LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMEEIOA. 
 
SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES BE 
 OPENED 01 SUNDAY? 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 BY 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher, 
 
 Delivered at the Request of Members of the Mercantile Library 
 
 Association of New York City, in the Cooper Union Hall, 
 
 Monday Evening, April 22d, 1872. Phonographically 
 
 Reported by T. J. Ellinwood. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 J. B. FORD & COMPANY, 
 
 I 
 
 />S> 
 
 ^ 0?_C0A^^n 
 
3*- 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 New York, April, 1872. 
 Rev. Henry Ward Beecher: 
 
 Dear Sir: The question of the advisability of opening the reading- 
 rooms of the great public libraries on Sunday is being earnestly discussed 
 among their members. We, who are members of the Mercantile Library, 
 feel solicitous that this matter should be decided so as to advance the best 
 moral, intellectual, and social interests of ourselves, our associates, and all 
 the young men of New York, and therefore we respectfully request that 
 for our guidance you will, if convenient and agreeable to yourself, give 
 public expression to your views upon this important question on some day 
 to be named by you. 
 
 Respectfully, 
 
 Henry D. Lloyd, Peter Yoorhis, 
 
 George C. Lee, Wm. G. Da vies, 
 
 Daniel E. Appleton, Wm. L. Felt, 
 John C. Lloyd, Wm. O. McDowell 
 
 and several hundred others. 
 
 Brooklyn, April, 1872. 
 Henry D. Lloyd and others : 
 
 Gentlemen: I have received from the Trustees of the Cooper Institute, 
 at your request, an invitation to address them upon the propriety of open- 
 ing the public reading-rooms of large cities upon Sunday, under suitable 
 regulations. It will give me great pleasure to comply with your wishes, and 
 unless some other date shall be more suitable, I will take the liberty of 
 mentioning Monday night, April 22. I am, very truly, yours, 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 
 
 The Library 
 of Congress 
 
 washington 
 
AN ADDRESS 
 Henry Ward Beecher. 
 
 Should the Public Libraries he Opened 
 on Sunday? 
 
 It has been said that whenever the clergy shall have arrived at 
 anything like a unanimous opinion upon the subject of the obser- 
 vance of the Lord's Day, we shall find the laity agreeing. I have no 
 doubt of it, and believe also that the converse is true ; that when- 
 ever the intelligent laity agree upon the subject of the Sabbath day, 
 they will find the clergy agreeing with them. For, happily, in our 
 day there is little distinction between the clergy and the laity. The 
 word citizen swallows up all distinctions. We dwell together in 
 one commonwealth, having common interests. There is such 
 familiar intercourse, there is such necessity of mutual consideration 
 and consultation, that in regard to all great moral public questions 
 no lines ought to be drawn between the opinions of the clergy and 
 those of the laity. 
 
 I count it a most auspicious circumstance when an audience is 
 gathered together, not on the spur of some campaign excitement, 
 but when sober men and sober women assemble to discuss a great 
 moral topic that can have no more interest to them than such as 
 springs from its relation to the commonwealth. I should be sorry 
 to suppose that this was a partisan meeting. I should be sorry to 
 be supposed myself to be antagonistic to those who are desirous of 
 maintaining the sanctity of the Lord's Day. I am the child of a 
 Puritan ancestry. My own earliest associations are with the strict- 
 est observance of the Lord's Day. I love that day. I love its 
 usages. I desire to see it maintained. More than that, I would 
 have it lengthen its cords, and strengthen its stakes. And where it 
 has done one thing well, I would have it do twenty more things 
 well. It is because I believe that this day of rest is capable of a 
 larger use — not by making it less moral, not by treating it in a 
 
4 SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES 
 
 spirit of desecration, not by dragging it down, but by giving it a 
 fuller and broader application — that I am here to-night. It is be- 
 cause I believe it can be made better than it has been, and more 
 heartily maintained and more sincerely respected and loved. 
 
 I know there are many who hold that this is a day which is pre- 
 scribed by direct divine authority, that it is obligatory in the sense 
 of an express command, and that the mode of observation is su b- 
 stantially settled. Men whose opinions I respect hold these views much 
 more rigidly than I do myself. But I find over against them a very 
 large number of people, many of whom were not born in this land, 
 and who have brought the customs and usages of other lands to our 
 shores. There are among us many men of various degrees of intel- 
 ligence who believe that Sunday is more a holiday, in the higher 
 sense of that term, than anything else, and that it ought to be a day 
 full of mere social enjoyment. I respect their liberty of opinion, 
 although I do not entertain their sentiments, either. I stand be- 
 tween these two extremes, attempting, if possible, to find a ground 
 on which both classes may stand, so there may not be any obstacle 
 in the way of cooperation on the part of all intelligent and good 
 citizens. 
 
 This is a day peculiarly American. Not that it has not been 
 observed in all countries, but that perhaps nowhere else, from the 
 very founding of the colonies, has there been an institution which 
 has been like the New England and the American Sunday — the day 
 of rest— the one religious day. In other lands it has been partly 
 religious, or it has been a day of games and exhibitions and sports, 
 with a little preliminary ruffle of church, and all the rest of the 
 garment of anything ; but it was in America that the Lord's Day 
 dawned, as it were, with the light of the other world shining over 
 its brow. It has stretched out its hands in our thought, and 
 in our associations, and spread multitudinous blessings over 
 all the continent. I used to think that nothing was on Sun- 
 day as it was on other days. Surely, to my eye, the sun rose with 
 more majesty and the birds sang with more sweetness on that day 
 than on any other. To my remembrance, the silence of Sunday was 
 like no other silence. Although I confess that as a boy, I did not 
 keep the Lord's Day according to the catechetical instruction which 
 I received; although I acknowledge that I indulged in many a sin- 
 ful giggle, and found humor in many things which were not allowed 
 in church, or elsewhere, still I bear witness that a certain moral 
 sensibility, and a certain poetic element, was derived by me from the 
 strict and Puritan observance of the Sabbath, which I can nevei 
 enough be thankful for. 
 
