and Dr. Beecher appeared to him one of these dumb dogs, who, when he opened his mouth at all, was almost sure to open it at the men who were trying through evil report and good to express in their lives the spirit of Him who so loved the world that He gave His Son to die to redeem it.  He bayed loud enough at the Abolitionists but not at the abomination which they were attacking.  He was content to leave it to the tender mercies of two hundred years.  No such liberal disposition of the question of the Sabbath was he willing to allow.  He waxed eloquent in its behalf.  His enthusiasm took to itself wings and made a great display of ecclesiastical zeal beautiful to behold.  “The Sabbath,” quoth the teacher who endeavored to muzzle the students of Lane Seminary on the subject of slavery, whose ultimate extinction his prophetic soul quiescently committed to the operation of two centuries; “the Sabbath,” quoth he, “is the great sun of the moral world.”  Out upon you, said Garrison, the LORD GOD is the great sun of the moral world, not the Sabbath.  It is not one, but every day of the week which is His, and which men should be taught to observe as holy days.  It is not regard for the forms of religion but for the spirit, which is essential to righteousness.  What is the command, ’Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,’ but one of ten commandments?  Is the violation of the fourth any worse than the violation of the third or fifth, or sixth?  Nowhere is it so taught in the Bible.  Yet, what is slavery but a breaking and treading down of the whole ten, what but a vast system of adultery, robbery, and murder, the daily and yearly infraction on an appalling scale not alone of the spirit but of the letter of the decalogue?

Mr. Garrison then passed to criticisms of a more special character touching the observance of the day thus:  “These remarks are made not to encourage men to do wrong at any time, but to controvert a pernicious and superstitious notion, and one that is very prevalent, that extraordinary and supernatural visitations of divine indignation upon certain transgressors (of the Sabbath particularly and almost exclusively) are poured out now as in the days of Moses and the prophets.  Whatever claim the Sabbath may have to a strict religious observance, we are confident it cannot be strengthened, but must necessarily be weakened, by all such attempts to enforce or prove its sanctity.”  This pious but rational handling of the Sabbath question gave instant offence to the orthodox readers of the Liberator.  For it was enough in those days to convict the editor of rank heresy.  From one and another of his subscribers remonstrances came pouring in upon him.  A young theological student at Yale ordered his paper stopped in consequence of the anti-Sabbatarian views of the editor.  A Unitarian minister at Harvard, Mass., was greatly cut up by reason thereof, and suddenly saw what before he did not suspect.  “I had supposed you,” he wrote in his