Sunday must be reconsidered; for, so far as the overwork of employés is concerned, the latter present many more objections than the former. A railroad can run two or three trains and not perhaps very seriously overtax the men who have the labor to perform; but, with the horse-cars, we are told that, as a rule, the same men who work through the week are employed on Sunday from early morning until late at night. We confess a great desire to preserve the quiet of Sunday as much as possible, and to assure to every class in the community a day of rest; but that the running of Sabbath trains is a sin we regard as a proposition too absurd to be seriously considered at the present day, and we confess to a surprise that any body of men representing an ecclesiastical association should be found taking such a position. And, surely, very few theologians of any merit would be willing to argue that the Christian Sunday had taken the place of, or was to be observed as, the Jewish Sabbath. The changed conditions of our social life have brought needs which must have their just consideration, and the requirements vary in different places. There are but two points to which we think the attention of the community must be earnestly called back: one, that the leisure, the quiet, the rest of the day must be preserved as much as possible; the other, that all companies furnishing either steam-cars or horse-cars on Sunday must provide them with other workmen, that all may have one day in the week for change and for rest. If the company cannot afford to pay this additional expense, let it be without the convenience.

PUBLIC LIBRARIES ON SUNDAY.

If the whole question of Sunday travelling is likely to come to a careful reconsideration and to call forth a great variety of opinions, it would seem hardly possible at the present time that there could be any serious opposition to opening as many libraries and reading-rooms on Sunday as possible. To visit them does not break in upon the quiet of the day. To read there can be no more a sin than to read at home; and, at a comparatively small expense, competent persons can easily be found to relieve those who are employed through the week. Wherever the experiment has been tried, the testimony is very strong both as to the good behavior of the readers and visitors and the good influence in promoting a more satisfactory observance of Sunday

in a large class of the inhabitants of our cities. It is for this reason we confess to a very great surprise in finding objections made by many quite prominent and doubtless conscientious persons in New York City to opening one of its libraries on Sunday. We believe that a little serious reflection, especially on the part of ministers, upon the purposes of the day and the needs. of our population, would convince them they have made a very great mistake. We believe that every one who has the welfare of society at heart, who is not selfishly willing to consider his own comfort or pleasure, will plead with no uncertain tone to have all such helpful institutions freely open to all comers on Sunday. For a man who has a library in his own home, or who ever reads books in his own home on Sunday, to refuse such a privilege, to petition against such a privilege to any person who has no such opportunity in his own house, we regard as the extreme impersonation of an antichristian spirit, as the most extreme form of inhuman selfishness. Or for any one who ever reads what is called a Sunday paper in his own home to offer any objection to another going to a library for the same purpose, or to read books which, even though of the very poorest character to be found in any of our libraries, are still immeasurably superior to the Sunday papers, is, we think, exceedingly inconsistent and open to very serious condemnation. We yield to no one in our desire to preserve as far as possible the quiet, rest-giving, worship-offering character of Sunday: we plead for it on account of the laboring classes most of all. We need rest on that day. We need worship or time to turn to the contemplation of spiritual things our busy, week-day life is apt to pass by; but public worship occupies only a small part of the day, and what is rest to one may not be to another. This whole matter must be reconsidered and rearranged, with a much greater liberality and a regard to individual tastes and needs. There are multitudes, and among them not a few ministers, who have their elegant and attractive homes, their libraries, or their tables filled with all the books they enjoy; and these they read in the seclusion of their homes without hindrance. Is it any more a breaking or a desecration of the Sunday for a few hundred persons to go quietly into a large public library and there read the books they may enjoy? Indeed, when we reflect that not only on Sunday, but on all days, so many of the former class can read as much as they please, it is a selfishness beyond measure and beyond

excuse, it reveals a spirit which has none of the religion of humanity in it, for them to use their influence to close public libraries against that other class of which many have only a few hours of Sunday to read at all. It is like a man who takes his private carriage, and drives Sunday afternoon as well as every afternoon, objecting to the cars which take the laboring people out to pleasant and healthful resorts on Sunday, on the only day they can go; or like the man who has his residence by the sea, whither he can repair at the close of every day's work, and not often very laborious, and where he can sit and enjoy the seabreezes every evening and all day on Sunday, objecting to the Sunday trains which bear multitudes of the real laborers away from the close and heated air of the city. This is not the way to promote a truer observance of Sunday. It is not the way to create a greater interest in worship. It tends to irritate instead of to harmonize the conflicting interests which have to be met in a vast social body. There are many in every large city, whose first need on Sunday is to get out of the city; and every means afforded them will only increase the true observance of the day. There are many others whose first need is to have libraries open where they may find that time to read which they cannot find in the pressure of their week-day life, and where, too, they may find wise direction in the use of books. We believe that in this respect a good librarian falls below no minister, no teacher, no man in any pursuit, in the aid he can give to his fellow-men. And the sooner the Church can show a wise and true leading in regard to the observance of Sunday, keep the just mean between a strict Sabbatarianism and a license which knows no restraint, a narrowness which draws a distinction between reading at home for the rich or reading at a public library for the poor, the sooner will it create a greater interest in its own ministrations and make them a more sanctifying power over all.

