But we believe that the heart of Scotland generally is sound and enlightened on the Divine authority and the inestimable value of the Sabbath-day. To our minds it stands sacredly associated with the greatest events in human history, and in the intercourse of God with man--the completed handiwork of Almighty power, when God looked around Him upon the young and unfallen world, and pronounced all to be good--the giving of the Divine law from the sacred mount amid the signs of the present Deity--and the rising of our Redeemer from the grave, and the rising with Him of the hope of our world. We are a free and happy people, we have conquered the ruggedness of our soil, and coped successfully with our ungenial climate; but it is to our religion that we owe our freedom, for who can enslave a people that fear God? and we regard our Sabbath as the bulwark of our godliness. It is our Tabor, on which we ascend weekly and meet with celestial visitants; our Jacob's ladder on which we climb to heaven's gate; the shield and nutriment of our domestic affections, it keeps the heart of our households warm and pure. It is not to be abolished, but extended; and even when it passes away at the end of time, it will not go out in whirlwind or tempest, but "As sets the morning-star, which goes Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides Obscured among the tempests of the sky, But melts away into the light of heaven." End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sabbath, by Andrew Thomson