One important advantage which is connected with the observance of the Lord’s day, among the labouring population, is the influence which it has in elevating the mind, character and condition of the female portion of the community. Where Christianity and its weekly rest are unknown, the condition of woman is abject in the extreme; but the religion of Jesus raises her from her degraded situation, by calling her forward to engage in the exercises, share the instructions, and receive the influences of its Sabbath. The Lord’s day calls her thinking powers into action, gives her a mind and conscience of her own, cultivates her intellectual and moral nature, and gives her to man a helpmate indeed, fitted to become, not merely his slave or his toy, but the companion of his labours and his studies, his devoted friend, and his faithful and judicious adviser; not merely the mother and nurse of his children, but their intelligent instructor and guide--his most efficient assistant in their intellectual and moral training. And if we consider the influence which the training that man receives in his early years has upon his character in after life--that, for the most part, in the families of working men, infancy and childhood are spent in the society of the mother, and therefore the impressions by which the character is, in a great measure, formed, are made by her, we shall feel convinced that the cultivation of the female mind and character must have an incalculable influence upon the condition of the labouring population. It were worth ascertaining, how many of those who have risen up from among the labouring population to adorn and bless humanity by their talents and their philanthropy, to enlighten and benefit society by useful and important discoveries in art and science, or by patient persevering labour to advance mankind in virtue and intelligence--how many of these had their minds awakened to activity, and their principles formed, by the instructions which hard-working parents were enabled to give them upon the Lord’s day, the only time they could devote to such a purpose. And would it not shed a fearful light upon this subject, could we possess ourselves of the history of the early Sabbaths of those who have made themselves notorious by their crimes; or of those, who, having sunk themselves deep in moral pollution, have destroyed themselves, degraded humanity, and cursed society by their vices? Would not such records give startling evidence of the ruinous effects resulting from the abuse of the weekly rest, and clearly demonstrate the truth of what has been already advanced, that, were the Sabbath abolished, or given to working men as a day of mere bodily refreshment and recreation, and not as a religious institution, they would soon be reduced to a condition worse than that of the untaught savage?