Day became the rest day of the Church. This is in accord with the idea that the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath, and that henceforth its deepest ground would be a redemption accomplished in the "fulness of time," but ordained before the foundation of the world.* In being associated with Christ and his deliverance of man, the Lord's Day has universal significance and application. It associates itself with those humane instincts which are the raw material in our nature of the higher Christian life. Intelligent and conscientious Sabbath observance thus becomes an element in our loyalty to Christ and in our love to our fellowmen, many of whom are dehumanized, demoralized, and enslaved by corporate powers in which no conscience has seemingly been developed.

As we search into history A. D., as into history B. C., we shall find that the sacred history in our Old Testament records helps wondrously to interpret the history of national life in all times and everywhere. In Christian times and among Christian people the Sabbath has still been a sign between God and man. In the degree of Sabbath observance has been the degree of enterprise, intelligence, and virtue, and especially among the working classes. Take the populations of these countries: New England, Old England (including Scotland and Wales), the north of Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, and in these very regions where the Sabbath has been most truly a Lord's day, there has been most markedly everything which makes manhood respected and respectable.

The first and most important thing for us ministers, churches, and Sunday-school teachers to do is to get ourselves sufficiently informed on the subject. We shall then see that to despiritualize man is to demoralize him. We shall come to the conclusion that the insertion of the law for Sabbath rest in that Mosaic decalogue, which from its first word to its last is moral, was no accident. Gradually we shall arrive at the conviction that spirituality and morality are so united that they are in their relation as soul and body. It will not take us long to arrive at the conclusion that the Sabbath institution has a relation to the welfare of man as man which we have never sufficiently estimated. We shall not be inclined to use it as the Pharisees would use it or as the Sadducees. These are types of men which belong to all generations. In our days the Pharisees are generally ecclesiastical and other people who think that they can set aside God's laws and substitute their own. The Sadducees generally edit newspapers. "Time was," says one, "when it was a disgraceful thing

As it appears in the Mosaic Records: The Sabbath institution speaks of emancipation from slavish toil, of deliverance from Egyptian bondage. Even in Mosaism the idea associated with it is redemption. But this redemption has always associated itself with that other and wider redemption which belongs to the human race. The Lord's Day is to us commemorative of that. The Lamb slain is the symbol of it. But the Lamb slain was, in the Divine purpose, siain from before the foundation of the world. What wonder, then, that all through the history which is to reach this fact there should be glimpses of the institution which was to commemorate the deliverance of man from all slavery, temporal and spiritual!

to sit in the seat of the scorner, but now half our newspapers are edited by men who occupy that seat."

Ministers, teachers in our Sunday schools, and especially our young people, need to recognize that there are certain things which go together. God hath joined them together; man cannot put them asunder except at a cost which will appear when it is too late. Spiritualization and moralization go together. The divine origin of the Lord's day and the divine origin of the church go together. When Voltaire said, "If you would defeat the church attack the Sabbath," he knew what he was saying. When Renan exclaimed, "Le Christianisme est mort, il a perdu son Dimanche," he was a long way from the truth, but he taught us what we need to learn, that the Sabbath institution is of more value than any of us assume. Injudicious and fanatical advocacy of the Sabbath on Jewish lines of simple fasting and abstention will do us no good. We cannot dictate to individuals; we cannot enter family life and try to rule it. We are outside all personal responsibility except our own. We have no rights of judgment in any family except that to which we belong. But we are IN the city, IN the State, and we are to be IN the city and in the State as light and as salt. If we are Christian churches we are in the city and in the State to illuminate and preserve from corruption. We believe that wherever the Christian Sabbath exists in influence and power it exists as "light" and as "salt."

The reaction from the old infelicities of a partially ripe Puritanism has been excessive. A ripe Puritanism, like a ripe Gravenstein pippin, has a fine, delicious flavor. It is half-ripe Puritanism which is unpalatable. In our church life we have had days and years of nervous hesitation, of timid reserve, of gentlemanly deference, of half apologetic presentation of truth, a condition " of bated breath and whispering humbleness." We knew not to what the new learning, the new criticism, the new science, the new philosophy, would carry us. We know now. Some of the enemies' guns we have captured and turned against themselves. We are beginning an era of new affirmations. We have no need to apologize for our existence or our Bible, or its beneficent institutions. But, we have to build more determinedly and intelligently than ever upon the rock of Divine Sovereignty, the spirituality of humanity, the rights of man as spiritual, the moral infallibility of Christ, his sole Lordship over man and over every institution whose existence is necessitated by the spirituality of man's nature. Vigorous life in the Church is proved necessary to uprightness of life in the State, and the Sabbath institution has been proved necessary to vigorous life in the Church. It is the most humane of all institutions. Its humaneness proves its divineness. In the admirable report of the New York Sabbath Committee are these words: "The future of the Lord's Day must depend largely on the attitude taken by the Christian ministry in relation to this question. They mould very largely the religious sentiment of the community, and it is on public sentiment which is to so controlling a degree that of the Christian people of the land, that, under God, the permanence of our American habit of Sunday keeping depends."

III.

I would venture to recommend by way of practical application of these suggestions that every Sunday-school library and every pastor's library (if I may be so bold) have in it that volume of Sabbath Essays published by our Congregational Publishing Society. It is a treasure house of facts and arguments on every side of this question.

I would add also the propriety of every minister devoting, at least once in the year, a sermon to this theme. I mean, not an ex tempore effusion, emotional and hortatory, but a good, old-fashioned, well-wroughtout, intelligent, scholarly, logical New England sermon, one that has weight as well as length; a well-fed, properly nurtured, full-grown sermon with iron and blood in it; and be sure not to preach it the week after you have somewhat recovered from an attack of grippe.

