348 



SIR ANDREW WIKGATE, K.C.I.E., 



being battered to pieces, and the public mind is left defenceless 

 and empty, open to occupation by all the spirits of unrest. 



Is our nation letting slip from its grasp what it is vital to 

 retain ? Are we losing, what France and Italy are endeavouring 

 to recover, that world-famous institution, the British Sunday ? 

 This weekly rest has steadied the nerves of our population and 

 safeguarded us from destructive revolution or excitability in 

 danger. It has cultivated the inventive faculty, which is 

 vigorous in Protestant lands, much less evident in Koman 

 Catholic countries, and becomes extinct in the ceaseless routine 

 of the non-Christian races. It is the secret of our Commercial 

 Supremacy, receiving the over strained brains and bodies at the 

 close of each week and sending them back on the Monday to 

 take an earnest, sane, and fresh view of business problems and 

 anxieties, to meet with braced energy a tired world. It 

 underlies the public respect for law and order, keeping the fear 

 of God in the national conscience. It is the negation of 

 materiaUsm and sets every life clear cut against a sky radiant 

 with hope of things beyond. It is the inheritance, won for the 

 working man by the pioneers of British freedom, giving him 

 seven days' food for six days' work. 



Sunday is already a day of pleasure and is fast becoming a 

 day of work. Concomitant with the loss of our day of rest, we 

 are letting slip Church-going, family worship, and Bible reading. 

 Tiie Head Masters of our public schools have already sounded a 

 note of alarm, while window-smashing is a curious product of 

 tl;e new education of girls. Men are being taught to be ashamed 

 of manual labour, and girls to be ashamed of being born women. 

 Are such notions the embryonic stage of the craving for slaves 

 and female infanticide ? More money is lost by strikes than is 

 gained by Sunday traffic and trading, and more health is lost by 

 the break-down of nerves than Sunday excitements seem able to 

 cope with. This change of attitude towards Sunday and the 

 Bible on the part of the nation, is reflecting itself in the Govern- 

 ment. In the eyes of Mahomedans, by way of winning their 

 respect, British officers serving in Egypt rest on the Moslem 

 Friday and work on the Christian Sunday. And now, in the 

 sight of the Mission Fields of the world, the Lord's Day is being 

 used to instruct men, not how to love, but how to shoot down 

 their enemies. Each desecration of the day is used as an 

 argument to justify the next profanation. 



Surely some subtle influence is at work. It is doubtful 

 whether the clergy realize the tremendous success of the 

 campaign against the authenticity of Genesis and the Old 



