THE RAILWAY AND THE SABBATH.

"I ASSURE you, there are above 850 trains already on the sabbath, employing at least 47,000 men; and this number is being daily increased. In fact, the invariable experience of this sabbath travelling shews that it only requires to be set a going, and by dint of cheap fares, return tickets, and other inducements, you soon create an appetite for it, you increase the numbers of those in the service of the companies, to whom the day of rest is made a day of toil; and you raise up a population of sabbath-breakers, who spend the Lord's day in idleness and sin. Surely this is a great evil."

Such were the remarks of an elderly gentleman in a railway carriage, in reply to a fellow traveller, who seemed to consider that" Remember the sabbath-day to keep it holy" was a commandment (and yet the only one of the ten) which man might keep or break at his pleasure.

"No doubt you think it is an evil, but should we not be allowed to do as we please? You prefer not to travel, and I prefer to travel on Sunday. I do not interfere with you by forcing you to travel, and you have no right to interfere with my liberty by preventing me."

"But," replied the first speaker, "you go much further than claiming for yourself liberty to do as you please, you encroach on the liberty of others by wishing them also to do as you please; for you require these men to labour, because it is your pleasure to travel. In this way, you not only break God's law yourself, but require them also to do an illegal act. Besides, if we profess at all to take God's will as our standard, we should seek to do not what we please, but what pleases Him; and we should neither require nor induce others to work on the Lord's-day, even though they may be willing."

"I admit the force of your remarks," said a third person in the carriage, who had been listening attentively to the conversation; there can be no doubt that every one who acknowledges the law of God should respect the consciences of others, and neither coerce nor tempt them to violate it. But while I admit this, it appears to me hard to deprive the working man of the only day he has for recreation."

"This seems a plausible objection. But it can easily be proved that such recreation, as you term it, must impose a still greater drudgery upon others. God has given six days for our worldly employments and recreations; and if we use

the seventh also either for the one or the other, we at once overturn his order and all gets into confusion. Besides, no one will maintain that to leave his home and travel upon the sabbath, conduces to the working man's comfort and happiness. I believe the very reverse to be the case. Every master knows that most of the workmen upon whom he can best depend are the men who spend the sabbath at home, and who attend a place of worship regularly with their families." "I can testify to that," struck in a young man, who had hitherto kept silent; "cheap Sunday trips were the ruin of the working men in Lancashire, two to three years ago. The men who were thus led away were seldom at their work on the Monday; you never knew when a job could be got out of their hands: and though they had extravagant wages at the time, very few laid by anything, and they and their families are now in poverty and misery."

"Have you found the same results where the men had moral and religious principle strong enough to resist the temptation either to work or to play on the sabbath?" inquired the elderly gentleman.

"That question will be best answered by referring to -'s work, who saw that his only security for getting steady intelligent workmen, was to engage those only who showed they feared God, by keeping holy the sabbath, and being connected with a place of worship. He and his men have prospered in consequence; his business has greatly increased; people knew that if a piece of work was promised, it would be done in the time. The men are, even in these bad times, comparatively well employed, and many of them have considerable sums in the savings' bank."

"All this, then, proves that the observance of the sabbath as a day of entire rest promotes man's temporal comfort and happiness; and that in keeping God's law there is a great reward even in the life that now is. Breaking God's command-and railway travelling is one of its leading forms in our day-strikes directly at the welfare of society; and every man who wishes well to his country, ought to oppose it to the utmost. The sure way to make men infidels is to destroy the sabbath. Our country, thank God, is not prepared yet for those excesses which are common in France; but we have to fear the consequences of this bit-by-bit desecration—this training up to sabbath-breaking, which the railway system is introducing. Nothing short of an entire cessation of work on the sabbath will do."

"What! would you have No trains? Suppose my father or mother were taken ill, am I to be prevented from going on Sunday to see them? Surely you could never advocate such a piece of nonsense as that," exclaimed one of the passengers. "I do not deny that cases of necessity and mercy may arise, and if provision could be made for them, so much the better. But because there may be such occasional demands, is that a reason for the systematic and regular running of trains? As was once remarked, a man may go and pull his sheep out of a pit on the sabbath, but that is a different thing from keeping his servants always in waiting with ropes, lest a sheep should fall into a pit. How many of the Sunday passengers that start from Euston-square do you suppose are necessity and mercy' passengers? Are there half a dozen? Probably not one who could not have obtained his end, if he chose, without travelling on the sabbath, and so causing hundreds of immortal souls to break the law of God. Besides this, the extraordinary rapidity of communication now attained has removed any plausible argument which formerly might have been advanced, for the necessity of travelling on the sabbath. For instance, in the case which you quote as a hardship, you know that after the receipt of the intelligence of a relative's illness, you have abundance of time to arrange your business and to leave London so as to be in Devonshire or Lancashire (I may almost say in any part of England) the same evening. By the wonderful applications of science in our days, God is giving such facilities for keeping his day holy, as to take away the very shadow of an excuse for doing any work upon it."

