DISCUSSION OX SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. 



Ill 



and busy community, a day of rest, a day of silence, a day of 

 peace is an absolute necessity ; and though the State cannot in 

 the least determine how we shall use the day in a religious sense, 

 it can on a social ground and in a hygienic sense secure the day 

 as a possibility for all those who wish to use it well. But, after 

 all, this day is not given to us by the State. It is given to us 

 by the higher spiritual principle of our humanity. It is not 

 secured by law ; it is secured by a gospel which is the gift to 

 us not of regulations that man has made, but of regulations that 

 God Himself has imprinted on our very nature in making us 

 spiritual beings. (Applause.) 



The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasing 

 duty to ask you to give a hearty vote of thanks by acclamation to 

 our distinguished lecturer; who has voiced, to my mind, the 

 broadest and highest principles on which Sunday Observance 

 stands. I am sure we have all enjoyed his remarks exceedingly, 

 and, as we listened to them, their weight must have impressed 

 itself on our minds. I am glad to feel such perfect harmony with 

 the speaker, and before asking you to give this hearty vote, I 

 should like to say a word or two myself upon the subject. That 

 the Sabbath was made for man is a truth of which the simplicity 

 of the language conceals the profundity of the thought. You can 

 hardly limit the extent to which the Sabbath was made for man. 

 And by the Sabbath we do not mean the Jewish Sabbath, but we 

 mean the Sabbath of creation — that in creation it was found neces- 

 sary to have a distinct thought for man in making a Sabbath, an 

 arbitrary elevation of the seventh daily period of his existence for 

 a different purpose from that of the other six, and this is as old as 

 Genesis. As the lecturer has so beautifully shown you, the law 

 is well nigh universal. The law of systole and diastole, or of 

 work and rest. He has shovvn, and has most fully supported by 

 science, that metals themselves one and all require rest, and that 

 the law of rest extends down to the mineral kingdom. Of course, 

 it extends throughout the whole of the animal kingdom. He has 

 also pointed out another subtle matter which has escaped until 

 recently the attention of many of our leading hygienic reformers. 

 They used to preach that change of work is rest. I had it 

 forcibly brought before me at the Alexandra House by the side 

 of our great hall. There I was told that when it was established 

 the large ^mnasium was added to it in order, by chansre of work, 

 to ^ve the girls who lived there rest from their clerkly labours 

 during the remainder of the day — the theory being that a fresh 

 set of nerve centres were employed in swinging over horizontal 

 bars from what were required to write precis and do typewriting 

 and shorthand. But there was a fallacy that lurked there, that 

 showed that work and play are not correlative with work and rest 

 — ^that play in itself is work of a sort, and that rest means rest 



