if they could ensure the exclusion of the rich on that day. Many would be glad to see an earnest of sincerity given by those who advocate their opening for the benefit of the working-classes in the organization of some plan by which the attendants and officials could be replaced for the Sunday by men of leisure and means. Some of these might well undertake the responsibility of guarding the galleries and museums during the hours in which they were open; and others who possess the requisite qualifications of knowledge, culture, and capacity of lucid exposition might well employ their time in explaining or describing pictures and objects of interest to the people who visited the museums. "In the interests of the workingclasses" is a good phrase; but our experience of things done in the interests of the working-classes leads us to imagine that it is possible to do something under such a plea which turns out wholly to the increase of the pleasures of the rich and of the labours of the poor. It is not surprising that the working-classes show little enthusiasm for efforts of this kind as long as there is any doubt about the nature of their interest in the movement.

The question of profit-making occupations enters here. It is true that there is compensation in everything, and that if Sunday pleasure means Sunday labour to the poor it means additional profit, which in hard times is most welcome. This must be admitted, but is it a gain without corresponding danger? The only protection of the workingman against the necessity for Sunday work lies in the prevention of any advantage of additional profit given to one trading class over another. The working-classes have seen the importance of this point, and trades union conferences have passed votes adverse to the opening of museums. Unquestionably they have been influenced much more by social than by religious considerations. They have seen that the increase of labour is threatened by the increase of pleasure.

If, therefore, in any way the change regarding the Sunday tends to bind the yoke of labour more closely on the neck of poverty, it cannot be regarded as a change for the better.

Again, the great law of mutual service cannot be broken with impunity. The increase of pleasures in a way which increases the labours of the poor, or robs them of their opportunity of rest, recreation, and worship, tends, as we might have expected, to the desecration of those who forget the duty of self-denial.

Sunday is a day which brings the opportunity of mental and moral elevation. I do not share the views of extremists. I cannot speak with authority on the economic aspect of the Sunday: but I think that the cessation of gain-getting pursuits on one day in seven is a protection against the tyranny of vulgar views of life. This is a gain. This is in itself a defence against that desecration of character which is inevitable when gain or enjoyment are made the ends of

life. The existence of the Sunday is a witness that man has after all something else to think of and to strive for than the getting of money. England has been reproached with the strength and tenacity of its mercantile instincts. Would the reproach have been less or more merited had England allowed her instincts full play every day in the year? Or has the existence of one day in which the need of money-making was forgotten tended to mitigate a passion which might have become a mania? It is, I suppose, quite certain that the perpetual concentration of thought on one topic disturbs the balance of the mind. The gold passion has ended in idiotcy and in suicide. To deliver men for twenty-four hours from its bondage, or, if not to deliver, to give them at least the opportunity of such a deliverance, is surely an advantage to the mental health of a great people.

It is an enormous gain to have a day which gives the money-making man the opportunity of getting rid of the thoughts of money, and of having set before him the higher aims and purposes of existence. This, to him, is a gateway of escape from some of the vulgarizing influences which surround him. It is a gateway of escape, also, from the vulgarizing influences of the pursuit of pleasure. It is an enormous gain to have a day which gives an opportunity to the idle butterfly of Society to remember that God made men and women, not to be butterflies, but by love to serve one another. There is enough frivolity in the world, and nothing so destroys kindly feelings, generous impulses, the capacity for self-denial, as the life of incessant frivolous pleasure. All that aspires within us dies out under the influence of a life devoted to pleasure. The Apostle said truly," She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." If the heart ceases to love, if compassion is no longer moved, if thoughtfulness for others vanishes, if the conscience is no longer uneasy about wasted hours, if the hunger to grow nobler and more useful has ended, if life, instead of being viewed as earnest and real, has sunk to the level of a masquerade, then all that is best and worthiest is dead. One of the best comments on the Apostle's teaching is to be found in words written by Baron von Humboldt, and quoted by Baron Stockmar in a letter to the late Prince Consort: "Frivolity undermines all morality, and suffers no deep thought and no pure feeling to germinate. It may, no doubt, be combined with an amiable and gentle disposition, but in such a soul so constituted nothing can emanate from principle; and self-sacrifice and self-conquest are out of the question." *

To those whose only idea of pleasure is the pursuit of what is empty and frivolous the day of opportunity becomes a snare. Truly conceived, Sunday is the opportunity of cultivating what is higher in our natures.

There is abundance of temptations and opportunities "Life of the Prince Consort," vol. i. p. 472.

of cultivating the lower. But if the day of opportunity for this higher self-education is turned into a day of demoralizing frivolity ; a day of amusement and pleasure to the wealthy and of harder work for the poor; a day in which principle is undermined, sturdy selfconquest rendered less possible, and self-sacrifice for the sake of others unfashionable then, little as I sympathize with rigid Sabbatarianism, I would prefer to become a grim Puritan rather than aid in any movement which weakened the moral fibre or rendered less keen the sense of brotherly love in the community.

