splendid edifices; but dilapidation and decay, in language which cannot be misunderstood, are foretelling their total destruction, without the speedy interposition of some other religion. Here may also be seen huge walls, extensive canals; but who carries on her commerce with foreign nations? Where is her enlightened patriotism, her benevolence, her mechanical enterprise, her philanthropy, her morality, her industry, her gratitude, her social, friendly intercourse with other nations? We speak of them as a people. In Siberia, Arabia, and the islands of the South Sea, may also be witnessed the deleterious results of the absence of the Sabbath and the Christian religion.

The picture in Africa is no better, but in many respects worse. There the cannibal, the far-fallen, degraded, filthy Hottentot; the unsuspecting, ignorant Negro; all alike are without God and without hope in the world. Little but desolation and misery is seen, over all their territories. Many of them are houseless, homeless, naked, starving; because they have none of the promises and threatenings of the gospel to stimulate them to industry, morality, and piety. How was it in the islands of the Pacific, before our missionaries went among them? Darkness, ignorance, superstition, and idolatry prevailed among them also. It is said of the Washington Islands, "they are a perfect brothel; the gestures the men practise," before American and European ladies, are truly shocking; and whenever we have met native females, they have most unblushingly offered themselves for pollution.”

Some of the tribes of Indians west of the Rocky Mountains, it is said, are still more degraded in this respect. Though their daughters are universally and unreservedly doomed to satisfy the unbridled propensities of the young men, to prevent adultery, still the male and the female, the married and the unmarried, in the indulgence of their lust, are more brutish and unnatural, than were the inhabitants of Sodom. Idolatry, in all these places, has grown old; and many of her votaries have become or are becoming weary of its exorbitant demands.

Why all this poverty, ignorance, wretchedness, degradation, sloth, unkindness, licentiousness, crime, dilapidation, promiscuous ruin and death, if the opposite results exist only under the influence of the religion of the God we worship? Why so much misery and human wo among the devotees of paganism, and

Mohammedanism, if the influence of their Shasters and the Koran is as salutary as that of the Bible and the Christian religion? But it is folly to pretend that the influence of the one is as good as that of the other. "A tree is known by its fruit." It is known that the religion of the Bible alone, brings life and immortality to light-causes light to spring out of darkness, and order out of confusion-introduces peace and comfort; intelligence and wealth; cleanliness and virtue; morality and rational expectation of future blessedness-raises the brutish man to the dignity of his nature-dethrones the despot-breaks the chains of the enslaved-relieves the suffering and the distressed-instructs the ignorant-soothes the disconsolate, and wipes the tear of sorrow from the cheek of the widow and the orphan. It is this religion only, that can prepare man for life, for death, and for the judgment-guide and direct him safely through this vale of tearscomfort him in his departing moments, and procure for him a seat among the blessed. But those privileges and consolations cannot be secured and perpetuated, nor can the opposite evils be avoided, without the aid of the Sabbath. As well might we expect the pendulum of a clock, or the balance-wheel of a watch, to move without a propelling power; or to enjoy the light of day, if all the luminaries of heaven were extinguished; as that the religion of the Bible will be promulgated to all people, and be adopted by all men; and render happy the whole human family, without the benign and salutary influence of this institution. Let go the Sabbath, and with it will perish all our hopes of future blessedness, as a nation, as communities, and as individuals. Surely then the philanthropist has a deep and lasting interest in securing the better observance of this day of rest.

TO HUSBANDS, FATHERS, AND BROTHERS, this subject commends itself. Would you have the marriage covenant maintained inviolate? Do you value chastity, sobriety, intelligence, industry, cleanliness, and domestic enjoyment? Would you have your wives, your daughters, your sisters, virtuous, amiable, “lovely, and of good report;" skilled in all the useful branches of domestic economy, and education? Would you have them like the pious Hannah, Lady Jane Grey, Elizabeth Rowe, Harriet Newell, Hannah More, Mrs. Winslow, instead of "the blood-stained Semiramis, the wanton Cleopatra, Russia's flagitious Catharine,"

Fanny Wright; the ignorant, degraded female of India, of the Washington Islands, or the female that roams over the western forests? Then do all you can to sustain the influence of the Sabbath.

