people, men, women, and children, work in them on Sundays, as the Gauls do in their country. . . . You have known how to unite freedom with order, popular rights with a national aristocracy and hereditary monarchy, which union, our great heathen prophet Cicero said, would, if ever it could be brought to pass, form the most perfect of governments."1

The prevailing tranquillity which is maintained by a wise and just government is of the greatest moment to all the enjoyments and interests of a country. Spain, Italy, and Ireland, might be pointed to as presenting obvious contrasts to such a state of things, and reference, too, might be made to those occasional scenes of outrage and bloodshed in countries usually peaceful, which enhance to the inhabitants their prevailing advantages. In Scotland, 1800 soldiers suffice to keep the peace, while Ireland required for the eight years preceding 1852, troops numbering at an average more than 25,000. Of these troops, scarcely 3000 are found in Ulster, and except in its southern counties, even these are wholly unnecessary. Not a soldier is stationed between Belfast and Derry, a distance of seventy miles, embracing two most populous counties, and various large towns. Of the 13,000 police in Ireland, the number stationed in Ulster in 1851 was 1901, little more than a seventh of the force for a third of the population.2 What says M. de Montalembert, in name of a Commission reporting to the French Parliament in 1850 on Sabbath Observance ? After remarking that the Almighty conferred success and security on human labour in proportion as nations respect the Lord's day, he refers in proof to England and the United States, and says, "Witness that city London, the capital and focus of the commerce of the world,3 where Sunday is observed with the most scrupulous care, and where two and a half millions of people are kept in order by three battalions of infantry, and some troops of guards, while Paris requires the presence of 50,000

men.

4

The connexion thus observed to subsist between a Christian

1 Bunsen's Hippolytus and his Age, vol. ii. pp. 16, 17.

2 Thom's Statistics, quoted in Dill, pp. 74, 81.

3 "O thou, resort and mart of all the earth."-CowPER.

4 Rapport, &c. (1850), pp. 37, 38.

institution and social order is not a matter of accident. From the whole preceding discussion in these pages, it follows that a Sabbath-keeping community will be healthy, intelligent, moral, and comfortable to the extent in which the influences of the institution are permitted to operate. Those who enjoy such blessings can have no interest in turmoil, or in mere change, and only the direst necessity would make them revolutionists, when all their feelings are in favour of peace and quiet. These men, too, can appreciate and make allowance for the difficulties of rulers, and their attempts at reformation will be rational and discreet. The meetings once a week of rich and poor prevent selfish insulation, remove ignorant prejudices, smooth asperities, cherish kindliness of feeling, create a mutual interest, teach lessons of civility, and promote refinement of taste and courtesy in manners. "The keeping one day in seven holy," says Blackstone, "as a time of relaxation and refreshment, as well as for public worship, is of admirable service to a State, considered merely as a civil institution. It humanizes, by the help of conversation and society, the manners of the lower classes, which would otherwise degenerate into a sordid ferocity and savage selfishness of spirit. It enables the industrious workman to pursue his occupation in the ensuing week with health and cheerfulness; it imprints on the minds of the people that sense of their duty to God, so necessary to make them good citizens; but which yet would be worn out and defaced by an unremitted continuance of labour without any stated times of recalling them to the worship of their Maker."1 He might have extended his remarks to other classes of society. There are those besides the lower orders who can be selfish and disorderly, noted for family broils, and for their breaches of the public peace, but a truthful biography of such characters would let us see that those who do such things neither relish the business, nor experience the tran · quillizing pleasures of a sacred resting day. The saying of Burke, that "whatever alienates man from God, must needs disunite man from man," holds good of all classes. Let us again borrow a few sentences from Bunsen's Hippolytus. After remarking, as already quoted, that our manufacturing people are not like the Gauls (French) condemned to Sunday labour, he thus proceeds: “You

1 Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 63.

have, like them, labourers and mechanics, aspiring to better their condition; but yours prefer working, and quietly associating together, to the making of revolutions, and plunging others and themselves into misery. You have ragged children; but you clothe and educate them for useful work, instead of enlisting them as soldiers to kill their fellow-citizens; and they like learning to read and to work, rather than making an attempt to convulse society by their votes, and to subvert order by arms. You have just shown to the world the practical effect of the principle on which your social arrangements are based. People on the Continent believed (or tried to make others believe) that the gathering of so many hundreds of thousands of your working and labouring men around the spectacle of the Great Exhibition would be the signal, if not of famine and pestilence, certainly of revolution and bloodshed. But I have seen them surround their Queen with respectful affection: and far from any disturbance taking place, good will and good humour and plenty never have reigned more paramount anywhere than during these months among you. when I ask myself, since what time you have possessed this liberty and enjoyed this peace and tranquillity, I cannot help remarking that you owe it all to that godly reform you began to make of Christianity about three hundred years ago."1

