I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. # 
 
 t <?& *B\f \^o 
 
 IUNITED STATES OF AMERICA,! 
 
THE 
 
 WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 How to Spend it. 
 
 < 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: ' 
 AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 
 
 No. 1122 Chestnut Street. 
 
 NEW YORK: 599 BROADWAY. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 186& by the 
 
 AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION,' 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States 
 for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 
 
THE 
 
 WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 HOW TO SPEND IT.* 
 
 nnHE interest which has been awakened in 
 -*- England and in our country upon the 
 question how the Lord's day, or the first day of 
 the week (called also Sabbath, or Sunday), can 
 be made most serviceable to the working-man, 
 is not surprising. It is a question involving 
 so many other interests that its importance can- 
 not well be exaggerated. Upon the due ob- 
 servance of that day depends almost all that 
 distinguishes Protestant Christendom from the 
 
 * The substance of this brief tractate is from a volume 
 lately published in England, entitled " Lending a Hand ; 
 or, Help for the Working-Classes." 
 
 1* 5 
 
8 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 force on all Sunday visitors to the Palace, and 
 further describes from what classes of society 
 they would have been likely to be drawn :■ — 
 
 " According to the reports of the Early-closing 
 Association, there are not less than 100,000 souls 
 engaged in the shops of the metropolis. 
 
 "A hundred thousand souls, who pass from twelve 
 to fourteen, and even sixteen, hours on their feet, in 
 one close atmosphere, contaminated with human 
 breath, thickened with dust, poisoned with gas ! 
 
 " Day after day, without change and without relaxa- 
 tion of any kind, except what is to be snatched at un- 
 timely hours of night or morning, these shop-servers 
 must sleep either in the houses where they work, in 
 dormitories more or less uncomfortable, or in lodgings 
 close at hand. These people have no cosy study to 
 retire to ; even in their bed-chambers they are not 
 alone. They have not the advantage of the evening 
 walk or ride to the suburbs, which has become part of 
 the system of the more opulent trading-classes of Lon- 
 don. They have little chance of the vacation ramble 
 at Margate,* Eamsgate, or Brighton ; still less a tour 
 
 * Though the localities referred to in this and other 
 paragraphs may not be familiar to the reader, the argu- 
 ments are of the same force among us as in England. 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 9 
 
 through Switzerland or up the Ehine. A few days' 
 holiday, and one or two pounds to spare, are the 
 utmost they can aspire to ; and these are the victims 
 whoin a section of the religious public seek to imprison 
 within the circle of the streets of London, and to 
 debar from any other resource than the public-house, 
 — the public-house, which is to be found at the corner 
 of every street, from Kensington to Bow. 
 
 "Again: besides the hundred thousand who are 
 banded for the boon of closing labour at eight o'clock 
 in winter and ten in summer, there are the numerous 
 tribe of clerks, obliged to keep up a decent appear- 
 ance on small salaries, in very responsible employ- 
 ments, living in cramped lodgings or miniature cot- 
 tages, who seldom see their children except on Sun- 
 days. There are tens of thousands of mechanics and 
 others, following occupations created by the highly- 
 civilized state of society in which we live, engaged in 
 producing those articles of luxury or comfort which 
 smooth the path of the wealthy. 
 
 "For all these town-working people what day of 
 rest is there? What opportunity of exchanging the 
 close air of the City, — of seeing grass and trees and 
 flowers, — of stretching their limbs and expanding 
 their lungs, — of laying in a stock of health for the 
 ensuing week, — except on the one day set apart for 
 rest, the Sunday? It is a libel on the goodness of 
 
10 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 God to believe that His day was intended as a punish- 
 ment for the poor and a luxury for the rich." 
 
 This idea of Sunday turned into a punish- 
 ment finds place in the work of another popu- 
 lar writer :* — 
 
 "It was a Sunday evening in London, — gloomy, 
 close and stale. Maddening church-bells of all de- 
 grees of dissonance, sharp and flat, cracked and clear, 
 fast and slow, made the brick-and-mortar echoes hide- 
 ous. Melancholy streets, in a penitential garb of soot, 
 steeped the souls of the people who were condemned 
 to look at them out of windows in dire despondency. 
 In every thoroughfare, up almost every alley, and 
 down almost every turning, some doleful bell was 
 throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the plague were in 
 the City and the dead-carts going round. Every thing 
 was bolted and barred that could by possibility furnish 
 relief to an over-worked people. No pictures, no un- 
 familiar animals, no rare plants or flowers, no natural 
 or artificial wonders of the ancient world ; all taboo 
 with that enlightened strictness that the ugly South 
 Sea gods in the British Museum might have supposed 
 themselves at home. Nothing to see but streets, 
 streets, streets ! nothing to breathe but streets, streets, 
 
 * Little lJorrit, by Charles Dickens, p. 21. 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 11 
 
 streets! Nothing to change the brooding mind or 
 raise it up ! Nothing for the spent toiler to do but to 
 compare the monotony of his seventh day with the 
 monotony of his six days ! think what a weary life he 
 led, and make the best of it, or the worst, according 
 to the probabilities !" 
 
 We hope we have stated the case fairly and 
 fully. If we understand the advocate of Sab- 
 bath relaxation and pastime, he claims that the 
 man who toils all the week has a right to take 
 his Sunday for amusement and recreation. For 
 this end, museums, public gardens, picture- 
 galleries, and all entertainments "where the 
 moral tendency is not pernicious, should be 
 thrown open to the public. Otherwise, the 
 public-house being the workman's only re- 
 source, his Sunday, which might have passed 
 innocently and happily at "the great Intel- 
 lectual Temperance Garden," will be disgraced 
 by brawls and drunkenness in the over-crowded 
 beer-shop. When we demur to this holiday 
 notion of the Sabbath, as over-riding the holy 
 day remembrance handed down to us from our 
 
12 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 fathers, and enshrined in those tables of the 
 Ten Commandments which are put up in many 
 of our Christian churches, very much as if they 
 wished us to draw the conclusion that they 
 contain a code of law and practice still binding 
 on Christian men and women, — when we de- 
 mur, he is ready with his answer : — " The 
 Sabbath is a Jewish institution; the Fourth 
 Commandment is not binding on Christians." 
 "The Sabbath was made for man," is his 
 watchword; and this is put forward as the 
 modification of the old precept, " The seventh 
 day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." 
 The ground for Sabbath observance is shifted 
 from duty to expediency ; and the expediency 
 relates rather to the welfare of the body than 
 of *he soul; rather to things seen, than to 
 things unseen. 
 
 We believe, however, the advocate of Sab- 
 bath relaxation would let the strict observer of 
 the day alone, if it were only a question as to 
 the standard of Sabbath observance he chooses 
 to adopt for himself. If, argues his opponent, 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 13 
 
 it is his pleasure to crowd the day with reli- 
 gious engagements, till his heavy eyelids in the 
 evening droop under the spoken or over the 
 written sermon, — if he chooses to incur the 
 risk of mental torpor and spiritual indigestion, 
 — it is, after all, an affair of personal taste and 
 discretion : let him cut his own coat as seems 
 him best; only, let him abstain from trying to 
 make it fit upon his neighbours. If a week 
 of light and optional occupation leaves him 
 fresh for a day of Sunday labour, — no work so 
 enriching,— let him labour in it and be thankful, 
 — rising earlier, if he will, and later taking 
 rest; but let him not, in thought or word, re- 
 proach the man who accepts gratefully the re- 
 turn of that day when, set free from the com- 
 pulsory call to early labour, he may give to the 
 body its additional hour of needed rest. 
 
 If for one day in the week the strict Sab- 
 bath-observer is willing to lighten the labours 
 of his cook, and eat a dinner prepared the day 
 before, it is thoughtful and kind; but the 
 sacrifice to him is very small : it would be 
 
14 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 very great to the working-man, who on that 
 one day of the week dines at home with his 
 children. 
 
 If, again, he restricts his walk to his garden 
 on the Sunday, because he finds it easier within 
 its walls and under its shady trees to shut out 
 weekday life and thoughts, so be it ; but let 
 him not frown on hot, dusty pedestrians, who 
 have taken their " Sabbath-day's journey" to 
 the nearest heath or common, and are walking 
 to or from the stifling room in a crowded 
 court which is their only home. 
 
 In some such language as this we shall hear 
 the strict Sabbath-observer charged by his 
 opponent with want of sympathy, with failing 
 to realize that differing circumstances have 
 different wants. In so far as the charge is 
 true, it is a grave one; and we are not pre- 
 pared altogether to repudiate it. It may be 
 that a gloom is sometimes thrown over the day 
 which ought to be the happiest in the week, 
 because one rigid rule is considered as equally 
 applicable to the child in the family, the young 
 
HOW TO SPEXD IT. 15 
 
 son and daughter at home, the unlettered 
 labourer, the toil-worn mechanic, and to the 
 quiet denizen of his study, who finds himself 
 amply provided for profitable enjoyment of 
 the Sabbath, with public services and private 
 reading, or meditation. 
 
 There is something curiously conventional, 
 and (we must say it) sometimes strangely in- 
 consistent, about notions of Sabbath observance. 
 To give a few instances,* which we believe 
 are not overdrawn. Do not some hold it to 
 be right and profitable to enjoy heart-to-heart 
 intercourse with a present friend, but quite 
 wrong to hold the same intercourse on paper 
 if he were absent? Eight to sing a hymn, 
 however secular the air may be to which it is 
 adapted, — wrong to take part in an anthem ? 
 Right to enjoy a voluntary on the church- 
 
 * We do not think it needful to prescribe positive rules 
 to cover such cases as are here supposed. If there is a 
 true reverence for the day and an honest desire to appro- 
 priate its several hours to such uses as will promote the 
 highest, holiest ends for which it is instituted, the spirit 
 may be trusted to control the letter. 
 
16 THE WORKING-MAN ? S SUNDAY: 
 
 organ, — wrong to reproduce it on the drawing- 
 room piano ? Right to go into the garden, — 
 wrong to take a walk ? Eight to gather a 
 flower, — wrong to examine its wondrous struc- 
 ture? Right to feed pet animals,— wrong 
 to observe or to be interested with them? 
 Allowed that an infant-child should set out 
 the animals of its ark, and gain a patriarchal 
 conception of Noah with a long beard, but not 
 allowed if the remote allusion to sacred history 
 should be wanting, and the selected toy should 
 be a doll or a ball ? 
 
