Neither is there sufficient support for sabbatical institutions in the merely merciful idea of bodily relaxation. We are still in the region of secular benevolence, and without some influence from a higher world of motive and feeling, the sacred idea of _rest_ will inevitably degenerate, and give place to its demoralizing counterfeits--idleness--dissipation--and vice. Thus could it be shown, that even for the best secular ends, a Sabbath divested of the religious element would be far worse that unintermitted labor. But we would hasten to another and a third view, which may be characterized as being more catholic, or rather less sectarian, than the first, and, at the same time, more spiritual, or less secular, than the second. To firm believers in the positive divine institution of the Sabbath (among whom we have no hesitation in avowing ourselves) the merely worldly argument would appear, sometimes, to betray, rather than support, the very cause it professes to advocate. On the other hand, there are, doubtless, many inquiring minds to whom the Scriptural argument seems more or less defective, but who would, nevertheless, accept a more elevated and more religious view than the one we have denominated the physical or the secular. There are good men, very good men, and honest believers, too, in the written revelation, who have a prejudice against any thing positively outward and ritual in religion, on the ground of its savoring too much of what they deem the obsolete Jewish economy. There are others who do not so accept the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, that they would regard as conclusive any merely exegetical or traditionary argument. There are those, again, who wholly reject the authority of the commonly-received revelation. There are men who go farther than this--pantheists,--scientific theists, who recognize only an impersonal Power and Wisdom--men on the very verge of atheism, and some beyond all limits that the most tender charity can regard as separating us from that doleful region. And yet among them all--may we not say it without giving just offense to the strictest believer--among them all there may be sober men, thinking men, deeply serious men, for whom it is possible, and, if possible, most desirable, to frame an argument for a Sabbath that may steer clear of the apparent difficulties in the one view, and the really lowering and unspiritualizing tendency of the other.