in its solemn particulars, are accustomed to exclaim on their knees, “Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law!” 9. The question of necessity and mercy then, which alone remains, is capable of much and varied illustration, and deserves and will repay careful study. In a few words, it may be stated as a question, Whether, in order to provide for the few and far between real cases of this description, it is necessary or expedient to entail on the railway staff of the whole island, the tyrannical burden of a toil which knows neither interval nor remission, from week to week and from year’s end to year’s end, save the middle of the night—if that—and as completely deprives unhappy railway officials of the moral and religious blessings of God’s appointed Sabbath as if they were so many beasts. London proclaims that the land needs no Sabbath post. Old Scotland proclaims that it needs no Sabbath coach. Where then is the necessity? where the mercy? Echo answers, Where? 10. On the subject of motions for statistics bearing on the number of Sabbath travellers, and the expense, and consequent profit (or loss) of Sabbath traffic, let the Sabbath leader free himself as much as possible of either. The profit or the loss forms no portion of his principle, just because it forms no part of the commandment; and he is apt, entering into this walk of inquiry, to be ensnared into secularity, whereof the enemy always takes strong and sometimes unfair advantage. Besides, through the process of “cooking” (using this technical term in the gentlest and honestest sense of which it is susceptible), he can always be defeated in his attempt to establish a loss. He knows, that “in keeping of the commandment there is great reward;” and that is his strength even on the profit and loss account. 11. It may be very right, however, for some skirmisher in his band to call for Sabbath statistics; and it is believed that these, when perfectly fair, will support the good cause. But the less the leader has to do with them the better. The more indeed he can, in a missionary way, penetrate into the dwellings of the stokers and switchmen, and there learn, for the public good, the Sabbath statistics of the man, with his declension from the washed face and decent garb, family worship and patriarchal walk to neighbouring church with wife and children, downwards to the greasy hand and clouded face, and cast clothing, and hasty meal, and testy temper, and troubled wife and larking children, of the now Sabbath-breaker—the more of this the better. O, surely, as the Sabbath was made for man, so pre-eminently was it made for the working man, for the poor man! To him, however, the railway director says: “Thou shalt not remember the Sabbath-day; thou shalt not keep it holy; in it thou shalt not only not do _no_ work, but thou shalt do much work. To the poor the gospel shall not be preached.”