cussion of Christianity, in a controversial way, is distinctly recognised as lawful.* It is only when such discussions degenerate into deliberate and malignant attempts to write against, and to bring into contempt the Bible or the Author of Christianity, that the law lays hold upon the disputants, and then because they outrage the feelings and endanger the peace of the people. It will not permit men to make systematic and public attempts in their discourses to destroy Christianity, because such attempts go to weaken the sanctions of law, upon which, in the last resort, the peace of the people rests. Within these limits, which every good citizen is supposed to recognize, discussion may be unfettered.

The freedom of the press is not interfered with by the fact that Christianity is recognized as the religion of the State. While the press has a guarantee of freedom from all censorship; yet it is not free, even in matters which do not directly affect religion, to publish everything which its owner may see fit to utter. The law has the morals of the people under its care, and when it sees them likely to be injured, it comes in, and an all-sufficient reason for its interference is found in the fact that it considers the publication contra bonos mores. Thus it visits with pains and penalties those who abuse the freedom of the press by obscene or licentious prints or books. The peace of the people is disturbed when an attempt is made to corrupt their morals. The publication of infidel or blasphemous books is prohibited on the same ground. Though they may not, in a similar way, affect the morals of the people, yet from the fact that they are against Christianity, upon which the public peace is resting, they are unlawful, and may not be put forth.

* See II. Strange, 834. 8 Johns. 292. II. Sergeant & Rawle, 394. II. Burns' Eccles. Law, 218.

The principle that Christianity is recognized by the State as something which essentially belongs to it, gives us, we think, the true and simple basis upon which the laws relating to the observance of the Sabbath are to be enforced. The law throws its protection round the sacredness and quiet of the first day of the week, not because it recognizes it as a sacred day in itself considered, but for other reasons. It does not punish the violation of the Sabbath, because that is an infraction of God's law. No human tribunal has any cognizance of the duty which a man owes to his Creator, least of all docs American law claim any such jurisdiction. That is a matter which belongs to the inner soul, whose silence and secrecy can be approached by none except God. The law does not attempt to impose, as many falsely assert, when reasoning against Sunday ordinances, the views of obligation to God of one class of men upon another and a different class. Here, as in all other cases, the law is very practical; it sets before it one end, and sets itself to secure it alone-The peace of the people. Christianity is a part of the common law, its sanctions give the law value, the people are a Christian people, and whatever tends to weaken or destroy the influence of Christianity, tends, in the same manner and degree, to destroy social peace. Now the sacredness of the Sabbath day is considered, and has from the beginning of the country been considered, essential to the integrity of religion. It is understood so far and so well, that argument is not greatly necessary to establish the point, that wherever this day is disregarded and unobserved, there religion has little power, and will, by and by, cease to exist. Christianity, without a Sabbath, is impossible.

It is this view of the case which gives a character of so much importance to Sabbath violation. In destroying the sanctity of the Sabbath, the sanctity of religion

is destroyed; the welfare of the State, which is founded upon it, is assailed.

We apprehend that this point is not understood, certainly it is not urged as it deserves to be, in the arguments on the legal aspects of the Sabbath question. The matter is viewed from a much lower position, and in a much narrower circle. The point is taken-the peace of the community-but the conception of the phrase is of the lowest kind, as if it referred to the actual disturbance created at the specific time, and by the alleged violation of the day. Hence witnesses are sworn to prove how much disturbance was created by the act in question. Now this may be a matter of importance, but it is not the thing at all which is chiefly to be regarded. The social peace hath a much wider significance than this, it even embraces the whole order of the State not in one place, or at one time, but in all places, and in all time. It is this peace of the people, the inheritance given them by the hard struggles of centuries, the sweet fruit of trees planted with tears and blood, the dear-bought boon of ancestral valor, for which institutions were established, and for which laws exist, and which the people are bound by every sacred obligation to hand down to coming generations; it is this peace which is struck at when the Sabbath is trampled upon. The specific violations of the day are taken at once out of the little circle of consequences at the moment or in the particular locality, and have given them a wide and lasting bearing. The array of witnesses proving or disproving the amount of actual noise, the questions whether this preacher's voice was drowned, or that worshipper's devotions were interrupted, become almost ridiculous in their littleness, when compared with this greater question. We can afford almost to forget them, at least to pass them by, while we address ourselves to the simple inquiry, Has the Sabbath been persistently violated? This once answered,

rest is plain. Is the Sabbath a part of the Christian religion? If it is, then a crime has been committed which the common law recognises as such, and which it will punish as such; Christianity has been assaulted, acts have been committed, whose tendency is to bring it into neglect and contempt, and these the law will not permit.

In these days, clear and well-defined views on this whole subject are of very deep importance. Infidelity sometimes grows bold, foreign skepticism and irreligion come in and vaunt themselves in their new-found freedom, and claim the right of not only holding, but promulgating, offensively and impudently, their dogmas, while they assail blasphemously the religion of this people; and, as if this were not enough, they seek to abolish, not only time-honored customs, but, in some instances, boldly petition* the authorities to remove from the statute-book the laws which protect the sanctity of the Sabbath. Nor is there a sufficiently intelligent and firm position assumed by the people themselves. There is, in too many instances, an indefinite notion that the freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of religious opinion and practice is such, that Christians have no peculiar prerogatives or claims. This should not be. We should not fear to announce and to claim, fully and distinctly, what the law proclaims and gives. All men should know that Christianity—which interferes with the religion of no man, which forces itself on no man, -is a part of the law; that no man may with impunity trample upon, maliciously or wantonly assail it in its doctrines or its ordinances; that whether we consider its origin, its history, its people, or its laws, this is a Christian State.

*In Newark, N. J., in 1853, a petition, numerously signed, was presented to the Common Council, by Germans and others, praying that the Sunday ordinances might be abolished.

VOL. VIII.-38

ARTICLE IV.

The Bible versus Tradition. Second Edition.

Debt and Grace, as Related to the Doctrine of a Future Life. By

C. F. HUDSON. Fourth Edition. pp. 472.

The State of the Impenitent Dead.

Boston: Jewett & Co. 1858.

By Rev. ALVAH HOVEY, D. D., Prof. of Christian Theology in the Newton Theological Institution. The Immortality of the Soul and the Final Condition of the Wicked, carefully considered. By Rev. R. W. LANDIS. New York. Carlton & Porter. 1859. PP. 518.

As we were standing at the railway station of one of our western cities, waiting for the train to start, a man came hurrying forward with a bundle of tracts under his arm. "The world is about coming to an end;" said he, "will you read a tract? Here is one to prove that the first day of the week is not the Sabbath, but the seventh day is!" "We do not care to read it," said we. "But, have you any thing in your bundle to prove that when a man dies, he is as dead as a dog?" He drew from the package a small tract purporting to be "An Appeal to Men of Reason and Common Sense," whose aim was to prove the annihilation of the wicked.

The "Second Adventists" or "Millerites," as they were at first called, having utterly failed in their interpretation of the prophecies, on the basis of which they had formed a sect, built church edifices, established periodicals, and founded a literature; found it very hard-such is human nature to abandon all their new theories, confess their error, and fall back into the churches from which they had seceded; against which they had said so many bitter things, and by whom so many hard things had been said against them; and, partly to cover their retreat, and partly through the