The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1861-12-19
Sabbath Physiology.

The Almighty rested one-seyenth of the time OF
creation, commanding man to observe an equal
repose. The neglect of this injunction will
always sooner or later, bring mental, moral, and
physical death.
Rest is an invariable law of animal life. The
busy heart beats, beats ever, from infancy to age,
and yet for a large part of the time it is in u
state of repose.
William Pitt died of apoplexy at the early age
of forty-seyen. When the destinies of nations
hung in large measures on his doings, he felt
com pelled 10 give an unremitting attention to
affairs of state. Sabbath brought no rest to him,
and soon the unwilling brain gave signs of ex-
haustion. But his presence in Parliament was
conceived to be Indispensable for explanation and
defence of the public policy. Under such circum-
stances, it was his custom to eat heartily and
substantial food, most highly seasoned, just be-
fore going to his place in order TO afford the body
that strength, and to excite the mind to that ac-
tivity deemed necessary to the momentous occa-
sion. But under the high tension, both brain
and body perished prematurely.
Not long ago, one of the most active business
men of England found his affairs so extended,
that he deliberately determined to devote his Sab
baths to his accounts. He had a mind of u wide
grasp. His views were so comprehensive, so far
seeing, that wealth came upon him like a flood.
He purchased a country-seat at the cost of four
hundred thousand dollars, determining that he
would now have rest and quiet. But it was too
late, As hestepped on his Threshold, after a sur
vey OF his late purchase, he became apoplectic.
Although life was not destroyed, he only lives to
be the wreck of a man.
1t used to be said that o brick-kiln SO must be
kept burning over Sabbath - it is now known
to be n fallacy. There can be no 9 must against
n divine onmand Even now, it is a received
opinion, that iron blast furnaces will bring ruin
if not kept in continual operation. Eighteen
years ago, an Englishman determined to keep the
Sabbath holy as to them, with the result, as
his books justified, that he made more iron in six
days than he had before in seven that he had
made more iron in a given time, in proportion to
the hands and size of his furnaces, than any es-
tablishment in England which was kept in oper-
alton during the Sabbath.
In New York, the mind of a man who made
half a million a year, went out in the night of
madness and an early grave, in only two years,
from the very strain put upon it by a variety of
enterprises, every one of which succeeded.
"It will take about five years to clear them
off, said al observant master of an Ohio canal
boat, alludilg to the wearing-out influences on
the boatmen, who worked on Sabbaths as well as
on other days. As to the boatmen and fremen
of the steamers on the Western rivers which never
lay by on Sbbaths, seven years is the average of
life.
The Observance, therefore, of the seventh por-
ton of our lime, for the purposes of rest, is de-
monstrably a physiological necessity, a law of
our nature.-HaH's Journal Of Health.