us and teach us such things as may only be mastered in silence and solitude--when the book of poems, the beautiful prose idyll, or the tender romance, may be our companion in summer under the trees, or in winter by a bright fire--and when we may stand, as it were, for a moment and take breath on the threshold of another week, bracing our energies to meet with whatever that week may hold in store for us, whether joy or sorrow. Few nations, however, view Sunday in this light. On the Continent it has long been a day of mere frivolous pleasure--and in America I know not what it is, never having experienced it. But the British Sunday, apart from all the mockery and innuendo heaped upon it by the wits and satirists of the present time and of bygone years, used to be a strong and spiritually saving force in the national existence. Dinner-parties, with a string band in attendance, and a Parisian singer of the “café chantant” to entertain the company afterwards, were once unknown in England on a Sunday. But such “Sabbath” entertainments are quite ordinary now. The private house copies the public restaurant--more’s the pity! Nevertheless, though Society’s Sunday has degenerated into a day of gambling, guzzling, and motoring in Great Britain, it is well to remember that Society in itself is so limited as to be a mere bubble on the waters of life--froth and scum, as it were, that rises to the top, merely to be skimmed off and thrown aside in any serious national crisis. The People are the life and blood of the nation, and to them Sunday remains still a “day of rest,” though, perhaps, not so much as in old time a day of religion. And that it is not so much a day of religion is because so many preachers have failed in their mission. They have lost grip. There is no cause whatever for their so losing it, save such as lies within themselves. There has been no diminution in the outflow of truth from the sources of Divine instruction, but rather an increase. The wonders of the universe have been unfolded in every direction by the Creator to His creature. There is everything for the minister of God to say. Yet how little is said! “Feed my sheep!” was the command of the Master. But the sheep have cropped all the old ways of thought down to the bare ground, and their inefficient shepherds now know not where to lead them, though their Lord’s command is as imperative as ever. So the flock, being hungry, have broken down the fences of tradition, and are scampering away in disorder to fresh fields and pastures new. Society may be, and is, undoubtedly to blame for its lax manner of treating religion and religious observances; but, with all its faults, it is not so blameworthy as those teachers of the Christian faith, whose lack of attention to its needs and perplexities help to make it the heaven-scorning, God-denying, heart-sore, weary, and always dissatisfied thing it is. Society’s Sunday is merely a