necessity must, of course, be performed; but these should be restricted within the limits prescribed by a conscientious regard to the object and design of the day.

2. Brutes are, by the fourth commandment, included in the law which ordains rest to all the animate creation. They need the repose which it grants, and they are entitled to their portion of it.

On the contrary, the law of the Sabbath enjoins the employment of the day in the more solemn and immediate duties of religion.

1. Reading the Scriptures, religious meditation, prayer in private, and also the special instruction in religion of those committed to our charge. And, hence, it enjoins such domestic arrangements as are consistent with these duties.

2. Social worship. Under the Mosaic and Christian dispensation, this was an important part of the duties of the day. As the setting apart of a particular day to be universally observed, involves the idea of social as well as personal religion, one of the most obvious duties which it imposes, is that of social worship; that is, of meeting together in societies, to return thanks for our social mercies, to implore the pardon of God for our social sins, and beseech His favor for those blessings which we need as societies, no less than as individuals.

The importance of the religious observance of the Sabbath, is seldom sufficiently estimated. Every attentive observer has remarked, that the violation of this command, by the young, is one of the most decided marks of incipient moral degeneracy. Religious restraint is fast losing its hold upon that young man, who, having been educated in the fear of God, begins to spend the Sabbath in idleness, or in amusement. And so, also, of communities. The desecration of the Sabbath is one of those evident indications of that criminal recklessness, that insane love of pleasure, and that subjection to the government of appetite and passion, which forebodes, that the "beginning of the end" of social happiness, and of true national prosperity, has arrived.

Hence, we see how imperative is the duty of parents,

and of legislators, on this subject. The head of every family is obliged, by the command of God, not only to honor this day himself, but to use all the means in his power to secure the observance of it, by all those committed to his charge. He is, thus, promoting not only his own, but also his children's happiness; for nothing is a more sure antagonist force to all the allurements of vice, as nothing tends more strongly to fix in the minds of the young a conviction of the existence and attributes of God, than the solemn keeping of this day. And, hence, also, legislators are false to their trust, who, either by the enactment of laws, or by their example, diminish, in the least degree, in the minds of a people, the reverence due to that day which God has set apart for Himself.

The only question which remains, is the following:

Is it the duty of the civil magistrate to enforce the observance of the Sabbath?

We

We are inclined to think not, and for the following

reasons:

1. The duty arises solely from our relations to God, and not from our relations to man. Now, our duties to God are never to be placed within the control of human legislation.

2. If the civil magistrate has a right to take cognizance of this duty to God, he has a right to take cognizance of every other. And, if he have a right to take cognizance of the duty, he has a right to prescribe in what manner it shall be discharged; or, if he see fit, to forbid the observance of it altogether. The concession of this right would, therefore, lead to direct interference with liberty of conscience.

3. The keeping of the Sabbath is a moral duty. Hence, if it be acceptably observed, it must be a voluntary service. But the civil magistrate can never do any thing more than produce obedience to the external precept; which, in the sight of God, would not be the keeping of the Sabbath at all. Hence, to allow the civil magistrate to enforce the observance of the Sabbath, would be to surrender to him the control over the conscience, without attaining even the object for which the surrender was made.

4. It is, however, the duty of the civil magistrate, to protect every individual in the undisturbed right of worshipping God as he pleases. This protection, every individual has a right to claim, and society is under obligation to extend it. And, also, as this is a leisure day, and is liable to various abuses, the magistrate has a right to prevent any modes of gratification which would tend to disturb the peace of society. This right is acknowledged in regulations respecting other days of leisure or rejoicing; and there can be no reason why it should not be exercised in respect to the Sabbath.

5. And, lastly, the law of the Sabbath applies equally to societies, and to individuals. An individual is forbidden to labor on the Sabbath, or to employ another person to labor for him. The rule is the same, when applied to any number of individuals; that is, to a society. Hence, a society has no right to employ persons to labor for them. The contract is a violation of the Sabbatical law. It is on this ground that I consider the carrying of the mail on this day a social violation of the Christian Sabbath.

192

PART II.

DUTIES TO MAN.- -RECIPROCITY AND BENEVO

LENCE.

DIVISION I.

THE DUTY OF RECIPROCITY.-GENERAL PRINCIPLE ILLUSTRATED, AND THE DUTIES OF RECIPROCITY CLASSIFIED.

It has been already observed, that our duties, to both God and man, are all enforced by the obligation of love to God. By this we mean, that, in consequence of our moral constitution, we are under obligation to love our fellow-men, because they are our fellow-men; and we are also under obligation to love them, because we have been commanded to love them by our Father who is in heaven. The nature of this obligation may be illustrated by a familiar example. Every child in a family is under obligation to love its parent. And every child is bound to love its brother, both because he is its brother, and, also, because this love is a duty enforced by the relation in which they both stand to their common parent.

The relation in which men stand to each other, is essentially the relation of equality; not equality of condition, but equality of right.

Every human being is a distinct and separately accountable individual. To each one, God has given just such means of happiness, and placed him under just such circumstances for improving those means of happiness, as it has pleased him. To one he has given wealth; to another, intellect; to another, physical strength; to another, health; and to all in different degrees. In all these respects, the

human race presents a scene of the greatest possible diversity. So far as natural advantages are concerned, we can scarcely find two individuals, who are not created under circumstances widely dissimilar.

But, viewed in another light, all men are placed under circumstances of perfect equality. Each separate individual is created with precisely the same right to use the advantages with which God has endowed him, as every other individual. This proposition seems to me in its nature so self-evident, as almost to preclude the possibility of argument. The only reason that I can conceive, on which any one could found a plea for inequality of right, must be inequality of condition. But this can manifestly create no diversity of right. I may have been endowed with better eye-sight than my neighbor; but this evidently gives me no right to put out his eyes, or to interfere with his right to derive from them whatever of happiness the Creator has placed within his power. I may have greater muscular strength than my neighbor; but this gives me no right to break his arms, or to diminish, in any manner, his ability to use them for the production of his own happiness. Besides, this supposition involves direct and manifest contradiction. For the principle asserted is, that superiority of condition confers superiority of right. But if this be true, then every kind of superiority of condition must confer correspondent superiority of right. Superiority in muscular strength must confer it, as much as superiority of intellect, or of wealth; and must confer it in the ratio of that superiority. In that case, if A, on the ground of intellectual superiority, have a right to improve his own means of happiness, by diminishing those which the Creator has given to B, B would have the same right over A, on the ground of superiority of muscular strength; while C would have a correspondent right over them both, on the ground of superiority of wealth; and so on indefinitely; and these rights would change every day, according to the relative situation of the respective parties. That is to say, as right is, in its nature, exclusive, all the men in the universe have an exclusive right to the same thing; while the right of every one absolutely annihilates that of every other.