But how will God judge even of the most exemplary in any congregation, who never forsake his house, either for pleasure, or for business, or for any of those plausible reasons by which men are too willing to delude themselves to their own ruin; if they spend the rest of the day, nevertheless, as they spend the other days of the week, and do not remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy throughout; if they do not devote the whole of it with a sober, religious awe to God; if they do not send their children and servants to church with the same punctuality as they go themselves; if they do not shun all the resorts of sensuality and gaiety abroad, or admit such inmates at home; if they do not study the Holy Scriptures, and put aside all other books but such as may tend to build them up in faith and piety; and, in short, if they do not live on this one day, in conformity with the sacred nature of the day, so uniformly and so universally, as to throw a sanctity around the lawful business and the lawful pleasures of every other day, and gradually to make their whole life truly Christian, truly divine, and fit, indeed, for heaven. Now, if they do not accomplish all this, whatever else they do, they fall short of a due observance of the Sabbath; and who is there, even amongst the most exemplary, alas! who ever thinks of accomplishing so much? Alas, alas! who is there amongst any of us, who, in some way or other, does not absolutely break the Sabbath, or even profane it? And what wonder, then, that there should be so much looseness, licentiousness, and depravity of manners in our nation; and that so many evils assail us, so many impend over our heads, and threaten us with some mighty ruin? Sabbath-breaking has led to the temporal and eternal ruin of thousand and tens of thousands; it cannot but lead to the deeper corruption of all; to the gradual undermining and ultimate extinction of all religious principle in the heart of man. When a people cast off their respect for God’s Sabbaths, they are prepared to run the full career of irreligion, and of profligacy, and of all the atrocities which scourge and afflict mankind.