of sin, there will always be opposition to it; and persecution, just in proportion to the magnitude of the evil, and the holy zeal, perseverance, and ability, which are brought to bear against the sin. The best men, engaged in the best of causes, have seen and felt this to be true. From the well-known influence of corrupt propensities and long-cherished sin; from the amount of infidelity, atheism, ignorance, and enmity to all good, in our land, we expect, if any attempt is made to remove these evils, and wrest this people from the hands of the destroyer, there will be a terrible opposition from anti-christian men, which may result in much waste of blood and human life. The blood of good men, on all similar occasions, has flowed, and will flow again, before this world is redeemed unto Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, righteousness and peace will ultimately prevail. God, the mighty God, will not always suffer his law to be trampled in the dust by infidels, and his gospel to be despised with impunity; nor his faithful followers to lie bleeding in the streets. He is about to rise and take to himself his great power; and though a tremendous battle may be fought before his children gain the victory; and though many of them may fall in the contest, from their ashes and their blood will arise an exceeding great army, which will easily put to flight all the enemies of the Sabbath and of our religion. A day of triumph to God's people will surely come. ADDRESS TO FEMALES. If there be a single female in all Christendom who can look with the least complacency on the efforts of anti-christian and anti-sabbath men, let her remember that the Sabbath-breaker is laboring most effectively to reduce the whole sex to that state of degradation, misery, and bondage, which may be seen in those lands where the influence of the Christian religion and the light of the Sabbath are not known: and that he needs but indifference on her part to accomplish his object with certainty. The following extract is from a Sermon to Youth, by Rev. A. D. Eddy, ON INFIDELITY. "It is a source of pleasure, that we are required to address but one class of our youth on the subject of infidelity. From this delusion and madness the female sex have generally stood exempt. Whenever they have fallen from the high stand that Christianity assigns them, to the level of scepticism, they have become disrobed of their dignity and virtue, alike a disgrace to their sex, and monsters in society. * He "It is alone almost sufficient to justify the peculiar blessings with which Christianity has crowned the female sex, that they were never found in opposition to its incarnate Author. had something to do for women, which should at once emancipate them from human impositions, and equalize them in divine privileges. * * None of them appear to have been amongst his public enemies, either during his life or at his crucifixion. Even Pilate's wife warned her husband, on the judgment-seat, to have nothing to do against that 'just person.' In like manner, the multitude of women who followed the Savior from the city to Calvary, instead of joining with the men in the cry of' Crucify him!' bewailed and lamented him. Indeed, there is no instance of any female offering any public indignity to Christ while he was on earth. Not she, with traitorous kiss, her Savior stung; She, while Apostles shrank, could dangers brave; "Religion has borrowed many of her brightest ornaments from the female sex, and uniformly poured upon them the choicest of her stores; and long may it continue to be alike their disgrace and ruin, to despise and reject the religion of heaven!" Look at the history of all anti-christian people and heathen nations, and learn what woman, without the influence of Christianity, is doomed to be: then never for a moment give countenance to sentiments like our objectors', who would prejudice the minds of the people against the Sabbath, for they are the worst enemies of your sex. Christianity alone can elevate woman. View with indifference or complacency such conduct, and, in a few years, you and your daughters may know, by painful experience, the effects of infidelity and Sabbath-breaking upon your domestic happiness and future prospects. Beware, then, we entreat you, lest you be found preparing the way for your own bondage, and the destruction of all that is amiable, virtuous, lovely, and desirable in the female character, by giving your sanction to such impious sentiments. LABORING POOR. To the laboring poor let us say,-Infidels and deists, (and all opposed to the Sabbath we class under this head,) would wrest from you your best friend; for the Sabbath is emphatically "the poor man's friend." They may pretend to be your friends, but they are not. Satan pretended to be the friend of Eve, until he had ruined our race; and he feigned great friendship and concern for our Savior, lest he should suffer hunger. Remember, Sabbath-breakers are against God, his Bible, and his Sabbath; and rather than these should be honored as they ought, they would ruin their father and mother, their brothers and sisters, and the whole human family. As you value liberty, comfort, peace, and eternal life, do not believe them. When we say that the man who desecrates the Lord's day is an enemy to himself, to his family, his neighborhood, and the world, we