But there is another side to this picture, and other truths having a bearing upon the argument, in support of which we might let go all a priori reasoning, and appeal directly to facts of observation. We will not take an extreme case, or rather, what is well known to be a common case with the Sabbath haunters of Hoboken and other rural purlieus. We will not take the intemperate, the gambling, or the debauched. Let two sober and industrious families be selected from the ranks of the laboring poor. One man devotes the day to pleasant rural excursions with his wife and children. We would not pass upon him a sanctimonious censure, although we might doubt the philosophy as well as the piety of his course. He has abstained from intoxicating drinks, from the lower sensual indulgences, from profane and vicious company. But he has sought simply relaxation for the body, and the negative pleasure of vacancy or of passive musing for the mind. The other pater-familias would, indeed, desire pure air for himself and little ones, purer air than can be obtained in the confined and populous street, and under other circumstances he would, doubtless, freely indulge in such a luxury; but then he knows there is a higher atmosphere still--a spiritual atmosphere--and that this, above all others, is the day in which he is to breathe its purity, and inhale a new inspiration from its invigorating life. He kneels with his children around the morning household altar--he goes with them to the Sabbath-school and to church--the remainder of the day is spent in devotion or meditation--and the evening, perhaps, is given to the social prayer-meeting. Oh, the gloomy drudgery! some would be ready to exclaim. We would not deny that there might be excess even here; but can we hesitate in deciding which of these two families will proceed to their weekly toil on Monday morning with more invigoration of spirit--ay, and of body, too, derived from the soul's refreshment? To which has the day been the truest _Sabbath_, the most real _test_? In deciding this question, we need only advert to our former analysis. There has been, in the one case, an utter mistaking of the true idea of rest. Experience has shown, and ever will show, that all mere pleasure-seeking, for its own sake, all vacancy or passivity of soul, ever exhausts, ever dissipates, and, in the end, renders both mind and body less fitted for the rugged duties of life than continued labor itself. In the train of these evils come also satiety, disappointment, a sense of personal degradation that no philosophy can wholly separate from idle enjoyment; and all these combined produce that aversion to regular labor, which is so often to be observed as the result of an ill-spent Sabbath. The body, it is true, belonging as it does wholly to the world of material nature, needs the repose of passivity; but the spirit can never indulge itself long in conscious indolence without risking the loss of spiritual power as well as moral dignity.