WIVES, DAUGHTERS, SISTERS, if you would not be the slaves of idle, dissipated, unfeeling men; if you would not be made to toil and drudge for an ignorant, lordly, besotted husband; prepare his meals from the corn of your own raising, the fish of your own taking, cooked by the fire of your own kindling; and then sit in silence till he has been served, when you may go and partake of the fragments; if you would not be subject to his chastising rod, to contempt and scorn, to degradation and sorrow through his life, and then burn on his funeral pile; if you would prefer a pious Abraham, Daniel, Paul, Hale, Baxter, Howard, Mills, Payson, to an envious, blood-thirsty Cain, the haughty Nebuchadnezzar, the hard-hearted Pharaoh, the impious Herod, Nero, Voltaire, Paine, Robespierre, or the inhuman cannibal; if you would not be put in circumstances, where you would consider it not only a duty, but a virtue, to take the life of your infant, throw away your chastity, submit to all the horrors of paganism, and to death itself, without the hope of immortality; if you would not exchange your intelligence, your virtue, your domestic firesides, your social and religious circles, the kindness and respect shown to your sex; the joy and hope which the Gospel inspires, and all which so highly distinguishes you above your sex where the Gospel is not known; we beseech you, come without delay, and lend your efficient influence to do away the sin of Sabbath-breaking. You owe all your elevation of character, all your comforts here, and hopes of bliss hereafter, to the holy influence of the Bible. And can you remain indifferent, in a struggle to maintain and defend the pillar on which it rests? We do not believe you can. You would not, if you could. Your influence is salutary. When rightly put forth, it is sovereign. Give us then this influence, and you, and your sex after you, shall still be intelligent, free, and happy.

NATIONAL LEGISLATURE.

Though we do not expect our national legislature to enact laws to enforce the observance of the Sabbath, yet we do expect,

and have a right to expect, that they will prevent the enactment of any law, which shall prejudice the rights and jeopard the interests of this great nation.

But as a national body, convened to manage and control the civil and political concerns of this growing republic, they have made a law, in relation to the Post-office Department, the adop tion of which was a public denial of the right of Jehovah to command us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; and an infringement on the rights of every man who would obey God rather than any subordinate power. By this act, that body is not only sinning against a large, respectable, and efficient part of this republic, but they are sinning against their own soulsagainst, indeed, the whole people for whom they legislate, and against high Heaven. It should never be forgotten that God punishes, and blesses nations and communities, in this life, ac cording as they obey or disobey Him. Though this is not a state of retribution for individuals, it is for nations and communities By this wicked and infidel act, we have had our Sabbath voted away, and God is frowning upon us.

What then shall we do? What will the result of all this be? Read the history of modern France, introducing her decades, and of other nations who have dared to disregard the Sabbath, and learn the true answer to these inquiries. By the enactment of this unrighteous law, we are exposed to numberless and fearful evils. It retards the progress of light, life, and truth; is hedging up the way for the spread of the Gospel and the enlargement of the kingdom of Christ; and will God be silent and inactive with such an obstacle in the way of the advancement of his cause? This law is also injuring from sixty to eighty thousand individuals, who are tempted, or compelled, to labor on Sunday. It takes away from them the bread of life. Much of this labor is performed by poor people, orphans, who need employment, without which they would suffer for the necessaries of life; and this class most need the instruction communicated on the Sabbath in the house of God. But how many of them, men and boys, are living in ignorance and crime, preparing to vote away our rights and property; to pilfer, lie, gamble, and murder-and ripening for the employments and sufferings of the lost! Boatmen and carmen have been encouraged to tread the Sabbath

under their feet, and say, "The nation justifies us in the act;" and who can tell the amount of pestilential influence arising from these channels of sin and pollution? In the cold season, they go back to the places of their nativity, or elsewhere, contaminating the very atmosphere in which they move. Who must answer for all this guilt and crime?

Here is an evil which has been done, and if the present members of Congress say "it was done by our predecessors," the fact is admitted, but you have sanctioned and encouraged it by not repealing the law requiring the profanation of the Sabbath. For since it required a national act to introduce it, it requires a national act to abolish it. This nation is to decide whether she will have a Sabbath or not. If we are to have a Sabbath, we must repeal that law. While the law is in force, Sabbath-breaking will continue and increase: and are we prepared to say, we will not repeal it ?-that we cannot do without a Sunday mail? One of two things we shall be compelled to do, either give up Sunday mails, Sunday stages and cars, or give up the Sabbath. Both cannot be sustained among us.

Before we become a nation of infidels, let us pause and count the cost; and remember, that God holds us by his omnipotent hand, and will call us to account; our unbelief and our contempt of his authority, our intelligence, honors, titles, riches, power, and extensive resources, to the contrary notwithstanding. At his bar we must appear, by his law we must be judged, and not by the worldly rules of convenience and profit, or by our notion of necessity. God has said, "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," and this nation ought to hear his voice and obey it— obey it now. Infidels may oppose, as they oppose the spread of the Gospel; and so long as they can see the Sabbath desecrated by a people, by a nation, they know they have little to fear from the influence of our religion.

STATE LEGISLATURES.

Our State legislatures are also interested in this matter. Many of them, every Lord's day, are receiving money from canal and rail-road tolls. This ought not to be. The old adage, “the partaker is as bad as the thief," applies a little too closely to this