SUNDAY PAPERS.

We made a comparison above between the value of Sunday papers and the books of public libraries. We have to confess a feeling of disappointment in regard to the general character of our Sunday papers; and it is a real disappointment, which does. not come out of any objection to them as Sunday papers. Certainly, so far as the work of preparation is concerned, although

we prefer the old custom of having Saturday evening, as far as possible, free from late hours of work or pleasure, there is nothing to be said; and, if the matter were of a kind to give any higher literary or moral taste to the readers of Sunday papers, we surely could have nothing to say. We would not be understood as making any objection to the publication of Sunday papers. We do not see why they might not be made of much value in giving a better tone to Sunday observances, of real help in those moral teachings for which the day has been set apart; why they might not in many ways be valuable assistants in the general and recognized work of the churches. It was with this idea that we were not so suspicious as some, nor so opposed, when Sunday papers were first suggested and published. We have been disposed to give them a very fair trial. We have not been so prejudiced against them as to be unwilling to see what they have had to offer their readers. Reading is surely to be commended, and especially reading on Sunday, when large numbers have more time to read than on any other day or all the week together. There is everywhere a thirst for reading. We are a reading nation, and there never was such an abundance of good reading from which to select, or so many good writers ready to furnish matter which shall be instructive, shall give a higher tone to social life and interests, which shall be permeated with a moral and religious flavor. We think the early Sunday papers had some concern for this. Either because it was feared that so great an innovation might provoke much opposition, or from a sincere desire to provide reading which was to some extent in harmony with the subjects to which the day had usually been devoted, there was, if not a great deal that could be called suitable Sunday reading, not a great deal that was of the very lowest order of secular reading. We think there has been a very rapid change in all this, and a change for the worse. With the publication of Sunday papers as an established custom, with the increasing numbers who fall into the habit of looking them all through to find, whether the search is successful or not, something that is of value, and with the rivalry as to which paper can provide the largest number of columns without any regard to the character of their contents, there has been a corresponding depreciation in their moral tone. Indeed, this has been so rapid, and we think so unfortunate, that we wonder if any of their readers have given it a thought.

In one of these vast quadruple sheets, with one hundred and twenty-eight columns of closely printed matter, how much might be considered a fair proportion to devote to what, with the most generous interpretation, may be called reading of a Sunday character, reading that parents by no means strict, would be glad to put into their children's hands, and call it reading suitable for the home on Sunday? We would not be understood as drawing any very strict or old time line as to what Sunday reading should be. We by no means desire to confine it to the international Sunday-school topics, nor to sermons, nor to religious stories or experiences. We know of very little in the whole range of historical or biographical or scientific matters to which may not be given a tone suitable for Sunday reading, and made very helpful to most persons, young or old. Letters of travel, many of the better kinds of novels, might come under this head. But, on the other hand, we are very sure that a whole side given up to flaming advertisements of the largest firms, and just such, only more prominent than in the week-day editions, has no moral significance, would hardly be claimed as suitable Sunday reading. Whole columns of miserable, personal gossip from all parts of the land, no matter if it has the excuse of being sought and read, are not Sunday reading that homes of any refinement ought to encourage. Long-spun out conversations about presidential candidates have no special moral bearing. Whole columns devoted to all the news about rowing and yachting, the theatres and amusements, operas and concerts, directions for cooking, or the reports of the financial world, about which men have already been tossed and distressed for six days; full accounts of bicycling and skating, these have no distinctively Sunday characteristics. No home, no person, is any better off for poring over them by the hour. They show no desire and no effort to give any higher tone to the reading masses, only to come down to and to minister to their very lowest tastes. And yet so easily is the habit formed, and so strong does it become, of looking through a paper which regularly comes into the home, that thousands of homes are doing this, and rarely finding anything which they would be willing to admit was suitable Sunday reading. We looked over two of these mammoth sheets which recently appeared one Sunday morning, to find in all the columns of both of them not quite two which by the heading could be called Sunday reading; and we are by