volumes, in an excellent state of preservation. Ah! these are the late lamented rector's sermons, "published by request," with the pages not so much as cut. Can it be wondered at that a Sunday-school library started under such miserable conditions becomes a wretched failure? Too long the Church has suffered from the idea that anything is good enough for Church work. Too long the clergy have tolerated the cry, "Oh, any old used-up thing will do for us." Yes, and unless there is an end of this fatuous policy, it certainly will "do" for the Church in a way not to be misunderstood. To those about to form a Sunday school library, I would say, begin with a high ideal. Pure literature does not of necessity mean poor literature. Beg books if you like, but you will find it far more satisfactory to beg the money, and then buy the best books you can, always keeping in view the special requirements of the particular parish in which the library is to be planted. The Church Reading Unions, which have now been formed in many dioceses, deserve cordial recognition, for there can be no doubt they are exerting a most beneficial influence on the home-reading of thoughtful Church folk. As an example of a ready way of getting into touch with a workingclass congregation, I may mention that last summer the Rev. H. A. Mason, vicar of S. Stephen's, North Bow, held a series of meetings in the vicarage garden on Sunday nights, after the ordinary evening service, at which addresses were given on various phases of Church work. I was privileged to speak to the people one night on "The Church and the Press," and had an attentive hearing from three or four hundred persons. The Sunday reading of the more educated classes has undoubtedly undergone a considerable change during the past quarter of a century. Is it quite certain that the change is for the better? In the pages of current literature one frequently meets with a gibe at the rigid observance of Sunday by our grandfathers and grandmothers, especially in this matter of Sunday reading. Writers delight to go out of their way to have a fling at the old-fashioned Sunday books, and yet it is a significant fact that when the biographer draws for us the story of some man who has had much to do with the making of the greatness of our Empire, a tribute is almost invariably paid to the quiet, sanctified Sundays which hallowed the early days of the hero. Sunday is peculiarly and emphatically the poor man's day. "On other days the man of toil is doomed To eat his joyless bread, lonely; the ground Both seat and board; screened from the winter's cold Or summer's heat by neighbouring hedge or tree; But on this day, embosomed in his home, He shares the frugal meal with those he loves." And the great test of our Sunday occupation is this, "How much of Heaven has it brought us, and how much of Heaven has it led us to impart to others ?" It is notorious that most parishes contain at least half-a-dozen bumptious laymen who are confidently of the opinion that they can "run the show" much better than their respective vicars. I hope I may say that I am not of the number, for happily I have never been that nineteenth-century-legalized-ecclesiastical-monstrosity-" the aggrieved parishioner!" I feel, however, that I ought to apologize for presuming to have offered so many hints to the clergy; but we lay-folk have not many opportunities of putting our views before the cloth, and so rejoice that once a year such an occasion is given by the Church Congress. (2) OPENING OF MUSEUMS, ETC. G. F. CHAMBERS, ESQ., Barrister-at-Law, Eastbourne.* WHETHER the nineteenth century people are willing to recognize the fact or not, one of their greatest needs is more rest-rest of mind and rest of body. For weal or woe we are all too busy, too restless, too much occupied, be it in money-making, in running about, in seeking pleasure, I had almost even said in good works-too many societies, committees, and public meetings. The age is one of rivalry and competition, carried too far in things religious quite as much as in things secular. I do not suggest, at any rate here, any attempt to wield Mrs. Partington's famous broom in respect of these matters, but no Churchman, minded to look at things from a practical standpoint, can doubt that if ever in the history of the human race there was a time when it was essential to keep up the spirit of the Fourth Commandment, that time is the present time. The subject, even as limited as it is to-day to museums (including picture galleries), is a wide one, and I can only hope to deal with it in outline. One important preliminary point must, however, first be glanced at. Call it Sunday, or Sabbath, or Lord's Day, or Day of Rest, or by any other cognate name, two questions arise: (1) Where did the day come from? and (2) What are our powers and rights to interfere in the regulation of it? I must avow at once in the plainest English that I hold the day to be one of Divine appointment; not a mere festival of the Church, not a merely Jewish, local, or ceremonial holiday, but an institution ordained by the Creator at the creation of the world, and serving the secondary purpose of commemorating that creation. In other words, the day came