 Inconsistency is always dangerous : children 
 and young people are quite sharp enough to 
 detect it. Let the parents — -who have always 
 a right to lay down laws for their own house- 
 hold — say, " This we allow, that we forbid ;" 
 but let them not say of things which are 
 really one and the same in principle, " This is 
 right, and that is wrong." Let not the conduct 
 of parents be open to the suspicion that it is 
 to save themselves trouble they impose Sab- 
 bath restrictions on their children. The game 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 17 
 
 of play with school-companions is properly 
 suspended : let it be exchanged for the weekly 
 luxury of a time spent with their father, who 
 has, .perhaps, little opportunity on other days 
 to make himself the personal friend of his 
 children. 
 
 Books • of study, lesson-books, — for this, to 
 children, is their "manner of work/' — will 
 (probably with their hearty consent) remain on 
 the shelves from Saturday to Monday; but 
 other books must be selected with an eye to 
 their age and tastes. w 
 
 The same principle which leads a parent to 
 appreciate the difference between his child's 
 mental capacity and his own, and to make self- 
 sacrificing efforts to meet its requirements, will 
 also lead the enlightened Christian philan- 
 thropist to understand that the same rule and 
 measure cannot be applied to his own employ- 
 ment of the Sabbath and to that of the work- 
 man; and will lead him also to recognize that 
 individual, self-denying effort on his part is 
 called for, that he may help the workman, as 
 
 2* 
 
18 THE WORKING-MAH'S SUNDAY: 
 
 he helps his child, to a profitable enjoyment 
 of that which is his inalienable right, — a seventh 
 day of rest from labour. 
 
 We say, to help him ; because, though the 
 working-classes can point to a goodly and in- 
 creasing number of thoughtful and intelligent 
 men in their ranks, there remain thousands 
 whose highest idea of enjoyment is confined 
 to animal comforts, —a pipe, a pot of beer, 
 a warm room to drink it in, and boon-com- 
 panions: beyond these they do not look. It 
 is extremely difficult to devise any harmless 
 Sunday occupation for such a class. 
 
 Some friends of the writer spent the summer 
 in a frequented place about an hour's distance 
 from a busy manufacturing town. Into this 
 place Sunday-excursion trains weekly poured 
 their thousands; but where were they chiefly to 
 be found? On the sea-shore, drinking in health 
 and blowing away the noxious fumes and gas 
 of factory labour? Or scattered up and down 
 the country, enjoying a rural walk and the 
 sight of trees and hedges? No! the beach 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. - 19 
 
 and the fields spread their attractions in vain. 
 For the most part, the excursionists took a short 
 course from the railway-station to neighbour- 
 ing beer-houses, which on Sunday were crowded 
 to excess; and "the day out" meant drinking 
 there instead of drinking at home, with a de- 
 ficit in the week's earnings to the amount of 
 the railway-ticket. A gentleman who had 
 passed the autumn at a watering-place says, 
 "I made it my business to make observation 
 with regard to excursion trains. I found that, 
 so far were the majority of the parties from 
 coming thither to take the pure air of the 
 beach, that they spent a great part of the day 
 in drinking at public-houses." 
 
 Before, however, we can enter upon any 
 questions of detail as to how the workman can 
 be helped to spend his Sunday with advantage 
 to himself and his family, it is necessary to 
 come to some sort of conclusion as to the light 
 in which we regard the observance of the Sab- 
 bath. 
 
 We have spoken of it as an * inalienable 
 
20 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 right. In what sense? Because it is a gift 
 from God to every man, of which, therefore, 
 no fellow-man has a right to deprive him ? Or 
 because it is a sacred duty, claimed by God, 
 which it were peril to disobey ? Or because 
 it is satisfactorily proved by men of science 
 that the physical and mental powers of men 
 require an interval of rest every seventh day to 
 keep them in working order? Or because the 
 State has adopted the Sabbath as a civil insti- 
 tution, reckoning it a day in which all ordi- 
 nary matters of business are to be suspended ? 
 Or is it, finally, because ecclesiastical authority 
 from the earliest ages has pronounced in favour 
 of the observance of the Sabbath, and pro- 
 vided for it in liturgies and forms of worship? 
 
 The lowest of these grounds of Sabbath ob- 
 servance has a certain measure of force and 
 value: thus, we may say to the workman, as 
 to a brother-man, — 
 
 "That you may trade well with your sole 
 capital, which is labour, and by degrees better 
 your condition, you want a healthy mind in a 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 21 
 
 healthy body. Science has proved, and ex- 
 perience confirms it, that labour must not be 
 continuous; that you need in every seven days 
 a day of rest. That day, by the laws of the 
 land, is secured to you ; it is your wisdom so 
 to use it that your body and mind may be re- 
 cruited, and prepared to start afresh for another 
 period of six days^ profitable toil. 
 
 "Does it, or does it not, refresh you to turn 
 into a public-house and spend the day in drink- 
 ing with your mates? Do you, or do you not, 
 rise the next morning with a clear head and 
 courageous mind and vigorous frame, satisfied 
 with yourself and prepared to set out with re- 
 novated powers as the bread-winner, — the prop 
 of your family? 
 
 "Or, again, you spend your Sunday in an 
 excursion: the railway-ticket is a serious dip 
 into your week's earnings, — very serious, if you 
 take your family with you ; for the wife must 
 ' smarten up a bit/ to go out and see the world. 
 It is not much of country air you get in the 
 journey, for you like your pipe, and so do 
 
22 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 others; and, if you left city smoke behind, you 
 carry tobacco smoke with you. You make a 
 long -day of it. What with a i bit' here for the 
 children, and a 'drop' there for yourself and 
 wife, money runs fast. We do not say you 
 will be otherwise than orderly and well con- 
 ducted; you will neither get drunk nor use 
 bad words; but by the time the day is over, 
 and you have had your pipe going home, and 
 it comes to dragging the tired children up the 
 stairs, we doubt very much whether any one, to 
 look at you, would say you had laid out your 
 Sunday to the best advantage for the end you 
 proposed to yourself, — getting strung up for a 
 week's work. We think it more likely than 
 not that Sundays so passed are followed by idle 
 Mondays; and, considering how much you have 
 spent on the day's pleasure, you might as well 
 not shorten the next week's earnings." 
 
 So we might argue; but does any one who 
 feels within himself what it is to be a man 
 think that, when we have said this, we haVe 
 said all? We are at issue with those who 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 23 
 
 would benefit the working-man at the expense 
 of the Sabbath, not because they sympathize 
 with the workman, nor because they appreciate 
 his circumstances and care for his privations, 
 but because their sympathy is so incomplete; 
 it embraces only a part of his nature, and 
 that the lowest. We are not writing in 
 an infidel country, or for infidel readers, that 
 we should be afraid to say, or fear to have 
 our statement questioned, that man is an im- 
 mortal being, the son of a Great Father who 
 yearns over him with parental love; that human 
 happiness is wrapped up in this, — to be at 
 peace with God, to know Him, and to love 
 Him; that these deepest laws of our being are, 
 nevertheless, matters of faith, and easily ob- 
 scured by the busy concerns of this life, by the 
 scheming and planning and toiling which have 
 reference to earthly prosperity in the fraction 
 of an immortal existence we are destined to 
 spend here; that therefore, because an immortal 
 spirit tenants our mortal body, God has given, 
 as an inalienable right, one day in seven, in 
 
24 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 which man may rise to his true dignity, undis- 
 tracted by the necessity of working to supply 
 the wants of his lower nature. The workman 
 is on the Sabbath God's free man; the day is 
 God's for him, and his for God : apart from 
 God, its glory is gone; it is a State institution, 
 an expedient device, whereby our hand-workers 
 are kept in working order, even as we let our 
 fields lie fallow, or turn our horses out to grass. 
 • It appears to us, then, that any expedient 
 for helping our brother-workman to spend the 
 Sunday is utterly beneath his acceptance which 
 does not take into account his true dignity, his 
 whole nature, as a being composed of soul and 
 body. The body must not be neglected, but 
 the claim of. the soul is paramount. On this 
 account, many schemes seem to us inadmissible 
 for Sunday which would be excellent for a 
 Saturday-afternoon holiday. They provide for 
 a man's animal and intellectual enjoyment, 
 but they ignore his spiritual necessities ; they 
 humanize, but they do not Christianize. 
 
 Take, as an example, among public institu- 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 25 
 
 tions, some well-furnished museum. We walk 
 through it with a throb of pleasure and exulta- 
 tion that such a school of knowledge and im- 
 provement is open to the workman. We de- 
 light to think that he may spend there holiday- 
 hours with his family, where every thing 
 around him is calculated to dissipate his igno- 
 rance, enlarge his ideas, cultivate his tastes, 
 and wean him from grosser and more sensual 
 pleasures. But, even as pleasures of the mind 
 are higher and nobler than mere sensual de- 
 lights, and we should grieve to see our brother- 
 man neglect the former in the pursuit of the 
 latter; so the joys and hopes and aspirations 
 of his immortal spirit are immeasurably higher 
 and nobler than human knowledge or mental 
 cultivation, and we should grieve to lure him 
 from the greater good by offering to him the 
 less. We know it is said that in enlarging his 
 mind and purifying his tastes we are taking 
 the first steps towards his moral renovation. 
 " It is taken for granted," says a modern writer, 
 "that architecture, sculpture, and the wonders 
 
26 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 of nature and art, which such buildings will 
 contain" (he is speaking of the Crystal Palace), 
 "have a direct or indirect tendency to lead to 
 true devotion. Only in a very limited degree 
 is there truth in this at all. Christianity will 
 humanize; we are not so sure that humanizing 
 will Christianize. Let us be clear upon this 
 subject. ^Esthetics are not religion: it is one 
 thing to civilize and polish, it is another thing 
 to Christianize. The worship of the beautiful 
 is not the worship of holiness: nay, I know 
 not whether the one may not have a tendency 
 to disincline from the other: at least, such was 
 the history of ancient Greece."* 
 
 * We are not unfrequently reminded by the advocates 
 of country excursions on the Sabbath, that it gives the op- 
 portunity to "look through nature up to nature's God." 
 It is greatly to be feared, however, that those who do not 
 see God in Holy Scripture, in providence, and in His sanc- 
 tuary and the ordinances of worship, are not very likely to 
 look for Him in His works. It seems degrading to a citizen 
 of the United States to limit his religious impressions 
 and aspirations as the poet does those of the roaming 
 savage: — 
 
 " Lo ! the poor Indian, whose nntutor'd mind 
 Sees God in clonds, and hears him in the wind." 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 27 
 
 One word here may be needful to guard 
 against the idea that the man who has brutalized 
 himself and deadened every moral sensibility 
 by the indulgence of low and sensual vice, is 
 more likely to open his ear to spiritual truth 
 than he will be if, under reforming influences 
 like those on which we have dwelt, he is re- 
 claimed from social degradation, regains his 
 self-respect, and becomes an orderly and well- 
 conducted member of society. The very re- 
 verse is the case: to have wandered farther 
 from the right way cannot have diminished 
 the difficulty of return; to have set human 
 authority at defiance cannot make it easier to 
 submit to Divine. The truth which enlightens 
 and saves is apprehended by that part of man's 
 nature which thinks and feels; and in propor- 
 tion as animal propensities have the mastery, 
 the entrance of truth is made more difficult. 
 