BE OPENED ON SUNDAY? 5 
 
 I honor the memory of the men who kept the old Sunday ; and 
 if I thought that the steps which we make in advance would take 
 away from the idea that on that day the Lord is especially near to 
 men (in their thought, though not in fact) ; if I thought that they 
 would subtract one particle of its stimulation of the best and noblest 
 elements of man's nature, I would never utter a word, nor by any 
 means give my influence toward the abatement of the rigor of the 
 Sabbath observances. I stand here loving the day, and honoring it ; 
 I honor it for what it has done for me, for my fathers, and for the 
 community. And I say, not that there must be less Sunday, but 
 that there must be more Sunday ; not that there must be less sanc- 
 tity, but that sanctity, taking to itself humanity, must be broader 
 and deeper ; not that the church should be robbed, but that the 
 church should know better how large is the patrimony which God 
 has given to it in this day. 
 
 I do not think that we have received our Lord's Day on the 
 ground of absolute command. Certainly the Jewish Sabbath is not 
 ours. We cannot, therefore, divine from that Sabbath how this day 
 ought to be kept. The old Jews kept their Sabbath as simply a day 
 of rest and recreation. They were not forbidden to have social en- 
 tertainment on that day. Indeed, it was the one joyful, cheerful day 
 of the week. The only thing that was barred was work. Abstinence 
 from work was carried to a ridiculous extent. It was forbidden, for 
 instance, that a man should walk with heavy nails in his shoes, lest 
 walking on the grass he should shell out some of its seeds, and so do 
 that which was equivalent to thrashing grain on Sunday. It was 
 not allowable for a man to lead an ass to water with a long halter, 
 because, while the horse bore a part of the weight of that halter, 
 the man would bear the other part, and so would be carrying bur- 
 dens on Sunday and would be working ! But to entertain one's 
 friends on Sunday ; to rejoice with them ; to cheer their hearts with 
 entertainments prepared beforehand — that was especially allowable. 
 Sunday was not distinctively a religious day. It was simply a day 
 of secular rest. But that day has passed away for the most part, so 
 that it gives us no idea of the method in which we should observe 
 our holy day. 
 
 So far as the Christian Sunday, or the Lord's Day, is concerned, 
 we have no command in the New Testament as to the mode in 
 which it is to be observed. We have scarcely more than the recog- 
 nition that it was observed, in addition to the old Jewish Sabbath. 
 We have neither from the primitive church nor from the Scriptures 
 any hint, explicit and binding, as to the mode of observing it. This 
 we know : that among the early Christians it was a day of joyfulness. 
 
SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBB ABIES 
 
 It was a day of triumph. It was a day in which they kindled the 
 fervor of enjoyment more highly than on any other day of the week. 
 Our Lord's Day has come to us strained through the usages of the 
 mediaeval age and church ; but largely we have received it from the 
 hands of our Puritan ancestors. Seeing the frivolity, the secular 
 wastefulness which occurred on that day, they were by stress of 
 circumstances, I think, driven to the opposite extreme ; and they 
 made the day so exclusively a day of moral teaching and self-re- 
 straint that it comes down to us with bars and bolts which did not 
 belong to the primitive Lord's Day, and which reason does not 
 justify. 
 
 THE FOUNDATION PRINCIPLE. 
 
 Now, we are to determine what is best in regard to the observance of 
 Sunday by some principle ; and I know of no other principle which 
 is so good as this : It is the lord's Day. 
 
 Who is- the Lord ? He is that Jesus who healed on the Sabbath 
 day, when the Jews thought it was professional work, and rebuked 
 him for it. He is that Jesus who justified those disciples that were 
 gathering wheat, and rubbing it in their hands, and eating it, being 
 called to account for it by the Jews, as though rubbing were grind- 
 ing, and therefore breaking Sunday ! He is' that Jesus who, when 
 found fault with for healing a man on the Sabbath day, declared 
 that it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath day. In the face and 
 teeth of the Jews, he declared that the Sabbath was a day of 
 humanity. 
 
 On another occasion he declared of the Sabbath : "It was made 
 for man, not man for it." It is man's servant, not his master. 
 Wherever the Sabbath day, therefore, is so administered that any part 
 of the community are oppressed by it, they have a right to rise up 
 and break through that observance : because the day was not made 
 to keep down manhood ; it was made to lift it up. It was not made 
 to take away liberty ; it was made to increase it. It was not made 
 to circumscribe man's thoughts and feeling and conduct; it was 
 made to augment them. In short, the Lord's Day is a day for larger 
 manhood. 
 
 In. looking at it, then, in this way, we must inquire what are the 
 beneficial uses that can be made of it. 
 
 PHYSICAL EEST. 
 
 First, we may adopt, very well, I think, to a certain extent, the 
 primary functions of the Jewish Sabbath ; in other words, we may 
 make it a day of bodily rest. We all need rest. We all need to 
 have at least one day in the seven in which the mill does not grind, 
 and in which the great maelstrom of society finds rest itself, and lets 
 
BE OF EN ED ON SUNDAY*! 7 
 
 us rest. The merchant with his staggering brain, the busy plodder, 
 the laborer, — all need rest. All American society is keyed so high, 
 is stimulated to such a degree, that nowhere else is one day of full 
 and complete physical rest more necessary than here. And in this 
 regard the only people who are professionally without any rest are 
 ministers of the Gospel. I need rest on Sunday, and do not get it. 
 By the absence of it, I appreciate the desirableness of it. 
 
