Now, it is precisely so with regard to the Christian Sabbath. A system of spurious Christianity has mutilated it by the sanction of secular occupations and sinful pleasures on that holy day. Romanism, in its ritual and service, is, in itself, a blasphemous worship—its mass idolatry—its priests usurpers of the prerogative of Christ, “the Great High Priest of our profession,” and teachers not of the Gospel of Christ, but of “another gospel”—the devotions of her people are not simple, spiritual, and Bible-taught, but the offspring of fear marked by superstition and self-righteousness, and by the vain repetition of prayers to those who are no more gods than were the dumb idols of ancient Paganism. But, in addition to this, Popery has made void the law of God, the law of the Sabbath, by her traditions, and that in two ways.—1st, She has dragged down this blessed day of God from that place of peculiar glory and grandeur, where Jehovah himself has enthroned it above every other day, and has degraded it to a level with the feasts and fasts of the Romish calendar, making her own numerous holidays of equal authority with the Holy Day of God’s appointment. The consequence is, that, in all Popish countries, the holidays are better observed than the Sabbath, just because superstition and will-worship are dear to the carnal heart. 2nd, She has robbed the law of God of its complete and permanent authority. She has contracted the Scriptural limits of the Sabbath, and made it a _half_ instead of a _whole_ Sabbath. Hence, when the Popish mass is over at noon, the remaining portion of the day is regarded as a holiday. I speak not here of countries like our own, where she accommodates herself to the religious feelings and habits of the community, but of countries where she holds paramount sway. There one-half of the Sabbath is devoted to amusement and sensuous, if not sensual enjoyment. Before famine and pestilence swept the neighbouring island as with “the besom of destruction,” crowds of the population might be found on the Sabbath playing at the game of football, wrestling in the meadow, or drinking and dancing in the public-house, whilst many of the priests were wont, as I have reason to know, to spend the evening of the Sabbath in gay society, and shared in card-playing and carousal. And when we look to France—the military review, the brilliant fête, the opening of a railway, take place on the Sabbath, while the population of Paris is divided between the attractions of Versailles, the Luxembourg, and the Louvre, and the numerous theatres which are thrown open by authority for those who are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.”