 We will not, then, undervalue social reform- 
 ation, brought about by civilizing influences, 
 but we will take it for what it is worth : it is 
 likely to replace certain defences, the loss of 
 
28 THE WOKKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 which leaves a man very open to moral assault, 
 — such defences as self-respect, for instance, or 
 a fair reputation. Natural affections, relieved 
 from the incubus of selfish debasement, are 
 likely to spring up into new life, — the man is 
 a kinder husband, a wiser father; social virtues 
 are strengthened, — he becomes a better citizen, 
 a better subject; his sympathies are now ranged 
 on the side of law and order, — he has some- 
 thing to lose, and nothing to gain, from anarchy 
 and rebellion. 
 
 These are important advantages ; and society, 
 which has to do with man as a social unit, and 
 is aggrieved, or otherwise, by his failure in 
 social claims or his fulfilment of them, — society 
 is satisfied with the result of the humanizing 
 influence she has brought to bear upon him. 
 But is the man himself satisfied? Amid the 
 human claims and natural affections which he 
 is learning to recognize, and to which he is be- 
 ginning to respond, does ijo consciousness at 
 times oppress him that a paramount" claim on 
 his affections is disregarded and forgotten? 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 29 
 
 He has been told that Sunday is the workman's 
 day for holiday and rest: does the word rest 
 never fall upon his ear like a bitter mockery, 
 because, under all his now decent exterior, he 
 carries within him a secret source of unrest, — a 
 misgiving that " acquaintance with God/' for 
 which, above all other purposes, Sunday was 
 given to him, is not yet begun? "I never had 
 my Sundays !" burst in anguish from the lips 
 of a dying cabman, when the summons came, 
 which none may disobey, to call him into the 
 presence of the unknown God, who might 
 have been his tried and trusted friend. 
 
 We have now regarded the question on its 
 human side, and, considering man, his interests, 
 his requirements, we contend that the most im- 
 portant use of the day should not be ignored 
 in any schemes, public or private, to help the 
 workman to make the most of his day of rest. 
 
 We are told that the Sabbath was a Jew- 
 ish institution, — one among many other obser- 
 vances which served the purpose of keeping the 
 Jews separate from other nations; that it is 
 
 3* 
 
80 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 spoken of indeed as blessed and sanctified at 
 the creation: but no injunctions which have 
 reference to man's observance of the day find 
 place till the Mosaic times, when the reason 
 assigned was in force. 
 
 Now, it is difficult to see in what sense the 
 day could be sanctified (set apart), unless man 
 were invited to share in the benediction and 
 rest with which God had hallowed the day. 
 Traces do not seem to us so absolutely wanting, 
 that the return of the seventh day was a re- 
 cognized period in patriarchal times. It was at 
 weekly intervals that the raven and the dove 
 were sent forth from the ark; and we think 
 that any one who will read with an unpreju- 
 diced mind the account of the fall of the manna 
 (which was antecedent to the giving of the law, 
 either moral or ceremonial) will allow that the 
 words which occur in Exod. xvi. 23 refer not 
 to the promulgation of a new precept, but to 
 the revival of an old one, which during the 
 long period of bondage in Egypt had fallen 
 into disuse. "The rest of the holy sabbath" is 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 31 
 
 referred to as something already known and re- 
 cognized : " this is that which the Lord hath said" 
 Besides, until Mosaic times, none of the other 
 moral laws had been collected into a code, or 
 otherwise written than on men's consciences: 
 yet we never hear it contended that the sixth or 
 the seventh or the eighth commandments are 
 abrogated, because they were first announced 
 through Moses to the one nation of the earth 
 who at that time feared God and professed to 
 take His law as their rule of life. As soon as 
 a moral code appears at all, the law of the 
 Sabbath stands incorporated with it. As if to 
 mark that its application, though more imme- 
 diate to the Israelite, was designed to take 
 effect on the whole human race, the reason as- 
 signed for the command in the earliest account 
 (Exod. xx. 11) is universal, and rests on the 
 creation ; the reason assigned in the second ac- 
 count (Deut. v. 15) is Jewish, and rests on the 
 exodus from Egypt. The earliest and most 
 prominent place is given to that reason in 
 which all mankind have an equal share. 
 
32 THE WOKKING-MAN ? S SUNDAY: 
 
 But, it is argued, when Christ came He an- 
 nounced a new principle as to the Sabbath : — 
 "The Sabbath is made for man, and not man 
 for the Sabbath." This is interpreted to mean 
 that the Sabbath is now handed over to man 
 to use as he judges most for his advantage; 
 God has relinquished any special claim upon 
 it; its character is changed from a holy day to 
 a holiday. 
 
 The passage on the authority of which it 
 has been deemed lawful to pronounce a sentence 
 of reversal on one of the Ten Commandments, 
 written with the finger of God on the tables 
 of stone, occurs in the second chapter of the 
 Gospel by Mark, on occasion of a presump- 
 tuous interference on the part of the Pharisees 
 with the conduct of the disciples in the presence 
 of their Master. Supposing Him either cul- 
 pably unobservant of the actions of His fol- 
 lowers, or culpably lax in His own notions of 
 what was due to the sanctity of the day, they 
 remonstrated both with Him and with them. 
 What was the offence? The disci pies were 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 33 
 
 hungry, and in passing through a cornfield 
 they plucked the ripe ears, rubbed away the 
 chaff* in their hands, and ate. Not the act it- 
 self (for it was allowed in Jewish law) roused 
 Pharisaical indignation, but their prejudiced 
 notion that, though lawful on other days, it 
 was unlawful for the Sabbath, as coming under 
 the prohibition "no manner of work." 
 
 The answer of the Lord is twofold, and is 
 directed against their prejudice on the one 
 hand, and their presumption on the other. 
 "You have formed your own notion of the 
 Sabbath, and would bind all men to it; as if 
 the Sabbath had been made first, and then man 
 had been created for the purpose of keeping it : 
 but the Sabbath was made on account of man 
 (this is the force of the preposition), not man 
 on account of the Sabbath. Again : you insist 
 not on the words of the law, btlt on the inter- 
 pretation you choose to put upon it: is it 
 seemly to do so in the presence of the Law- 
 giver, who must know best the spirit and force 
 of His own commands? That my disciples 
 
34 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 do this in my presence, unrebuked by me, 
 should be to you a sufficient guarantee that 
 such an act in no way violates my law. To 
 me, by whom the day was first set apart, and 
 who am its rightful Lord, you must look if 
 you would know how to observe it." 
 
 This seems the natural construction to put 
 upon the narrative; and accordingly we watch 
 in the fourfold story of the life of Christ for 
 indications as to how the Sabbaths were spent 
 by Him. Synagogue-worship is a prominent 
 feature of them; it was, we are told,* "His 
 custom ;" so also it was His practice to satisfy 
 on that day His own benevolent impulse to 
 relieve suffering by works of healing, and He 
 vindicated such an employment of the day 
 triumphantly against the cavil of the Phari- 
 sees.f Intimate social intercourse is also a 
 feature of Christ's Sabbaths. After leaving 
 the synagogue, we find him turning into the 
 house of a friend, a welcome and beloved 
 
 * Luke iv. 16. f Luke vi. 9. 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 35 
 
 guest.* Days so busily occupied as His, with 
 works of mercy, left little time for seasons of 
 retirement; but these were redeemed from 
 sleep :f as to recreation and bodily refreshment, 
 the walk through the cornfields was reckoned 
 by Him no desecration of the day ; and He 
 was one of the three who enjoyed the Sabbath- 
 evening walk to Emmaus, though He depre- 
 cated a journey under any circumstances which 
 would destroy the tranquillity of Sabbath rest. 
 " Pray ye that your flight be not on the Sab- 
 bath-day." 
 
 These few gleanings from the life of Christ, 
 our example, and the founder of the Christian 
 dispensation, may serve to show the general 
 principles on which He would have us inter- 
 pret, a In it thou shalt do no manner of work." 
 
 We gather — The Sabbath is a day for the 
 direct worship of God and communion with 
 Him, and as such is called, in the latest book 
 of Scripture, " the Lord's day." J 
 
 * Mark i. 29. f Mark *• 35. J Matt. xxiv. 20 ; Kev. i. 
 
36 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 It is a day for bodily rest and refreshment, 
 in which the toil should cease by which we win 
 our bread in the week. 
 
 It is a day on which all necessary bodily 
 wants may be attended to. 
 
 It is a day when the ignorant and the suffer- 
 ing have a special claim upon us. 
 
 It is a day for enjoying intercourse with 
 members of our family and intimate friends. 
 
 Such relaxation as is needed by body and 
 mind — a quiet, private walk, for instance, or 
 the singing of sacred songs, or enjoyment of 
 the beauties of God's work in creation — is not 
 discordant with the observance of the Sabbath. 
 
 The writer has felt a real shrinking from 
 going over ground which has exercised so 
 many wiser heads and abler pens; but some 
 statement of principle, and the reason on which 
 it is held, seemed necessary, because every sug- 
 gestion of detail must be modified by it. If 
 the Sabbath is a mere holiday, and my brother- 
 workman has nothing more important to do 
 in it than to amuse and refresh his mind, to 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 37 
 
 rest and recreate his body, then the only pro- 
 blem is, How to provide amusement for all 
 without depriving some of any rest or interval 
 of labour at all ? But if there be truth in the 
 deductions we have drawn, other motives and 
 purposes must be taken into account; and then, 
 in a large city, the question becomes very com- 
 plex and difficult. 
 
 Too often the workman's home is a single 
 room for* himself and his family in a crowded 
 court or alley. Sounds of profanity and sights 
 of impurity which he cannot shut out, and an 
 atmosphere foul, enervating, depressing, are 
 around him ; while green trees and hedge-rows, 
 flowers and singing-birds, are miles away. 
 