 Friends, when it is said that we are to rest on the Sabbath day, 
 it does not come home to many of you as it does to others. Most of 
 those who are gathered here are too prosperous to know what is the 
 sweetness and balm of the rest the Sabbath gives. How many 
 poor men there are who rise before the sun rises, and who work 
 through all the hours of the day, and through every day of the week, 
 until late at night, and fall upon their couches conscious that they 
 have taxed every bone and every muscle to its utmost ; and who, at 
 last, when the six days have rolled around, and they wake prema- 
 turely on the Sabbath with inexpressible gladness, turn and say, 
 " Thank God ! I have one day on which to rest ! " 
 
 If there were here a servile class as there has been in every nation 
 for ages, this day of enforced rest, although it were enforced by a 
 secular and physical law, would be a mercy. 'Where a day of rest has 
 been enforced, it has been a supreme bounty to the working man. 
 
 Moreover, how many men are there so separated from their 
 households during the week that they can scarcely say that they 
 know their own families ! They see them little. Many men go to 
 their business early and return late, and do not see their children. 
 They go away before the children are up, and come back after their 
 children have gone to bed. How many men there are who need a 
 day in which to make the acquaintance of their own households, in 
 order that they may be known, and felt, and welcomed, and loved! 
 How many men there are in the community who are goaded and 
 taxed by anxious thought, by incessant attritions, and who long for 
 one day in which they can unbuckle the harness and rest ! The 
 Lord's Day is a bounty of God which they who are prosperous, and 
 who are never taxed with care, and to whom God seems to have given 
 a perpetual vacation, cannot understand; and it is not for them to 
 determine what are the benefits of this day of rest. If you were to 
 obliterate the Lord's Hay, it would double the burdens of the poor. 
 It would make the yoke sorer, and it would- make the back ache 
 more severely than ever. Therefore, for the sake of the poor toiling 
 man, I say, Blessed be the one-seventh part of the time which God 
 has hallowed, and which we are to consecrate to the needs of the 
 laboring classes ! 
 
8 SEO ULD TEE P VELIO L TEE A BIES 
 
 MORAL EDUCATION. 
 
 Not only is there to be bodily rest, but, as the center of all man- 
 hood, there must be a consideration of the moral element. The 
 Lord's Day ought to be improved for moral culture, so far as possi- 
 ble. I believe that worship in the house of God is a wise thing on 
 the Sabbath for all good citizens. I would not enforce it by law ; 
 I would not enforce it even by a coercive and punitive public senti- 
 ment ; but I would, if I could, persuade all my fellow-citizens, once 
 in the day, at least, to go — father and mother, and brothers and sis- 
 ters — to church. A sweeter group, a pleasanter scene, no painter 
 ever beheld, than a whole household cleanly dressed and with smil- 
 ing faces, the large feet moving with heavier tread, and the little 
 feet pattering on behind, going to the house of God, to unite in 
 common hymns, and common supplications, and common worship, 
 and listen together to instruction concerning the daily duties of life. 
 
 Ladies and gentlemen, we have a very hard time, six days in the 
 week wrestling with the devil. He does cudgel us, and tempt us to self- 
 ishness, and make us envious, and jealous, and hard, and avaricious, 
 as we toil and are taxed during the week. We do not mean to un- 
 man ourselves on Monday ; but we fall into the current, and are 
 swept into ways which in our better moments we would not choose, 
 and which our judgment does not approve ; we live below our ideal ; 
 and it is a good thing for us on one day of the week to go where we 
 shall have our ideal raised again, and our memory of better things 
 quickened. It is a good thing for us to have a day on which we can 
 take breath, and get a new start for the next week. 
 
 Do you tell me that the working people cannot go to church 
 after having toiled all the week ? Going to church once on Sunday 
 will rest them. For the matter of that, I am witness to many and 
 many a man who has found the sweetest and soundest rest in church ! 
 But e^ en if they maintain their wakefulness (as, if the service and 
 sermon are not too long, they will), there is that in the economy of 
 religious service which every man needs. And those men need it 
 most who have the least of it. I mean those men who are at the 
 lowest ebb in society ; the lowest classes of men, of whom I think, 
 for whom I sympathize, to whom I give my life's best endeavors — 
 my brethren who are at the bottom. In behalf of them, more than 
 of any others, I plead for the Sabbath services of the church ; be- 
 cause you can do for men nothing so good as to make them compe- 
 tent to do for themselves. I say that essential manhood begins in 
 moral sentiment, and that the poor who have true moral principle 
 in them can organize more speedily around themselves the deficient 
 elements, and lift themselves up into light and privilege. A poor man 
 
BE OPENED ON SUNDAY? 9 
 
 who is without a moral sentiment in him is poor indeed. It is a good 
 thing to give a man a barrel of flour rather than that his household 
 should lack bread; but there is far a better gift to a man than that? 
 even ; it is the power to earn that barrel of flour. It is a good 
 thing to give men refreshment, and amusement, if need be, on the 
 Sabbath day ; but it is better to give them a manhood out of which 
 will come satisfaction, and rest, and refinement, and education, and 
 aspiration. I plead for the Sabbath service of the church as one of 
 the elements of education needed by all, but more especially by those 
 who are poor, uncomely, unshorn, unwashed, uneducated. The 
 lower down you go, the more men you find who need the influ- 
 ences that fall upon the top. As in the forest it is the tops of the 
 trees that cheat the parts below of sunlight, so in society the bottom 
 is cheated by the top. The top takes all privilege, and the bottom 
 has little or none. 
 
 THE SOCIAL ELEMENT. 
 
