perceived because a natural and a gradual growth, hath attained at last an alarming height. Persons of the higher ranks, whether from a certain vanity of appearing great by assuming a privilege of doing what was generally forbidden, or for the convenience of travelling when the roads were the most empty, began within our own memory to make their journies on a Sunday. In a commercial country, the great fortunes acquired in trade have a natural tendency to level all distinctions but what arise from affluence. Wealth supplies the place of nobility; birth retains only the privilege of setting the first example. The city presently catches the manners of the court; and the vices of the high-born peer are faithfully copied in the life of the opulent merchant and the thriving tradesman. Accordingly, in the space of a few years, the Sunday became the travelling day of all who travel in their own carriages. But why should the humbler citizen, whose scantier means oblige him to commit his person to the crammed stage-coach, more than his wealthier neighbour, be exposed to the hardship of travelling on the working days, when the multitude of heavy carts and waggons moving to and fro in all directions renders the roads unpleasant and unsafe to all carriages of a slighter

fabric; especially when the only real inconvenience, the danger of such obstructions, is infinitely increased to him, by the greater difficulty with which the vehicle in which he makes his uncomfortable journey crosses out of the way, in deep and miry roads, to avoid the fatal jostle? The force of these principles was soon perceived; and, in open defiance of the laws, stage-coaches have for several years travelled on the Sundays. The waggoner soon understands that the road is as free for him as for the coachman,- that if the magistrate connives at the one, he cannot enforce the law against the other; and the Sunday traveller now breaks the Sabbath, without any advantage gained in the safety or pleasure of his journey. It may seem, that the evil, grown to this height, would become its own remedy: But this is not the case. The temptation indeed to the crime among the higher ranks of the people subsists no longer; but the reverence for the day among all orders is extinguished, and the abuse goes on from the mere habit of profaneness. In the country, the roads are crowded on the Sunday, as on any other day, with travellers of every sort: The devotion of the villages is interrupted by the noise of the carriages passing through, or stopping at the inns for

refreshment. In the metropolis, instead of that solemn stillness of the vacant streets in the hours of the public service, which might suit, as in our father's days, with the sanctity of the day, and be a reproof to every one who should stir abroad but upon the business of devotion, the mingled racket of worldly business and pleasure is going on with little abatement; and in the churches and chapels which adjoin the public streets, the sharp rattle of the whirling phaeton, and the graver rumble of the loaded waggon, mixed with the oaths and imprecations of the brawling drivers, disturb the congregation and stun the voice of the preacher.

These scandals call loudly for redress: But redress will be in vain expected from any increased severity of the laws, without a concurrence of the willing example of the great. This is one of the many instances, in which a corrupt fashion in the higher orders of society will render all law weak and ineffectual. I am not without hope that the example of the great will not be wanting. I trust that we are awakened to a sense of the importance of religious ordinances, by the dreadful exhibition of the mischiefs of irreligion in the present state of the neighbouring apostate nation; and though our recovery from the

disease of carelessness and indifference is yet in its beginning, appearances justify a sanguine hope of its continuance, and of its ultimate termination, through the grace of God, in a perfect convalescence. And when once the duties of religion shall be recommended by the general example of the superior ranks, then, and not till then, the bridle of legal restraint will act with effect upon vulgar profligacy.

But, in the application of whatever means for the remedy of the evil, whether of legal penalties, which ought to be enforced, and in some cases ought to be heightened or of the milder persuasion of example—or of the two united, which alone can be successful, — in the application of these various means, the zeal of reform, if it would not defeat its own end, must be governed and moderated by a prudent attention to the general spirit of Christianity, and to the general end of the institution. The spirit of Christianity is rational, manly, and ingenuous; in all cases delighting in the substantial works of judgment, justice, and mercy, more than in any external forms. The primary and general end of the institution is the public worship of God, the Creator of the world and Redeemer of mankind.

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Among the Jews, the absolute cessation of all animal activity on their Sabbath had a particular meaning in reference to their history: It was a standing symbolical memorial of their miraculous deliverance from a state of servitude. But to mankind in general to us Christians in particular, the proper business of the day is the worship of God in public assemblies, from which none may without some degree of crime be unnecessarily absent. Private devotion is the Christian's daily duty; but the peculiar duty of the Sabbath is public worship. those parts of the day which are not occupied in the public duty, every man's own conscience, without any interference of public authority, and certainly without any officious interposition of the private judgment of his neighbour, every man's own conscience must direct him what portion of this leisure should be allotted to his private devotions, and what may be spent in sober recreation. Perhaps a better general rule cannot be laid down than this, that the same proportion of the Sabbath, on the whole, should be devoted to religious exercises, public and private, as every man would spend of any other day in his ordinary business. The holy work of the Sabbath, like all other work, to