 He gets up, we will say, later on Sunday : — 
 it might seem hard to grudge him that. It is 
 a day of rest, and he has had a week of toil ; 
 but when he is up, there are, perhaps, twelve 
 hours before he will go to bed again. How 
 are they to be used ? What facilities are there 
 for his spending the Sunday as we would like 
 him to spend it ? If his clothes are very mean 
 
38 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY 
 
 and shabby, it will be a hard trial of principle to 
 go to church, for he is very sensitive to slights ; 
 and if he sees the rich man passing into his 
 cushioned pew, with " Sit thou here in a good 
 place," while to him it is said," Stand thou there ;" 
 or if he sees the lady gather up her skirts as 
 she passes him, he will be only too ready to 
 think that he has got into the wrong place, — 
 to forget that " the rich and the poor meet to- 
 gether, but the Lord is the maker of them all." 
 At last all the wearers of broadcloth and 
 silk dresses are successfully squeezed into pews, 
 and soon after service has begun a free seat is 
 left for the workman ; then, if he has a prayer 
 and hymn book, and if the service is read* 
 with feeling, and if the music and singing are 
 not so highly decorative that he loses his way in 
 them, and if the sermon is a living message 
 and not an intellectual treatise (thank God, in 
 
 * It will be observed that reference is here made to the 
 order of service in the Established Church of England. 
 The remarks would probably be inapplicable to most places 
 of worship in the United States. 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 39 
 
 a growing number of churches these ifs can be 
 satisfactorily answered), — then he has a fair 
 opportunity of gaining the most important 
 advantage the Sunday has in store for him. 
 
 His ear is arrested ; those great living truths 
 which take no account of his poverty or wealth, 
 of his social meanness or social dignity, but 
 which address him as a man, as a son, as an 
 immortal being, as one loved and cared for, — 
 those truths soothe and calm him ; they raise 
 him up to the dignity of manhood ; he passes 
 from the church-door with a half-formed pur- 
 pose to come again, — to come oftener. 
 
 So far all is well: but the Sunday is not 
 half over yet ; his mind is not trained to habits 
 of continuous thought ; probably the morning 
 service has used up his power of attention. 
 Now, if he lived in the country, he might turn 
 into his little plot of garden-ground, and 
 enjoy the concert God has prepared for him, 
 and teach his children to distinguish between 
 the notes of the robin and the thrush and 
 the warbling blackbird; or he might show 
 
40 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 them how the bud of last Sunday has opened 
 into a flower, and might give, as he plucks up 
 the ill weed which threatens to choke tender 
 seedlings, a hundred useful, profitable lessons 
 from God's great open book of nature. 
 
 But where is our Town-worker to take his 
 children ? The quiet, orderly church-goer we 
 have been describing, — who wants to stretch 
 his limbs and get a breath of pure air, and 
 see something more refreshing than dingy 
 brick houses, but who would fain keep his 
 children and himself out of harm's way, Sun- 
 day traffic, drinking and swearing, gambling 
 and betting, — -what outlets are there within a 
 walk where hundreds have not got the start of 
 him? The Parks are crowded; other places 
 of public resort look like human ants'-nests. 
 Where is he to go ? He would like a quiet 
 walk with his family in winter, or to sit out 
 with them under the trees in summer ; he is 
 almost driven out of his so-called home, for 
 the sights and sounds and smells 01 the neigh- 
 bourhood are not choice or refreshing; but, 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 41 
 
 except some forlorn, deserted-looking streets, 
 where is there a chance of a retreat ? 
 
 We have thought whether it would be too 
 great a sacrifice to ask that the gardens of 
 Squares,* some of them very large and plea- 
 sant, should be reserved on Sunday for work- 
 men of this class, who would really value a 
 quiet retreat within walking-distance of their 
 homes, and not know where to go for it ? We 
 do not propose to admit them indiscriminately ; 
 but surely each household in a large Square 
 has, or should have, its visiting-list of humble 
 and deserving friends in the working-classes, 
 and each family might admit a certain number 
 of those it has reason to know would not abuse 
 the privilege. Of course it would necessitate 
 keeping the nurse-maids and children of the 
 
 * This applies to private squares belonging to adjoining 
 estates and open only to the proprietors ; but we need not 
 say how distasteful to workmen in our country would be 
 any such provision for their entertainment as is here sug- 
 gested. If habits of Sabbath-observance have not been 
 formed in childhood and youth, the disposition to appro- 
 priate its hours to moral and religious improvement, under 
 any auspices, will be rarely found. 
 4-*- 
 
42 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 Squares out of the gardens on that day; but it 
 is only one day out of seven, and the sacrifice 
 made by the rich would gladden the heart of 
 his working brother as a practical and living 
 proof of his sympathy. 
 
 And what if, on Sunday afternoon in sum- 
 mer, gentlemen of the Square, father or sons, 
 should spare an hour from their own ease and 
 Sabbath rest, and turn into the garden with 
 some interesting book in hand and read it 
 aloud to a group under a tree (good reading and 
 pronunciation have great charm for the work- 
 ing-man)? We will venture to say the effort 
 made would be richly repaid by the kindly 
 feeling called forth on both sides. 
 
 But we are well aware that the class we have 
 been describing hitherto are not those for whom 
 it is most difficult to provide on Sunday : un- 
 happily, it is a mere fraction among the masses 
 of workmen who do thus spend the morning at 
 church and the afternoon with their children. 
 Such men are the exception. The rule is, first, 
 to drop out of the calculation altogether that 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 43 
 
 Sunday has any thing to do with the needs of 
 man's spirit or his wants beyond the present 
 life; secondly, to sacrifice to pleasure-taking 
 the needed bodily rest offered by the Sunday. 
 Pleasure-excursions, by rail or boat, are the 
 least objectionable of the ways in which the 
 day is ordinarily spent. Next to these come 
 the frequenters of scenes where excitement and 
 vice are mingled attractions. Then, perhaps, 
 lowest of all, the thousands who are too bru- 
 talized by drink to care for fun or pleasure: 
 heavy-eyed and leaden -hearted, they turn into 
 public-houses on Sunday as soon as they are 
 open, with last week's earnings in their 
 pockets. The evening finds them drinking 
 still, — excited now, and noisy; at night the 
 miserable wife guides home a drunken sot, 
 whose wages have melted into drink, and who 
 must lose a working-day or two in sleeping off 
 the effects of his debauch. 
 
 Here is the strong point made by those who 
 would throw off the restraints of the Sabbath 
 and argue for Sunday amusements. " See the 
 
44 THE WORKING-MAN ? S SUNDAY: 
 
 effect/' they say, " of shutting up places of 
 rational amusement, — museums, zoological gar- 
 dens, picture-galleries, and such like; — you 
 leave nothing for the masses but the public- 
 house ! You must take things as you find them, 
 and deal with men as they are, not as you could 
 imagine or wish them to be: you cannot infuse 
 into them your ideas of the Sabbath, — your 
 taste for church-going ; they will not have 
 your religion at any price; but they would 
 spend the day quietly and sensibly at the Crys- 
 tal Palace or the other public institutions — at 
 once humanizing and instructive — from which 
 you exclude them/' 
 
 Would they? That is just the question. 
 The better class of excursionists might, who 
 spend the day pleasure-seeking with their fami- 
 lies: yet, remembering the excursionists we 
 sometimes meet at their places of resort, we can- 
 not feel too sure even of these. But why spend 
 time in conjecture? The experiment is tried 
 weekly. The most ardent advocate of Sunday- 
 pastime could not desire a fuller catalogue of 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 45 
 
 pleasures and amusements than are open to the 
 public every Sunday in Paris. How does it 
 answer there? Are the public-houses empty, 
 while the masses are informing their minds 
 and refining their tastes in picture-galleries 
 and music-halls? Does Monday morning find 
 them braced up for exertion, ready to do battle 
 manfully, for wife and children's sake, with 
 the difficulties and struggles of a workman's 
 life? 
 
 Let us take a glance, first, at the bill of fare 
 provided for them in the way of amusement: 
 it is varied enough to suit all tastes : — Ver- 
 sailles, which might answer to Sydenham 
 Palace in England, half an hour's distance by 
 train; the exquisite fountains, reserved for 
 Sunday entertainment; the grounds so large 
 that, though thousands flock there, the visitor 
 may, if he chooses, keep apart and find a quiet 
 retreat. The Champs Elysees, crowded with 
 attractions for all ages and ranks, — billiard- 
 tables for the men, whirligigs for the active, 
 coquetry for the young, toys for children, dash- 
 
46 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 ing equipages for the brilliant and gay. The 
 streets, sights in themselves, with their glitter- 
 ing shop-windows: — here and there, perhaps, as 
 an exception, closed shutters, but for the most 
 part open, and the scene of busy traffic. The 
 theatres, — the grand attraction of Paris, to 
 Parisians as well as strangers, — the theatres 
 are truly in force on Sunday. Dr. Guthrie 
 was there in February, 1864. We give in a 
 note a list of thirteen theatres and operas with 
 which he furnishes us, containing the follow- 
 ing announcements, to suit the tastes of all 
 classes of society, on the 28th of that month.* 
 
 * At the Opera, " The Huguenots," in 5 Acts. 
 Theatre Francais, " Une Chaine," a Comedy in 5 Acts, 
 and " The Young Husband/' a Comedy in 3 Acts. 
 Opera Comique, " The Black Domino." 
 Odeon, Kepresentations of "the Kelays" and " the Will." 
 Gymnase, " Mont Joye," a Comedy in 5 Acts. 
 Theatre Italien, " Eigoletto," an Opera in 4 Acts. 
 Theatre Lyrique, " Faust," an Opera in 5 Acts. 
 Palais Royal, "La Gannotte." 
 Porte Lamartine, " Faustine." 
 Gaite, " The House of the Bagnio-Keeper." 
 Thedtre du Chdtelet, " The Shipwreck of the Medusa." 
 Theatre de Jeunes Artistes, "Galatee." 
 Varietes, " Le Petit de la Eue Ponceau," a Comedy in 2 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 47 
 
 Is this amusement enough? At all events, 
 if Parisian workmen frequent cabarets, it is 
 not because other places are closed to them. 
 Now let M. Jules Simon speak; his generous 
 sympathies towards the workmen add weight 
 to his words when he has to give evidence 
 against them : — " On pay-day the workman re- 
 ceives, in a round sum, the earnings of the week 
 or the fortnight; if paid on Saturday, he can- 
 not wait till the next day to begin his debauch. 
 By Saturday night the cabarets are full ; they 
 remain so all Sunday, often all Monday also: 
 a little gambling serves to pass the time be- 
 tween the cups. The pipe never leaves the 
 workman's lips. Soon the stifling atmosphere 
 is hardly fit to breathe. Inarticulate cries, 
 obscene songs, licentious words, mingle with 
 the rattling of glasses. Money runs fast: one- 
 third — half, perhaps — of the hardly-earned 
 w r ages are gone. Wives begin to look in, — 
 
 Acts, lively and very amusing; preceded by a The Sister 
 of Jocriee," and followed by "A Trooper who follows the 
 Nursery-Maids.'' 
 
