not introduce the Bible into our public schools, or do anything in a public capacity which implies that we are Protestant Christians. Those men do not know what Protestant Christians are. It is their characteristic, as they humbly hope and believe, to respect the rights of other men, and stand up for their own. And, therefore, they say to all-Infidels and Atheists-to all who demand that the Bible shall not be the rule of action for us as individuals, and as a Government, you ask what it is impossible can be granted. We must obey God. We must carry our religion into our families, our workshops, our banking-houses, our municipal and other governments; and if you cannot live with Christians, you must go elsewhere."1

That the sanguine hope of another American writer, as expressed in the following words, may be fulfilled, is devoutly to be wished: "If the wise, and good, and patriotic in our land persevere; and especially if ministers of the gospel generally bring the influence of the gospel to bear on this subject, the day, there is every reason to believe, is not far distant when, by the blessing of the God of the Sabbath, the greater part of our nation will be, at least externally, a Sabbath-keeping people."2

SCOTLAND.

It may to some appear out of place to introduce, under the head of controversies on the Sabbath, a country where we ought to look for the fruits of peace and sanctity rather than for the turmoils and desolations of war. And it is true that, from the Reformation to the present time, the Scottish Church has had but one doctrine on the subject; and that for a long period general acclaim accorded to the nation a distinction above all others for a sacred regard to the Lord's day. But besides the aversion to holy restraints and duties common to human nature everywhere, the peculiar exposure of the Scots to foreign aggression against their worship and liberties, and the perfervidum ingenium, which led them to carry the war for truth and right into other lands, have

1 British and Foreign Evangelical Review for January 1860.

2 Dr Schmucker's Appeal in behalf of the Christian Sabbath, p. 16.

engaged them in Sabbatic contests not a few, and originated a Sabbatic literature equal in value, if not in amount, to that of any country.

For the greater part of three centuries has the institution encountered strong opposition from without. A Scotsman, James VI., from being a boastful admirer of Presbytery, became its avowed and bitter foe, and after his accession to the throne of England, speedily availed himself of his increased power to attempt the subversion of the religious polity and rights, including the Sabbath, of his native land. Charles I. was equally disposed, though less able, to carry on the nefarious work. The measures with the same view adopted in the reigns of Charles II. and James II.measures dooming within a period of twenty-eight years no fewer than 18,000 persons to death, or to sufferings worse than deathhave certainly, for folly and wickedness, been rarely paralleled in the history of any country. During such a time it was to be presumed that the Lord's day would be trampled under foot by one class, who, indeed, selected it as the season for their bloodiest deeds, and that it could not be observed by the other as they would. But the doctrine of its sanctity formed a part of the testimony, which they earnestly maintained, and for which they were willing to die. It has been well said, that the sacrifices of missionaries and of their supporters for the propagation of Christianity, so honourable to our times, are not for a moment to be compared with the expenditure of suffering and substance which its conservation cost our fathers. And more effectual than even persecution has been the influence of imported people and customs from England and Ireland for impairing the religion and Sabbath observances of Scotland. But evil has been to some extent the occasion of good, and it is a pleasing reflection that, despite the follies and cruelties of the Stuart kings, the deadening influence of prelacy and moderation, and, in our own day, the corrupting power of English wealth and Irish poverty, the popular belief and feeling of the country have, from the period of the Reformation down to the present time, been eminently Sabbatical.

Apart from the press, much has been done to secure for Scotland her hallowed day of rest. The Parliament from time to time passed Acts, for the most part suggested by the Church

Courts, which, according to the best authorities, amounted ultimately to a very complete legal provision for the protection of the Lord's day against open desecration. Still more numerous are the Acts of her supreme ecclesiastical court, which not only in 1566 and 1575 abjured all human holidays, but by its decrees, and the direct exercise of discipline, did much subsequently to maintain sound doctrine and right practice in reference to the weekly holy day throughout the nation. Three instances are worthy of particular notice. One of these occurred in 1596, when the members of the General Assembly were stirred to "great searching of heart" as to their treatment of the Fourth and other Commandments of the Divine Law, melted to genuine sorrow for sin, and warmed with a love which faithfully and boldly extended its care to his Majesty's household, the whole resulting in the spread of similar exercises and feelings, and in a general reformation over the land. Another belongs to the year 1638, when the Assembly, so celebrated for its connexion with the Second Reformation, excommunicated the greater part of the prelates for, with other grave offences, their shameless profanations of the Lord's day. The ratification of the Westminster Confession of Faith, with the full arrangement of the form of worship and discipline, by the General Assembly of 1647, which completed the Reformation, is the third instance.

