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with a sense of fancied injustice, in the expectation that the surrender of the Sabbath may at last be necessitated by the public safety. We hope that the pulpits of the Church of England will be as untiring in this question as the platforms of infidel meeting-halls; we hope that her ministers will be perpetual witnesses, both in word and deed, against the slanders of their opponents. Above all, we hope that none of them will change sides, even upon this one point of Sunday bands. We regret that so many have done so; not because we are insensible to the grounds which have caused the change, but because this point involves the whole question. It is not merely a question of whether bands are justfiable or no it is a question as to whether the Sabbath is holy, and whether any desecration of it can be right. It may be true that walking in the parks is a healthy thing, and that the bands promote it; but it does not follow that there is nothing better, or that the bands are essential to it. It may be true, in some cases, that the war is not between the parks and the pulpit, but between the parks and the pothouse; but we cannot believe this as by any means a general rule, when we know that the gin-palaces were as full as ever, and that the religious services in the neighbourhood of the bands were nearly deserted. The greater portion of those who were in the parks when the bands were played, were persons who might have been, and, in the majority of instances, who would have been, keeping the Sabbath as God has commanded, and as by His grace we have been able to keep it in England for centuries.

But the chief fact which, we trust, that those who are wavering in the question will bear in mind is, that the Sunday bands do not stand alone. The yielding of this one point would be like the first moving of a floodgate which, when once stirred, is irresistible. As Lord Palmerston wisely observed in the House of Commons, it may seem a slight step in itself, but it is an obvious violation of the existing state of things, and we could not tell whither it would lead. The Anti-Sabbath agitators make no secret of their ultimate objects, nor do they conceal the fact that the questions which they have lately stirred are but preliminary to the final oneIs the English Sabbath to be kept holy or no? If once the law which recognises the obligation of the Sabbath is directly broken by the legislature, those who live by catering for the public amusement will not lose the opportunity, and we shall have the Continental Sunday in England without delay. Let us beware of the slightest bend in this direction; let us pray

God that we may be spared the fearful scenes of Continental Sabbath-breaking, which robs God of His glory and man of his rest.

We are writing now from the Continent, and we cannot but hold up in warning what we witnessed yesterday. It was a Sunday, and, as being the great holiday of the week, was appointed by the French government to be kept in honour of the infant son of Napoleon III. We walked through Paris at midday, but we could not find a single church open. Instead of churchgoers the streets were filled with gaily-dressed people crowding to the theatres, admission to which was, on this occasion, by imperial command, gratuitous. Soon afterwards great numbers of balloons were sent up, and during the whole afternoon the lower class amused themselves with penny shows and dancing booths in one of the large open spaces of the city. At night there was a general illumination, and a public display of fireworks, which attracted, it is calculated, nearly half-a-million onlookers. This is the way in which the French give thanks to God for His "late signal mercies vouchsafed to them;" and this is what it is intended that we should have instead of our days of humble thanksgiving, and the holy calm of our Sabbath services. We earnestly hope that our fellowchurchmen will not, by their divided opinions upon the question, give the present, or any subsequent government, a pretext for receding from their righteous determination to shield us from the curse of the Continent-the want of a day of rest, and above all of a day of prayer.

But as members of the Church of England we have to act another part in this question: we have not merely to endeavour to keep the day legally consecrate, we have also to strive that its consecration may be a blessing to the people at large. This, we think, is the hardest part of our duty: it is easy to clamour about the benefits which the Sabbath brings, it is more difficult to work, with all our energies, that those benefits may result in our individual circles. We must use every possible exertion to make our services less dreary than they sometimes are, and our Sunday schools less wearisome to both teachers and pupils. We cannot always expect men to come to church, or boys to school, if every source of human pleasure is taken away, and every means of human weariness supplied. We speak with especial reference to afternoon services and afternoon sermons. Nothing could well be more dull and uninteresting than the services which we have attended in London on summer afternoons. The