do not allude to those who sincerely and devoutly worship God, after the dictates of an enlightened conscience, and who strictly observe a seventh day rest. Such we, not only in this place, but through all this work, mean to except. But we do say, that that individual who wantonly and habitually profanes the Sabbath, or observes no Sabbath, is a dangerous man in the community. His example, if universally followed, would blast all our fair prospects, as a nation, in a political point of view. Such men are not only enemies to our republic and our religion, but they are enemies to their own best interests, and to mankind. Past history, profane and sacred, ecclesiastical and civil, will prove this assertion. We love to quote from such authors as the following: "Do not flatter yourselves that pure and undefiled religion can be preserved a single month after the Sabbath is gone; for the house of God will be immediately shut up, or thrown down; your ministers will be driven from the altar; the hallowed fires will be extinguished on all the heights of Zion; the church will be clothed in sackcloth; her tears will be, all the day and all the night, upon her cheeks; and the strings of her harps, upon the willows, will be swept only by the mournful breezes of the surrounding desolation." If any deny that this is the legitimate effect of giving up the Sabbath, let them cast their eye upon that chart of the world, whose lines give the history of different religions, and see which nations have enjoyed Christianity, and at what period of their existence, and which have not. Then turn to their history, and learn a lesson which would make the infidel and deist blush and hide their heads, but for their hardened impiety, their awful blindness, and their determination towards ruin. SABBATH-BREAKING PARENTS. In the language of Dr. Humphrey, we say : * * * "If you care not what becomes of your own flesh; if you are willing to trust the keeping of their morals and their happiness to the wayward propensities of unsanctified nature; if you covet from them disobedience, neglect, and abuse in this world, their withering testimony at the bar of God, and their bitter execrations to all eternity, then let them profane the Lord's day as much as they please; let them sport, and fish, and hunt, and launch the sail-boat, and lounge in the tavern, while others are in the church and the Sabbath school. And lest they should, after all, become dissatisfied with the broad way, encourage them by your example. Wander about your farms, or go into your shops and counting-rooms; or travel with the mail, under the sanction of government, and the curse of Heaven; or meet your companions in the grog-shop, or on the sunny side of the distillery. Attend every anti-sabbath meeting, vote for the resolutions and sign the remonstrance. Denounce all the Sabbath-keeping boats and stages, and all the petitions to Congress, as innovations of the rights of conscience, and dangerous to the liberties of the country. Such a course will be likely to do the work for your families soon, and do it effectually. It will bring you, by a short route, to the brink of that gulf, into which you may plunge in vain to rescue your sons and daughters from destruction." CLOSING APPEAL. "Give up the Sabbath-blot out that orb of day-suspend its blessed attractions—and the reign of chaos and old night would return. The waves of an unquiet sea, high as our mountains, would roll and dash, from west to east and east to west; from south to north and north to south, shipwrecking the hopes of patriots and the world. "Who then is the patriot that would thrust out our ship from her peaceful moorings, in a starless night, upon such an ocean of storms, without rudder or anchor, compass or chart? The ele ments around us may remain, and our giant rivers and mountains. Our miserable descendants, also, may multiply, and vegetate, and rot, in moral darkness and putrefaction. But the American character and our glorious institutions, will go down into the same grave that entombs the Sabbath; and our epitaph will stand forth a warning to the world."—Beecher. Look at this, ye Americans, who trample on the Sabbath, and quote the opposition made to it by men of great names in the Congress of these United States, as a good reason why they should receive the highest offices in the gift of the people. Look at this, you who scoff at, ridicule, and calumniate the men who would rescue this day from its awful and alarming profanations! As surely as there is a God in heaven, this nation must give up its opposition to the Sabbath, or drink deep of the cup of his indignation. We cannot, since we have taken the Bible for our guide, do without a Sabbath, as well as those nations can who have never heard of a Bible. Our social, civil, and religious blessings, together with our literary, scientific, and political prosperity, are inseparably connected with a due observance of that day. Were it possible for us, as a people and a nation to banish forever from our minds all reverence and respect for that institution, still the day would not be forgotten, though it might live in our remembrance, only as a day of pastime and pleasure, every way tending to contaminate and corrupt the morals of all. If we do not keep the day as it ought to be kept, better would it have been for us never to have |