sleep, or it will lose the power to labor. Exhausted nature, when denied these indispensable means of relief and restoration, will flag and sink, crushed beneath the insupportable burden.

The all-wise Author of our being has made a two-fold provision for the alternation of labor and rest. By his own example in the beginning of the creation, and by positive enactment, he requires one seventh part of all our time to be given to the purposes of devotion, and exempted from ordinary labor. "In it thou shalt not do any work." "The Sabbath was made for man"-for man's comfort, health, strength, and salvation. It is the laborer's friend. It interposes between the master and the servant; and demands for the stalled jade a cessation from toil. Admirable provision! How wonderfully it promotes the vigor, and efficiency,-how greatly it prolongs the life, of him who keeps it! The man who breaks it will find that he robs himself more than his God. keeping this commandment there is great reward.

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Of the remaining portion of our time, it is said, "Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work." But it is not to be expected that the whole gross of hours is to be incessantly occupied. Nor is such the meaning of the injunction. All our daily labor is to be done during the six days, and not on the seventh. Of these six days, as already intimated, a portion only can be given to work. Food must be taken; sleep, also; and recreation. Time, of course, must be allotted for these purposes, and in a certain ratio. It must be ample for the ends to be secured-must bear a reasonable proportion to that which is given to labor, or the power to labor will be diminished, and erelong exhausted, and life itself be unduly shortened. These laws of our being have been put to the fullest proof. They have developed themselves in universal experience.

These seasons of rest from labor, moreover, must recur at regular intervals, as appears from another provision of the Author of our being. The earth has, in a most wonderful manner, received from the Creator an impulse that, from the beginning, has driven it, once every 24 hours, around its axis, presenting to every portion of its surface a regular alternation of day and night. The light of the sun, so necessary to labor, is thus, at stated intervals, withdrawn. Obedient to the demands of their physical constitutions, all the orders of animated nature, with very few exceptions, seek, as the light departs, a season of repose. The fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and man, also, find a law within them, requiring a cessation from labor. The brute creation obey this primeval law, and reap the reward of obedience. Man, too, when not corrupted by luxurious habits, and the laws of despotic fashion, obeys the requirements of his nature, and yields to the divine impulse.

This is the law to which the Saviour of man refers in the words of the text. That law requires all our work to be done by day, as much as the divine enactment of the Sabbath requires all our work to be done during the six days, and not on the seventh. "I must

work. while it is day. The night cometh when no man can work." He appeals to a law, an established law, of nature; a law written on man's constitution ;-to the universal sense of mankind. That sense has been fully ascertained, and put on record. Nothing pertaining to man has been more fully determined. Everywhere, and in all ages, the doctrine has been maintained, that the day, and not the night, is the time for work.

It is not asserted, nor does the Saviour mean to affirm, that work cannot be done at all by night. No one, surely, would risk his reputation by such an affirmation. We know it can. We know that it is done to an extent that demands investigation, inquiry, and even interposition. The text is one of many similar ones, in which the inability spoken of is not strictly of a physical nature. Work can be done by night, but not with impunity. It is such a transgression of a fixed law, as must result in serious injury to the transgressor. No man can sin against his own nature, and not feel the effects of it. Sooner or later the injury will be developed. When, therefore, it is said, "The night cometh when no man can work," we are to understand the Saviour as teaching, that, agreeably to a well-known and divinely-established law, man's daily labor is ordinarily and properly to be suspended by night.

Thus far we have unquestionable authority for our position. The will of God, in this matter, is fully ascertained, and in all respects concurs with man's best good. It is never safe to violate any law of God, much less a law of our own nature. It matters not who does it. Their doing it does not make it right. It still remains the law-the truth-that the night is the time for rest, for sleep.

The extent, to which the violation of this requirement is carried, is affecting very seriously the health and energies of the people. It is very common, as most of you know, for the lovers of pleasure, of both sexes, and all grades in society, to occupy, occasionally, nearly the whole night in the labor of the dance, and in the exciting and exhausting diversions of the ball-room and pleasureparty. The night is converted, by artificial means, into the bril liancy of the day, and the time that should be given to repose is squandered on the passion for mirth and folly. With a good constitution, you may endure it for a season; but "ye have sinned. against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out." Sooner or later, according to the strength of that constitution, you will reap the fruit of your folly, with unavailing regret.

When it is remembered, that this devotion of a large portion of the night to folly, and at some seasons, and in certain circles, several nights of every week, is demanded by the laws of fashion, and that these laws are implicitly obeyed,-when, too, it is known, that they, who are subjects of the realm of fashion, are, for the most part, the offspring of constitutions thus broken down, and carry within them the consequent infirmities of such a birth and training,

is it to be thought strange, that the deadly consumption sweeps away so large a portion of the young and lovely before they have lived out half their days? Must they not pay the forfeit of their folly, and suffer for the violation of the inexorable demands of their nature? Need we wonder that so many parents are called to weep in sackcloth over the dust of their manly sons and blooming daughters, cut down in the morning of their life, when they themselves have taught them to transgress this imperative law of their being? When shall it be, as God has ordained, that men will learn that the night is the time for rest?

It is greatly to be deplored, that so many of the trades are carried on by night-that many employers think it to be for their interest to keep their machinery in operation by night, as well as by day. It is a very great drawback to the pleasure with which we peruse the morning paper, that, in order to furnish us with the gratification, scores of our fellow-men have been obliged to labor all the night, or the greater part of it, in the setting of type, in the press-room, in the procuring of expresses, and the like. To them, it is a serious evil. It draws upon their very life-blood. But great as is the evil, I can now only allude to it.

