lucre offered for his Sabbath hours, and who, perhaps, sacrifices a good situation over and above, we ask, if, instead of being jeered for his scruples, he does not deserve the thanks of all his fellows, as the Hampden or the Tell of industrial freedom?

J

So far as the Sunday excursion goes, the workman forfeits little who does without it. "As it is not all gold that glitters, neither is it all true pleasure that usurps the name. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness. Never shall I forget the mournful accents with which a condemned criminal, shortly before he was executed, said in my hearing, that his crimes began with small thefts and pleasure excursions on the Lord's-day." To us no excursion is pleasure which is not pleasant when ended. But in what does the pleasure of the Sunday ploy consist next morning? Is it in the choice friendships you have made, or the sum which you have added to your savings? Is it in the additional energy which bulges in your muscles, and the limpid clearness with which the stream of thought and feeling flows? Or is it in the great calm which fills your conscience the happy thought how much you have done for God and for your fellow-men? Or is it in the unwonted neatness with which your habitation smiles on your return, and the fresh alacrity with which you resume the morrow's task? "I lodged,"

* Dr. King's Words to the Working Classes on the Sabbath Question.

says a shrewd observer, "within a stone-cast of the Great Manchester and Birmingham Railway. I could hear the roaring of the trains along the line, from morning till near mid-day, and during the whole afternoon; and, just as the evening was setting in, I sauntered down to the gate by which a return train was discharging its hundreds of passengers, fresh from the Sabbath amusements of the country, that I might see how they looked. There did not seem much of enjoyment about the wearied and somewhat draggled groups: they wore, on the contrary, rather an unhappy physiognomy, as if they had missed spending the day quite to their minds, and were now returning, sad and disappointed, to the round of toil from which it ought to have proved a sweet interval of relief. A congregation just dismissed from hearing a vigorous discourse would have borne, to a certainty, a more cheerful air."*

Our reader has likely tried the plan of Sunday diversions already. Have they made you a healthier or a happier man? Have they made you richer, or a more respected member of society? Or have they not consumed a large amount of your hard-won earnings, and often sent you to Monday's toils more weary than you left them on Saturday night? Have they not involved you with worthless and abandoned acquaintances, and sometimes left on your mind a gloomy foreboding and a guilty fear? And do you never tremble to think what the end of these things

Hugh Miller's First Impressions of England.

must be? Many a Sunday trip has had for its terminus the gaol, the convict-ship, the scaffold. Many a broken Sabbath has been the first step in a career which ended in drunkenness, in theft, in murder. And every Sabbath breaker is going forward to the bar of God. Dear reader, accept as a timely message these friendly lines. Seek pardon for the past, and in the Lord's strength make trial of the better way. For the sake of a peaceful conscience, for the sake of a prosperous week, for the sake of a happy home, for the sake of an approving God, "Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy," and you will shortly prove the truth of the promise, "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob, thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."