A DAY OF HEAVEN UPON EARTH.
By Hamilton
O SABBATH!—needed for a world of innocence—without thee what would be a world of sin! There would be no pause for consideration, no check to passion, no remission of toil, no balm for care! He who had withheld thee, would have forsaken the earth! Without thee he had never given to us the Bible, the Gospel, the Spirit! We salute thee as thou comest to us in the name of the Lord—radiant in the sunshine of that dawn which broke over creation’s achieved work—marching downward in the track of time, a pillar of refreshing cloud and guiding flame, interweaving with all thy light new beams of discovery and promise, until thou standest forth more fair than when reflected in the dews and imbibed by the flowers of Eden—more awful than when the trumpet rang of thee in Sinai! It is a day of heaven upon earth! Life's sweetest calm, poverty's birthright, labor's only rest! Nothing has such a hoard of antiquity in it! Nothing contains in it such a history! Nothing draws along with it such a glory! Nurse of virtue, seal of truth! The household's richest patrimony, the nation's noblest safeguard! The pledge of peace, the fountain of intelligence, the strength of law! The oracle of instruction, the ark of mercy! The parent of our manhood's spiritual greatness. The harbinger of our soul's sanctified perfection. The glory of religion, the watch-tower of immortality. The ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reacheth to heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending upon it.—Hamilton