WHAT IF THE SABBATH WERE BLOTTED OUT?

Let us suppose for a moment, that the Sabbath, in this nation, were blotted out,-that, as some men have foolishly and wickedly wished, every Christian in our land should now go to the grave. By the word Christian, we mean such as love the Sabbath, the Bible, Sabbath schools, our benevolent societies, and the house of religious worship-who contribute of their money and their influence, to establish and sustain these institutions. Let none be left, but the man who will not remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Who, we ask, would wish to live in such a community? Who would build school-houses, and instruct in the arts and sciences? Who assemble in our churches? Who would erect and sustain alms-houses, orphan asylums; and teach the young and rising generation to walk in the ways of virtue and peace ?

Did ever the arts and sciences long exist and flourish in a community where the Sabbath had done nothing, and was not doing much for them? Is domestic happiness enjoyed, where there are no Sabbaths observed? Are the rights of females regarded, and their persons protected, where the Sabbath is not known? Are parents lovers of their children, and are children dutiful and affectionate to their parents? Are the rights of the poor regarded? Are men moral, chaste, sober, benevolent, industrious, and patriotic, where the Sabbath is contemned? In such places, are men considered free and equal? Does each seek the good of others? For an answer to these inquiries, ask the inhabitants along the Ganges, or on the isles of Borneo, and of the South Pacific.

The strong arm of despotism may, for a while, keep under and control an ignorant, degraded people; but civil and religious liberty can never be established and sustained, without the aid of the Sabbath; and every act of Sabbath desecration serves to weaken the foundations of a free government. Sabbath-breaking, since it tends to immorality and wretchedness, shortens and embitters human life. Where there is no Sabbath there is no permanent good.

Who would be willing to exchange the Sabbath for days of pagan festivities, rites, and ceremonies? Who would exchange the Bible of the Christian for the Koran of Mohammed, or the

Shasters of the Brahmin? Who exchange the pure, exalted, ennobling, and dignified worship of the one living and true God, for the base, sordid, and degrading worship of the almost numberless Hindoo gods? Who would subject himself to the horrors of the ten persecutions, or those of the feast of Bartholomew, as witnessed in France, in 1572, when sixty thousand Protestants were murdered, by those who would not keep a Sabbath? Think of her civil wars, during which, “in the beginning of the seventeenth century, more than a million of men lost their lives; nine cities, four hundred villages, two thousand churches, two thousand monasteries, and ten thousand houses, were burned or destroyed, besides the many thousands of men, women, and children, that were cruelly butchered; and one hundred and fifty millions of livres were spent in carrying forward these slaughters and devastations." This is a part of the history of that nation which dared follow the counsel of the execrable and inhuman Robespierre and his coadjutors; which feared not to burn the Bible, introduce the decades, and attempt to extirpate the Christian religion. Similar scenes have been acted over, whenever an attempt has been made to abolish the Sabbath. The late mobs and riots in our country, indicate approaching judgments, not altogether dissimilar.

But what are we doing on the Sabbath, and who are they that are doing it?

We are running stages, carrying and opening mails, running boats, freighting goods, carrying passengers, lading and unlading vessels, printing papers, driving and butchering cattle, hogs, and sheep, riding in rail cars, omnibuses, hacks, sulkies, writing and doing business in our counting-rooms, warehouses, customhouse offices, and a thousand other things, that God has forbidden, and which tend to keep us from his house, and drive away from our minds all sense of obligation to him, and reverence of the holy day.

This work is not done only by the poor, who most need rest and instruction, but many rich men are now attending to their business as much on Sunday as on other days; and the unavoidable result of all this must be, unless soon checked, to blot out our Sabbaths. Then we may bid farewell, not only to our

religion, but our liberties, our virtue, our morality, our happiness, here and hereafter.

DANGER TO BE APPREHENDED.

Let the Sabbath be trampled under foot by this people, some ten or twenty years longer, and let the present annual increase of Roman Catholic immigration, which is said to be a hundred and fifty thousand, be doubled a few times in that period, and added to the seven hundred thousand already among us; to them add the millions in this nation who shall then be unable to read, and the enemies of the Sabbath generally, and tell us, whether it would be difficult for such a phalanx, headed by a Nero or a Robespierre, to vote away our Sabbaths and our religion; pillage our dwellings; ravish our wives and our daughters; and butcher every man, woman, and child who embraced the Protestant religion? Many in the city of New-York, during the riots last summer, were heard to wish, that every Protestant church in that city were in ashes, and every Christian drowning in the dock.' We already begin to experience the judgments of heaven, in consequence of sin; and great will be the guilt, and awful the doom of the individual, or the community, that persists in those practices which render it necessary for God to come out in judgments against a people. Dare any person take the responsibility of contributing to the continuance of a sin, which is fraught with so much danger to individuals and communities?

