but too
well. How little opportunity the average hand-worker, or his wife, has
of eating of any tree of knowledge, save of the very basest kind, is but
too palpable. We are mending, thank God, in this respect. Free
libraries and museums have sprung up of late in other cities beside
London. God's blessing rest upon them all. And the Crystal Palace, and
still later, the Bethnal Green Museum, have been, I believe, of far more
use than many average sermons and lectures from many average orators.

But are we not still far behind the old Greeks, and the Romans of the
Empire likewise, in the amount of amusement and instruction, and even of
shelter, which we provide for the people? Recollect the--to
me--disgraceful fact; that there is not, as far as I am aware, throughout
the whole of London, a single portico or other covered place, in which
the people can take refuge during a shower: and this in the climate of
England! Where they do take refuge on a wet day the publican knows but
too well; as he knows also where thousands of the lower classes, simply
for want of any other place to be in, save their own sordid dwellings,
spend as much as they are permitted of the Sabbath day. Let us put down
"Sunday drinking" by all means, if we can. But let us remember that by
closing the public-house on Sunday, we prevent no man or woman from
carrying home as much poison as they choose on Saturday night, to
brutalise themselves therewith, perhaps for eight-and-forty hours. And
let us see--in the name of Him who said that He had made the Sabbath for
man, and not man for the Sabbath--let us see, I say, if we cannot do
something to prevent the townsman's Sabbath being, not a day of rest, but
a day of mere idleness; the day of most temptation, because of most
dulness, of the whole seven.

And here, perhaps, some sweet soul may look up reprovingly and say--He
talks of rest. Does he forget, and would he have the working man forget,
that all these outward palliatives will never touch the seat of the
disease, the unrest of the soul within? Does he forget, and would he
have the working man forget, who it was who said--who only has the right
to say--"Come unto Me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will
give you rest"? Ah no, sweet soul. I know your words are true. I know
that what we all want is inward rest; rest of heart and brain; the calm,
strong, self-contained, self-denying character; which needs no
stimulants, for it ha