It seems to us that if laborers worked eight hours a day and had Sunday for a holiday instead of a holy day, all their requirements would be better answered than in any other way. We do not need a day nor an hour when either work or play would be a crime, and before any other portion of the week is set apart for a holiday, let Sunday be made free to enjoyment and recreation. There is the eternal bugbear of religion to oppose this scheme, but that is all. The minister, who under free trade on Sunday would be obliged to close up his business, is in favor of a Sabbath law of protection for sermons and prayers, but why should a few clergymen who have six holidays in the week and only one work-day, be favored against millions of toilers, who work six days in the week and are liable to be arrested if they do not go to church on the seventh day? Not a Saturday half-holiday but a Sunday whole-holiday is the first rational step towards justice to the working-man. There is very little in the average Sunday service that is instructive and nothing that is entertaining, and it is based upon the erroneous notion that man owes something that he knows nothing about, a debt of worship one day in seven. Man’s brain should be emancipated from the superstition that there is a God in the universe that requires him to sacrifice his own good to divine vanity. Work is holier than worship, and to play is better for man than to pray. Man wants leisure to enjoy himself, not to worship God. He can have it when he becomes sensible enough to demand it. THE MOTIVE FOR PREACHING Why does a man enter the Christian ministry? Why do men preach the Christian faith? There is some reason for doing so. What is it? We have been told that the men who adopt the profession of preaching for a living make a sacrifice of personal advantage by doing so; that these men, had they entered any other profession, could not only more readily achieve greatness, but could also make more money. We do not believe it. As a rule, we believe that the men who are getting a living to-day as ministers, earn more money and enjoy more fame, than they could get in any other business or calling. Ministers are not martyrs. That idea needs to be given up. There is another idea that people have entertained too long, and that is, that all the young men who graduate from a divinity school are intellectual giants. Brains are not the capital of the pulpit. We gladly acknowledge the exception to what we have stated as a rule, and are not only willing, but anxious, to testify to the occasional brilliant preacher. We are speaking of the overwhelming majority and not of the conspicuous few. Most men go into the ministry because they think they can get a living more easily by preaching than by doing anything else. The pulpit is founded not on spiritual sands, but on an earthly rock. It is the salary that makes it attractive.