There is a second party, which refuses to join in the protest through indifference to the Sabbath, or latitudinarian views of its nature and claims. To them, the Sabbath appears to be simply a human institution; a thing invented by priests for priestly purposes; an enslavement of man’s free spirit; a formalism which mars the pure essence of devotion, makes it a thing of times and seasons, and desecrates every other day that it may consecrate one. “Every day is a Sabbath,” according to this doctrine; to attach holiness to any particular day, is to rob all the rest of the holiness which belongs to them. To tell a man that he can worship best in sanctuaries in Sabbath seasons, is to fetter his right and liberty of worship at all times and places; and, in short, the Sabbath is regarded as the very key-stone of that arch of formalism on which the Church rears the superstructure of her power. Such is the latitudinarian view of the Sabbath; and, of course, those who hold it, rejoice in the prospect of the opening of the Crystal Palace on that day. In order to discern the falseness of their views, we must glance at the true idea of the Christian Sabbath. Of all the popular cants of the day, perhaps that is at once the most pretentious, and the most heartless, which asserts a necessary antagonism between form and spirit, soul and body, the spiritual and the material, and sets itself up as the special champion of spirit and the spiritual, by maintaining that all forms and organizations, all times and seasons, all modes and habitudes, are systematic conspiracies against the liberties and rights of men. This is the latest resurrection of the old ascetic spirit, and must end—as all attempts to emancipate ourselves from the conditions of life and development which God has implied in the constitution of our being and of all things—have ended, in blank immorality and shameless denial of all moral law. This is the great danger of our times. It is not formalism that we have chiefly to fear. There is more peril of our casting off all form and order, than of our being mastered and bound by any one. The Sabbath is of God. He who causeth the outgoing of the morning and evening to rejoice, causeth the outgoing of the Sabbath morning to rejoice over the human world. He who gives to the weary body the refreshment of nightly slumber, gives to the weary mind and spirit the rest of the Sabbath day. We may steal the hours from slumber, but the wrong will in the end avenge itself; and it is at our peril, and to our certain detriment as men, societies, or nations, that we steal its offices from the Sabbath. The moon, the fairest and the benignest minister that attends our earth, marks out our weeks for us. She chimes with notes of silvery clearness the sevens, while the sun intones the units on the bells of time. In full tune with living nature we keep our Sabbaths. We enter into the universal harmony when we consecrate our seventh day.