I would add that one Sunday a year should in the Sunday school be devoted to this theme as a lesson, and that to that lesson as much time and care should be given as the importance of the subject demands. And, lastly, I ask the question whether this Association might not prepare and issue, with the authority of a united vote of commendation behind it, for young people especially, a nineteenth century Christianized exposition of the principles which underlie this subject, and of the conduct which best accords with such principles?

Now I have done. But by way of postscript I would add that if all the churches in the State would unite themselves with the New England Sabbath Protective League and give it such support as is necessary, though the heads of the State set themselves and the politicians take counsel together against the Lordship of Christ over the Sabbath, with King Grog and King Mammon in the lobby, yet there is good hope that we may yet once more set the rightful King upon this holy hill of Zion.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON THE WIDER CIRCULATION OF RELIGIOUS LITERATURE.1

The Committee upon the Wider Circulation of Religious Literature, will occupy but a few moments of your time, as it has described the nature and possibilities of its work, in previous annual reports to the Association.

Special attention is called to the full report submitted at the ninety-third annual meeting of this body held in 1895. In that report will be found an ample statement of the reasons of this Christian undertaking, by which an effort has been put forth to make sure that good books, magazines and papers did not perish after their first reading. The report referred to was adopted by this Association, and printed in the minutes of that year. The work thus undertaken has been continued by your committee. Last autumn a printed letter was sent to each Congregational minister in Massa

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chusetts, in which were set forth the facts, that vast quantities of good literature never passed beyond their first use, while at the same time there are needy homes in every community, needy fields in the South, Southwest and West, and along our New England Coast. The circular appealed to the pastors to gather up helpful books and other publications, supply the wants of their own parishes, and forward any material left over, to the members of this Committee, who would undertake to forward it to destitute places. Christian Endeavor Societies were asked to cooperate by maintaining exchange tables in the vestibule of the churches, where the people might deposit what they could spare, and find what they desired. The response to this circular letter has been kind, cordial, and helpful. The committee has received fervent thanks from many would-be givers for providing a method by which they could bestow their gifts.

A conviction has been established in many minds that it is not right to store up in cellar, cioset, and attic the rapidly accumulating mass of good publications, while sailors, pioneers, mountain-whites, and negroes are so sadly destitute.

The conscience of many Christian people has also been awakened, and old convictions upon this matter have been roused and made to bear fruit. In this way there has been set in motion a quiet but steady current of private generosity, which has blessed many needy places.

In addition, probably twenty thousand publications have been sent to your committee, which have been forwarded to a goodly number of local institutions, to the sailors, light-houses, and life-saving stations along the Maine coast, to the colored school at Knoxville, Tenn., and especially, to Berea College, Kentucky. The Harrow school, at Cumberland Gap, Tenn., has also been assisted by gifts sent by earnest Christian Endeavorers.

Most appreciative and grateful letters have come to your committee from the recipients of these gifts. The committee feels that if those who have given periodicals could but read these epistles of thanksgiving, and still more, if they could know the amount of good which their gifts have done, they would greatly increase their efforts in the years to come to give of their abundance, in order that nowhere in our great country should there be any lack of religious reading matter.

The expenses of printing and forwarding the circulars sent out by the committee amounted to $14.55, which sum has been paid by the treasurer of the Association.

During the year one member of the committee, Rev. W. Walker Jubb, has been unable to co-operate, because of the change of his place of residence to England.

We recommend that the work carried on thus far should be continued by this organization by the appointment of a committee to serve during the coming year.

FRANK BARROWS MAKEPEACE.
ELLIS MENDELL.

REPORT ON LABOR ORGANIZATIONS.

The "Committee on Presenting Resolutions of Sympathy to Labor Organizations," continued from last year, organized with Deacon James G. Buttrick for chairman, and Rev. Jesse H. Jones as secretary. No commission having been given it, the committee had to map out a line of work for itself. Judging from the specific service assigned it at the time of its original appointment in 1895 at Lynn, we inferred that you were expecting its labors should be a ministry of blessing to the same toiling classes, namely: the employees of steam and electric railroads. Upon looking the ground over, we concluded that we could render these men no greater service than to obtain for them one rest-day in seven. We soon discovered that this great blessing could be secured by legisla tion alone. We accordingly bent our energies to accomplish this result. If we were to come before the Legislature, we felt that we needed a stronger backing than this Association, which represented only the Congregational churches of the Commonwealth. We therefore invited the New England Sabbath Protective League, which includes all denominations in its constituency, including our Catholic brethren, to join forces with us, and later the American Federation of Labor. The League appointed Rev. M. D. Kneeland, and Bro. Geo. E. McNeill, a recognized leader in labor circles, to unite with the chairman, and Bro. John H. Kilby of this committee, to act as a "joint committee" to superintend the work.

This joint committee first prepared a bill to introduce to the Legislature, which read as follows:

AN ACT TO BETTER SECURE A REST-DAY FOR WORKING PEOple.

SECT. 1. No County, Town, City, municipal or other corporation, organized, located, or doing business in the Commonwealth, and no official, agent, or servant of such corporation, or of the Commonwealth, shall directly or indirectly cause or allow any person to perform labor, either under contract or otherwise, for such corporation or the Commonwealth, more than six days in a week.

SECT. 2. Any corporation or person violating the provisions of this act shall be punished by a fine of not less than fifty dollars nor more than one hundred dollars for each violation.

SECT. 3. This act shall take effect July 1, 1897.

A circular-letter, explaining the origin and character of our movement, and incorporating the bill, was mailed to every clergyman within the