The rest of the Sabbath is invaluable to the labourer who is desirous of cultivating his own mind by study, of strengthening and gaining the control of his intellectual powers, or of increasing his stock of knowledge by reading. When he returns from his daily labour, to enjoy his brief hour of leisure in the evening, his system is too much exhausted by his previous exertion, and, consequently, his animal spirits too much depressed, for close application of mind or energy of thought. If he attempt to peruse any really serious and useful author, he not unfrequently falls asleep with the book in his hand. The lighter pages of the novelist, with their intellectual intoxication, and too often pernicious views of human life and human nature, may be able, by their excitement, to overcome, for a time, his fatigue; and, therefore, if he reads at all, for these, the works of the natural and moral philosopher, of the historian, the moralist, and the theologian, are laid aside; and thus his moral and intellectual nature, not receiving wholesome food or healthful exercise, becomes weak and diseased, and unfitted to fulfil the offices of enlightening him; his passions and appetites, unrestrained by an enlightened conscience and cultivated understanding, lead him captive at their will; and his whole character and condition strikingly prove, that, as a general rule, the degradation of one part of man’s nature is the degradation of the whole. Is his temporal condition abject, his body subjected to unremitting toil?--his intellectual condition, too, is debased, and his mind enslaved. Is his intellect uncultivated, and his moral nature vitiated?--his outward appearance[2] and condition are degraded, rude, and comfortless. The Sabbath, by the repose it affords, not only renews man’s physical energy, renovates his animal system, it also qualifies his mind to apply itself to self-culture and to the acquisition of solid and useful knowledge. Nor does it stop here--it leaves him not unaided and unguided to grope in darkness for the knowledge which is essential to his well-being; it pours upon his path a flood of light, opens wide the gate of knowledge, and bids him enter. It leaves him not to mope alone over the dreamy speculations of sceptical philosophers who have attained to no belief, who have no certainty or knowledge, but have chosen their perpetual abode in those gloomy regions of darkness where the dense fogs of doubt are for ever settled, till his mental energy is exhausted and his mind unhinged. No; it calls him forth in exulting joy to seek the society of his fellow-men, that mind may awaken and strengthen mind, and heart warm heart--that they may ponder together the meaning of facts--facts attested by incontrovertible evidence--facts the most sublime and interesting that have ever engaged the attention of man. It calls men together to study, in each other’s society, a system of morality pure and perfect, founded upon these facts.