computed that seventy-eight out of every hundred Scotch ploughmen are never known to enter a place of worship, or to join in any religious exercises. Can we wonder then that we hear complaints of increasing poverty, of a diminishing population, of a lower tone of morals, and that the children of the working classes are more weakly than their forefathers, and show signs of a generally deteriorating race? It is but the natural consequence.

In the middle of the last century a class of men arose in Germany and France calling themselves "philosophers," who endeavoured to destroy the foundations of all religious belief, and the observance of Sunday particularly was treated by them with the greatest contempt. Their views were eagerly embraced by the French nation, and several of the Continental sovereigns, not realizing that in sapping the foundations of religion the bulwarks of all law and dutiful allegiance to the Crown were being seriously undermined, were carried away by the prevalent fashion to give encouragement to the propagation of these ideas. "Germany," wrote the German evangelical teacher, Jung Stilling, at this period, "will be severely punished by France for becoming a partner in her sin." It was this philosophical German association which turned traitor to its country, and fraternized with the French republican invaders in 1792, and they were rewarded by seeing Germany overrun by Napoleon's armies, and for years subjected to French violence and taxation. Jung Stilling and a few more were the earliest agents in an evangelical movement in Germany, intended to restore religion and the observance of the Sabbath to their unhappy land. The young patriots who rose up to emancipate their nation from the iron yoke of the French in 1813 were the products of this evangelical movement, just as the French revolutionists of 1789 were the products of the philosophers: they were men who believed in a Providence stronger than armed battalions, and in His justice and mercy towards the oppressed; and they also believed that if they expected His aid, it was but reasonable that they should pay Him the tribute which He has demanded of man from the creation of the world. It was "philosophers"

1 Jung Stilling, born in 1740, was an oculist by profession, and invented an operation for cataract in the eye. He took advantage of the opportunity which his calling supplied, of imparting religious counsel to his patients of high rank, to induce them to lend their support to the observance of the Lord's day. He was also a Privy Councillor of Baden.

who had subjected Germany to bondage, misery, and war; it was God-fearing men, and observers of the Sabbath, who restored her to freedom and peace. The old Emperor William of Germany served in his youth in that war for independence, and probably remembers this distinction when he gives his vote in favour of a State religion, and opposes, however ineffectually, the policy which would abolish every restriction on work and trade on the Lord's day; and end by making a Sunday in Germany much what it is in Paris.

But if the "philosophers" were once nearly fatal to Germany, their influence had, an even more destructive effect on France herself. Could the excesses of the great French Revolution, which followed quickly upon their teaching, have occurred amongst a people accustomed to give the seventh portion of their time to the Almighty's service? "Where is the wise," we might say with St. Paul, of these philosophers, "where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? . and chosen the weak things of this world to confound the mighty?" (1 Cor. i.). "For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God" (1 Cor. iii. 19). Has the prosperity of France, the most fitted by nature of all countries on the earth to be rich, peaceful, powerful, and independent, been so great since the last century as to induce us to follow the system which these "philosophers" inaugurated, of making no perceptible difference between Sundays and working days, except that Sunday in Paris is generally selected for races, fireworks, and other popular fêtes and entertainments? The capital of France has been traversed by foreign conquering armies three times within fifty-six years, and there have been five civil revolutions, besides which it was partly burned in 1871 by its own infuriated people. Yet with all these warnings, and with the history of the Israelites before us, and of the judgments they endured when they departed from the law of God, we still see attempts made to obtain the practical abolition of the Lord's day by the State, and that every facility should be given to spend it in laborious amusements, which must also compel others who provide those amusements to remain at work. "They despised My judgments," said the Lord, speaking of Israel and Judah, "and walked not in My statutes, but polluted My sabbaths" (Ezek. xx. 16), and invasion by a foreign enemy is the direct punishment with which Sabbath-breaking is threatened in Jeremiah (chap. xvii. 27).

As a nation, we have been mercifully spared from the miseries of war, which have laid waste every other country in Europe during the last hundred years. No hostile army has landed on our shores for several centuries, and we feel that while we have power to threaten, we have ourselves no reason to fear the devastation of a foreign foe. But can we always expect this immunity if we fall into the same error as our neighbours, and boldly set at nought one of God's most positive laws? Yet more foolish than the brothers of Dives, if we hear not Moses and the prophets, neither shall we be persuaded by the bitter experience of the dead.