from God; and our Saviour has stated its design: "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark ii. 27). This is its primary purpose-the benefit of man. Whilst the non-Mosaic origin of the Sabbath may be shown by various proofs familiar to the theologian, recent archæological discoveries in Bible lands have furnished a new and unexpected proof of quite another, but most interesting, kind. I will employ the words of the Rev. A. H. Sayce :-"The Sabbath rest was a Babylonian as well as a Hebrew institution. Its origin went back to pre-Semitic days, and the very name Sabbath, by which it was known in Hebrew, was of Baby. lonian origin." Further on he says, "We must, therefore, admit that we first find traces of the week of seven days, with the rest day or Sabbath which fell upon the seventh, in Babylonia, and that it was intimately The Editor finds it necessary to omit portions of Mr. Chambers' paper, owing, partly, to its extreme length. connected with the astronomical belief in the existence of seven planets." -The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments, 3rd edition, 1894, pp. 74, 76. If you will, therefore, accustom yourselves to regard the Lord's Day as a primæval and not a Judaic institution, you will soon see that my second question must be answered by saying that our powers and rights to interfere with the regulation of it must be deemed strictly limited to the lines laid down in what Sir Walter Scott at the closing scene of his life called "THE BOOK." Turn, then, to "The Book," and at Exodus xx. 8-11 you have the words familiar to all. Those words (as explained and developed in Isaiah lviii. 13, 14) must, I hold, be taken by us Christians and Churchmen in 1895 in their plainest literal sense, without addition or subtraction. That this is so I argued at length at the Manchester Church Congress in 1888 and at the Cardiff Church Congress in 1889, and time fails me to go over the ground again to-day. I will content myself by saying that the very form and framework of the Fourth Commandment, coupled with the fact that it is only one out of ten such precepts, forbids altogether the idea that it is merely something Mosaic or Judaic, and therefore optional for us; whilst if you once begin to attempt to draw lines of relaxation of your own, each man will quickly drift into paths which will be no paths, but a trackless wilderness of Sunday non-observance. This is mere history; not my imagination. Depend upon it, the closer we stick to Isaiah's injunctions the better:-" Turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; . . . honour Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord" (Isaiah lviii. 13, 14). Now let us inquire what, on the principles already laid down, can profitably be urged in regard to the employment of Sunday for purposes of sight-seeing in connection with museums and picture galleries, and— ultimately, yes, ultimately-theatres. Depend upon it you cannot draw, or, if you attempt to draw you will not long be able to keep up, the distinction between Henry VIII. in model, say, at the South Kensington Museum; and Henry VIII. as represented by Holbein, or somebody at the National Gallery; and Henry VIII. as represented by Irving at the Lyceum Theatre. The ball once set rolling is bound to go on, and those well-meaning (so-called) friends of the working-man who profess to draw their limiting line at the outside of the theatre door, are strangely blind to the fact that they are standing as on a glacier, which is not only slippery, but is perpetually sliding downwards. The continent of Europe and many of the great cities of America tell us a tale, and furnish us with a warning herein, which we must not, indeed cannot, ignore. 66 The Sunday Society" says it does not wish for the Continental Sunday, and it proposes, I believe, to go no further than museums, pictures, books, and music. This limitation is upheld, I doubt not in perfect good faith, by many of the clerical and titled supporters of the Society, but it is a matter of notoriety that many supporters (and they some of the most active and aggressive) go far beyond this, and decline to be tied down to any line. Accordingly, whilst one section only urges the opening of concert halls, such as the Albert Hall and the People's Palace; another section, much more consistent as it seems to me, boldly advocates the opening of theatres; and a third section claims that anything and everything which is not illegal on weekdays shall be rendered not illegal on Sundays. The questions, of course, inevitably suggest themselves: "Why stop at the museum?" "Why stop at the concert hall?” "Why stop at the theatre ?" Why not go on to the circus, then the workshop, and the factory?" These differences are no differences of principle; only of degree and detail. If the musician is to ply his trade and earn his living playing secular music in the Albert Hall or Battersea Park on Sunday afternoon, why is the mustard manufacturer or the cotton spinner to be debarred by law from running his machinery and earning his living on Sundays if he wishes to do so? It is sometimes suggested: "On this principle the clergy must not be paid for their Sunday work; sidesmen must not