The Sabbath.

6. It is not, however, as a mere sublime picture that we value at so high a rate the Sabbath-honouring habits of the Scottish people, but because _we are convinced that the practice nourishes and sustains the very roots of our national life, and keeps pure and deep the streams of our national morality and religion_.--It is not the least valuable result of the recent discussion of the Sabbath question in Scotland, that it has served to elicit and accumulate a mass of statistics demonstrating the close connection between the Sabbath observance and the religious prosperity of our people, as well as illustrating in a most interesting manner what has aptly enough been termed _the physiology of the Sabbath-day_. Thus, if we look through three centuries of the religious history of either portion of our island, it will be found that our Sabbath-keeping periods have uniformly been those in which the Church has been "as a well-watered garden." The two things have risen or fallen with each other, and have exerted mutual influence, as may be seen by comparing the age of Cromwell with that of either Charles. Inquiries on a very large scale, embracing all our principal professions and trades, were recently made in reference to the moral condition of those connected with each; and it was found that, from the costermonger and the bargeman upwards, the most Sabbath-breaking were also the most morally sunken and degraded. And our superintendents of police will tell you, that persons who are in the habit of honouring the Sabbath, and frequenting a place of worship, are more careful in their pecuniary transactions, "more careful also in their language, more economical in their arrangements at home, more affectionate and humane, and in every respect superior persons by far to those of contrary habits." Some who do not look with favour upon our Sabbatic rest, are accustomed to point to the drunkenness which exists among a certain class of our Scottish population; but it is not our Sabbath-keepers who are our drunkards. Some few years since, the moral statistics of certain congregations in Scotland, including a membership of thirty thousand, were collected, and it was found that an average of only two out of every thousand of those members had in the course of a year been charged with the sin of intemperance. And what is thus found to hold in the instance of large communities, is equally true in the case of individuals. So long as a Scottish youth respects the Sabbath and frequents the church, there is good hope regarding him, for he is coming under weekly influences that keep him right; but when these practices cease or become fitful, it is sure that virtue has begun to decay at the roots, if it be not indeed already dead; and Hogarth, one of our greatest painters, was therefore true to nature and experience, when, in his "Rake's Progress," he represented him in his first downward step to ruin as gambling on a tombstone in a churchyard while public worship was proceeding in the church near at hand. One of the sages of modern infidelity, Voltaire, who at one time dwelt on the shores of your beautiful lake, declared that he despaired of extinguishing Christianity so long as men assembled on a particular day of each week for Christian worship and instruction. And his remark shewed that he had discovered the value of the Sabbath to the Church; for public worship will never be common among a people where there is not the recognised sanctity of a Sabbath to preserve it. And let it never be forgotten, that it is far more easily preserved than recovered, for when any portion of its time is invaded, the habits of a people soon shape themselves to the new order of things. A spadeful of earth may prevent the inundation in Holland, but when once the sea has broken in, the strength of a million of men may fail to roll back its destructive waters.