The first stage-coach between Boston and New York began, June 24, 1772, to run once a fortnight, starting on the thirteenth, and arriving on the twenty-eighth, fifteen days' travel. Now the distance is gone over in less than the same number of hours. And so the first stage-coach between New York and Philadelphia, begun in 1756, occupied three days in the journey. Three days dwindle down to three hours in the train.
In the Scriptures we find Isaiah with prophetic eye looking over the centuries to these later times, and penning down, "Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain;" and "swift messengers" are seen executing the world's affairs—no meagre description of the great means of intercourse in our day, the railway and telegraph. The prophet saw in it a clearing of the track for the coming kingdom of the Redeemer, which is, some time, to spread over the whole earth as "the waters cover the sea." Men make good tools and instruments for themselves. They forget they are perfecting them for God also, who is using them, and who will use them to make known the precious Gospel of His Son, "peace on earth, and good will to men."
What powerful preachers for the Sabbath are the railway and telegraph, doing away with all necessity and every excuse for Sabbath travelling, as they do. Long journeys and the most urgent business can be done between Sabbath and Sabbath, giving a rest-day to the nation. And this view of them is deserving more and more regard.
The institution of the Sabbath was founded with the human race. It was meant to be the rest-day of the entire world. It was set up as a blessing: "The Lord blessed the Sabbath-day, and hallowed it." The bodies of man and beast need it. The muscles, bones, nerves, sinews, and brain cannot endure the strain of constant and uninterrupted work. It is a day of making up the waste of the animal frame under continual labour and excitement. Night rest is not enough. The God of nature and the God of the Sabbath has fitted the one to the other.
When the knowledge of God had faded out of the earth, and God chose a people to restore and preserve it, besides a code of national laws particularly for them, He enacted from Sinai a code of moral laws for man. Among them was the rest-law of the Sabbath. It is the Fourth Commandment of the Decalogue, taught in all our Sabbath-schools, pulpits, and homes: "Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy: in it thou shalt do no work," man or beast. Farther, God promises great reward to those who call "the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable * * not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, but delighting thyself in the Lord;" showing not only the rest-use of the Sabbath, but its soul-use, as a day of special intercourse with God.
"The Sabbath was made for man," says Jesus Christ; and the Christian Sabbath incorporated into it the finishing of the great plan of our redemption, when Christ,
"Who endured the cross and grave,
Sinners to redeem and save,"