Now

The occasion, however-although ever to be deprecated-may call for the defence of a land against domestic or foreign foes. And who are the men best prepared in such a crisis to stand by their sanctuaries and hearths? The very persons who have by means of the Sabbath been disciplined not less to energy, enterprise, self-reliance, and physical strength, than to all the finer and gentler feelings of humanity. Macaulay describes Cromwell's army as one that never found either in the British Islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset-as startling and delighting Turenne by its fearless energy; and mentions a brigade, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by allies, which nevertheless drove before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain. lets us into the secret of all this power, when he says, “But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell from other armies was the austere morality, and the fear of God which per

1 Vol. ii. pp. 16-18.

He

vaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most zealous royalists that in that singular camp no oath was heard, no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that during the long dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen and the honour of women were held sacred."1 Thus "the people that do know their God are strong and do exploits." It was ever so in the history of the Jews, down to the time of the Maccabees. When they forgot their religion and its Sabbaths they became weak and dastardly, and were finally reduced to a condition of abject dependence and servitude. In France as compared with Britain, in Spain as compared with Holland, in South as compared with North America, we find proofs that the people whose character, mental, moral, and corporeal, has been deteriorated by ignorance, superstition, and the pursuits of frivolity and pleasure, are surpassed in energy and prowess by the men who have, through the Scriptures and the institutions of Christianity, imbibed the spirit of faith and courage, and had their intellectual and physical powers trained to activity and endurance. And who are those that at the close of a war return to their homes and ordinary avocations, without having been corrupted by the life of a camp or the excitements of the battle-field, and blend again in general society without the slightest disturbance of its order and peace? The men who, like Cromwell's warriors, have learned by the lessons of the Sabbath that war is not a matter of desire or taste but a painful necessity, and that "the post of honour is a private station." The historian proceeds to record the following remarkable facts connected with the disbandment of the army whose virtue and bravery in the campaign he had eulogized. Fifty thousand men, accustomed to the profession of arms, were at once thrown on the world and experience seemed to warrant the belief that this change would produce much misery and crime, that the discharged veterans would be seen begging in every street, or would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such result followed. In a few months, there remained not a trace indicating that the most formidable army in the world had just been absorbed

1 Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. 122. How different from the following: "No woman's honour is safe in any village through which a French detachment happens to be passing." Letters from Turin.-Daily Express, June 22, 1859.

into the mass of the community. The royalists themselves confessed that in every department of honest industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men, that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that if a baker, a mason, or a wagoner, attracted notice by his diligence or sobriety, he was in all probability one of Oliver's old soldiers."

When a society is characterized in its successive generations by a growing measure of health and longevity, it is generally regarded as in an improving condition. And what sound-minded person can doubt that the cultivation of the virtues of respect for life, industry, temperance, and providence, together with the improved physical comforts which such a condition implies, not to mention the pleasures of health itself, must presuppose as well as contribute to national wealth, energy, and happiness? When we compare the present state of our own country with that of degraded and short-lived savage tribes, with that of half-civilized China, where so many of the young are left to perish, or even with that of Europe, in those times when fell diseases created so much alarm and calamity, we have an impressive illustration of the blessings included in the increasing duration of human life. But England teaches us the same lesson in another way, for while "the value of life is greater there than in any country in the world," 2 with all other elements of greatness and prosperity in proportion, she presents over against these honours the spectacle of life in its lowest form of discomfort and abbreviation. We see a large class destroyed for lack of knowledge of the simplest sanitary rules, of the plainest principles of political economy, and especially of those intellectual and moral subjects which, above all other means, dignify, bless, and prolong the life of man. We see a vast number the victims of crimes, which not only in many instances entail capital punishment, but as connected with imprisonment and other sufferings, are equivalent to 30 years' tear and wear of life, the criminal of 35 years being 65 years old in constitution, and by imprisonment itself increase exactly fourfold the chances of death. And we see tens of thousands ruined by vice,

1 Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. p. 154.

2 Dr. S. Smith's Philosophy of Health, vol. i. (1851), p. 147. 3 Ibid. p. 108.