In determining the proportions of time that may properly be devoted to labor, we have thus far been able only to distinguish between the day and the night, and to ascertain that our daily labor is ordinarily to be done "while it is day." We are yet to ascertain, by a separation of the day from the night, the proper proportion of time to be given to work. If the day be measured by the shining of the sun, it is nowhere of a uniform length. It differs in different latitudes, and in the same latitude at different seasons of the year. In such cases, it is obviously proper to ascertain the average relation of the day to the night throughout the world, and so to determine the question. Such was our Saviour's understanding of the matter. Thus he asks the question, on another occasion, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" Such was the understanding of the world then, and such it is now. Twelve hours of sun,

and twelve of shade, divide and fill up the day.

The day, therefore, is practically to be regarded as of twelve hours' duration, and no more. This is the portion of time during which labor is to be performed. A greater amount is in no sense requisite. It is enough for all practical purposes. During that time, the whole business of the day may and ought to be transacted. The labor of man need not, in an ordinary state of society, be prolonged beyond this rate, for the purposes of a comfortable sus

tenance.

Furthermore, it is capable of proof, that, where this proportion of time is exceeded habitually, the human frame ordinarily gives way, and suffers injury. It cannot endure it. I have already intimated, that exercise is indispensable to perfect health. This exercise, however, if unduly prolonged, or too active or laborious, becomes

hurtful, destructive of health. By careful observation from age to age, by extended investigation on the part of medical science, and of civilians, results have been attained, which clearly develop the fact, that the human system cannot ordinarily endure continued labor more than twelve hours daily, including the time needful for the taking of food.

So deep-seated and so general has been the conviction that such is the case, as to constrain the legislatures of enlightened nations to interpose between the avarice of the employer and the over-tasked laborer, by enactments defining the number of hours that shall ordinarily be reckoned as constituting a day's work. In the fourth year of Queen Elizabeth, A. D. 1563. it was enacted, in respect to laborers, that "if they work by the day or by the week, they must continue working from five in the morning till after seven at night, from the middle of March to the middle of September; and all the rest of the year, from twilight to twilight: only, from March to September, as aforesaid, they are to be allowed two hours for breakfast, dinner, and drinking; and from the middle of May to the middle of August, half an hour more for sleeping; and all the rest of the year, an hour and a half for breakfast and dinner: and for the absence of every hour, the master may stop one penny out of the wages." The utmost that could, even in that age of hardy, robust, and athletic men, be required, in the most favorable season of the year, as a day's labor, was twelve hours; while the average for the year came short of eleven.

In several of the States of our Union, laws have been passed in relation to the labor of convicts, the necessity of which has grown out of the same general fact to which I have alluded. In New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia, the following humane enactment has found a place among their laws:"Such offenders (convicts), unless prevented by ill health, shall be employed in work every day in the year, except Sundays, and such days when they shall be confined in the solitary cells; and the hours of work, in each day, shall be as many as the season of the year (with an interval of half an hour for breakfast, and an hour for dinner) will permit; but not exceeding eight hours, in the months of November, December, and January; nine hours, in the months of February and October; and ten hours in the rest of the year." Nothing but a decided conviction of the inhumanity of exacting more than the human system will endure, could have prompted such an enactment, in the case of men whose crimes had made them amenable to the punishment of imprisonment at hard labor.

In the consolidated Slave Act of Jamaica, W. I., passed March 2d, 1792, provision was made for the allowance of several holidays to the unfortunate bondmen, and one day in every fortnight, exclusive of Sundays, to cultivate their own provision-grounds. Besides these provisions, it was enacted, "that every field-slave, on such plantation or settlement, shall, on work-days, be allowed,

according to custom, half an hour for breakfast, and two hours for dinner; and that no slave shall be compelled to any manner of field-work upon the plantation, before the hour of five in the morning, or after the hour of seven at night, except during the time of crop, under the penalty of fifty pounds." These laws were made by slaveholders, for the regulation of their own slaves, from whom they had every inducement to exact all the labor that could be performed, without seriously impairing their health, and shortening their lives. Yet the most that they dared to require was, a daily labor of eleven hours and a half, in at least two portions, with an interval of two hours for rest.

Such facts are not to be passed over in silence. They speak volumes for the position that I have now taken. It would be difficult to find any civilized people, at the present day, who would venture to enact a law requiring even convicts to labor at any other than in the day-time. Our own Revised Statutes simply demand, that they "shall be kept constantly employed at hard labor during the day-time, except when incapable of laboring by reason of sickness or bodily infirmity." It would be regarded as inhuman to require them to work by night.

The modern legislation of the British government has been in accordance with these views. In the 42d year of George III., 1802, an act was passed, at the instance of Sir Robert Peel, himself a manufacturer, by which the labor of apprentices in factories was limited to twelve hours, and not permitted at night. In 1816, the same distinguished commoner procured the passage of a resolution for a committee of the House of Commons to make investigation into the evils of the factory-system. Deep was the indignation, when the report of this committee brought out the fact, that great numbers of children even were worked from five in the morning till eight at night, all the year round; and that, in making lost time, they frequently worked from five in the morning till ten at night. The inquiry resulted in the passage of an act, making it unlawful to require of any factory laborer, under eighteen years of age, more than sixty-nine hours of labor during the week, or eleven and a half hours daily.

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In 1832, it was proposed to reduce the time to fifty-eight hours in the week, for all under eighteen years of age. This proposition gave rise to another commission of inquiry, fifteen in number, five of whom were of the medical profession, commonly known as the "Factory Commission." A vast amount of facts, bearing on this question, was thus collected, by which it was ascertained, that the hours of labor in Scotland were from twelve to twelve and a half; in the north-eastern district of England, twelve; in Manchester, twelve; and in the West of England, often not more than

ten.

In 1841, another commission was raised, called the "Children's Employment Commission," who extended their investigations