It is impossible, and it would be most ungrateful, to overlook the eminent services of “The Sabbath Alliance,” itself a fruit of the agitation of the question of the Lord’s day, and a powerful agent in its cause. Its basis is thoroughly orthodox, recognising, as it expressly does, the whole truth of God in regard to the Sabbath, its divine institution, and the perpetual obligation of the Fourth Commandment of the Moral Law. While thus it excludes from its _membership_ all who deny any portion of the truth, it includes in the matter of its _actings_ all who differ on the point of the civil magistrate’s authority to interfere in regard to the observance of the day. It thus so far restricts its _actings as an Alliance_ as to avoid all application to the law or the legislature, save only to the effect of rescinding existing laws whose purpose is to compel disobedience to the divine law. Nothing can be more pure or more catholic in constitution than this. It has enabled Sir Andrew Agnew, the advocate of legislation, to embrace excellent Mr Henderson of Park on its platform, the originator and munificent endower of the Workmen’s Sabbath Essay Scheme, and of every purely “voluntary” effort, though the foe of judicial or state interference. And that the Alliance has been practically most efficient, is proved both by the progress of the principle all over the land, and by the stir of hatred excited among the enemies, as against all its actings, so especially against that most sagacious, effective, and self-remunerating arrangement whereby the whole services of two men have been secured for the working of its work—the one resting at the centre and the other revolving round the provinces, to concentrate at once and to scatter the light of the principle, and bring the darkened masses to its enjoyment. Let our friends be assured, that the bitter derision and invective of the infidel press directed against the “two secretaries and their salaries,” are the transparent exhibition of the sense entertained in these quarters of the power and efficacy of the labours of these two Christian gentlemen. The country ought to support this institution more effectually than it does, and to make more true than the state of its funds and the generosity of Dr Greville and Mr Lyon admit, their gibes at the “large and lavish (!) allowances” voted to them. The English localities likewise should, no less than the Scotch, have their “Sabbath Alliances;” and it would be honourable to the Church of England if it did not leave the work of originating them to the unestablished communions.