Wide Relations of the Sabbath.
IN an admirable discourse by President Hopkins, on "The Importance of the Sabbath to the purity and perpetuity of free institutions," he says: "The Sabbath is not, as many seem to suppose, an institution slightly connected with the other arrangements of God. It may seem so at first, but trace its connections and you will find it inseparably blending with all the arrangements of God for the elevation and well-being of man. Its law of rest is enstamped even upon the physical organization of all beings capable of labor, whether of body or of mind, and in its simplicity and variety of adaptation, like the air, the light, and the water, it bears the evident impress of the hand of God. How simple, and yet, while it meets the wants of the exhausted animal, how evidently was it 'made for man' in all conditions and in all his relations. "How perfectly is it adapted to the laboring man in his toil, to the young man in his temptations, to the business man in his perplexities, to the scholar in his exhausting process of thought, and to the statesman as bearing the burdens of public life! How is it adapted to families, consecrating home, and giving opportunity for family instruction; how to communities, as the individuals composing them are related at once to each other and to God, and as needing opportunity both for private and public devotion! How does it blend the social and religious nature of man and fit him for a social heaven! How is it related to the Bible, as a book requiring study, and time to study! How does it connect man with the past, by constantly reminding him of that great event which it commemorates; how with the future, by its glimpses and foretastes of that heaven which it typifies! Kept as God commanded, it would improve the individual man, physically, intellectually, morally. In its social relations, it would secure purity and harmony; in his civil relations, security and freedom. It would unite man, and all men to God. Surely, whatever he may intend, he who fights against the Sabbath, fights against the best interests of his race, and against God himself."