and the life and glory of our churches—such as was spent by the best of the English Puritans two hundred years since, often leading them to confess, at the close of such a day, "Surely if this be not heaven, it must be the way to it;"—I should paint it in some such manner as the following:—The good man rises from his slumbers to realise the fact that it is God's day of sacred rest, and to open his mind to its devout associations. There is an unwonted stillness in the streets, and in the fields all around him, which that day only brings. The care of the body is not unheeded, and there is even a double attention to cleanliness and to taste in his attire; secret devotion is more prolonged than on other days, as it is more undisturbed; the family is in due time summoned around the frugal meal, it being perhaps the only day in the week in which they all meet at the same board; kind words and of affectionate counsels are interchanged; events in the family history are alluded to, and made the theme of edifying reflection; family-worship follows, and on this occasion the little family choir is unbroken, and sends up its full-voiced praise to heaven. The time has come for joining the companies that are already crowding to the houses of prayer. A brief interval, and a second frugal meal follows, and there is another ascent to the temple to worship God. Then comes the happy Sabbath evening, in which the Christian parents gather their children around them for religious instruction, and for recalling and reviewing the lessons of the sanctuary. Domestic affection has time to expatiate and grow in that Sabbath atmosphere; the Bible and other religious books are read; psalms and hymns are joyfully sung. Mercy joins her work with that of piety; the sick and the sorrowful are visited and comforted; neglected children are taught in the Sabbath-school; unreclaimed masses are evangelised in the mission district. The family once more re-assembles at the evening meal, and the Sabbath is closed with family worship, meditation, and secret devotion; and as the members of the household pass away to their nightly rest, it is felt that its hours have not been wearisome or unprofitable, but that they have in truth been all too short for the blessed work that was to be done in them.

3. It will not be wondered at, after these details, that in Scotland we claim the entire Sabbath for religion, not only because it forms part of our most sacred convictions that it has been so conferred upon us by the unrepealed act of Heaven, but also because we are of opinion that, within narrower limits than this, the Sabbath must ever fail to work out, to its proper extent, all its beneficent designs. Anything less than this would be something like placing the sun under a partial eclipse, which you yet expected to ripen the fruits of the world. Suppose the period of the Sabbath to be restricted, as some would wish, to the hours of public worship, and men suddenly to pass from business or pleasure to the sanctuary, and then to pass with equal suddenness from the sanctuary to business or pleasure again, even the benefit of the season of public worship would be more than half lost. Nature in most men is incapable of violent transitions; it must have its dawn and its twilight; and were our Sabbath to consist only of the time that we spent in the temple, the world would be far more likely to introduce its corrupting and debasing influence into the Church, than the Church to send out its healing streams upon the world. It is no mere theory or conjecture this; for the experiment was actually tried in England in the reign of our Sixth James, in the publication of "The Book of Sports," when it was sought to make games and morris-dances alternate on Sabbaths with public religious worship; and the effect was to neutralise the power of the pulpit, and to deluge the land with frivolity, irreligion, and vice. There must be the preparation and attuning of the mind for