 More than this, while the Lord's Day should be a day of rest and 
 of moral culture, for the sake of manhood, I hold that it is a day on 
 which religion should be helped by the social element. I do not 
 believe in solitariness in religion. I do not believe that any thought 
 or feeling is better for having grown alone. A plant that has grown 
 in the dark lacks color and fiber. A potato vine that has grown in a 
 cellar toward a little crack through which comes a beam of light — 
 how spindling and worthless it is ! A religious culture which is 
 cloistered and closeted is full of sentiment and sap ; but it is crude 
 sap and useless sentiment. 
 
 When the Lord made a man, he made him to grow altogether. 
 You cannot send up his religious feelings like a steeple, while all 
 his other feelings remain uncultivated. His intellect must grow in 
 connection with his social affections, and his social affections must 
 grow in connection with his moral sentiments, if you would give 
 him true religious culture. 
 
 The Lord's Day is a good day in which to learn to love your neigh- 
 bor as yourself. I do not think it is a great sin if your neighbor has 
 his side door open on the Sabbath day for you to walk across the 
 law r n and sit on his porch, and talk with him of things seemly. I 
 think the Lord likes that. I do not think that if your household is 
 made radiant, and your children wake up and say (as I never did) 
 " Thank God, it is Sunday !" I don't think that if you make it the 
 best day of the week, and 3 r our children are good-natured and joyful, 
 that they are any the worse. Let the church service inspire conscience 
 and moral sen timent, and let the household inspire social affections, 
 love, and fellowship one with another. Let a part of the observance 
 
1 SHOULD TUB P TJBLIC L1BB ABIES 
 
 of the Lord's Day be that which makes men, forget their differences, 
 forget that they are rivals, forget each other's faults, and look upon 
 one another as fellow-travelers toward the great future. Let men 
 learn on the Lord's Day to worship God in the church, but also to 
 love their fellows in the household. To love men — is that a desecra- 
 tion of Sunday ? I believe in letting out the harness a little. I 
 believe in making the holes for the buckle a little lower down. Let 
 our Lord's Day be a church day in the morning, and a family day 
 the rest of the time. I think that we preach too much. I think 
 that we overteach and overtax in the Sabbath school. I think we 
 are making the Lord's Day laborious. I do not think that we use 
 Sunday enough to make the family finer, sweeter, more compact, 
 more homogeneous, more social, and so more religious. I see many 
 men who come to church stern and stiff. They would not for all 
 the world ride in a car on Sunday — no ; nor go over the ferry on 
 Sunday — no ; nor do anything at home that made them agreeable — 
 no ! I do not hold up their way of keeping the Sabbath as a model. 
 Sunday is a day of household love. It is a day of family reunion. 
 It is a day in which the children ought to feel that their father and 
 mother never were so handsome before, and never were so good. It 
 is a day in which every part of the household should, at the going 
 down of the sun, be able to say, " Thank God for this open door of 
 heaven, which has poured out so many happy hours on us." 
 
 It is bad to bring up children with such a sense of the sanctity 
 of Sunday that they shall feel not gently restrained, and sweetly 
 and pleasantly impressed, but that the day is a terror, a yoke, an 
 iron rod. It is God's day, and is a bounty, and children ought to 
 know it. It is a day of liberty to men, and children ought to be 
 made to feel it. Any administration of the Lord's Day in the family, 
 which makes men tire of it, is bad. Any way of keeping Sunday so 
 that the household is not made happier and better by it, is an un- 
 christian way of keeping it. It was made for man ; man was not 
 made for it. 
 
 SUNDAY TO BE MADE BOUNTIFUL TO ALL. 
 
 There is one other point that I now wish to press upon you. 
 Thus far I have attempted by a plain expression of my views, to 
 gain the confidence of those who are really friends of the Sabbath, 
 and now I wish to turn to these persons, and say, " It is not enough 
 to "&eep" Sunday. Sunday is to be administered as well as kept. 
 You are bound to see to it, not merely that you do not break the 
 Lord's Day, but that it does its appropriate work through the whole 
 community. This is your duty. For instance, you may be prosper- 
 
BE OPENED ON SUN DA Y? 11 
 
 | 
 ous ; you may be able to say, " I go to church ; thank God I do not 
 
 ride in the cars either ; I go in my own carriage ; I attend to what 
 the minister says ; I pay liberally for the support of the G-ospel ; 
 what lack I yet ?" And you return to your dinner, cooked on Saturday, 
 perhaps, but bountiful, and warmed with generous liquors; and 
 made palatable in other ways. You may be a prosperous man, and 
 your house entertain all that heart could wish, and on Sunday, after 
 dinner, you lie on the sofa, slippered and with dres&ing-gown, and 
 with every comfort; and at night you gather your household to- 
 gether, and have, oh ! such a happy time ; and you say to yourself, 
 " How ridiculous it is for men to undertake to destroy this beautiful 
 day I" I have a word to say to you. You have all that you could 
 desire. You have your pew in church. You have the respect of 
 your minister. You walk in a circle that does obedience to you. 
 You have a magnificent home, and all manner of luxuries. But 
 how is it with the poor cooper? How is it with the poor black- 
 smith ? How is it with the poor laborer, who climbs four pairs of 
 stairs to his solitary room in some attic where he lives without com- 
 forts, without a household, without a branch which bears a blossom ? 
 The Jewish Sabbath became a day for prosperous men, and was 
 administered so that the poor man was oppressed, and Christ said 
 substantially this : "Any keeping of the Sabbath which neglects hu- 
 manity to the poorest and the lowest is a violation of the day — a 
 breaking of it." 
 
 STREET CAES OUGHT TO RUIS". 
 
