The Sabbath is a great name, and a great day, honoured throughout the civilized world, ushered in by solemnities and consecrated by prayer and devotion.

Judaism and Christianity both recognise the Sabbath alike, enjoining its observance, though it is celebrated upon different days.

From every city and hamlet of England the deep-toned cathedral bell or rural chime or swelling strain of pealing organ comes floating upon the tranquil air, summoning a vast nation to the house of worship. Noble streets and narrow alleys, meadow paths and shady lanes, are thronged with young and old, with blithesome children, with gray-haired men, with rich and poor, seeking the house of God, to offer up in unison adoration and thanksgiving.

The traveller pauses on his laborious pilgrim age to celebrate the day of rest and seek out God's altars, a home for the spiritual being, beneath whatever clime those altars rise. The hardy mariner suspends his labour to consecrate upon the wide seas the Sabbath-morn, and the voice of prayer mingles with the music of the waves.

Wherever the Bible has left its track of light upon distant shores, where palms and cedars wave; in ice-bound lands, where polar stars gleam bright by day; in far-off isles, where the deep surge beats against a lonely beach, the Sabbath is solemnized, not in synagogue, or church, or beneath cathedral dome alone, but upon the free sea-shore, upon mountain heights, under the spreading sail and waving flag, amid the smiles of nature, beneath the broad arch of heaven, in God's own bright and beautiful universe.