48 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 pale and trembling, — remembering the hungry 
 children at home, and the threatening land- 
 lord. At last nature asserts itself; the man 
 must sleep somewhere; the policeman turns 
 him out, and the wretched wife does her best 
 to guide him home in safety."* 
 
 Or payment, perhaps, takes place on Sun- 
 day, — more usually than not, we believe; for 
 business finds itself as much at home as 
 pleasure, in a Parisian Sunday: in this case, 
 work generally winds up in the forenoon. 
 "On Sunday morning," says Mr. Blanchard 
 Jerrold,f "every workman will be at his bench, 
 hard at his work up to noon, when he will 
 break off, and go forth in holiday attire to 
 enter upon his long span of pleasure. The 
 afternoon of Sunday affords him only a taste 
 of relaxation. St. Monday is his real holiday; 
 and if it leaves him any money unspent on 
 Tuesday morning, he will not be inclined to 
 return to his bench. He is essentially a spend- - 
 
 * L' Ouvriere, p. 133. 
 
 f Children of Lutetia, vol. ii. p. 100, 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 49 
 
 thrift, and wife and children who are dependent 
 on him can have but little hope that he will 
 make any provision for the future." 
 
 "With the Parisian example before our eyes, 
 we cannot see that we have any great encou- 
 ragement to work out the experiment elsewhere 
 whether Sunday amusements might raise the 
 moral tone of the masses and draw them away 
 from spending their day of rest in degrading 
 and sensual indulgences. The lever that shall 
 raise them must be stronger in its own nature, 
 and poised on a steadier fulcrum. 
 
 It is also reasonable, to say the least, to in- 
 quire whether workmen have given any opinion 
 themselves on the subject. They ought to 
 know best their own wants and wishes. 
 
 On the 23d of November, 1865, a deputa- 
 tion of working-men of London waited upon 
 Earl Granville, with reference to the opening 
 of the Kensington Museum and other places 
 on Sunday. Mr. T. Hughes, M.P. for Lam- 
 beth, introduced the deputation; and several 
 of the working-men addressed his lordship on 
 
50 THE WORKING-MANS SUNDAY: 
 
 the subject of opening public buildings on 
 Sundays. They denied that the working-men 
 of the metropolis ivere anxious to have such 
 places opened on Sundays, and repudiated the 
 claims of those who professed to represent the 
 interest of operatives. 
 
 Mr. Hughes gave subsequently the reasons 
 for his belief that the deputation which he 
 headed expressed a general feeling of the work- 
 men. He said the question was raised at every 
 meeting during his canvass in Lambeth, and 
 invariably decided against opening such places 
 as museums and galleries on Sunday. He 
 further stated that various other meetings of 
 special trades, at which he had presided, had 
 come to a similar conclusion. They were very 
 anxious for the opening of such places on the 
 evenings of weekdays, and for some shortening 
 of the hours of labour; and they deprecated 
 the Sunday agitation, as tending to diminish 
 their chance of obtaining these benefits. 
 
 The Times, in a leading article on the subject, 
 leaves indeed the theological part of the ques- 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 51 
 
 tion untouched, but expresses its pleasure that 
 the opinions of working-men have within the 
 last few years been taking this direction. 
 
 "It may," says this journal, "be assumed that the 
 majority of persons in all classes would be sorry to see 
 the Sunday deprived of those general characteristics 
 which have so long marked it among us. How much 
 we all owe to the observance of Sunday it would be 
 difficult' to estimate. In this city, to great numbers 
 of men it is an absolute necessity. It is probably the 
 only institution which prevents work from becoming 
 continuous. Such are the daily increasing demands 
 of labour, that to many men, without this enforced 
 break, life would become one perpetual whirl of occu- 
 pation. The sudden change of thought, the pause in 
 every business, afford a refreshment to the mind, 
 scarcely less than that of sleep to the body, and give 
 opportunities for family intercourse and for quiet re- 
 flection, which it would be impossible otherwise to 
 obtain. The artisan, above all, whose business does 
 not follow him to his home, may spend a quiet day 
 with his family in complete relaxation. We may be * 
 allowed to think that the day has had an influence on 
 our national character, and contributed a sobriety, a 
 steadiness and a thoughtfulness to it which it would 
 otherwise have wanted. A day of rest is more than 
 
52 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 a holiday ; and let us keep Sunday for the former, and 
 not for the latter. If the working-men are coming to 
 be of this opinion, we congratulate them on their good 
 sense, and we trust that they will not allow themselves 
 to be misrepresented. Agitation on this subject has 
 no chance of receiving much attention, except so far 
 as it is supposed to express the wishes of the working- 
 classes. If they are against such a measure as throw- 
 ing open public amusements, no one else is for it." 
 
 Adam Smith, the author of the Wealth of 
 Nations, was not likely to view the question in 
 its religious aspect; but he comes to the same 
 conclusion as the Times about the importance 
 of repose and rest. A. friend of his came to 
 him with a manuscript he had written, attack- 
 ing Sabbath observance as practised in this 
 country. "Put it behind the fire," was the 
 advice of the great political economist. "If 
 the common notion of the sacredness of the 
 day secures to the working-classes, week by 
 week, a period of repose and rest, the Sun- 
 day, even as a civil institution, is an invaluable 
 blessing." 
 
 Perhaps, then, we may leave the question 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 53 
 
 of public amusements. It looked plausible 
 enough as offering counter-attractions to the 
 grog-shop, but in France it has on this very 
 point been tried and found wanting ; while in 
 England it appears to run counter to the wishes 
 of the very class on whom it intends to con- 
 fer a boon. 
 
 Another question remains besides Sunday 
 amusements. To pass it over in silence would 
 be cowardly, for it is confessedly a difficulty. 
 The same leader in the Times, which gives its 
 voice against Sunday amusements, says, with 
 regard to working-men, "We would by all 
 means have them get away on Sundays from 
 the confinement, the bad air and the gloom of 
 their narrow courts, into the Parks, and into 
 the country" 
 
 " Into the Parks !" yes, by all means. We 
 only wish their size and number corresponded 
 better with the requirements of the thousands 
 who resort to them, so that they offered a 
 quieter retreat. But " into the country !" this 
 involves the whole question of Sunday travel- 
 
 5* 
 
54 THE WOKKING-MAN's SUNDAY: 
 
 ling. On a superficial view, the advantage of 
 the workman appears to come into collision 
 with the integrity of Sabbath observance : the 
 subject requires to be looked at all round, to 
 decide that it is not so. 
 
 Those in whom sympathy for the workman 
 is strong and a Sabbath instinct feeble will 
 argue thus :- — " If you shut him out from 
 works of art, at least make it easy for him to 
 enjoy the beauties of nature. You have your 
 garden and conservatory, let him have his 
 cheap run to some place of popular resort.* 
 You allow that the body as well as the soul has 
 a claim and part in the day of rest. What re- 
 freshment or bodily strength can he gain, pent 
 up in a close city atmosphere, with nothing to 
 
 * One argument used for running cars on the Sabbath, 
 viz., that the rich ride to church in their carriages, and 
 the poor should have such means of conveyance as they 
 can use, has very little weight with those who know the 
 facts. Of the owners of private carriages in our cities, pro- 
 bably not one in a hundred uses them on the Sabbath. The 
 number of private carriage-owners who go to church on foot 
 is probably much larger than the number who neglect to 
 attend because the cars are not in motion to take them. 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 55 
 
 raise his spirits or brace up his bodily powers ? 
 Who can tell what influences for good, sea air 
 and blue sky, and hedge-rows and green fields, 
 may not exercise? No great portion of the 
 day need be occupied in the transit to and fro ; 
 he may attend church in the country, and is 
 likely to do so with far more profit than in 
 town, Railway-servants, indeed, must be 
 employed, but it is a case in which the few 
 who would suffer must be sacrificed to the 
 many who will reap advantage." 
 
 Now, in the first place, we are quite ready 
 to admit that the workman is under unfavour- 
 able circumstances, both for soul and body, 
 who has to spend his Sunday cooped up in a 
 crowded neighbourhood. It is more difficult 
 for him than for an agricultural labourer to 
 improve the day for the purposes for which it 
 was given, — spiritual profit and bodily rest. 
 Noisy and disorderly neighbours occupying 
 the same house are not helpful to reflection; 
 dingy brick houses are depressing to the spirits ; 
 the impure atmosphere of a great city is in- 
 
56 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 jurious to the health. They are not imaginary, 
 but real evils, which the steady workman 
 encounters when he resolves to renounce the 
 excursion-train and pass the Sunday at home. 
 
 But, on the other hand, are the evils imagi- 
 nary which are brought upon workmen, as a 
 class, by Sunday excursions? If they are 
 fairly compared with the first-mentioned, which 
 are the worst ? 
 
 Think of the excursionist himself. It must 
 be either an expensive or a rather selfish plea- 
 sure, if he is a family man. It would be a 
 little hard to leave the wife at home in her 
 dull room on the clay she has been looking 
 forward to all the week ; and if she goes the 
 children must, or be left to chance it by them- 
 selves about the streets. At the journey's end 
 some place must be sought to eat and shelter 
 in : what place will offer but the public-house ? 
 Will the scenes that go on in the public room 
 be always those to which a respectable work- 
 ing-man would like to introduce his wife and 
 young children ? 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 57 
 
 Moreover, his railway-ticket is to himself a 
 passport to drink. It has been decided that as 
 soon as a man has purchased a railway-ticket 
 on Sunday he becomes in the eye of the law 
 a traveller, and may call for beer or spirits 
 at any public-house in any place where he may 
 stop ; and that, too, in the hours of Sunday in 
 which, were he to remain at home, he would 
 find public-houses closed by law. As a traveller, 
 the public-house will be open to him all day ; 
 at home, up to five o'clock in the afternoon, it 
 is only open two hours, — and those hours are 
 from one to three, when home has a counter- 
 attraction to offer, the Sunday dinner with his 
 family. If he is a man easily led away by drink, 
 such a consideration as this ought to weigh 
 with him in the question of Sunday travelling. 5 ^ 
 
 Again, as to church-going ; excursion-trains 
 do not run to quiet country villages, where the 
 door in the rustic church-porch stands open 
 to invite wayfarers to enter, but to attractive 
 
 * Of course this refers to a local law not known in the 
 United States. 
 
58 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 watering-places and places of general resort. 
 The excursionist is one of hundreds or thousands 
 whom such a place numbers on Sunday among 
 its visitors. We ask what chance they would 
 have of finding church accommodation, sup- 
 posing any considerable number of them were 
 inclined to seek it? At home they might not 
 have gone to church or chapel • here they can- 
 not. 
 
 Again : the day is one of great fatigue, 
 bustle and excitement. Let any one who 
 doubts it watch the riotous crowds who flock 
 in to town from the railway-stations on Sun- 
 day evening. We look in vain for traces that a 
 day of rest and healthful relaxation has been 
 enjoyed; we are compelled to admit that 
 neither as to his purse, nor as to his family, nor 
 as to his soul, nor even as to his body, has the 
 workman done the best thing for himself, by 
 his Sunday excursion. 
 