The inferior courts were no less watchful over the interests of practical religion. The Synod of Lothian, for example, censured. Spotswood, minister at Calder, afterwards the noted Archbishop, and Law, minister at Kirkliston, for playing at foot-ball on the Lord's day. The Session records of the latter part of the sixteenth century and throughout the seventeenth, teem with proofs of the diligence with which ministers and elders sought to promote the piety and morals of the people, and especially their

1 Mr. John Davidson, minister at Prestonpans, by whose powerful appeals the Assembly of 1596 was so deeply impressed, was Moderator of the Synod at the time, and urged that the offenders should be deposed, "but the Synod agreed not thereto; and when they were called in, he said, 'Come in, ye pretty foot-ball men-the Synod hath ordained you only to be rebuked;' and turning to the Synod, he said, 'And now, brethren, let me tell you what reward you shall get for your lenity; these two men shall trample on your necks, and the necks of the ministrie of Scotland.'"-Livingstone's Memorable Characteristics. Wod. Soc. Sel. Biograph, vol. ii. p. 296.

obedience to the Fourth Commandment. Burnet, when referring to the time immediately prior to the Restoration, says :— "They kept scandalous persons under a severe discipline for breach of Sabbath, for an oath, or the least disorder in drunkenness, persons were cited before the church-session, that consisted of ten or twelve of the chief of the parish, who, with the minister, had this care upon them; and were solemnly reproved for it."1 Among the evils inherited from Rome, was the custom of performing comedies on the Lord's day, which continued for some years after the death of Knox, but was increasingly discountenanced, and ere long, through the influence of the sessions and magistrates, discontinued. In 1754, the sessions commenced the practice of employing individuals of their number to traverse the towns on Sabbaths and other seasons of public worship for the purpose of causing notice to be taken of such as should be found "vaging abroad upon the streets, and of having them cited before the session."2

But probably the faithful public ministrations, and the assiduous labours in private, of the excellent ministers, with whom Scotland has been more or less favoured in all periods of her reformed history, have contributed more than anything else to the formation and maintenance of her character as a Sabbath-keeping country. When we think of such a man presiding successively over the students of Glasgow and St. Andrews as Andrew Melville, who could in the Privy-Council pronounce Archbishop Bancroft a Sabbath-breaker; of John Welch, on one occasion weaning an easy-minded minister from his "bow-butts and archery" on the Sabbath afternoon, by engaging him to spend that time with himself and his friends, John Stuart and Hugh Kennedy, in prayer, and, on another, declaring to a gentleman, with whom he had in vain remonstrated against the patronizing of foot-ball and other pastimes on the Lord's day, that he should be cast out from house and hold, words which the unhappy man had soon to confess were

1 Hist. of his Own Time (1850), p. 102.

2 The persons so employed were called Searchers. Principal Lee, in his evidence given before a Committee of the House of Commons in 1832, says, that the practice continued for a century and a half. But similar measures have been resorted to occasionally in later times.

verified; of Henderson, who, when Charles I. had attended the High Church in the forenoon of the Sabbath after his arrival in Edinburgh in 1641, but spent the afternoon in playing at golf, conversed on the enormity with his Majesty, who afterwards gave constant attendance, as he did also at family worship performed morning and evening in the palace by that faithful minister; and of William Guthrie, who, by giving an equivalent for the profits of each day's shooting, could prevail on a parishioner to exchange on the Sabbath the fowling-piece and the field, for the Bible and the Church, till he learned that godliness was its own sufficient reward, and became, as an elder, an auxiliary to his minister in winning men from evil; when we think of such individuals— specimens of the ministry of their time-we see how adapted the means were to make the Church of Scotland the " Philadelphia" portrayed by Kirkton and Burnet. And when we remember Halyburton's dying counsels to his boy David, "not to come near anybody that would swear, lie, speak what was bad, or break the Sabbath;" Boston's lasting penitence for a youthful violation of the Fourth Commandment; Ebenezer Erskine's searching words from the pulpit, "I am ready to judge that folk's acquaintance with God himself is known by the regard they show to his holy day;" Alexander Moncrieff's pungent answer to the man who demanded to know his right to advise him against a Sabbath excursion, "You will learn that at the day of judgment ;" and Brown of Haddington's saying, by which he endeavoured to regulate himself and his family, that "conversation on the common affairs of life, or even on the more external and trivial matters of the Church, on the Lord's day, was unsuitable to the spiritual exercises of the day, and offensive to God;" when we remember such men, we recognise the worthy successors of the Scottish Reformers and Covenanters, and the fitting means of perpetuating among their countrymen the honours and blessings of the day of rest.

Nor has Scotland, amidst difficulties of no ordinary kind, merely maintained the Sabbath at home. She has furthered its interests abroad. She helped to equip Teellinck for his successful contest in Zealand. Her Welch, Boyd, Forbes, Dury, Andrew Melville, Brown, and Crawford, with others, exemplified, and in some in