It was enough, therefore, for my own vindication, enough, I repeat, to justify my refusal to protest, to show that the mere transmission of letters through the London Post Office on the Sunday, taken in connection with its avowed object on the one hand, and with its concomitant measures of relief on the other, was not that affront to religion, that disparagement of Divine ordinances, which alone could necessitate the interposition of a Christian nation for its discomfiture. This was the object of my Letter. This object, steadily kept in view, necessarily confined my argument within narrow limits, and excluded many topics of discussion to which the opponents of the measure would gladly divert our attention. For example, a Clerical antagonist, {5a} for whose character and evident sincerity I entertain great respect,—and whose name, as he well knows, is enough to secure for him at my hands a degree of forbearance and courtesy which he would think it a dereliction of duty to reciprocate,—complains that I have not enunciated in my Letter any positive opinions of my own as to the grounds of the observance of the Lord’s Day. {5b} To supply this deficiency, he has had recourse to my published Sermons; and, selecting from a Sermon preached on a particular occasion an incidental notice of the question, continues his complaint that there also my language on this subject is vague and unsatisfactory. I can direct him, if a time of unwonted leisure should ever permit him to avail himself of the reference, to three consecutive Discourses on the Lord’s Day, contained in a volume of Parochial Sermons, published four years ago, in which I have entered fully into the discussion, and expressed myself in language to which I still heartily subscribe. You, my dear Sir, will not require to be informed, that there, as everywhere, I have spoken of the Lord’s Day, as every Christian man must speak and think of it, with veneration, with thankfulness, with an earnest and watchful jealousy for its honour. The Author of the “Reply” would have expressed himself, doubtless, in language more eloquent and more impressive, but he could scarcely have used any more decisive as to his own convictions, than that in which the national observance of the Sunday is there enforced. For his information, not for yours, I quote the sentences which follow. {7}