rendered the moral conservator of nations.

"The omnipresent influence the Sabbath exerts, however, by no
secret charm or compendious action, upon masses of unthinking
minds; but by arresting the stream of worldly thoughts, interests,
and affections, stopping the din of business, unlading the mind of
its cares and responsibilities, and the body of its burdens, while
God speaks to men, and they attend, and hear, and fear, and learn
to do his will.

"You might as well put out the sun, and think to enlighten the
world with tapers, destroy the attraction of gravity, and think to
wield the universe by human powers, as to extinguish the moral
illumination of the Sabbath, and break this glorious main-spring of
the moral government of God."

And I would ask, Would any Christian man consider it desirable for his
orphan children, after his death, to find refuge within this asylum,
under all the circumstances and influences which will necessarily
surround its inmates? Are there, or will there be, any Christian parents
who would desire that their children should be placed in this school,
to be for twelve years exposed to the pernicious influences which must
be brought to bear on their minds? I very much doubt if there is any
Christian father who hears me this day, and I am quite sure that there
is no Christian mother, who, if called upon to lie down on the bed of
death, although sure to leave her children as poor as children can be
left, who would not rather trust them, nevertheless, to the Christian
charity of the world, however uncertain it has been said to be, than
place them where their physical wants and comforts would be abundantly
attended to, but away from the solaces and consolations, the hopes and
the grace, of the Christian religion. She would rather trust them to the
mercy and kindness of that spirit, which, when it has nothing else left,
gives a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple; to that spirit
which has its origin in the fountain of all good, and of which we have
on record an example the most beautiful, the most touching, the most
intensely affecting, that the world's history contains, I mean the
offering of the poor widow, who threw her two mites into the treasury.
"And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the
treasury; and he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two
mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unt