 You must not take your measure from your own prosperity. It 
 is very easy for you to say, piously, " City cars ought not to run on 
 Sunday ; people ought to stay where they are." For my own part, 
 I believe that city cars ought to run on Sunday ; and if you want 
 me to compromise the matter, I will say that on Sunday rich men 
 shall not ride in them, and poor people shall be allowed to ride in 
 them at half price ! You ought to make locomotion easy to those 
 who need it most. Those who are obliged to work all the week, 
 cannot on week days visit their family connections, their parents, 
 their brothers and sisters, their cousins, or their uncles and aunts, 
 as the case may be, who are scattered here and there, some in Brook- 
 lyn, for instance, while they are in the upper part of New York. You 
 can make visits in your carriages, on any day you please, hut the 
 poor man needs to have a car on Sunday. And I believe in keep- 
 ing up the affinities of friendship. I believe in their being minis- 
 tered to, even on the Sabbath day. Therefore I believe in running 
 the cars. Not that there are not many evils connected with it, but 
 that on the whole it serves the cause of the poor in the community. 
 
12 SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES 
 
 I would, however, have it done less at the expense of the drivers and 
 conductors than it now is. There is a great deal of sinning against 
 the poor in that direction, of which I shall speak in a moment. 
 
 THE DUTY OF THE COMFORTABLE. 
 
 There are a great many persons who feel that they have done 
 their work for the Sabbath as soon as they have gone to church. 
 Then their conscience is satisfied. "Ah !" says a man as he begins to 
 divest himself of his raiment for his couch, "I have kept the law. I 
 have been to church twice. I have heard the minister. I have 
 seen that my children were all rightly dressed and properly cate- 
 chised. I have done my whole duty." Have you ? Do you know 
 what is the condition of the people in your ward ? Do you know 
 how men live in the families next to you ? Do you know how 
 the poor men over the way in the street behind you are living ? 
 Do you know anything about your fellow men ? Has the Lord's 
 Day made you acquainted with anything beyond yourself ? Have 
 you extended your sympathy to those who are around about you ? 
 Do you feel more tolerant toward imperfect men in the community ? 
 Are you a larger and more generous man ? Is your blood warmer ; 
 or are you a cold man still ? Are you selfish in your religion ? If 
 so, you have not kept Sunday as you should have kept it, and your 
 church observances have not done you good. 
 
 CIRCUMSTANCES ALTER CASES. 
 
 All men must keep the Sabbath according to the way in which 
 they are circumstanced. In the village, where the church is capa- 
 cious enough to hold all the population, where men live at home, 
 and where there are no strangers, I see no special reason why there 
 should be anything more than the church and the household. You 
 can make no institutions that are better than the family ; and the 
 instruction of the church and the social advantages of the house- 
 hold are adequate for sparse populations of village life. But that 
 which, may be enough for a village of five hundred or a thousand 
 inhabitants, is not enough for a city of a million. For instance, in 
 the city of New York, there are two hundred and fifty thousand 
 people who could not get into the churches of the city. If you 
 should fill them ful 1 to the dome, there would then be two hundred 
 and fifty thousand men and women who were excluded. You have 
 not churches enough. There is this vast number whom you have 
 not made provision for — and that, leaving out the sick and others 
 who could not attend church on the Lord's Day. In village life 
 there is provision ; but not in city life. 
 
BE OPENED ON SUNDAY? 13 
 
 SPECIAL CLASSES. 
 
 For example, look at the artisans in New York — the workers in 
 all manner of materials. Have you taken the trouble to go among 
 them ? Many have. There are missionary spirits who have gone 
 into every part of the city. But many of you never have. You 
 have never gone into cellars and attics. You have never seen where 
 the shoemaker and the blacksmith work. You have never been in 
 the nooks and corners where many of the trades are carried on. 
 
 When Sunday comes round, I say, "Blessed be God for my 
 house !" But as I look round on every side, I say, "Probably there 
 are more than ten thousand families over there in that great, city 
 who have no room to spread themselves." They are high up, or 
 they are low down ; and whole families are grouped in one or Wo 
 small rooms. What sort of a home have they for Sunday ? There 
 are men who have not smelled fresh air for six days. There are 
 men on whose head, for six days, the light has hardly shone. There 
 are men etiolated and without expansion, without aerated blood, 
 reclused and hidden ; and if, when Sunday comes, they say to their 
 wife and their children, " What if we go down to Greenwood, to-day, 
 and hear the birds sing ? Let us go and see how sweet things look 
 down there," — would you meet them with a scowl as they went out 
 of the house, and say to them, " My friends, this is the Lord's Day, 
 and you ought not to be taking the cars and riding down there " ? 
 My answer would be, " Yes, this is the Lord's Day, and the earth is 
 the Lord's, and the fullness thereof — the country as well as the city." 
 If men are, in the providence of God, so shut up in the city that 
 they cannot breathe the pure, sweet, fresh air, though I would say 
 to them, " You ought not to neglect the church, it is necessary for 
 you ; you, more than anybody, ought to have the benefit of t]ie 
 church on Sunday;" yet would I also say, "During a part 01 
 this day you have a right to God's free air ; and during a part of 
 it you have a right to the sun in the country. The cars are 
 yours ; the sun is yours ; the birds are yours ; the sky is yours ; the 
 earth is yours. Take them, in the name of God, and be thankful 
 for them." 
 
 There is another class in our cities who need some help for the 
 Sabbath day. I refer to the vast number of persons who are, by the 
 nature of their work, forbidden to have a Sunday. I do not know 
 how many upper and under- servants there are in our great hotels. 
 I know that there is an army of such persons, to whom no day ot 
 rest comes, and I confess that I do not know how to give advice in 
 regard to them ; but I do say that some means ought to be provided 
 to enable this class of laborers to take cheap rides, during part of 
 
1 4 SHO ULD THE P UBLIG LIBB ABIES 
 
 the Sabbath day, out of the places in which they are confined in the 
 city. 
 
