CHAPTER IX.

ADDRESS TO CHRISTIANS, PATRIOTS, AND PHILAN

THROPISTS.

CAUSE AND EFFECT.

NATURE's laws are sovereign, and, judging from the past, will remain so. Effect must and will follow cause, now and ever, as heretofore. A man cannot have health while he indulges in luxury and dissipation, any more than he can take fire into his bosom and not be burned. If he be idle and profligate, poverty and wretchedness will ensue; if industrious, honest, and frugal, abundance and peace will be his reward. As it is with individuals, so it is with families, neighborhoods, and larger communities. If right be pursued, all will be well-if wrong, it will be ill with them.

But should it be asked, which is the best, and the safest criterion, by which wrong actions are to be tried, we answer, the BIBLE—moralists, patriots, and philanthropists, say the BIBLE— and infidels, deists, and atheists admit, almost universally, that there is no better or safer guide to right actions, and a happy and prosperous life. They have never, themselves being judges, produced a better. It might likewise be argued, and conclusively proved from the history of past generations, that the code of morals, laid down in that Book, is the only one that can lead to happiness in this life. Were it fully conformed to, there would be heaven below-hence some of the reasons why all men should obey it.

In that code is contained the law of the SABBATH. Oneseventh of our time is required for rest and religious purposes.

As the laws of the natural or Physical world are inflexible, so are those of the moral world.

You cannot long have Sunday mails and civil and religious liberty.

You cannot run boats; and stages, and cars, and omnibuses, on Sunday, and have a virtuous and moral community.

You cannot have a wise and efficient administration, and a happy people, no matter how good your Constitution is, and at the same time, Sabbath-breaking rulers.

You cannot have even an intelligent, industrious, and happy nation, and a national sanction to break any one of the injunctions of this code; especially, that most important and indispensable one, the fourth.

You cannot have the Christian religion, nor civil liberty, and seven days in a week for labor and amusement.

You cannot have the religious and benevolent objects of the day in a flourishing state, with this system of Sabbath desecration. These things cannot long exist together. If you would retain the religion of the Bible, Sabbath-breaking must cease; for no religion ever has been, or can be propagated and sustained, without its festivals, its seasons for devotion. These truths necessarily follow, if the positions first laid down be correct. For effect must and will follow cause. If the Sabbath be profaned, people will not long assemble to hear religious and moral instruction; and then they necessarily become ignorant and vicious. So, the result in this country must soon be no Sabbath, in its legitimate hold on the public conscience, and no Christian religion, or no secular labor on that day. Both cannot long go together. We are rapidly approaching the crisis. Which will we have? Choose quickly, that you may have your choice-delay, and you may be compelled to take that which will destroy us.

SABBATH-BREAKING MAKES INFIDELS.

This nation is rapidly becoming infidel, and why? Not because infidelity makes Sabbath-breakers; for men must first cast away all reverence for that day, before they can disbelieve the Bible, ridicule its truths, and contemn its Author. All those who habitually trample on this institution must, from self-respect, or

love of consistency, profess to disbelieve the claims of those precepts which condemn them. Having therefore learned, by national sanction, and individual and State examples, to desecrate God's holy day, they fly to infidelity, in self-justification, waxing worse and worse, and contaminating every thing that comes within their reach.

Should it be asked, who are becoming infidels ? The answer is ready--stagemen, boatmen, carmen, postmasters, and their clerks, custom-house officers, toll-gatherers, forwarding merchants, innkeepers, their families and domestics, porters, barbers, milkmen, and others, who by any means, or in any way, habitually violate this day. They, to appear consistent, must say there is no law by which they are required to suspend their labor one-seventh part of the time.

We know a person, the son of a pious man, who moved from New England, some twenty years ago, into the valley of the Mississippi. He was then a nominal believer in the Christian religion. He opened a public house, was appointed postmaster, and, like other men in such circumstances, began to do business on Sunday. The result has been, not only infidelity in the father, but in six or eight sons. Not long since, on that day, we were pained to see that all of them, together with a large num ber of neighbors and stage-drivers, could laugh, talk, and drink, on the day of rest, sport with the Christian religion, ridicule the story of the cross, and blaspheme God, regardless of their own, and the future well-being of others. They had, as the most valued part of their library, "Paine's Age of Reason;" and they believed every word its author had written, notwithstanding the reasonings and statements in "Watson's Apology for the Bible," which had a place on the same shelf.

