"This is the day which the Lord hath made."-Psalm cxviii. 24.

"The Sabbath made thy genial heart her throne:
Each day of mourning woke thy plaintive moan;
Each festival thy joy; the conscious fane
Beheld thy every pleasure, every pain.

Thy trickling tears impressed the stones around,
But on the cross alone in drops were found.
The awful rites, no careless look disdained,
And no unhallowed word thy lips profaned.
No idle mirth perturbed thy placid cheek :
The hidden virtues, God alone can speak.
Thus flowed thy life at that congenial shrine :
Wherefore he bade thee, in the fane resign
Thy mortal part, and soar to realms divine!"

Gregory Nazianzen's Epitaph on his mother Nonna.

CHAPTER II.

THE DAY OF REST.

ONE of the first lessons which a christian parent will endeavour to teach his child, is to reverence the Sabbath; to hold it in peculiar sanctity and honour, as a portion of time which God rightfully claims, out of respect to his own glory and the happiness of man. He will learn, as soon as the arithmetic of his early years enables him to calculate the completion of the hebdomad, that the next day is the Lord's; that it is his by an express and solemn claim, and that therefore it ought to be sacredly devoted to him as a kind of rent or acknowledgment, that all "our times are in his hand." The observance of a seventh day, as a season of rest, is an appointment of the Divine Being, in which he has consulted the temporal and spiritual welfare of his creatures. No ordinance indicates his benevolence and wisdom more than this. Such an interval of repose is essentially necessary, not only to the physical strength of man, but to that of all the animals employed in his service; and when viewed apart from its political aspect, it is found most

powerfully to subserve the interests of religion, by directing the attention, at regular and not very distant periods, to its important truths. The institution is an illustration of that analogy between natural and revealed religion, which has been so ably pointed out by a learned prelate; * and it most beautifully corroborates the delightful doctrine, that a wise, considerate, and bountiful Intelligence presides over the affairs of our world, ministering to the natural necessities and moral wants of its inhabitants. It is equally as true of the inward as of the outward man, that "He knows our frame;" and in the appointment, upon the consideration of which we now enter, he has had respect to the life, the health, and vigour of both.

Laying aside the sacred volume, there are several à priori arguments which might be adduced to support the probability that the Divine Being would appoint a stated relaxation from the cares and business of life. If it is the duty of the creature to honour the Creator with solemn acts of worship; and if an exemption from the distraction usually attendant upon secular pursuits is a powerful, nay, an essential auxiliary to the proper discharge of this service; then there must be stated or irregular intervals when those engagements which would operate unfavourably as to devotional exercises, shall be suspended. The question, therefore, to be settled is, whether it would have been more worthy of Infinite wisdom and goodness, to have left the Bishop Butler.