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 public devotion and instruction, by secret prayer and meditation; there must be the recollection and the holy repose of the soul afterwards; there must be the hallowed intermingling of deeds of charity with exercises of piety, and room for the revival and the play of home affections, if the Sabbath is to shed all the good which the beneficence of Heaven has put into it, upon churches and nations.
And if there is need for such a Sabbath in any country, and among any people, even were they as pastoral and contemplative in their daily habits as Abraham in Canaan, or as Moses when tending the flocks of Jethro, it is immeasurably more indispensable to the intellectual and religious wellbeing of men living in old countries such as Scotland or England, where over-population has unduly crowded the market of labour, and given rise to an unhealthy competition, in which men often need to strain their wits and their energies to the utmost in order simply to live. Nothing will save a people in such a community from an undue mental strain unfavourable alike to intellectual and moral health, and even from being wrought in great numbers to death, but the weekly recurrence of a day which is fenced off and guarded by Divine prescription, and attachment to which is deeply rooted in the religious convictions and the gratitude of the people. There are tens of thousands of our industrial classes, and even multitudes among our men of business, who seldom see the younger members of their families, except on Sabbath-day. And to what a debasing monotony of toil would the lives of these men speedily be reduced, were it not for the anticipation of the coming day of hallowed rest, in which the artisan should know no master, and the master himself should be disturbed by no postman's rap or din of business, and should exchange his ledger for his Bible, and the hardening influences of commercial competition and rivalry for the softening and purifying influences of home and of the house of God. On this day, our sons of toil stand erect in the full consciousness of their manhood and of their heavenly birthright; and shall the day which brings such privilege and blessing to man be described as a restraint? It is such a restraint as the shutting of the door of the ark was to Noah, which kept the deluge out, and the patriarch safe. It is like the fence of flowers which we may imagine to have been drawn around Paradise when Adam dwelt in it; and to many a wearied and wasted labourer, when this day has returned with healing in its wings, it has seemed as if the primeval curse was suspended, and Eden threw open its closed gates for a season to receive the wanderer back.