BETHANY, Va., December 28, 1853.      

      Messrs. Editors:--By giving the following extract a place in your valuable and increasingly popular Harbinger, you will confer a, favor on a constant reader, and one grateful for the instruction he has received. The extract is from a Prize Essay on the Sabbath, written by a journeyman printer of Scotland.

      Yoke-fellows, think how the abstraction of the Sabbath would hopelessly enslave the working classes, with whom we are identified. Think of labor thus going on in one continuous, monotonous and eternal cycle limbs forever on the rack, the fingers forever plying, the eye-balls forever straining, the brow forever sweating, the feet forever plodding, the brain forever throbbing, the shoulders forever drooping, and the restless mind forever scheming. Think of the beauty it would efface, of the merry-heartedness it would extinguish, of the giant strength it would tame, of the resource's of nature it would exhaust, of the aspirations it would crush, of the sickness it would breed, of the projects it would wreck, of the groans it would extort, of the lives it would immolate, and of the cheerless grave that it would dig! See them toiling and moiling, sweating and pelting, grinding and hewing, weaving and spinning, strewing and gathering, mowing and reaping, raising and building, digging and planting, unloading and storing, striving and struggling--in the garden and in the field, in the granary and in the barn, in the factory and in the mill, in the warehouse and in the shop, on the mountain and in the ditch, on the roadside and in the wood, in the city and in the country, on the sea and on the shore, on the earth, in days of brightness and days of gloom. What a sad picture would the world present, if we had no Lord's day!

      The preceding reflection on the benevolence and policy of the institution of the weekly day of rest from the toils of life, is worthy of the consideration and reflection of every philosopher and philanthropist. But to the Christian, the Lord's day--the day of his triumph over all our enemies, and of the hallowed mementoes of his love, as [186] well as our interest in the scenes it reviews, in all their superlative, though awful grandeur--opens a fountain of emotions in the Christian heart incomparably more interesting.

      With him it is not the mere benevolence of an animal or a worldly repose from the drudgeries of this world. The Christian and the political economist view it very differently in their respective philosophies. It is, indeed, of great advantage to the State, but incomparably more to the church. And it is, in both respects, worthy of our benevolent Creator to have ordained it, and of man to observe it, in full harmony with God's benevolent design in sanctifying it.

A. C., Harbinger, 1854, page 231.      

Source:

Alexander Campbell. "The Lord's Day" (Response to "Prize Essay on the Sabbath, written by a journeyman printer of Scotland"). The Millennial Harbinger 25 (April 1854): 231.

[MHA2 186-187]