 But, on the other hand, what shall we do for the car-driver and 
 the conductor? These men are, I think, as much overworked as 
 any class in our cities — that is, they are worked more hours ; and, 
 as far as lawful pay is concerned, at less wages than any other class 
 in the community. While on the Lord's Day they are conveying 
 their fellows to church, to the houses of relatives, or to the fel- 
 lowship of God in Nature, they themselves have no rest. Some ar- 
 rangement ought to be made by which drivers and conductors should 
 have relief on Sunday — some more equitable mode of alternation in 
 duty. 
 
 Take the very institutions which we are considering to-night — 
 the art galleries, the lyceums, the reading-rooms, and the libraries. 
 It is sometimes said, "If you open them on Sunday, you take away 
 the Sabbatli from their custodians — from the janitor, the librarian, 
 the clerk, the keeper." Some provision ought to be made that, while 
 you are making Sunday better for the young men of the city, you 
 shall not make it worse for these administrants. There ought to be 
 some arrangement by which every man connected with any enter- 
 prise should have the benefit of Sunday, in some way. 
 
 The ferries ought not to be run on Sunday, unless the ferry com- 
 panies give a part of the day to their employes. Hotel keepers 
 ought to see that their employees have a part of Sunday to them- 
 selves. Christian gentlemen, Christian ladies, this is what I call 
 administering Sunday. You ought, in some way, to carry the 
 bounty of Sunday to everybody. You ought to see that there are 
 means provided for moral instruction to every class in this great 
 community. 
 
 THE PEEILS OF YOUNG MEN". 
 
 Look at the young men who come to New York. I do not know 
 how many of them there are without homes or friends. I sup- 
 pose that when I count them by tens of thousands I am moderate. 
 What is the life of these young men ? He is fortunate who has 
 come from a country Christian household and home, and has had 
 his lot cast in a good boarding-house. There are some good boarding- 
 houses. I stand up for that much-maligned class, boarding-house 
 keepers. There are some who I know are mothers in Israel and 
 fathers in Israel to those that are in their households, watching for 
 them, and doing for them. But, on the other hand, there are a 
 great many boarding-houses that are not the way to heaven — unless 
 it be through vigils and fasts ! 
 
 Here are thousands of young men who come down to New York 
 
BE OPENED ON SUNDAY! 15 
 
 from warm-hearted family circles. They are strangers among 
 strangers. They are worked hard through the day. They either 
 sleep at the store .where they work, or roost in a boarding-house. 
 For them there are no provisions made which answer at all to their 
 home-life. When the Sabbath day comes, one of these young men 
 lifts himself up from his cot under the counter, or on the counter, 
 or in his desolate little bedroom, and dresses himself and goes to 
 breakfast. After breakfast, the question comes up as to what he 
 shall do. u Tom, what are you going to do ?" " I don't know ; 
 what are you going to do ?" " Well, about the same thing." It 
 being Sunday, and just after breakfast, it is half-past nine. They 
 have slept, and slept, and slept ; and they have eaten their late 
 breakfast ; and they say, " Let us go out in the street and see what 
 we can find." Perhaps they make up their minds to go to church 
 somewhere. They saunter along. There is no special church that 
 they know anything about, or are interested in. They go into the first 
 one that they see open. They count, one, two, three, four, five, six, — 
 well, there are forty or fifty people there, it may be. " Well," they say, 
 " don't let us stop here ; let us go up to the next church." They go 
 up to the next church, and as they enter, two or three people give 
 them a polite stare, as much as to say, " What under the heavens have 
 you come here for ?" Nobody rises to receive them. No courtesy 
 nor kindness is shown them. For you know that men and women 
 who would be ashamed not to be polite to any one in their own 
 house, think it right to treat every stranger in the Lord's house as 
 though he were a penitentiary convict. Not daunted by this cold 
 reception, they venture forward, and think they will take that seat ; 
 but the usher says, " No, not there," and takes them back, and 
 finally seats them in the last pew in the corner. They sit down, and 
 look at each other a moment, and then get up and bolt. From Sun- 
 day to Sunday, in this way they go to different places. They make 
 a kind of pilgrimage from church to church ; and they are fortunate 
 if they find one where they are courteously received, where they are 
 made to feel welcome, where it seems like home, where some one says 
 to them, " Where do you live ? Shall I not come and see you this 
 week ? Will you not come and see me ?" I fear that there are hun- 
 dreds and thousands of young men who on Sunday mornings go to 
 churches and find nothing that does them good. What do they 
 generally find ? Suppose they get a lodgment, what is the nature 
 of the teaching which is administered to them ? They are told, 
 perhaps, that the ministry has been handed down from the time of 
 the apostles — and it interests them exceedingly ! They are glad that 
 it is so ! There is no special nourishment in it ; but still it is 
 
16 SHOULD THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES 
 
 proved. They get just about that spiritual nourishment which they 
 would if they sat and saw crochet-work going on. No stitches are 
 let down. Every thread is in the right place. Or, in another 
 church, they are told that, 
 
 " In Adam's fall we sinned all." 
 — a very comforting doctrine ! 
 
 Others go to still another church, and they find out something 
 about Belshazzar, or something about the visions of Daniel, or 
 something about the disclosures in the Apocalypse. How seldom 
 do young men get into a church where the preacher is speaking of 
 things that go right home to them — their temptations ; their diffi- 
 culties ; their wants ! How seldom do they get into a church where 
 they feel that there are hearts which throb and glow with the spirit 
 of brotherhood! .How seldom do they get into a church where 
 there is something that their souls can feed on ! 
 
