the ordinances of this holy day are forsaken and forgotten, the whole system of moral obligation must of course be also forgotten; the great, substantial and permanent good, of which religion is the only source, is effectually destroyed; the political peace and welfare of a community, the salvation of the human soul, the infinitely benevolent designs of redeeming love, the institution of the means of grace, and the obedience and sufferings of the Son of God, are frustrated and set at nought.  Thus, by one effectual blow of sin, and the friends of sin, are all the great and valuable interests of mankind overthrown.”

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Although our remarks are confined to America, we may mention that it has been stated by some of our own countrymen who have visited London that Sunday is generally as well observed there as in New England; yet we find in the “Salem Gazette” of Nov. 23, 1785, that the attendance on public worship in London was then rather small as compared with what might have been seen in Boston at the same date.  But that was before the days of the “sensation” preachers, as they are called,—­Spurgeon, Beecher, Talmage, and men of that stamp, who now draw crowds of people, many of whom are not always the most religious in the community, but who love excitement rather than quiet contemplation.

LONDON,

Sept. 13.  Sunday being a day of rest, 739 horses were yesterday
engaged on parties of pleasure.

In fifty churches, eastward of Temple-bar, the congregations amounted, on an average, to seven for each church in the morning, and five in the afternoon.  This shews the state of the Christian religion in the metropolis to be far better than could be expected!

1785.

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The following extract from the “Belfast Patriot” of 1825 shows how the “Lord’s day” was regarded in 1776 in the “District of Maine.”

FIFTY YEARS AGO.  At a town meeting, held on the common, on the south end of lot No. 26, probably where the meeting house now stands, on the east side of the river, in Belfast, Oct. 10th, 1776, the town then having been incorporated two years—­among other things “to see if there can be any plan laid to stop the Inhabitants from visiting on Sunday.”  “Voted, That if any person makes unnecessary vizits on the Sabeth they shall be Lookt on with Contempt untill they make acknowledgement to the Public.”

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Houses of worship were formerly “as cold as a barn.”