Sabbath-breaking has made every one of these men open contemners of God's law. This is not a peculiar case; many such families, and whole neighborhoods, can be found in that great valley; and let the practice continue a few years, at most, and in every neighborhood may be found such men, in abundance. Oh, how this system multiplies infidels. It does it by hundreds and thousands every year. Infidels, so long as this practice shall continue, need do nothing more than keep the

Christian public ignorant of what is doing, thereby to destroy Christianity. There is no necessity for their reprinting infidel subtlety, infidel slang, infidel slander and blasphemy, so long as labor and amusement are continued on Sunday; for this is doing their work of death more effectually than anything else could do it. Oh, that Christians but realized this, as they very soon will, though it may be too late to remedy the evil.

What, let us ask, must be the influence of this unholy practice, but the entire destruction of our privileges, civil, domestic, and religious? Wherever the Sabbath is profaned, infidelity comes in like a flood; and ignorance, crime, anarchy, and desolation follow in its train, as natural and unavoidable consequences. For the Sabbath and infidelity cannot long exist together. Where there is no Sabbath, there can be no sound morality-no true patriotism and philanthropy-but little humanity or general intelligence-little national prosperity, and no cheering hope of a blessed immortality. The Sabbath gone, and all that is valuable, here or hereafter, is gone; for, in the present economy, God cannot convert the world without the influence of that day.

The SABBATH has already lost much of its hold on the business men of this nation. The public conscience, on this subject, is fast dying away; and, continuing to do as we have done, its voice will soon cease to be heard. The din of worldly business has all but deafened the men of this world, and the love of gain filled the heart of the church, so that they seem to think of nothing but money, self-aggrandizement, and self-applause. · It often appears absolutely impossible to break the charm. Judgments, often repeated and most severe, may do it, but it is to be feared nothing else can; for God has long been trying mercies, and we have waxed worse and worse. Must it be, that the moral and physical benefits of this blessed season are soon to be lost to the church, and to a guilty, dying world ?

This seems, on looking over the whole field, and watching the progress which this evil has made, during the last eight or ten years, almost unavoidable. To human appearance it is quite SO. But "with God all things," consistent with his plan of government and his holiness, "are possible."

Will not the MINISTRY suffer with the people? Are they not, in a measure, responsible for the losses, the pains, and the miseries which are felt, in consequence of this national breach of the divine law? Had they lifted up their voices against such an intrusion, the evil might have been stayed, and this nation spared many a pang; many souls might have been saved from perdition, and God's name and authority preserved from dishonor.

PRIVATE CHRISTIANS have neglected, and continue to neglect, their duty, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary. They act as though they believed it was the work of ministers only to reprove this sin, and that they have nothing to do in the matter. They have either been afraid to speak, or too worldly, covetous, selfish, and indifferent, to spend a thought for this object, though upon its success depend the best interests of a dying world. One has turned to his farm, and another to his merchandise, apparently listless, unaffected, undisturbed.

This NATION, for a number of years, has been rolling in wealth and pleasure. Prosperity has smiled on us, and, in our own estimation at least, we have become rich and important. Many of our young men are proud, impious, and ready to say, “Who is the Lord, that we should serve him ?" The Sabbath is our own, and we will enjoy it. The truth of God exerts no influence on their minds, to convince them that they are sinners, poor, ignorant, dependent-hastening to the judgment of the great day. They laugh and scoff at serious things, and even defy the Almighty. Old men too are forgetting the good instructions of their fathers.

The efforts of some professors of religion to divide our ranks, and their frequently going over to the enemy, are very discouraging. When one stands in the field, at his post, and is attacked by the enemy, instead of coming up to his help in the mighty struggle, they leave him to conquer alone, if he can, or they even join with the enemy, though, it is admitted, in most cases indirectly. Thereby they procure, if not his immediate, his ultimate overthrow; when, worn out, grieved, and discouraged, he dies a martyr to the cause.

This is cruel-traitorous; but it has been acted over and over,