 There is many a young man on the verge of destruction, who be- 
 gan right, whose inspiration was right, whose ideal was right, but 
 who is weak on the social side, who is tempted in this way and that, 
 and who has come to a point where all the barriers which restrain 
 him from evil are in danger of being broken down. He was edu- 
 cated to honesty ; he means to be honest ; but his wants are increas- 
 ing every week, and are not increasing in the right directions. He 
 stands unsettled, vibrating between right and wrong. There is 
 enough conscientiousness left in him to chastise him with a whip of 
 scorpions. And if now he could go into a house of God where some 
 man spoke to his need, he might be lifted out of the snare and saved 
 from the pit. There are many places, hundreds, thousands of places 
 in the city of New York where he might receive help and succor ; 
 but he does not know how to get to them. He wanders through 
 some of the principal thoroughfares or conspicuous streets ; and if he 
 finds anything to help him it is the exception. He is apt to find 
 nothing but coldness and indifference. And he strolls back again, 
 and thanks God that at last it is two o'clock — dinner time. That 
 helps Sunday amazingly. He eats his dinner. Then he goes out to 
 smoke. When it is three or four o'clock he does not know what to 
 do. He walks around the streets. By and by it is supper time. He 
 eats supper. So at last he has worn out all the day — and the day 
 has pretty nearly worn him out. 
 
 At night he says, " Look here, this is a doleful business ; I wish 
 I could go somewhere where somebody cares for me." Alas ! there 
 are places where somebody cares too well for him. Over the d\ trance 
 is written " The way to joy /" and over the exit is written, " The 
 way to damnation" He goes in and is caught as a bird in the snare 
 
BE OPENED ON SUNDA Y? 17 
 
 of the fowler. Hecatombs of young men are destroyed in this city 
 without mourners. Hundreds and thousands of young men in every 
 single year go down the way of death, and nobody cares for their 
 souls. Fellow citizens, I say that the young men of New York — 
 the mechanics, the clerks, the laboring men — ought to have some- 
 thing on the Lord's Day that shall be a home or a resort for them. 
 Our Christianity has done much. The family has done much. And 
 there are self-denying laborers in households and in churches. These 
 institutions are doing a great many things. But there are things 
 that ought to be done wdiich are not yet done. There ought to be, 
 conspicuously, such places open on evenings and on Sundays as shall 
 leave a young man without excuse if he wanders into by and for- 
 bidden paths for the sake of company. 
 
 THE PKOPOSED REMEDY. 
 
 Under such circumstances, if it is proposed to open, on the Lord's 
 Day, well-lighted reading-rooms, comely library halls, and galleries 
 where no licentious art solicits, but where there is an appeal to the 
 sense of beauty ; if it is proposed to open places, where there is lib- 
 erty, where comforts are provided, and where young men can meet 
 their fellows and not be thrown out into the street, I say, in the 
 spirit of that Master whose resurrection or birth we celebrate on 
 that Sabbath-day, try it — try it ! 
 
 I beseech of those conscientious men w r ho are opposed to this 
 movement not to misrepresent the intentions of those wdio are in 
 favor of opening these reading-rooms and libraries; not to say, 
 " They do not care anything for Sunday, and they are going to 
 break down the bars and destroy the Sabbath." We are stepping in 
 to endeavor to supplement the noble work of the churches, and do 
 something that the churches were not made to do, and do not per- 
 form, and cannot perform. There are thousands and hundreds of 
 thousands in New York who, on Sunday, owing to their peculiar 
 relations and situations, need something done for them more than 
 is done. If they could have homes, and if they could attend 
 churches, that would be better ; but they have no homes, and they 
 cannot, under the circumstances, always attend churches. 
 
 Well, will they go to the reading-rooms ? Multitudes will not; 
 but it would be worth while to open the reading-rooms if there 
 should be fifty to attend them. And if nobody should go there cer- 
 tainly will be no harm done. 
 
 OBJECTIONS TO THE PLAN. 
 
 t is objected, frequently, "You have no right to use the Lord's 
 ±j. for anything but religion." I say we have a right to use the 
 
1 8 ISHO ULD THE P UJBLIC LIBB ABIES 
 
 Lord's Day for every purpose of humanity. I say that the Lord's 
 Day is consecrated to every thing that does good to the manhood of 
 men, whether it be strictly religious, whether it be moral, or whether 
 it be social. But it is objected, "If you begin, you cannot stop. 
 When you have once let down the bars, you cannot tell what the 
 results will be." Fellow-citizens, we are not children. We are 
 competent to self-government. We do not run at the sound of a 
 rattle, and turn back at the sound of another. We are trying to 
 make an experiment in good and virtuous earnest. We mean good, 
 we mean virtue, we mean manhood ; and if when the experiment 
 has been fairly tried, if after a sufficient number of years, we find 
 that it does no good, or that it does harm, I pledge myself in behalf 
 of the gentlemen who are now immediately concerned in this mat- 
 ter, that they will shut the door as promptly as now they propose 
 to open it. But it is said, "If you begin it, you cannot stop it." 
 We can stop it. Any intelligent and moral community can go to 
 the right or to the left according as they find by experience that 
 going to the right or to the left is mischievous or beneficial. 
 
