selves all that we propose for the household do not press us, it is of little use to inquire further.

I. There must, of course, be for the hallowing of the Sabbath in the family, as well as out of the family, a refraining from work. It must be seen there that all the workers, so far as possible, rest from labor, cease from their ordinary occupation. This must not be a transfer of the business from the office and the field to the privacy of the home. It is not ceasing from labor to stay in the house, instead of going to the counting-room or the shop, and push forward our business enterprises by letterwriting, posting books, and sifting estimates and calculations. This is to bring the world into the very scene of which we are asking, How shall we keep the Sabbath then? It is invading the sanctuary of the home with what doesn't belong there on any day of the week. A business man ought to leave his knit brow and corrugated face behind him in the workshop, if he can, whenever he comes in across the doorstep of his house; let him go to his wareroom and on 'Change a business man, with all his problems working in the lines about his eyes and lips, but let him come into the family a domestic man, his pack of worldly care and harness of worldly toil depart at the door or further off, and the sunshine of love and joy shining on his countenance. He wants his hands now, not to strike a strong stroke in the earth, or on the anvil, or at trade, but to meet soft and warm palms, to catch and toss aloft his babe. His grim lips may relax for smiles and kisses and gentle words. He comes in to cheer and be cheered as a man who has not only a brain to contrive,

a skill to execute, a will to hold his own in the world's competitions, but a heart with which to cherish dear ones, affections to come forth into refreshing play. It is a mistake and an impertinence on any day of the six to transfer the shop to the fireside. It is all this, and a crime beside, to make the transfer on the Lord's day.

As it isn't quite respectable on Sunday to strip the arm for downright work, there are not a few who give up the outward activities of their daily industry and keep on planning. There are plans enough laid on the Sabbath for myriads of fortunes, if God did not cross them, or give them a malign success, plans for business, plans for travel, plans for pleasure, plans for every pursuit and hope of heart and life. The Sabbath is of all days, with multitudes, the day for planning. And this planning fills the walls of many a home with its busy talk, through almost all the hours of the family intercourse. It makes the changeful interest of conversation whenever the silence is broken. It leads out all the listeners and all the partakers into the dust and heat and glare of life again. They sit together at the family board; the light in the room is perhaps subdued from yesterday's; to the neighbors they seem to be within keeping Sabbath. But they are not within. They are out, going to and fro on free excursion trains, loading and unloading ships, ransacking foreign markets, buying, fashioning, and making up the costume for the season, and settling mercantile and social accounts. I believe it is a great and unceasing desecration of the Sabbath in many a family, this gabbling about what shall be done on the morrow. There can be no household Sabbath where this profanation is admitted.

It has been well remarked that to rest from work in hallowing the Sabbath is for each worker to cease from that which is his own employment; that is, each worker is to cease to be a worker in that matter. But wherein is he a worker? What constitutes him the man he is in that department of human industry? Is he a worker only with his two hands, or with the loins of his back? Does he not bring thought and purpose and arrangement and design into his tasks? Is he not a worker with his invention, his experience, his judgment, his sagacity? But he is to cease to be a worker in his work. Then, in that calling, he must cease from brain work as well as from hand work, cease from planning as well as achieving, and rest his mind as well as his loins from that use of his faculties with which he fills other days.

The housework itself, that which cannot altogether pause on any day of the year, for any call, human or divine, ought to be restricted and simplified. Every housekeeper knows how to prepare for days of special preoccupancy that interdicts careful attention to the domestic management. Such days occur not unfrequently in the progress of secular time, and are arranged for, without much embarrassment. This precast may be exercised as well for the Sabbath, that, as toiling manhood from without comes in to rest, toiling womanhood within may sit down in the same domestic quiet, with few calls to break in upon the calm, and plead for time and thought and strength in household tasks.

I know that the wives and daughters of many homes are unvisited by any such disturbing summons.

Are

there not the servants? If the table is to be graced with the presence of Sabbath guests, and a sumptuous banquet is desired, or if we choose ourselves to fare more luxuriously than yesterday because we have more leisure to sit and enjoy the dainties, or because the family circle is more full, or because we shall not be driven forth when the repast is ended to intercourse in which all our keenness and alertness will be in demand, but may drowse our dulness away, if we so please, in extension chairs, or on pillowed couches, the special provision need not greatly tax our personal attention or activity. All that we have to do is to give our orders. The cook will serve up at the appointed time our favorite dishes; the parlor girl and butler will see that the family style suffers no discredit. All will go well. We pay good salaries, and can rely upon having our directions faithfully and gracefully complied with. We need not stay to superintend; we can sit through the morning in our pew, cool and untroubled, our thoughts drifting away occasionally to the entertainment in progress, but not in distressing anxiety, rather in pleasant anticipation; and in decorous observance we and our favored children keep Sabbath ordinances. Meanwhile at home the work goes bravely on. The kitchen is a laboratory of art. The converging processes that are to meet in the issue are put in motion, each in its time and at its proportioned rate of advance. Fires glow, meats steam, savory clouds thicken, and the grand success looms clearly up through all the apparent disorder.

But who are these creatures on whom the heat and the

burden are rolled? Are they machines, automatons? Ah, no. They are men and women, beings with souls, souls as deathless as those that gave out the order for the dinner, and then rolled at leisure to the house of God, with the same large capacities, the same immortal destinies pending.

--

Oh, the unutterable meanness of these family entertainments! The board is covered with generous cheer; but they are not generous souls that preside. They have been somewhat thoughtful, they fancy, for their own spiritual health; they have robbed the cheaper soul, which they have kept grinding in the prison-house of toil, of its Sabbath sunshine, God's house, Jesus' gospel. They themselves must be edified by the formulas of worship, prayers, music, preaching, and they must dine well. As for the Irish help, why, it wont make much difference with them, and they are well paid, and like the place too well to leave, and really it is somewhat of a pity, but the thing can't be managed in any other way, and this is the day when these friends can best of all favor them, and so there is nothing to be said. No, "nothing to be said" just now; but there will be something to be said by and by. This is an honorable family, - by courtesy a Christian family, but I know that the servants' wages there are paid, if not in uncurrent money, in money which the banks wont receive on deposit! This family would insist on being taken to heaven, when the time can't be postponed, in the family coach, though drivers and footmen had to take back the carriage, and thus be themselves shut out!