligence and influence-under the oath of the Christian profession to sustain, at all hazards, and by all means, the institutions of Christ; to stand by the friends of his cause; and to bear their burdens! There are many, besides, whose attachment to the Sabbath, and whose sense of the importance of preserving its sacredness in the community, are no less to be doubted. And shall a few lawless men, in resisttance of such a body of influence, wrest the sword of justice from the hand of God's ministers? Surely the civil guardians of our sacred institutions, might be made to feel, that in a faithful discharge of their duty, they would have nothing to fear; and if, by our neglect of giving them assurance of this, our Sabbaths shall be given up to desecration, how shall we answer for it to those men whom yet we bring under obligation at the peril of their souls, faithfully to execute the laws? How shall we answer for it to our children and children's children, exposed to the seduction of lawless impiety? How shall we answer for it to God, when the sins of a degenerate people through successive generations, shall be traced to our supineness, and the time of vengeance shall have come?

My brethren, you see with every passing year the increasing boldness with which the Sabbath is profaned. You know how that, along all the great thoroughfares of our country, in most of our large cities, and many other parts of the land, the very appearance of sacred rest is almost gone, and tens of thousands of immortal beings there, coachmen, boatmen, tavernmen, and tenders, are as really strangers to the blessings of the Sabbath, as the heathens themselves. You cannot be ignorant that the tide of licentiousness that is sweeping over the country, is setting in upon its most favored portions, so that, from the one end of it to the other, the boldest despiser of the day of God scarcely fears the restraint of law, or the voice of rebuke. are fast becoming an apostate people. The great interest is a worldly interest. The supreme deity is mammon. To this, the authority