sion to fall, in his brother's
way; let not your good be evil spoken of. It is good neither to eat
flesh nor drink wine, _nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or
is offended, or made weak_.' Now, my good friend, you happen to be
endowed with a certain tone of mind which enables you to carry through
your mode of keeping the Sabbath with little comparative evil, and much
good, so far as your family is concerned; but how many persons in this
neighborhood, do you suppose, would succeed equally well if they were to
attempt it? If it were the common custom for families to absent
themselves from public worship in the afternoon, and to stroll about the
fields, or ride, or sail, how many parents, do you suppose, would have
the dexterity and talent to check all that was inconsistent with the
duties of the day? Is it not your ready command of language, your
uncommon tact in simplifying and illustrating, your knowledge of natural
history and of biblical literature, that enable you to accomplish the
results that you do? And is there one parent in a hundred that could do
the same? Now, just imagine our neighbor, 'Squire Hart, with his ten
boys and girls, turned out into the fields on a Sunday afternoon to
profit withal: you know he can never finish a sentence without stopping
to begin it again half a dozen times. What progress would he make in
instructing them? And so of a dozen others I could name along this very
street here. Now, you men of cultivated minds must give your countenance
to courses which would be best for society at large, or, as the
sentiment was expressed by St. Paul, 'We that are strong ought to bear
the infirmities of the weak, _and not to please ourselves_, for even
Christ _pleased not himself_.' Think, my dear sir, if our Savior had
gone only on the principle of avoiding what might be injurious to his
own improvement, how unsafe his example might have proved to less
elevated minds. Doubtless he might have made a Sabbath day fishing
excursion an occasion of much elevated and impressive instruction; but,
although he declared himself 'Lord of the Sabbath day,' and at liberty
to suspend its obligation at his own discretion, yet he never violated
the received method of observing it, except in cases where superstitious
tradition trenched directly on those interests which the Sabbath was
given to promote. He asserted the right to relieve pressing bodily
wants, and to administer to the necessities of others on the