collect offertories, nor add up their accounts." This is a very poor joke, not good enough for our old friend, Punch. The question of drawing a line was never more clearly put than by The Times, on June 9, 1877, discussing the very subject which we are discussing to-day, the Sunday opening of museums. Said the "leading journal" on the occasion in question :-"We should make a complete breach in the defences which now protect the Sunday as a day of rest, and should have definitely abandoned our general rule. Once throw open, by resolution of the House of Commons, all national museums and picture galleries on Sundays, and it is hard to see what institutions, public or private, we could insist on closing." The danger of making concessions where a vital principle is at stake, because of the impossibility of securing the permanency of your concessions, is well illustrated by the history of the Sunday Band question. When this nuisance was first pushed to the front, thirty or forty years ago, by organized effort, the plea was urged, "We only ask for the performance of sacred music;" and this plea, industriously asserted and re-asserted, often disarmed opposition and converted opponents into sympathizers. But the mask has long been thrown off. Sacred compositions now either only come into a programme as decoy ducks, or to throw dust in the eyes of the public; or, more often, are contemptuously ignored by being wholly omitted. Hence the following unblushing newspaper advertisement, which appeared in various London daily papers as recently as August 17th, 1895: ROYAL ALBERT HALL, Sunday, 18th August, at 3.30. From the "Gipsy suite" (a) Valse Melancolique (Lonely Life) "Murmurs of the Sile" Ed. German. Organist-Mr. H. C. Tonking. Vocalists-Miss Florence Hoskins and Mr. Herbert Emlyn. Accompanist-Mr. Howard Hadley. Seats 3d., 6d., Is., and 2s. Admission Free.. Before I pass from the subject of theatres in its bearing on our present discussion, a few more words are requisite in view of certain facts which are notorious. By way of disarming hostile criticism, Sir H. Irving publicly disclaimed, some years ago, any desire to see theatres open on Sundays. His words in the after-dinner speech at the Arts Club at Manchester in 1888 were:- "English actors would be the very first to resent and oppose any such proposition."-Bolton Evening News, Oct. 27, 1888. ..... It is idle to say that there is no danger of the theatrical profession being led to lend itself to public theatrical performances on Sunday, if the ice is broken by the National or other Public Museums and Art Galleries being opened on Sundays as a matter of ordinary course. With every desire to find any good I can, anywhere, at any time, I do know-indeed, the fact is notorious-that the theatrical profession at large holds very loose views on the religious obligations of the Lord's Day. Otherwise, how comes it that complaints are constantly cropping up of special Sunday trains for the conveyance of theatrical companies and their bulky impedimenta of scenery and dresses. The Westminster Gazette, of Oct. 2, 1893, stated that on the previous Sunday the L. & N. W. Railway "carried no fewer than sixty theatrical companies, numbering altogether 1,339 passengers, whose belongings were carried in seventy-four trucks. The record of the previous Sunday was a big one, but yesterday's well nigh doubled it. The G. N. Railway Company also carried a dozen theatrical companies yesterday." We are further informed (citing The Referee, of Sept. 24 and Oct. 1, 1893), "That the two railway companies just mentioned, conveyed in all ninety-three theatrical companies, embracing 2,079 passengers, who, in at least eight cases were conveyed in trains provided by special arrangement; while their luggage, scenery and other paraphernalia filled one hundred and twenty trucks." Surely statistics such as these applying only to two Sundays in one particular year do not agree with Sir H. Irving's plea that " English actors would be the very first to resent and oppose" Sunday theatrical work. If the matter were not a serious one, it would be not a little amusing -the specious plea that the opening of public institutions connected with literature, science, or art, is to be deemed expedient in the interest of the "working-man." Unfortunately this much talked about and much patronized personage manifests little or no gratitude to his professed friends for what they are doing on his (supposed) behalf. In the first place, he does not go when he has the chance; as witness Birkenhead, Chester, Coventry, Fleetwood, Hindley, Lancaster, Leek, Maidstone, Oxford, Stoke-upon-Trent, Tonbridge, Worcester, and Workington, in all of which places Sunday opening has been followed by Sunday closing — institutions opened experimentally having been closed because of the ridiculously inadequate attendances. But this is not all. Buildings still kept open are, to a very slight extent, frequented by the working-man; for instance, at Birmingham, where the greatest measure of success has been achieved, the attendance at the Art Gallery is steadily falling off year by year, e.g.: 2,365, 2,310, 1,709, 1,432, 1,188, as between 1888 and 1894. Yet what more special centre of |