but which a weekly recurrence unquestionably fails to bring about. The Fasti and the Festivals, the Saturnalia and the Carnival of ancient and modern Rome, have caused, and do cause, by their frequency and their licentiousness, but a weariness of dissipation, which it is vain to call pleasure. Arguing by analogy, I may safely say that the rigid observance of our Sundays, is productive less of religion than of lassitude; while the incongruity of throwing wide the publichouses, and closing up the most harmless exhibitions, makes me blush, that in a land of such true and wise enjoyment, cant and hypocrisy, should be found sufficiently strong to sanction and uphold the degrading anomaly.'

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Now, Sir, had this article appeared in a Sunday newspaper, it would have been quite in character; but that it should be found in The New Monthly Magazine, which is set up to correct and oppose the politics and religion of the Old Monthly, and which is said to be under the editorial care of a Scotchman, who of all others, has been taught to venerate the Sabbath, and that Scotchman, one who has really written some beautiful poetry on religious subjects, and is deemed a very loyal man, is to me strange and passing strange.' The language of the writer is a reflection on the wisdom and goodness of God in the appointment of the Sabbath, as if in so doing he were producing moral and physical injury, instead of promoting the best interests of man. It opposes his command, who has said, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' 'Ye shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary;' and who, lest there should be any mistake cherished respecting the manner in which it should be kept, has not only said 'in it thou shalt not do an

y

work,' but also, If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from DOING THY PLEASURE ON my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable, and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, Isaiah, 58. 13, 14. This is an eternal law, obligatory upon man; it is not a part of that ceremonial dispensation which vanished away; but is one of those moral precepts which ever remain in full force, and come with the same authority to us, as those other requirements with which they stand connected, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and thou shalt do no murder.'

The writer equally opposes himself to the law of the land, which guards the Sabbath day, and endeavours to undo the authority of the desk which proclaims, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,' and to which the people solemnly reply, 'Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this law,'-to the authority of the pulpit, which often enforces that of the desk, and to the authority of the law and magistracy. The throne too, has for many years, especially guarded the sanctity of the Sabbath, and the press is now to array itself agaiust this sacred institution; and that press not The Examiner, not The Liberal, but—The New Monthly Magazine. From the former we might have expected such an attack; but when it proceeds from the latter, it seems to come from an enemy in disguise! Alas, our Sabbaths are not at best, too much reverenced; and since the re-opening of Continental intercourse, our poet might still have reason to singO Italy! thy Sabbaths will be soon

Our Sabbaths, closed with mummery and buffoon.

Preaching and pranks will share the motley scene,
Our's parcell'd out as thine have ever been,
God's worship and the mountebank between:
COWPER.

but still compared with continental Sabbaths, they have some degree of piety about them. We have our crowded Sabbath promenades, our Sabbath tea-gardens,-our Sabbath concerts,-our Sabbath newspapers,—our Sabbath wakes and revels, all these are evils rather to be deplored than augmented; but truly we should reach the acmé of vice, and be well prepared to drink in all the blasphemous tenets of infidelity, were the doctrines broached in The New Monthly Magazine to obtain a general reception. Surely, there are agents enough at work to corrupt the morals of the people, without that becoming an auxiliary.

The writer shews himself, as may be supposed, deplorably ignorant of the nature of religion, as if no one could be religious without being melancholy. Fresh imported from the Continent, he lands at Dover, and comes post to London with all the gay visions of continental manners flitting before his eyes, and beholding a Sabbath day without dancing, and fiddling, and gambling, and frolicking; he finds fault with the Sabbath in not being fitted for him, and not as he ought to do with himself, for becoming so unfitted for the Sabbath. He does not refer to the Bible, no, he has evidently forgotten that; but to the policy of keeping holy the Sabbath, and thinks he is qualified to decide that the Sunday recreations of the Continent are, after all, to be preferred to the Sabbath solemnity of England; and then he uses the most perverted kind of logic, taking things for granted which are not just, and building a superstructure on a false foundation. I deny his premises, and therefore cannot allow his conclu

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sion. He presumes that religion destroys pleasure, instead of creating it, and hence he infers, 'that the permission to be gay on one day in the week, is more likely to raise the mind, in cheerfulness, to Heaven, than the command to be dull.' But where is this command to be dull? Is abstinence from one pleasure, a preventive from another Has religion no charms? Was the wise man wrong when he said Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace?' What a perverted judgment is here manifested, and what an awful ignorance of the nature of genuine piety! Again, he adds, that the evils consequent on dancing are light in comparison with those which attend on drunkenness; and that policy, piety, manners, and morals, stand, every one, a better chance of being served in the ball-room, than in the gin-shop.' But, is there any need of their being served in either? Was there ever more absurd reasoning, and could the New Monthly Magazine degrade its pages more than by the insertion of so feeble an article? But, facts may speak for themselves, and if the gin-shop be one test, and the ball-room the other, we think that a comparison with the continent will easily prove which does the most harm. The writer, however, seems as if he thought he had advanced too far in his wild and unhallowed theory, and he therefore thinks that an occasional day of denial and gloom might have some good effect, and owns that it had some on him. I wish it had had a better; but, he is of opinion that a weekly recurrence of solemn days fail to produce any good effect: that is, he is of opinion, that the God who has said six days shalt thou labour, but on the seventh thou shalt do no manner of work,' was not so wise or so good, when he made the law, as, were he a legislator, he could be! Talk of blas

phemy! why this cannot be exceeded by PAINE or CARLILE. Let me again repeat the conclusion, not that it should be remembered, but be held up to abhorrence: Arguing by analogy, I may safely say that the rigid observance of our Sundays is productive less of religion than of lassitude; this is, as the writer judges, by his own unhallowed feelings, yet labouring under the effects of the excitement of the continental dance, 'while the incongruity of throwing wide the public houses, and closing up the most harmless exhibitions, makes me blush, that in a land of such true and wise enjoyments, cant and hypocrisy should be found sufficiently strong to sanction and uphold the degrading anomaly. The keeping the public houses open at certain hours, may have some apology in the calls of necessity, though here, I think, the writer has an opportunity of making his strongest thrust, yet it is but attacking a weak side, and he uses but a sorry weapon in the encounter. Because one evil is tolerated, that is no reason why another should be added, or even exchanged for it, and whatever would violate the sanctity of the Sabbath must, to every Christian mind, be an evil. Let it be remembered too that all this is not the work of Sectarianism or Methodism; it is the law of the land, enforcing the law of God, and guarding from interruption the keepers of that righteous law; but this law of the land, this law of God, is branded by the writer as cant and hypocrisy !' The next time he blushes' it is to be hoped it will be at the re-perusal of his own Anti-Christian production, and the editor of the New Monthly Magazine will, I trust, blush too that he has ever given it insertion.

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Yours,

K. T