Deprive religion of its weekly rest, and by what means is it to gain access to the ears and to the understandings of working men, and their children? When is it to pour its light into their minds, and the influence of devotion into their hearts? When shall the labourer study the book of God, or working men gather together to hear, not the teachings of erring man, but, with the Scriptures of truth in their hands, to listen to the voice of that infallible Wisdom which was with God when he laid the foundations of the earth? Shall it be after a day of laborious exertion has rendered them unfit, by exhaustion, for the close application of their minds to any serious study? Alas for the advancement of the labouring portion of the community in intelligence and morality! Alas for the refinement of manners, and the cultivation of mind among them, if it is to be left to such seasons! So absolutely essential to the well-being of man does the Sabbath appear, whether viewed in relation to his eternal or his temporal interests, that, could we suppose it possible for man, destitute of the weekly rest, to become conscious of the wants of his own nature, we should conclude that he would have instituted, of his own accord, a Sabbath for himself. Those who, either for worldly gain or the pursuit of pleasure, profane the sacred hours of Sabbath rest, are not only despising one of the most important institutions of religion, but they are doing what in them lies to undermine one of the most enduring defences of human liberty. He who would take from the working man his Sabbath, would take with it the mind-awakening influence of religion; would keep the gate of knowledge, and forbid his entrance; would throw an impassable barrier in the way of his progress in civilization, and leave him the slave of the despot, the tool of the crafty politician, and the follower of the superstitious zealot, or the religious impostor. Let those, then, who would seek to transmit to their children that liberty and those rights for which their fathers have struggled and bled, rear them amidst Sabbath influences, fill their minds with those subjects for the study of which the weekly rest was instituted, and accustom them to Sabbath exercises; and, most assuredly, they will rise above the oppression of the tyrant, see through the devices of the crafty, the subtlety of the sophist, and the deceit of the impostor.