But a most important consideration, in view of this subject, is the influence of your large and powerful denomination upon an unconverted world. Whatever your theory about the perpetuity of the sabbatic law--whatever your doubts and scruples about the use of the term _Sabbath_ under the gospel--you cannot rid yourselves of a deep sense of the importance of a day of rest to the world at large. Hence the resolutions of your churches and conventional bodies, with regard to the profanation of what you call the Lord's day. Hence your plain, out-spoken censures of running cars, stages, steamboats, and other public conveyances, on this day. Hence your griefs and lamentations over those who make it a day of recreation or mirth. Hence your readiness to coöperate with those bodies which are organized to suppress, if possible, the violation of what is called the Sabbath. We admire the _principle_ which governs you in all this; but we lament that it is not regulated by a better understanding of the subject. If you would promote right principles, you must be careful that your proofs, and examples for illustration, are pertinent and free from all uncertainty. We are fully persuaded, that your _Recommendations_ and _Pledges_, your _Resolutions_ and _Associational Acts_, will always meet with defeat, until you can fortify them by a law of God, so clearly expressed, that it will urge and goad the violator's conscience wherever he may go. The consciences of guilty men cannot be reached by the method you are pursuing. You behold them desecrating the Sunday, and, in order to make them lay it to heart as a sin, you bring down upon them--what? Apostolic example? New Testament intimations, and far-fetched inferences? No. None of these do you think of employing. But the _Law_, the all-searching, sin-rebuking _Law_ of God, is the only means you think of in such a case. Nothing else suits your purpose, be your _theory_ what it may. But hear their reply. "Is the law of the commandment upon us TO-DAY? That it was YESTERDAY, we allow; for it says, '_the seventh day_.' That the law of the commandment lies against us _every_ day, you will not pretend; but only _one_ day in seven. If that one day was _yesterday_, you are yourselves as guilty as we; and we, therefore, feel comparatively comfortable. To be sure, some sense of the necessity of keeping the Sabbath holy, does at times rest upon our minds; and our consciences, for the moment, reproach us; but when we see you, and all the Christian world, living in the neglect of it, we feel quite easy again, and think our sin to be but a light one." Such may not be their precise language, but it is the exact expression of their hearts' feelings. Thus even the Law fails in your hands, because you attempt to make it speak _what it will not speak_.