“How wonderful are thy works, O God!” I exclaimed, as we retraced our steps.  And I could not but reflect upon the singular trait exhibited by Jesus of frequenting a high mountain to pray.  Surely, altitude elevates one into the spiritual state, and no doubt Christ felt nearer to the spirit world when elevated far above Jerusalem, on the mountain-top, amid the clouds.  Thus, looking down from the sublime height, I realized for the first time that I too was a spirit and an inhabitant of the world in which Jesus dwelt!

LYMAN BEECHER.

THE SABBATH.

In the days of my ministrations on earth, it was pretty generally believed that the Sabbath day was one of peculiar sanctity; and that the Creator, having completed the creation of the earth in six days, had rested upon the seventh from the labor attendant on that work.  But science, which is ever at war with the Jewish record, has established the fact that the world was not created in that short space of time.

The multiplicity of worlds created also disprove the idea that the Creator could have rested during any set period of time.

Some zealous skeptics, to counteract the belief in the sanctity of the Sabbath, have asserted that mind can never rest, and that as God is a spirit, rest to him is impossible.

Even granting this hypothesis, history and research have proven the wisdom and utility of the Jewish Sabbath, as established by the great lawgiver, Moses.

The Jews at that time were an active, restless, laboring people.  Their industry had enriched Egypt, and having escaped from her oppressive bondage, they were liable, in their efforts to found a nation of their own, to carry their habits of industry to excess.

Probably they overworked their slaves, their cattle, themselves, and the “stranger within their gates.”  Their wise lawgiver, under the direct influence of spiritual guides, promulgated this law:  “Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy man-servant, thy maid-servant, thy cattle, nor the stranger within thy gates.”

And this commandment has been handed down from the Jewish to the Christian nations.  With the early Jews it was a day of recreation, of dancing, and of song.  The early Christians employed the day at first in social intercourse, afterwards it became a day of sacred ordinance; and, as copies of the Scriptures were rare, they met on that day to hear them read, and in their simple faith would select passages and apply them to their own necessities.

When the Christian religion invaded Pagan countries and became established, the days which had formerly been appropriated to feasting and sacrificing to the gods and goddesses became the fast-days of the Romish Church.

When Protestantism arose, she swept off from her calendar these fast-days, and returned to the simplicity of the Jewish Sabbath.