arded it with
indifference, are now becoming its warm partisans. As a sample of this
change of feeling, the following paragraph from the _Christian Press_ of
Jan, 1872, may be presented. The _Christian Press_ is the organ of the
Western Book and Tract Society, Cincinnati, Ohio, and its editor,
speaking of the National Association above referred to, says:--

"When this Association was formed, while we were prepared to bid it
God speed, we did not then feel that there was any pressing need
for the object sought; and as our mission was specially directed to
the Christianizing, enlightening and elevating, the masses of the
people, we have said little in our columns on the subject, being
assured that if the people are right, it is easy to set the
government right. The late combined efforts, however, of various
classes of our citizens to exclude the Bible from our schools,
repeal our Sabbath laws, and divorce our government entirely from
religion, and thus make it an atheistic government--for every
government must be for God or against him, and must be administered
in the interests of religion and good morals, or in the interests
of irreligion and immorality--have changed our mind, and we are now
prepared to urge the necessity for an explicit acknowledgment in
the National Constitution of the authority of God and the supremacy
of his law, as revealed in the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments."

With the anti-Sunday movements of the present day, considering their
associations, and the manner and object in and for which they are
carried forward, we have no sympathy. They aim at utter no-Sabbathism,
freedom from all moral restraint, and all the evils of unbridled
intemperance--ends which we abhor with all the strength of a moral
nature quickened by the most intense religious convictions. And while
the indignation of the batter portion of the community will be aroused
at the want of religious principle and the immorality attending the
popular anti-Sunday movement, a little lack of discrimination, by no
means uncommon, will on account of our opposition to the day, though we
oppose it on entirely different ground, easily associate us with the
class above-mentioned, and subject us to the same odium.

Meanwhile, some see the evils involved in this movement, and raise the
voice of alarm. The _Christian Union_, Jan., 1871, said:

"The fr