IV. And now, brethren, I come to the practical application of our subject, in the apprehended overthrow of all that is dear to a Christian mind by the opening of a great public exhibition on the Lord’s-day. It is a topic which I approach with much pain, not a little heightened by a fear lest strong feeling should betray me into any infirmity—into any word or sentiment inconsistent with the meekness and gentleness of Christ. But I have prayed to be kept from this—have asked of God that I might nothing exaggerate, nothing represent unfairly, nothing set down in the spirit of an ill-tempered and scolding partisan—but rather that, speaking in sorrow more than in anger, I might win _you_ to pray against this threatened evil—to pray against it as you would against the pestilence, or other feared providential scourge. This will not in any degree lead to a slackened diligence in the use of outward means, as you perceive from the first step I have invited you to take, in memorializing Her Majesty’s responsible advisers against this first step to a new “Book of Sports.” But still, remember, the thing to be done is to open eyes that are as yet blind, and to alarm consciences that now slumber; and this is a work to be done, not by might and not by power, not by wrangling and not by wrath, but by the Lord of Hosts pouring out upon our people a praying spirit, and enduing our beloved Queen with a wise and understanding heart. With a jealousy, therefore, that respects as well the charitable temper required of a Gospel teacher, as the demands of an unbending and unfearing faithfulness, I may not speak of the contemplated opening of the new Exhibition on the Lord’s-day in any other terms than as an impious affront to the honour of Almighty God—as a wanton outrage upon the religious feelings of the surrounding neighbourhoods—as a cruel encroachment upon the poor man’s Sabbath rights—and as a legalized incentive to the most debasing forms of viciousness and crime.