In a book called "Contemplations Moral and Divine," the author, Sir Matthew Hale, an eminent judge and Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench in the reign of King Charles II., gives his experience of the worldly advantage of keeping the Lord's day. "I have found," he says," by a strict and diligent observation, that a due observing the duty of the Lord's day hath ever had joined to it a blessing upon the rest of my time, and the week that hath been so begun hath been blessed and prosperous to me; and on the other hand, when I have been negligent of the duties of this day, the rest of the week hath been unsuccessful and unhappy to my secular employments; so that I could easily make an estimate of my successes in my own secular employments the week following by the manner of my passing this day; and this I do not write lightly and inconsiderately, but upon a long and sound observation and experience." Again, he adds, "I have ever found that in the strictest observation of the times of divine worship I ever met with the best advantage to my worldly occasions, and that whenever my worldly occasions encroached upon those times I ever met with disappointment, though in times of the most probable success, and ever let it be so with me. It hath been and ever shall be to me a conviction, beyond all argument and demonstration whatsoever, that God expects the observation of His times; and that while I find myself thus dealt with, God hath not given over His care of me. It would be a sad presage unto me of the severe anger of my Maker, if my inadvertence should cast me upon a temporal undertaking upon this day and it should prosper."

Many volumes might be filled of experiences drawn from a history of the blessing which attends a due payment of our weekly debt, and of the reverse. But it is sometimes

urged on behalf of the labouring classes that Sunday is their only day of recreation, therefore that excursion trains should run for their benefit, keeping many railway officials employed to take them into the country, and that museums and exhibitions should be kept open for their instruction, and concert-rooms and other places of diversion for their entertainment on Sunday. Even this argument, unsound as it is, no longer applies. The bad harvests of the last three years and the depressed state of trade have made work more needed by the labouring classes than holidays, and whole districts have been impoverished either in consequence of strikes, or the enforced idleness produced by some of the principal factories being closed. Workmen are kept on, on half-time, to preserve them from starvation, more than because their masters can employ them; and in all parts of the country we meet people of the lower and middle classes whose chief complaint is that they can get no employment. Experience shows that the passengers by Sunday excursion trains are not the overworked, who would shrink from the fatigue of a railway journey if Sunday were really their only holiday in the week, or agricultural labourers, whose holidays are indeed few; but the idle, who have far too much leisure on other days, and in this manner spend the wages which should be placed in savings banks against a day of scarcity or sickness. We have holidays on Saturday afternoons, and in many populous neighbourhoods on the whole of Monday, which can be spent in amusement or change of air; so we may reasonably allow the Lord's day to be reserved for its proper purpose.

The parent engaged in a busy profession often assembles all his children together round him on only this one day in the seven, and gives them the wholesome lessons and example which come with more effect from a parent than from any other source. Is the peaceful atmosphere of a village on an English Sunday less refreshing to a man who has really worked the previous six days, than if its lanes were choked up with crowds watching acrobats, booths, travelling caravans, and all the shows which are permitted to exhibit on Sundays in some of the Continental towns and villages? and in this utilitarian age we may be sure that when work was plentiful and trade good in our large towns, Sunday would become a day of hard labour such as any other in the week if it were once generally admitted that it might be spent in every kind of secular

amusement.

A FEW REMARKS ON DISTRICT VISITING.

BY SUSAN PORSON HAWES.

AMONGST the duties and pleasures of our life there is one employment that engages a good many of the daughters of England, which is an undertaking of responsibility and of interest the work of a district visitor. In a small, thinly peopled parish, indeed, there may be no such persons regularly appointed, and those who visit the poor go only whenever and wherever they like. But where there are many cottagers living in a country parish, or where a great number of the poor inhabit the shabby parts of a country town, in which, looking attentively, one sees court after court running back from the main street, the kind of visiting above mentioned would not suffice. If much were done, probably some families would get an undue share of visits, of relief, of petting, whilst the condition of others, moral and mental, and their occupations, would be unknown, their illnesses often unheard of. So also of visiting in London, of which I have no experience.

And here I wish to say, before going farther into the subject upon which I have presumed to write, that my experience is very limited indeed, and that I beg those who take the trouble to read this paper to excuse its defects.

The office of a district visitor may include several dutiesthe distribution of relief to the needy, and the provision of suitable books for those who like to borrow them, being principal ones. I think that the office should be that of a helper to the clergyman, working under him, and striving to benefit the bodies and souls of his parishioners-in some sense, that of a deaconess. With this view I would advise any young person just undertaking the work-1st, do not let yourself be regarded as a relieving officer by the poor you visit, that is simply as such; for I think, whatever be said to the contrary, that to act in that capacity is one part of district visitors' business. 2nd, do not let yourself be regarded as a "tract lady." No doubt the occasional lending of good tracts is advisable, and even a