 But it is said, " Look at the countries where there is no Sunday." 
 Yes, look at the countries where people are not educated. Look at 
 the countries where the people are priest-ridden. Look at the coun- 
 tries where there is no popular liberty. There you find that the 
 tyrant, where he be hierarch or potentate, pays off the people for 
 their political liberty by giving them holidays to play on. They 
 please them with amusement on Sunday, and other bribes, to make 
 them willing to part with their privileges. But that is not the case 
 in this country. It is not so in America. And I scorn, in behalf of 
 our whole American citizenship, the allegation or the insinuation 
 that we shall come to bull-fighting and cock-fighting and rat-baiting 
 as soon as we open libraries and reading-rooms for men in order that 
 they may instruct themselves. Do you suppose that we shall turn 
 New York into Havana by giving a larger liberty of intelligence to 
 young men ? The Lord may have made you very well as far as he 
 went, but he stopped a great while too soon for your good, if that is 
 your style of reasoning. 
 
 But it is said, " It will lead young men to stay away from the 
 churches, and substitute mere reading and intelligence for religion." 
 My reply to that is, that it will draw ten young men from the street 
 where it draws one from the church ; and it will be more likely to 
 send ten men to the church, where one goes to it now without such 
 an auxiliary. I believe it will be the means of increasing the moral 
 susceptibilities of the young, and not of deadening them. 
 
 But you say, " You will compel the librarian and the keepers to 
 
BE OPENED ON SUNDAY? 19 
 
 stay there." I believe that the Young Men's Christian Associations 
 would be happy to furnish volunteers who should take their turn in 
 caring for the libraries and reading-rooms. Is there any better work 
 that these associations could do than lending their aid to an under- 
 taking like this ? And so far as the members of the Mercantile 
 Library Association are concerned, I take it that there is principle 
 •enough among them to see to it that every man who is employed in 
 these places has some part of Sunday to himself. I do not wish to 
 make the duties of custodians any heavier than they are already ; 
 but I wish to extend the privileges of such benevolent institutions 
 to those who have them not, and at the same time institute some 
 mode of relief on Sunday for those who sit there during the other 
 six days of the week. 
 
 But, it is said, " It is undertaking that which is in the dark. It 
 Is doing a very risky and perilous thing. You have never tried it 
 You do not know what the end will be." I beg your pardon. The 
 thing has been tried. I have in my hand a letter from Philadelphia, 
 which I will read : 
 
 2107 De Lancey Place, Philadelphia. 
 Dear Sir: You are announced, I see, to speak, on Monday night, on the 
 Library question. I desire to tell you that our Mercantile Library in Phil- 
 adelphia has been open to the publio on Sunday for nearly two years — it 
 will be two years in June. The first year it was closed early in the even- 
 ing, but now it remains open until ten o'clock at night. The attendance 
 has risen steadily, from three hundred per day the first year, until now the 
 average is seven hundred, nearly all of whom are young meu. No books 
 are given out on shares on that day, so that the army of employes have 
 rest; but as the library is on the open-case plan, the readers may roam at 
 will. 
 
 Both the President, Mr. Morris Perot, and the Librarian in charge, Mr. 
 D'Ossone, have expressed themselves to me as entirely satisfied with the 
 working of the new arrangement, now too well established to be called an 
 experiment. There is no disorder, and more than even the usual hush. In 
 fact, it is only the opening of one cathedral more, where those who hunger 
 and thirst during the busy week may come and be filled. 
 
 Very truly, yours, 
 
 S. C. Hallowell. 
 
 Now, one word more. I wish to express my strong conviction 
 that the Sabbath day is a boon and bounty of God to the common 
 people, and to the working classes. Though I have advocated a cer- 
 tain amount of social liberty, I wish you to remember that I quali- 
 fied it, as I still qualify it, by expressing the opinion that all civic 
 enjoyment or social feeling shall include in it a definite basis of 
 moral instruction on the Sabbath day. I wish to add that while 
 there will not be much gained in the upper ranks of society by the 
 strict maintenance of Sunday, which has done its work mostly for 
 
20 THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES ON SUNDAY. 
 
 the prosperous classes, I expect to see that the more liberal adminis- 
 tration of the Lord's Day, religiously, socially, and intellectually, will 
 
 rain down blessings upon the poorer classes. And for their sake 
 
 for the sake of the friendless, for the sake of the homeless, for the 
 sake of the young men and young women — I plead for the opening 
 of places where they may go for company and for information on 
 the Lord's Day. If it be thought best not to open them during the 
 whole of Sunday, that is a matter to be determined on principles oi 
 expediency. It seems to me that they should be open from noon 
 until at least ten o'clock in the evening. The morning can be 
 occupied profitably in other ways. The afternoon is when the time 
 hangs heavy with indolence ; and the evening i^ the time when is 
 most felt the call for social exhilaration. And if light and attractive 
 reading-rooms and libraries are open, and if friendly voices are 
 heard, and kind greetings are exchanged, I believe that " experience 
 will show within a very few years, that New York never did a better 
 thing than to provide these places and homes of Sabbath resort for 
 the young men of the city. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS. 
 
 At the close of Mr. Beecher's remarks, Mr. Henry D. Lloyd offered the 
 following resolutions, which were carried unanimously: 
 
 "In the belief that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the 
 Sabbath, and that it is right to do good on that day, 
 
 " Resolved, That in order to add to the Christian's uses of the Lord's Day, 
 in order that it may be not broken as now, but the better kept, in order that 
 there may be not less, but more of Sunday, that our social, moral, and intel- 
 lectual manhood may be suffered to develop on every day of the week, 
 we earnestly call upon the managers of the, Mercantile,' the Cooper 
 Union, the Astor, and all the great libraries, not only of this, but of all the 
 great cities of this land, to throw open their reading-ro6ms upon the Sabbath 
 day, under regulations which they may deem suitable; and, 
 
 "Resolved, That we hereby offer the Rev. Henry Ward Beech er our 
 heartfelt thanks for the noble eloquence with whifch he has- once more 
 established the harmony between Christianity and humanity, and has 
 pleaded in behalf of homeless youug men for humanizing resorts^on Sunday, 
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