"Well," replied the former speaker, "I admit that it would be a good thing if there were an entire cessation of work on the sabbath, and if it were indeed a day of rest and peace, and blessing to the millions in the land. But I fear there is little chance of this."

"And yet it might soon be realized, if every one would apply the same standard in measuring the requirements of the fourth commandment which he professes to do with the other nine, and would endeavour to act accordingly. I suppose you would not approve of a little stealing on the part of a poor man, even though his family were perishing with hunger, and yet there is a strong' necessity and mercy' case here for breaking the eighth commandment; and why should you try to extenuate what you call only a little breaking of the fourth commandment, by running a morning and evening

6

train on the Lord's day. The minister in church every sabbath reminds you of this command, Remember that thou keep holy the sabbath day. Six days shalt thou labour and do all that thou hast to do. But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work,' etc., and you respond aloud, Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." If a man be at all honest in that prayer-honest in professing his desire to keep the Lord's-day, he will neither seek his own pleasure by travelling himself on the sabbath, nor will he coerce the consciences of others by compelling them to work; and if he be a shareholder in any company which runs trains, he will use all the means in his power to get these trains stopped, and to relieve his servants of all unnecessary work. If those who admit the obligation of the sabbath, were thus true to their principles, and active in this cause, so desirable a thing as the entire suspension of sabbath traffic might be attained much sooner than you imagine. A most salutary change is taking place in America. No sabbath mail or railway carriage for travelling on that day is now to be seen in New England. The cause is gaining ground here. Many are beginning to see that the stability of our social institution greatly depends upon the preservation of the sabbath as a day of entire resting from work; that to insure quiet, order, and happiness in the land, the people must be moral and religious, and that they cannot be so without having one day in seven secured to them, to be used for the ends and purposes for which God set it apart from the beginning."

WARMTH FOR THE COLD.

I HAD a letter and comfortable tidings from my dear father, (Philip Henry,) as also four directions how to keep warm within in this cold season.

1. Get into the sun, that is, Christ. Under the beams of this blessed Sun of righteousness there are warmth and comfort. 2. Walk to the fire, that is, the word of God. "Is not my word like fire?" How many warming, comforting passages

are there!

3. Keep in motion, and action; stirring up ourselves, and the gift and grace of God that is in us.

4. Christian converse and communion. How can one be warm alone? Life of Mrs. Savage.

A CHILD'S TEARS.

A WELSH clergyman asked a little girl for the text of the last sermon. The child gave no answer-she only wept. He found out that she had no Bible in which to look for the text; and this led him to inquire whether her parents or neighbours had a Bible; and this led him to begin a Bible Society for Wales. Some good people in London said, "Why should not we have a Bible Society for England, too?" And others said, " And for France and the nations of Europe?" And then another said, "And why not have a Bible Society for the whole world?" The tears of that little girl led to the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

TRACT ANECDOTES.

TRACTS AMONG COLLIERS.

THE wife of a country clergyman mentions the following instances of benefits from tracts:

"As I was walking the other day near the coal pits which Occupy a large portion of our parish, I observed a collier looking wistfully at some tracts I carried. I stopped, and asked if he would wish to have one. He eagerly accepted the offer, and then uttered some expressions of thankfulness, saying that he had been a great swearer, but that a tract I had given him some time before had shown him the sinfulness of such a practice. The tract was entitled 'A Word to the Profane,' and the poor collier repeated with emphasis and feeling the six lines at the head of that tract, which lines had first struck his mind and conscience:

It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme

Lightly appealed to on each trifling theme,' etc.

"Another instance lately occurred, in which three words on the cover of a tract had been blessed to an infidel collier, to whom it had been lent. The words were, God is infinite.' These words led him to reason with himself, 'If God be infinite, how can a finite being understand the mysteries of God, which I refuse to believe because I cannot understand them?' "These words led to his conversion to God.

"The clergyman who lent the tract states, that the last he heard of this once infidel collier was, that he got up two hours earlier every morning in order to read the Bible before going to work in the pits.

"I do so love distributing tracts; I meet such a number of colliers in this district; when I am drawing near, many a