---
title: 'Albert Barnes on the Sabbath Opportunities Given During a Year'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2022-08-28
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2022-albert-barnes-on-the-sabbath-opportunities-given-during-a-year
---

# Albert Barnes on the Sabbath Opportunities Given During a Year

“Fifty-two times the affairs of the world have been suspended by common consent all around you, to remind you that there is a God; that there is another world; that there is a place of perfect cessation from toil; and that man has higher interests than those which pertain to the present life. Fifty-two times all the courts have been suspended; the stores have been closed; the exercises in colleges and schools have been arrested; the apprentice has been released from his toil; the hired laborer has ceased to be found by his contract to work; and the slave has had no task, and has felt that, to some extent, the time was his own, and that he too might think of heaven. Fifty-two times the axe of the woodman has ceased to be heard, and the noise of the spindle and the loom has died away, and the plow has been left standing in the furrow. Fifty-two times during the year you have been solicited to take up your Bible and to search diligently after truth; fifty-two days have you been invited to the sanctuary; through fifty-two days you have had nothing else to do but to prepare for heaven.” — [Albert Barnes](/authors/albert-barnes), “The Value of Fifty-Two Sabbaths in the Year” (1860)