^o'vembef.wor"}     Sunday  as  a  Religious  Institution.  513 
simile  as  suddenly  as  to  mix  a  metaphor  atrociously,  the  key  to  the 
solution  is  then  seen  to  be  ready  at  hand — and  to  be  in  the  hands 
of  the  clergy.  Sunday  rest  a  religious  institution  ?  It  is  that  and 
it  is  nothing  else. 
It  may  be  an  accident,  but  it  is  a  happy  one,  that  my  place  on 
this  programme  is  in  the  middle  of  this  series  of  five  speakers.  The 
first  two  deal,  theoretically,  with  rest  as  a  physical  and  rest  as 
a  mental  necessity ;  the  last  two,  practically,  with  certain  legal 
aspects  of  and  certain  business  experiments  with  Sunday  closing. 
Between  these  two  pairs,  the  physician  and  the  professor,  the  lawyer 
and  the  proprietor,  stands  the  priest,  and  says :  The  religious  use 
of  Sunday  rest  is  not  one  of  several  uses ;  it  is  the  only  use  worth 
while.  Rest  on  Sunday  is  rest  for  a  purpose ;  that  purpose  is  rest 
in  order  to  pray.  It  is  necessary  and  it  is  permissible  for  men  to 
pause  in  their  labor  to  speak  with  their  God ;  but  it  is  not  necessary, 
and  they  will  not  much  longer  be  permitted,  to  take  one  day  out  of 
seven — a  very  large  share — for  any  lesser  purpose.  Strange  is  it 
indeed  that  men  so  honest,  so  clear-headed  and  so  far-sighted  in  all 
other  things  should  so  far  fail  to  see  this  and  fail  so  persistently. 
Strange  is  it  that  they  do  not  see  the  anomaly  in  the  theory  and  the 
penalty  in  the  fact.  The  first  is  that  a  day  of  rest  is  asked  upon  one 
ground  and  is  accepted  on  another ;  the  second,  the  penalty — and 
it  will  soon  be  paid  if  this  continues — will  be  the  loss  of  the  day 
upon  any  ground.  He  were  a  mean  employer  indeed  who  would 
not  allow  his  employee  to  stop  his  work  to  say  his  prayers ;  but  he 
is  an  equally  mean  employee  who  accepts  a  day  of  rest  for  worship 
and  then  spends  that  day  at  everything  under  the  sun  except 
worship. 
Let  me  restate  this  principle.  So  long  as  the  day  was  used,  and 
wherever  it  is  still  used  for  its  distinctive  purpose,  it  has  been  and 
is  still  gladly  given  ;  but  in  other  times  and  places  it  has  not  been 
and  will  not  be.  This  is  a  perfectly  natural  process.  Here  as  else- 
where cause  always  precedes  effect.  The  cause  is  simple ;  the  effect 
is  obvious.  This  has  been  the  history  of  the  day's  loss  as  a  day  of 
rest  to  men  who  labor  wherever  it  has  been  lost  to  men  who  do 
labor.  The  saying  of  a  generation  ago  that  "  There  is  no  God  west 
of  the  Missouri  River  "  preceded  and  produced,  so  surely  as  a  cause 
ever  had  an  effect,  the  saying  of  to-day  that  "  There  is  no  Sunday 
west  of  the  Mississippi  River."    Here,  as  in  every  similar  field,  the 
