" Do their secret retirements witness the
earnestness of their prayers and the warmth of their thanksgivings,
their diligence and impartiality in the necessary work of
self-examination, their mindfulness of the benevolent duty of
intercession? Is the kind purpose of the institution of a Sabbath
answered by them, in its being made to their servants and dependents a
season of rest and comfort? Does the instruction of their families, or
of the more poor and ignorant of their neighbours, possess its due share
of their time? If blessed with talents or with affluence, are they
sedulously employing a part of this interval of leisure in relieving the
indigent, and visiting the sick, and comforting the sorrowful, in
forming plans for the good of their fellow-creatures, in considering how
they may promote both the temporal and spiritual benefit of their
friends and acquaintance: or if their's be a larger sphere, in devising
measures whereby through the Divine blessing, they may become the
honoured instruments of the more extended diffusion of religious truth?
In the hours of domestic or social intercourse, does their conversation
manifest the subject of which their hearts are full? Do their language
and demeanor shew them to be more than commonly gentle, and kind, and
friendly, free from rough and irritating passions?

Surely an entire day should not seem long amidst these various
employments. It might well be deemed a privilege thus to spend it, in
the more immediate presence of our Heavenly Father, in the exercises of
humble admiration and grateful homage; of the benevolent, and domestic,
and social feelings, and of all the best affections of our nature,
prompted by their true motives, conversant about their proper objects,
and directed to their noblest end; all sorrows mitigated, all cares
suspended, all fears repressed, every angry emotion softened, every
envious or revengeful or malignant passion expelled; and the bosom, thus
quieted, purified, enlarged, ennobled, partaking almost of a measure of
the Heavenly happiness, and become for a while the seat of love, and
joy, and confidence, and harmony.

The nature, and uses, and proper employments of a Christian Sabbath,
have been pointed out more particularly, not only because the day will
be found, when thus employed, eminently conducive, through the Divine
blessing, to the maintenance of the religious principle in activity and
vigour; but also because we must all have had occ