, and honored according to the
measure of its usefulness, and even of its faithful effort to be useful.

* * * * *

It is not to be supposed that this immense, unprecedented growth of
outward activity can have been gained without some corresponding loss.
The time is not long gone by, when the sustained contemplation of the
deep things of the cross, and the lofty things in the divine nature, and
the subtile and elusive facts concerning the human constitution and
character and the working of the human will, were eminently
characteristic of the religious life of the American church. In the
times when that life was stirred to its most strenuous activity, it was
marked by the vicissitude of prolonged passions of painful sensibility
at the consciousness of sin, and ecstasies of delight in the
contemplation of the infinity of God and the glory of the Saviour and
his salvation. Every one who is conversant with the religious biography
of the generations before our own, knows of the still hours and days set
apart for the severe inward scrutiny of motives and "frames" and the
grounds of one's hope. However truly the church of to-day may judge
that the piety of their fathers was disproportioned and morbidly
introspective and unduly concerned about one's own salvation, it is none
the less true that the reaction from its excesses is violent, and is
providing for itself a new reaction. "The contemplative orders," whether
among Catholics or Protestants, do not find the soil and climate of
America congenial. And yet there is a mission-field here for the mystic
and the quietist; and when the stir-about activity of our generation
suffers their calm voices to be heard, there are not a few to give ear.

* * * * *

An event of great historical importance, which cannot be determined to a
precise date, but which belongs more to this period than to any other,
is the loss of the Scotch and Puritan Sabbath, or, as many like to call
it, the American Sabbath. The law of the Westminster divines on this
subject, it may be affirmed without fear of contradiction from any
quarter, does not coincide in its language with the law of God as
expressed either in the Old Testament or in the New. The Westminster
rule requires, as if with a "Thus saith the Lord," that on the first day
of the week, instead of the seventh, men shall desist not only from
labor but from recreation, and "spend the whole