To the rich and leisured classes I make appeal. There are thousands of things which doubtless you may do with a good conscience on Sunday. The day is free: it is to you, as it is to others, a day of opportunity. No man can judge for his brother. But, for the sake of the moral character of this great people, avoid all things which are mere emptiness. You despise the man who is vulgarized by the pursuit of money; but a man is no less surely vulgarized by the pursuit of pleasure. Let your occupations and pastimes be those which elevate the mind and refine the character; cultivate all that helps us out of the vulgarity of worldliness; and, to this end, cultivate reverence for the "unseen," for a man's life verily consisteth, not of the abundance of things which he possesseth, but of that unseen and priceless heritage, a spirit and character growing in obedience to the laws of the Kingdom of God which is within you.

and

And as Sunday is a day of opportunity, let it be consecrated chiefest to the use and happiness of those whose opportunities of tasting of life's feast are few. On that day call not together your friends and your rich neighbours: open your hearts to the poor the toil-worn. Let all that is best and brightest in life be on that day the portion of those who labour. Give them the opportunity of everything which can gladden and refresh them. Be scrupulous to rob them of nothing which may lift them heavenward. Show that you reverence them by showing that you think nothing too good for them. Show that you reverence life and life's higher possibilities by exerting strenuous self-denial for the sake of giving to God's poor the freest opportunities of recreation, cultivation, and worship.

W. B. RIPON.

WILL ENGLAND RETAIN INDIA?

THE

HE English think they will rule India for many centuries or for ever. I do not think so, holding rather the older belief that the Empire which came in a day will disappear in a night; and it may interest some to consider for a moment the pessimist view as stated by one who heartily believes that the British dominion over the great peninsula of Asia is a benefit to mankind.

It is customary with Englishmen, and especially with Englishmen who have seen India, to speak of the British domination there as a miracle," but they seldom realize fully the import of their words. The Indian Empire is not a miracle in the rhetorician's sense, but in the theologian's sense. It is a thing which exists and is alive, but cannot be accounted for by any process of reasoning founded on experience. It is a miracle as a floating island of granite would be a miracle, or a bird of brass which flew and sung and lived on in midair. It is a structure built on nothing, without foundations, without buttresses, held in its place by some force the origin of which is undiscoverable and the nature of which has never been explained. For eighty years at least writers by the score have endeavoured to bring home to Englishmen the vastness of India, but, so far as can be perceived, they have all failed. The Briton reads what they say, learns up their figures, tries to understand their descriptions, but fails, for all his labour, to realize what India is-a continent large as Europe west of the Vistula, and with 30,000,000 more people, fuller of ancient nations, of great cities, of varieties of civilization, of armies, nobilities, priesthoods, organizations for every conceivable purpose from the spreading of great religions down to systematic murder. There are twice as many Bengalees as there are Frenchmen; the Hindostanees properly so called outnumber the whites in the United States; the

Marhattas would fill Spain, the people of the Punjab with Scinde are double the population of Turkey, and I have named but four of the more salient divisions. Everything is on the same bewildering scale. The fighting peoples of India, whose males are as big as ourselves, as brave as ourselves, and more regardless of death than ourselves, number at least a hundred and twenty millions, equal to Gibbon's calculation of the population of the Roman Empire. There are four hundred thousand trained brown soldiers in native service, of whom we hear perhaps once in ten years, and at least two millions of men who think their proper profession is arms, who would live by arms if they could, and of whom we in England never hear a word. If the Prussian conscription were applied in India, we should, without counting reserves or Landwehr or any force not summoned in time of peace, have two and a half millions of soldiers actually in barracks, with 800,000 recruits coming up every year-a force with which, not only Asia, but the world, might be subdued. There are tens of millions of prosperous peasants whose hoardings make of India the grand absorbent of the precious metals; tens of millions of peasants beside whose poverty Fellahs or Sicilians or Connaught men are rich; millions of artisans, ranging from the men who build palaces to the men who, nearly naked and almost without tools, do the humblest work of the potter. Every occupation which exists in Europe exists also in India. The industry of the vast continent never ceases, for India, with all her teeming multitudes, with a population in places packed beyond European precedent, imports nothing either to eat or drink, and, but for the Europeans, would import nothing whatever. She is sufficient to herself for everything save silver. Amidst these varied masses, these two hundred and fifty millions, whose mere descriptions would fill volumes, the tide of life flows as vigorously as in Europe. There is as much labour, as much contention, as much ambition, as much crime, as much variety of careers, hopes, fears, and hatreds. It is still possible to a moneyless Indian to become Vizier of a dynasty older than history, or Finance Minister of a new prince whose personal fortune in hard cash is double that of the late Emperor William, or abbot of a monastery richer than Glastonbury ever was, owner of an estate that covers a county, head of a firm whose transactions may vie with those of the Barings or Bleichroders. One man, Jutee Pershad by name, fed and transported the army which conquered the Punjab.

I have failed like the rest, I see. Well, see for a moment in imagination a Europe even fuller of people, but full only of brown men, and then see also this. Above this inconceivable mass of humanity, governing all, protecting all, taxing all, rises what we call here" the Empire," a corporation of less than fifteen hundred men, part chosen by examination, part by co-optation, who are set to govern, and who protect themselves in governing by finding pay for a minute white garrison of