 But most workmen, we should hope, are 
 open to an appeal on other than selfish motives. 
 Such an one may have few sympathies with 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 59 
 
 the classes above him, but he has many with 
 his brother-operatives. It is an honour to 
 humanity to see what generous sacrifices work- 
 ing men and women will make for each other 
 when occasion calls for it. It is, then, a part 
 of the question from which he will not turn 
 his eyes when it is pointed out to him, that if 
 he is to turn his day of rest into a day of plea- 
 sure, others must turn their's into a day of toil. 
 Very hard toil, too ; harder than on other days. 
 "Rest!" said a railway-porter; "I do not 
 know what it is to sit down on Sunday." 
 Another says, "I get one clear Sunday in a 
 year." A passenger-porter says, "I work 
 harder on Sundays than on weekdays, as there 
 is more passenger traffic." Another, — a rail- 
 way-policeman, — " On other days I work 
 twelve hours, but on Sunday fifteen ; on Mon- 
 day, sixteen hours : the work is harder on 
 Sunday and Monday, on account of the ex- 
 cursions." Again, a London railway-servant 
 says, " I have known as many as one hundred 
 and fifty trains pass our station on a Sunday. 
 
.60 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 Sunday is the hardest day's work ; guards and 
 policemen get no Sunday in summer, and only 
 one in three in winter. The Sunday labour is 
 very injurious to the characters of young men 
 from the country." 
 
 But, it is said, the disproportion is so great 
 between the few who work, and the many who, 
 by their work, are enabled to take pleasurable 
 recreation, that the end justifies the means. A 
 workman shall answer, — a packing-box maker 
 from one of the great industrial centres. 
 
 " Grant," he says, " that railway-labourers 
 form a small portion of the community; their 
 paucity of numbers is no sufficient reason for 
 disregarding their claim. During a former agi- 
 tation of the question, shareholders who wished 
 to vote against Sunday trains because the gene- 
 ral feeling was against it, were vehemently told 
 that the question was not one of numbers, and 
 that though the parties disposed to travel on 
 Sunday were the smallest fraction of society, 
 they should, and ought to, have the opportunity 
 of spending the Sunday as they thought proper. 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 61 
 
 Now," said this acute reasoner, " if this argument 
 be sound, give the railway operatives the benefit 
 of it : whether* they be few or many, allow them 
 to keep the Sabbath as they think proper." 
 
 But, in truth, the number is not such a mere 
 fraction who are employed by Sunday travel- 
 ling. The workman, who understands better 
 than most men the value of a day of rest, will 
 think twice before he adds another straw to the 
 burden already resting ,on so large a number 
 of his mates. 
 
 Nor are those connected with conveyance 
 and locomotion the only men who lose their 
 lawful rest. What becomes of Sunday to the 
 man who keeps open the place of resort, 
 while he is attending to his influx of visitors? 
 Nay, he and his servants have more than they 
 can get through ; the supply cannot meet the 
 demand; and taverns, public-houses and cigar- 
 shops multiply under the fostering wing of 
 Sunday trains. 
 
 There are other consequences, less evident, 
 because more remote, which have not escaped 
 
62 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 the notice of intelligent men in the working- 
 classes. We quote the words of a gardener: — 
 " I am informed that the servants of the rail- 
 way-company will now be compelled to work 
 seven days for six days' wages; and if the sys- 
 tem is carried out by this company, it may be 
 carried out in other establishments and works 
 as well. Who can tell where the thing is to 
 end? Employers of other trades may take it 
 up; and, knowing the social position of the 
 working-classes, and how many thousands of 
 them, even at the best times, live but from 
 hand to mouth, they may exact that which 
 their workmen have neither the will, nor the 
 strength, nor the power to resist." 
 
 To what conclusion, then, are we to come, as 
 lovers of the working-classes? Sunday in the 
 city has its privations, but Sunday in the coun- 
 try, as things are managed at present, has its 
 immediate dangers for the working-man him- 
 self, its undoubted hardships for a large class 
 of his brother-workmen, and its probable ill 
 consequences to operatives generally. We 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 63 
 
 honour the man who, in consideration of these 
 things, resists the temptation of a Sunday-ex- 
 cursion ticket ; and we think, if he takes his 
 wife and children out for a little fresh air in 
 the streets, if no park or field is within reach, 
 it will be some comfort to him to know that, 
 as far as he is concerned, railway-servants, 
 public-house keepers and policemen might en- 
 joy their Sunday rest. 
 
 So, then, with regard to Sunday travelling 
 as well as to Sunday amusements, after care- 
 fully considering this question, and trying to 
 look at it all round, we seem driven to the 
 conclusion that the hopes it holds out of im- 
 proving the workman's Sabbath are fallacious ; 
 that it offers no real remedy for the perverted 
 moral taste which leads him to spend his Sun- 
 day in a beer-house, rather than in seeking the 
 combined edification and rest for which the 
 day was given to him. 
 
 But have we any thing to offer in place of 
 these remedies ? For to reject a proposed re- 
 medy is not to cure the disease. It is very 
 
64 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 well to talk of " edification and rest ;" but they 
 are secured neither by shutting up museums 
 and picture-galleries nor by discouraging Sun- 
 day excursions. Policemen, whose duty it is 
 to keep the public peace on Sunday, will tell 
 us whether the chosen retreat of the masses — 
 the public-house at the corner of every street 
 — looks hopeful either for edification or rest. 
 There is an old saying in Ireland, that when 
 the devil finds a man idle he generally puts 
 a job into his hands. And city Sabbaths 
 among the working-classes afford abundant 
 proof of it. 
 
 There are some, indeed, whose weekly occu- 
 pation implies severe bodily labour. When 
 the six days are over, they feel spent with toil, 
 and rest to £hem is to spend several extra 
 hours in sleep. By all means let them do so; 
 reserving some portion of the day, the part 
 when the body is least likely to act as a clog 
 upon the mind, for that which is the highest end 
 of the Sunday, — seeking God, — finding rest for 
 the soul in Him as its true centre; then let 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 65 
 
 them sleep as weary men should, and thank 
 Him by whose provident care the opportunity 
 for doing so is secured to them. 
 
 But there are many others whose occupation 
 is sedentary, and, probably, monotonous, — 
 occupying their hands, not their heads. Sunday 
 finds them wide awake ; ready, to use a popular 
 phrase, for any thing that " turns up," except 
 church-going ; they like to talk politics with 
 their neighbours, or read their Sunday news- 
 paper, or go out with a pleasure-party, or 
 spend the day with their mates at the nearest 
 public-house. If any of their private houses 
 had been fit to sit down in, they would, per- 
 haps, have preferred them ; for if men are not 
 far gone in drinking-habits, and if wife and 
 children have still some hold upon them, they 
 have a notion, however feeble and inoperative 
 it may be, that in the public-house they are in 
 harm's way. 
 
 Here is our social problem : these men must 
 be got hold of; persuaded to see their own in- 
 terests ; helped to help themselves ; led to per- 
 6* 
 
66 THE WORKING-MAN ? S SUNDAY: 
 
 ceive what they really do want, and how little 
 a day's drinking can supply it. They must 
 be dealt with tenderly, respectfully, discrimi- 
 nately ; not in masses, but as individuals, with 
 reference to individual circumstances, character, 
 tastes, perils. 
 
 They must be addressed as reasonable men, 
 not in set phrases, which were pregnant with 
 meaning once, but have lost their freshness, 
 like a beautiful flower which has passed from 
 hand to hand till it is dry and withered. Full 
 credit must be given them for good sense and 
 intelligence, and the arguments put before 
 them must be forcible and telling. 
 
 Now, to what does all this point? Not to 
 statutes ; they are necessarily rigid, inflexible ; 
 they act with mechanical force ; and what we 
 want is tactile dexterity. It points to a gene- 
 ral recognition, on the part of the educated and 
 refined, that they have a work to do for the un- 
 educated on Sunday; what cannot be done by 
 legislation may be done by the wondrous power 
 of sympathy, translated into action. 
 
HOW TO SPEXD IT. 67 
 
 But the work is great, and we require the 
 force of united action. There is something 
 for every one to do who can, himself or her- 
 self, spend a Sabbath of quiet and refined ease. 
 What if it should be proved, after all, that 
 those who are most urgent for Sabbath con- 
 secration have been the men who were ready 
 to make sacrifices of personal ease and indul- 
 gence ; and to work, not perhaps always in the 
 wisest way, but with earnestness and zeal, to 
 raise the tone of the workman's Sabbath? 
 What if the over-activity which may have 
 characterized their Sabbath should have been 
 in a measure thrust upon them, because they 
 had to do duty for themselves and their ease- 
 loving neighbours as well ? 
 
 A book which we all profess to venerate lays 
 down, as a principle of action, "Whereunto 
 we have already attained, let us walk by the 
 same rule, let us mind the same thing." We 
 are speaking to the whole class of educated, 
 kind-hearted, sensible, philanthropic residents 
 in our chief cities and populous towns ; where 
 
68 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 the congregated masses of human beings pre- 
 sent a mechanical and moral hindrance to any 
 profitable employment of the workman's Sab- 
 bath, — mechanical, because he cannot be quiet 
 if he would ; moral, because evil example is 
 contagious. 
 
 Among these educated men and women we 
 may find a great variety of opinion as to the 
 true nature of the Sabbath, the demands it 
 makes upon us, the right way of spending it; 
 but all will be agreed that the workman who 
 drinks up half his week's wages in the public- 
 house is spending it in the wrong way, a way 
 which will neither prepare his soul for the 
 other world to which he is hastening, nor in- 
 struct or invigorate his mind, nor refresh or 
 recruit his bodily strength. 
 
 Yet this wrong way is the way chosen, Sun- 
 day after Sunday, by thousands at our very 
 doors. Within a stone's throw of the manr- 
 sions around our splendid squares, drinking- 
 saloons rear their unabashed front, and are 
 lighted as brilliantly as the elegant drawing- 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 69 
 
 room ; but on what different scenes the gas- 
 jet sheds its brilliance ! In the drawing-room, 
 on wealth, refinement, luxury, the gentle cour- 
 tesies of society ; in the drinking-saloons, on 
 rags and squalor, nauseous fumes of breath 
 vitiated with spirits, the degrading indulgence 
 which turns men and women into fiends. 
 