If Sabbath-breaking, then, tends to weaken the physical powers of man, derange his intellect, contaminate his morals, waste his property, and shorten life, there can be no doubt that this nation, so long as the present system of Sabbath operations is continued, is in imminent danger. If Sabbath profanation "brings upon an individual, a community, or a nation, the displeasure of our Maker, and if all nations and people, who have been guilty of it, and have not repented, have gone, or are going to ruin, surely, while we practise this sin, we have every reason to be alarmed.

Such consequences of this sin, seem to be perfectly natural, and to the critical observer unavoidable; for the whole man, physically and mentally, his property, health and life, are the property of the nation. When in their most healthy and vigor

ous state, the nation is the most powerful, wise, and prosperous. But let these be weakened, deranged, or destroyed, by any means, and the nation is injured; and if the government cannot be sustained without them in their most perfect state, we are in danger.

No nation ever rose and prospered, in wealth, intelligence, virtue, peace, and power, without the aid of the Sabbath; and no nation ever continued long in such prosperity without its aid. If these remarks are applicable to nations generally, much more to republican governments.

Let every man, therefore, who values the Sabbath, and would remove the great evil of its desecration, earnestly and respectfully petition Congress, without delay, to repeal the law requiring labor on Sunday in the Post-office Department. Our Sabbaths will never be duly observed, while that law is in force. It is an unreasonable law, an unjust law-injurious to those connected with the Post-office Department, and thousands of others; unnecessary, because a mail six days in the week, is as often as we need one, since we are required to rest from all secular cares on the Sabbath; unreasonable, because such a law, complied with, brings innumerable evils upon our land, and exposes us to the withering judgments of heaven.

They should also petition the States to prevent labor being done on their canals and railrods, on that day. For why should a State receive into its treasury money acquired by labor on Sunday? Christians will not labor for money on that day; they will not engage an individual to labor for money, and pay them on that day; and why should they suffer companies of men to labor for them? It is their duty to ask the States, to prevent it, on their roads, &c.

Legislators are bound not only to enact laws to punish offenders, but to prevent doing those things which tend to the injury of individuals, or the community. Neh. xiii. 15-22. Travelling and labor on these public thoroughfares, must therefore be prevented, before we can see the Sabbath observed.

Our nation need but look at this subject to be induced to come to the aid of a neglected and profaned Sabbath. Let us therefore present the subject to them, fully, respectfully and repeatedly; that our land may be clear from this sin, and safe from impending judgments.

Business men in this republic, are you willing, by desecrating the Sabbath, to make sure and hasten the day of terror and of death? Will you now pursue such a course as will render it necessary for your then, perhaps, orphan children and your widows, to seek shelter in lands, now heathen, where they may be more safe and secure, as Bonaparte told Lafayette it would be more for his health to retire from Paris to his estate? In your thirst for weath and influence, are you not in danger of overlooking the only means which can preserve your own happiness and safety, and that of your friends, and of this nation? If labor and amusements be continued on the Sabbath, it will be utterly impossible to prevent wickedness from overrunning the land, and anarchy from distracting the people. There is but one alternative; Sabbath profanation must cease, or our liberties and our religion are lost. We would rather be a subject of the autocrat of Russia, and dwell among the snows and frosts of Siberia, or under the rod of the veriest despot upon earth, than remain in this nation, now so highly favored, when God shall, for the sin of profaning his day, dash her in pieces "like a potter's vessel." There are already many conflicting passions and interests among us, hard to be controlled, even in this day of Christian restraint; but what will be our condition, when this restraint shall have been withdrawn, and we shall be given up, like a tempestuous ocean, to the winds and storms of intestine dissensions; wave dashing against wave, until our Union is broken, and we become our own executioners ?

What, we ask, without the principles of the Bible, the fear of a future retribution, kept alive by the influence of a Sabbath, can keep, even in this country, our property, our reputation, and our lives, from the outrages of a mob? In this state of things, is it possible that rational, intelligent men will trample under foot the only institution that can save us? Our REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT cannot save us. That depends on the morality, intelligence, and religion which the Bible presents, through the medium of the Sabbath, as our only hope, for safety and perpetuity. So long as our religion and our Sabbaths save us, we shall save our government, and that will save us no longer.

The professional men, mechanics, and agriculturists of this nation, have formed themselves into a kind of copartnership, to