To a close observer of human nature there is nothing surprising in the fact that a class of persons, who wink at this sacrifice of Sabhath sanctities to the demon of gain, look at the same time with stern disapprobation upon everything partaking of the character of amusement, however innocent and healthful, on this day. But for myself, looking down through the light of a golden evening upon these quietly passing groups, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them for seeking on this their sole day of leisure the needful influences of social enjoyment, unrestrained exercise, and fresh air. I cannot think any essential service to religion or humanity would result from the conversion of their day of rest into a Jewish Sabbath, and their consequent confinement, like so many pining prisoners, in close and crowded boarding-houses. Is not cheerfulness a duty, a better expression of our gratitude for God's blessings than mere words? And even under the old law of rituals, what answer had the Pharisees to the question, "Is it not lawful to do good on the Sabbath day?" I am naturally of a sober temperament, and am, besides, a member of that sect which Dr. More has called, mistakenly indeed, "the most melancholy of all;" but I confess a special dislike of disfigured faces, ostentatious displays of piety, pride aping humility. Asceticism, moroseness, self-torture, ingratitude in view of down-showering blessings, and painful restraint of the better feelings of our nature may befit a Hindoo fakir, or a Mandan medicine man with buffalo skulls strung to his lacerated muscles; but they look to me sadly out of place in a believer of the glad evangel of the New Testament. The life of the divine Teacher affords no countenance to this sullen and gloomy saintliness, shutting up the heart against the sweet influences of human sympathy and the blessed ministrations of Nature. To the horror and clothes-rending astonishment of blind Pharisees He uttered the significant truth, that "the Sabhath was made for man, and not man for the Sabhath." From the close air of crowded cities, from thronged temples and synagogues,--where priest and Levite kept up a show of worship, drumming upon hollow ceremonials the more loudly for their emptiness of life, as the husk rustles the more when the grain is gone, --He led His disciples out into the country stillness, under clear Eastern heavens, on the breezy tops of mountains, in the shade of fruit- trees, by the side of fountains, and through yellow harvest-fields, enforcing the lessons of His divine morality by comparisons and parables suggested by the objects around Him or the cheerful incidents of social humanity,--the vineyard, the field-lily, the sparrow in the air, the sower in the seed-field, the feast and the marriage. Thus gently, thus sweetly kind and cheerful, fell from His lips the gospel of humanity; love the fulfilling of every law; our love for one another measuring and manifesting our love of Him.