 We have said the drawing-room is within a 
 stone's throw of the grog-shop ; but is it the 
 exception or the rule that the inhabitant of the 
 one should concern himself or herself with 
 the frequenter of the other ? These drinking 
 thousands are made up of individuals ; they 
 have each their point of contact with those 
 classes above them who employ their labour 
 or profit by their toil. In many cases the 
 point of contact is individual and personal; 
 every family in the wealthy classes has its own 
 tradesmen, whose shop-boys and assistants call 
 at the house on their daily familiar round; 
 their own laundress, probably, and house- 
 scrubber ; their poor needlewomen, their milk- 
 men and baker, postmen, &c. Here is a direct 
 
70 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 opening. These men and women minister to 
 your comfort ; you profit by them ; life would 
 have many rough places for you if they did not 
 smooth them. Have you ever thought whether 
 their being thus brought into neighbourly con- 
 nection with you does not give them a claim on 
 something more than the hard cash with which 
 you reward their services? Do you know 
 any thing about their families ? Is it to you 
 they would come, as to a sympathizing friend, 
 if trouble pressed sore upon them ? Have you 
 ever asked them how they spend their Sun- 
 days ? And if you have reason to think it is 
 this "wrong way" we have been talking of, 
 have you, in friendly counsel, tried to set 
 them right? Have you let them feel that 
 you pitied more than you condemned, that you 
 realized the temptations of their joyless strug- 
 gling existence? Have you thought of any 
 substitute to propose for the fatal dram which 
 is working them so much woe ? Is there not 
 in your beautiful house some little waiting- 
 room near the door ? Could you not, without 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 71 
 
 exposing your own household to temptation by 
 having strangers in the kitchen or hall, — 
 could you not tell this poor tempted man to 
 bring his wife and children some Sunday 
 evening, and try whether a cup of tea and 
 a cheery fire, and your pleasant kindness, and 
 a few pictures, and a little reading, are not 
 better than the drinking-saloon ? Think what 
 it would be to him to feel that you cared for 
 him ! How it would reflect to him the patient 
 love of God, and make him strong in the 
 hope that the remedy lies within his reach, 
 — that he may yet become respected and re- 
 spectable ! 
 
 If each family would thus act as a magnet 
 to draw up its own immediate dependants, the 
 ranks of the drinking thousands would soon 
 be thinned. The same might be urged on 
 employers, the owners and principals of shops, 
 the masters and mistresses of workrooms. 
 Sometimes, indeed, they shut their own mouths 
 by making a common day of the Sabbath them- 
 selves. " I could not stop there," said a young 
 
72 THE WOEKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 dressmaker to the writer; " Sunday was just 
 like a weekday." " Why ! did your employers 
 keep you at work?" "No: they could not 
 keep us, but they worked themselves. When 
 I came home from church, they were always at 
 it, and the sewing-machine going, just like a 
 weekday." 
 
 But those employers who know the value of 
 a quiet and orderly Sabbath of rest themselves, 
 must surely feel that it concerns them to inquire 
 whether those who work for them all the week, 
 and whom they have associated closely with 
 their interests, have any settled and regular 
 way of spending their Sundays; or whether 
 they rank among the idlers who, according to 
 the Irish proverb, stand ready for "a devil's 
 job." Only remember, the employers' interest 
 and sympathy must be real; it must show 
 itself in something more than advice. Every- 
 body knows that is cheap; and, in these days of 
 independence, advice, however good, must be 
 given with a great deal of tact and skill not to 
 be resented : but with these provisoes, and when 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 73 
 
 advice and personal sacrifice go hand in hand, 
 it is valued, and often acted on. 
 
 We were struck with the graceful tact exer- 
 cised on this point by a hotel-keeper in Wales. 
 Hotel-keepers are hardly expected to concern 
 themselves with the religion of their customers ; 
 on the contrary, Sunday visitors and their re- 
 quirements naturally tend to reduce to a mini- 
 mum their own standard of Sabbath observance. 
 
 Some friends of the writer, in spending a 
 Sunday at Bangor last autumn, were struck 
 with the air of mourning which seemed to 
 pervade the neighbourhood. The sermon in 
 the Cathedral, and another in a principal 
 church, spoke *of a serious loss which society 
 had sustained by a recent death which had 
 occurred among them. Who was it that had 
 so lived as to be thus missed? It was the 
 mistress of the George Hotel, Bangor Ferry, 
 who died on the 4th of October, 1865, at the 
 advanced age of seventy-three. 
 
 Eleanor Roberts, the daughter of a small 
 former at Yspytty, in Denbighshire, became, 
 
74 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 twenty-three years ago, the proprietress of a 
 small wayside inn near Bangor, in the high- 
 road to Holyhead. 
 
 Soon afterwards her house became the resort 
 of engineers engaged in the construction of the 
 tubular bridge over the Menai Straits. From 
 profits made at the time she was enabled to 
 erect additional buildings, until by degrees the 
 little wayside inn could claim rank with first- 
 class hotels, — in point of comfort, at all events, 
 if not in point of size. 
 
 It became a place of favourite resort. Among 
 other names in the visitors' book we may read 
 an autograph testimonial from the good old 
 Duke of Wellington, as to the comfort he ex- 
 perienced in taking up his quarters there. 
 The beauty of its site, perhaps, had something 
 to do with its far-spread reputation; but, 
 doubtless, its chief attraction was owing to her 
 whose genius kept every department under her 
 own personal inspection, and whose consistent 
 Christian character won the respect of all whom 
 she employed. 
 
HOW TO SPEXD IT. 75 
 
 The servants had an air of quiet responsi- 
 bility, and showed visitors to their rooms with 
 a respectful solicitude, as if they felt themselves 
 answerable for their comfort. 
 
 At every corner of the staircase and corridors 
 there was some pretty or interesting object to 
 gratify the taste, such as statuettes, pictures, 
 minerals, aquariums, — all such things, in fact, 
 as a lady will gather round her in her own 
 house, but which she does not meet with in a 
 hotel without coming to the conclusion that its 
 owner must be no ordinary person. 
 
 The arrangements in Miss Roberts's hotel 
 bore, however, still more legible traces of her 
 character. On the table of each room there 
 was a Bible and some other book of devotions, 
 and over the mantel-piece, instead of a tariff' of 
 prices, some texts of Scripture. 
 
 On the Sunday Miss Roberts made a personal 
 request to all guests staying in the house, that 
 they would kindly consent to take breakfast at 
 one hour at the table-d J hdte, in order that the. 
 servants might have the privilege of attending 
 
76 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 public worship. The same plan was observed 
 about dinner. This request, proffered with a 
 certain homely dignity, was seldom, if ever, 
 refused ; and by this arrangement the servants 
 were enabled to observe the Sabbath in as 
 orderly and regular a manner as they could 
 have done in a private family. 
 
 After breakfast it was announced that car- 
 riages were ready, free of charge, to convey 
 guests to the Cathedral, or any other church 
 they might wish to attend. 
 
 The drawing-room was filled with attractions 
 on Sunday for the visitors at the hotel ; books 
 carefully selected on the table, in many of 
 which were inscribed expressions of regard 
 from the authors; sacred music, both Welsh 
 and English, were laid on the piano, which 
 was left open for use. The pretty terraced 
 garden, and a conservatory full of well-tended 
 plants, provided for every innocent and pleasant 
 enjoyment in the intervals of public worship. 
 
 We do not wonder that the George Hotel 
 prospered, or that, a few months before her 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 77 
 
 death, Miss Roberts refused fifty thousand 
 pounds for her business. We have cited her 
 example, as showing that no calling need 
 hinder a personal regard for the Sabbath, and 
 also as a specimen of the delicate tact and 
 pains-taking effort which give efficiency to good 
 advice. 
 
 Sometimes, again, the connection between 
 ourselves and those we seek to influence is self- 
 made; that is to say, no other special reason 
 exists why we should put our hand to a work 
 but that confessedly it needs to be done and no 
 one else comes forward to do it. A case in 
 point occurs to us. The suburb of a populous 
 town had a reputation for its invigorating air, 
 and as such became a frequent place of resort 
 for invalids. Invalids provide a hopeful source 
 of employment for the owners of donkey- 
 chairs; the suburb in question had its full 
 quota of these conveniences, with a good num- 
 ber besides of saddle-donkeys, for the delight 
 of children who walked up from the town to 
 enjoy the breezes of an ample common. 
 
78 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 In direct contradiction to the law, Sunday 
 to these asses and their drivers was the harvest- 
 day of the week. Donkey-racing was an 
 amusement especially reserved for that day, to 
 the exceeding annoyance of affluent inhabitants, 
 whose country-houses bordered the common. 
 In the teeth of the law, and before the eyes of 
 the magistrates, these donkey-men and boys, 
 Sunday after Sunday, paid their fines and 
 drove their obnoxious traffic, fearing neither 
 God nor man. 
 
 A lady settled in the neighbourhood, and 
 became a sharer in its interests. " Can nothing 
 be done for these donkey-boys?" was her 
 natural question. The smile raised by. the 
 inquiry implied that if she were not new to 
 the place it would never have been made. 
 She let it sleep a little time, and the donkey- 
 boys ran riot as before. 
 
 Tired of waiting for a more suitable agent, 
 she determined to begin. One of the family 
 sitting-rooms was made attractive with a glow- 
 ing fire, and new reading-books, and appliances 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 79 
 
 for writing, and the donkey-men were invited 
 to spend an evening with her. It seemed to 
 them too strange, incomprehensible. They were 
 not used to sympathy: what were they to the 
 lady, or the lady to them? The hour passed; 
 she waited in % vain: not one answered the 
 summons. 
 
 The next week the same experience; but, 
 at last, the perseverance of their friend roused 
 the curiosity of the men, and on the third 
 occasion the room was full ! Unwashed they 
 were, indeed, — unsavory ; scarcely able to com- 
 mand their countenances; yet still living, 
 human souls, brought within kindly, soften- 
 ing influence. She took care they should not 
 feel that they were penned in for a sermon; 
 except one message from God's Book, and two 
 or three petitions offered to him, the evening 
 (a weekday one) was reserved for teaching them 
 to read and write. By degrees her guests be- 
 came too numerous for the size of her room ; 
 clean hands and faces appeared here and there 
 among the party; they learned to be diligent 
 
80 THE WORKING-MAN ? S SUNDAY: 
 
 and steady. She had an ear for all their in- 
 dividual concerns, and strange-enough histories 
 were brought to her. 
 
 The weekday class having taken a firm hold, 
 she has now proposed to them to give up to 
 her a morning hour of their wild, riotous Sun- 
 day; she has added to the attraction of the 
 Sunday-morning class by a promise of coffee 
 and biscuit, and has planned for them a com- 
 fortable room, where they can feel that they 
 are at home. We cannot doubt that the 
 "nuisance of the neighbourhood" will abate 
 sooner under this genial influence, than by the 
 most rigidly imposed fines and legal punish- 
 ments. 
 
