Verification of God's Word Benefits of the Lord's Day. sengers, if any, have the opportunity of worshiping the Most High God, who made the heavens, the earth, and the wide sea; and, whether it be convenient to have any other service for the benefit of your apprentices or not, you will find it a good thing thus to wait upon the Lord. You will experience a benefit temporally as well as spiritually; your people will be more orderly and respectful, and Almighty God will be your shield and your exceeding great reward. Yea, if thou acquaint thyself with him and return unto him, the Almighty shall be thy defense; for then shalt thou delight thyself in the Almighty, and shalt lift up thy face unto God; and thou shalt make thy prayer unto him, and he shall hear thee." Now what rational subject of Almighty God can doubt this, having for it His Own WORD! And what ship-master or common mariner will turn a leaden ear to this testimony and expostulation of one of their own craft, to whom a long and varied experience gives a right to be heard and regarded. Considerations like these, we fully believe, will yet have their weight upon owners, officers, and men. The sea shall A good Time coming. Commerce shall be Religious. yet have its Sabbath; the holy Lord's day shall be rescued from profanation by the great whaling and merchant fleets; the abundance of the seas shall be converted to God, and to the observance especially of this great ordinance of creation's Lord, THOU SHALT REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY TO KEEP IT HOLY. There's a good time coming for seamen, and that, we trust, not far. We thankfully recognize the law of progress and reform as true of them, and already remarkably developed in this day. We gladly share in the cheering faith of Dr. Bushnell, that the time is at hand when all that pertains to commerce is to be sanctified by virtue and religion, as of right it should be; "when commerce itself shall become religious, and religion commercial; when the mariners will be blended with all the other worshipers on shore, in the exercise of common privileges, and as members of a common brotherhood; when the ships will have their Sabbath, and become temples of praise on the deep; when habits of temperance and banks for saving will secure them in thrift, and assist to give them character; when they will no more live an unconnected, isolated, and therefore reckless life, Mariners to be Missionaries. How to be brought about. but will have their wives and children vested here and there, in some neat cottage among the hills, to be to them, when abroad, the anchor of their affections, and the security of their virtue; when they will go forth also to distant climes and barbarous shores, with all their noble and generous traits sanctified by religion, to represent the beauty of Christ to men, and become examples of all that is good and beneficent in his Gospel. Be it ours to aid a purpose so desirable, theirs to realize it in their conduct and character." Realized, we believe, it will be in the world's cheering progress, and that ere long, when MARINERS shall be missionaries from shore to shore, from the river to the ends of the earth; when the isles shall wait God's law at their hands, and continents, long wrapped in the darkness of paganism, shall be thrown wide open to messengers of salvation, borne and backed by those that go down to the sea in ships, and do business in the great waters! Lord! for those days we wait; those days Are in thy word foretold. Fly swifter, sun and stars, and bring This promised age of gold. Mariner's Millennium through the Telescope of Poetry. Peace, with her olive crown, shall stretch Her wings from shore to shore; Beneath the influence of HIS grace, With sudden green and fruits array'd- Then shall bless'd seamen sing and tell AND SEA AND LAND, IN SABBATH LIGHT, |