 We have not given this as an instance of 
 what ladies ordinarily could or would do, but 
 to show that the most wild and reckless are 
 within reach of practical sympathy; and that 
 where points of contact between ourselves and 
 the working-classes do not already exist, an 
 aggressive benevolence will make them. Direct 
 suggestions as to what may be done and how it 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 81 
 
 may be done, are secondary in importance to 
 arousing the conviction that the remedy for a 
 great social evil lies in our own hands, and 
 that we can apply it, not by opening our purses, 
 but our hearts; by recognizing that he who 
 lies there in a moral slough is yet our human 
 brother, waiting our hand to pull him out and 
 set him on the terra firma of a hopeful reform- 
 ation. 
 
 It is for this initiatory step that united and 
 vigorous action is so urgently needed. Once 
 allure the workman away from the tavern; 
 once give him a pleasant experience of a Sun- 
 day otherwise spent; once reawaken the feel- 
 ings in him of the father and the husband, and 
 we shall find we have given an impetus which 
 he will follow up. There is an amount of 
 self-helping in the working-classes for which 
 we hardly give them credit. > A lady gathered 
 round her those whose lives called most loudly 
 for reform. She went into the question with 
 them; proved that strong drink was their 
 enemy ; they wanted an assembling-place with- 
 
82 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 out the drink, a public-house without the beer: 
 it was not offered to them, so they must have 
 one of their own. The originating thought 
 was dropped like a living seed into their minds 
 by this true friend of working-men ; she gave 
 the impulse, but it fell into prepared soil ; con- 
 viction ripened into desire, desire was fertile in 
 effort, arid the result is, a Workman's Hall, in 
 which religious service is held one evening in 
 the week as well as on Sundays. 
 
 Thus it has been proved that work-people 
 even in a low neighbourhood can quite well 
 afford to set up and rent for themselves read- 
 ing-rooms and a house for their lectures. Pro- 
 bably, if working-men can be induced, by the 
 influence brought to bear on them by those 
 around them, to exchange their drinking-bouts 
 for a quiet and regular Sunday, it may lead 
 to their opening rooms furnished with books; 
 where they may enjoy the peaceable afternoon 
 in reading or talking with their friends, which 
 is hardly possible in their own crowded dwell- 
 ings. 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 83 
 
 * 
 
 Let us now review our position. We invited 
 the general co-operation of all educated and 
 kind-hearted residents in cities and large towns; 
 to secure it, we had to lay down the broadest 
 and most general principles of action, namely, 
 a recognition that large masses of our working- 
 classes are spending their Sabbath in a wrong 
 and injurious way; that neither Sunday amuse- 
 ments nor excursions offer any effectual remedy 
 for this social evil, and that it is incumbent on 
 the educated classes to exercise, in the varied 
 ways in which it may be open to them to do so, 
 that individual influence which may induce the 
 workman to forsake the drinking-house and 
 spend a quiet and restful day with his family. 
 
 This is, perhaps, the highest aim to which 
 we shall secure general agreement; but we are 
 free to confess that we have not many ex- 
 pedients to offer, if the aim is to be limited to 
 inducing the workman to make of his Sunday 
 a day of repose. We are free to confess such a 
 day will lack interest, because while attaining 
 its lower it will have missed its higher pur- 
 
84 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 pose. If this were all that could be offered to 
 the workman, Mr. Dickens might say with 
 more justice the words we have already quoted, 
 — " Nothing to change the brooding mind, or 
 raise it up; nothing for the spent toiler to do 
 but to compare the monotony of his seventh 
 day with the monotony of his six days, and 
 think what a weary life he led." 
 
 But, brother-workmen, we appeal to you. 
 Is it true that the God who gave you the Sab- 
 bath offers to you in it nothing but animal re- 
 pose? Nothing that can " change your brood- 
 ing mind, or raise it up"? Is there nothing 
 comforting or elevating in the truths on which 
 a weekly rest from toil gives you leisure to 
 dwell? Nothing comforting in the thought 
 that you, poor and of little account in society, 
 are of great price in the sight of God? 
 That your welfare — your's individually, as 
 one of the human race — prompted Him to a 
 sacrifice so vast that parents, who can under- 
 stand it best, gain but a dim conception of it ? 
 Is there nothing comforting in the belief that 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 85 
 
 your present life of toil and privation is no 
 proof that God has forgotten you, but rather 
 that He has planned for you a course of edu- 
 cation and discipline which may, if you will 
 yield to His hand and interpret Him aright, 
 prepare you for honour and dignity, and a 
 royal standing, in the immortality to which 
 you are hastening? 
 
 Brother-workmen, it is better to rest than to 
 drink ; but why be satisfied with resting, when 
 you may pray? It is better to spend a quiet 
 day in your own home, than a day of revelling 
 in the rum-shop; but why be satisfied with 
 that, when God invites you to His house, and 
 will give you such a welcome there as may 
 lead you to say, with one of old, "A day in thy 
 courts is better than a thousand"? 
 
 This is the real glory of the workman's Sab- 
 bath ; but these are principles of action to which 
 comparatively few will subscribe. Some will 
 laugh at them as visionary; some will con- 
 demn them as exclusive; others will renounce 
 them as incomprehensible, unpractical: the 
 
86 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 ranks of workers who would combine to res- 
 cue Sunday from being a drinking-day, and to 
 establish it as a day of rest, will be greatly 
 thinned when it becomes a question of recog- 
 nizing it as a holy day. 
 
 But, if few in number, they are firm in pur- 
 pose, and are animated by motives which admit 
 no relaxation of effort. If on the lower and 
 more general basis it was difficult to find ex- 
 pedients whereby to make a day of repose sat- 
 isfactory and interesting to the workman, on 
 this higher and more restricted basis it is need- 
 less to suggest them, so many and varied are 
 the agencies already at work. 
 
 To enumerate a few. We have Sunday 
 schools* and classes for all grades among the 
 
 * We apprehend that the superintendents and teachers' 
 of our Sunday-schools are not fully awake to the import- 
 ance of training the children under their care to reverence 
 the Lord's day. Without any undue restraint upon their 
 natural flow of spirits, it is quite possible to throw around 
 the day and its employments a cheerful, happy atmos- 
 phere. The exercises of the school-room may be made to 
 correspond in tone and character with the loving spirit 
 which prompted the Saviour's inquirv, a Is it lawful to 
 
HOW TO SPEXD IT. 87 
 
 young; and this is a work in which men of 
 leading talent and position do not disdain to 
 take part. Again : classes are formed for mil- 
 liners and dressmakers, for servants, for young 
 women waiting in shops, for foreigners, and, 
 as we have said, for donkey-drivers. Hardly 
 any neglected ones can be named who have not, 
 somewhere or other, drawn forth efforts of 
 Christian sympathy and care. City mission- 
 aries visit gas-manufactories, cab and omnibus 
 
 do good on the Sabbath day, or to do evil ? to save life, or 
 to kill?" The impression may be made, in numberless 
 incidental ways, that the teacher regards the day as 
 fraught* with the richest blessings. The suppression of 
 boisterous mirth and, the reproof of rude manners would 
 be proper as a mere matter of discipline ; but we maintain 
 that, by the blessing of God on judicious and seasonable 
 efforts, the teacher can win the affections of a pupil to the 
 Sabbath and its hallowed occupations. We do not suppose, 
 of course, that a boy or girl will relish or profit very sensi- 
 bly by the exercises which engage the mature Christian 
 mind ; but it may well be the study of the parent or teacher 
 to adapt to the physical, intellectual and spiritual wants 
 of the child such occupations as are entirely consistent 
 with the due observance of the day. Our children and 
 youth are at present in no danger of cultivating too sedu- 
 lous a reverence for the laws and institutions of God or 
 man. 
 
88 THE WORKING-MAN'S SUNDAY: 
 
 yards, and other places where the nature of the 
 occupation allows to the labourer no Sabbath 
 of rest. Similar agents carry the war into the 
 enemy's camp, follow the drunkard to the 
 tavern, and ply him there with the. good news 
 of gospel love and the solemn importance of 
 eternal realities. We were struck with the 
 ready tact shown by one of these missionaries 
 but the other day, in a conversation he related 
 to us, which he had held the Sunday before in 
 a saloon with those assembled to drink. 
 
 He entered with a few little books in his 
 pocket, and, taking out one, which was ^ dia- 
 logue, offered to read it in parts with a man 
 who stood near. 
 
 "Oh, yer one of the soul-mongers! Always 
 at it ! talkin' of what yer don't understand. 
 I'd like to know, what is a soul? Come, old 
 fellow, can yer tell us that?" 
 
 Attention was aroused, and the answer to 
 " Bill's" question was waited for with some 
 curiosity. 
 
 "My friend," said the missionary, "a man 
 
HOW TO SPEND IT. 89 
 
 generally ask^ a question for one of three rea- 
 sons: either he cares to get an answer, or he 
 asks from curiosity, or he wants to puzzle the 
 man whom he questions." A knowing wink 
 from Bill to his mates showed that the last 
 suggestion had hit the mark. "Yes, I see/' 
 said the missionary; "you want to puzzle me, 
 to show me up : now, you know, two can play 
 at that game, and, before I answer you, will 
 you be so good as to tell me what are the com- 
 ponent parts of oxygenated muriatic acid of 
 lime?" 
 
 Silence for a moment, then a nudge and a 
 chuckle on the part of a mate. " Eh, Bill, 
 he's got yer there !" 
 
 " You can't tell me ? Well, at least repeat 
 my question. What was it I asked you ?" 
 
 Bill hardly liked to give in, and turned his 
 head from side to side in a vain effort to recall 
 the words. 
 
 " Can't you say it ?" inquired the missionary. 
 
 " I'm a thinkin'." 
 
 " Thinking, are you ? What with ? Your 
 
90 THE WORKING-MAN ? S SUNDAY: 
 
 finger-ends? The hair on your head? What 
 is it in you that thinks ?" 
 
 " Caught you, Bill ! The old fellow's caught 
 you, he has !" chimed in another neighbour. 
 
 "I have answered you, my friend: what 
 thinks", is your soul." 
 
 He then took occasion to speak of its im- 
 mortality and its redemption, to listeners who 
 were now all eager in their attention. Such 
 readiness in turning circumstances to advantage 
 can be acquired only by experience; but we 
 rejoice to think how many are thus aggressively, 
 Sabbath by Sabbath, seeking out in their own 
 haunts the careless, the unconcerned and the 
 morally degraded among our working-classes. 
 
 We are told that before many years have 
 passed over us the old barriers will be broken 
 down, and our Sabbath will be exchanged for 
 a day of work and pleasure. Let philanthro- 
 pists and religionists combine to avert what 
 both would deplore. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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