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prayers slovenly read-the sermon, generally on some abstract point of theology, served up under a form wholly unintelligible to the audience; and the attendance as miserably small as could be expected. And similarly with Sunday schools: the rooms themselves have almost invariably been crowded and stifling, the children weary and uncomfortable, the teachers for the most part careless about anything else but getting through their task as soon as possible. The natural consequence is, that the working classes will go anywhere on Sunday afternoons rather than to church, and their children are only too glad when they are old enough to be allowed to leave the Sunday school. It is often so at other periods of the day but while it is so at all we shall have a difficulty in persuading those who frequent the parks that church is a better place for them. We hope that all who have the interests of the Sabbath really at heart, will do their best that the Sabbath and its services may be considered by the working classes as not merely a duty but also a delight.

LORD DALHOUSIE.

INDIA has lost one of her ablest governors in Lord Dalhousie we hardly know which of his predecessors we could place beside him, for none of them has done so much to make our empire in the east a firm and lasting one. His financial and administrative abilities, whether singly or combined, have never yet been equalled by any of the long line of illustrious names who have held the supreme place in India. Our empire there, until within the last ten years, was merely kept up by force; the native powers would easily have driven us from their shores if they could have combined, whilst we should have left behind us scarcely a single monument of our dominon, and certainly none in the affections of the people. Our rule is bad enough now, we know, but Lord Dalhousie has done all in his power to make it otherwise, and the changes which he has set in motion will not be long in altering the whole state of the country. He has given himself up most nobly to the task of amelioration : he has for eight years worked without a day's intermission, until at length all his physical powers have failed him, and sheer fatigue has laid him so prostrate that not long since his life was despaired of. He has now come home for a few years' rest, and we sincerely wish him the repose which he needs, for we see other work for him to do. He is the man, above all others, to whom we must look when the present

Government is too weak to stand. There is hardly a single statesman besides him who can hope to form anything like a permanent Administration, for the leaders of the different parties have tried the experiment in vain, and nearly all others have been irrecoverably stained by the part which they have taken in the war. Lord Dalhousie combines all that we need, both in position and in character. He has not been rendered unpopular by any recent political agitations; he has not acquired any party-odium; he comes before the world with the fame of his governorship reflected brightly upon him, and the belief in his ability undiminished by any secondary considerations. So that his position gives full scope for the unimpeded exercise, as well as the true appreciation, of his talents, and these are of the highest order in every respect. He has the power of forming great schemes, and also of carrying them out; he has unwearied industry, and the habit of close attention to the details as much as to the larger applications of his measures; he has forethought and foresight, the most necessary of all qualifications for a legislator, which give us confidence that his acts are necessary for the future although we cannot see their expediency in the present. He is, in short, an extremely able and vigorous statesman, and the sooner his talents are brought to bear upon our whole home administration the more likely shall we be to avoid those dark social problems which hang so luridly in our horizon.

CONVOCATION.

CONVOCATION has had another deliberative session, at which the conversation degenerated into the twaddle which had always been predicted as the result of a meeting of clergymen. We are sorry that in so long a session nothing of the slightest interest was brought forward, except the case of the Wesleyans in the Upper Chamber. Nothing could be more tedious than the debates on the discipline of the clergy, and nothing could give better grounds for the popular sneer that the clergy are not fit to govern themselves. Certainly the report which was presented was a more feasible scheme than that of the Lord Chancellor, so happily rejected by the House of Lords, but that is not saying much for it. We sincerely trust that Convocation will do something, in a matter of such importance, more worthy of its own high character and more likely to receive the sanction of the Govern

ment.

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We record, with much pain, the manner in which the Upper House entertained the petition, to which we alluded in our last number, for the reconciliation of the Wesleyan body to the Church of England. The Bishop of St. David's took the lead against it, expressing himself extremely indignant that the petitioners had ventured to insinuate that examinations for ordinations were not always so strict as they might be. If the fact had not been notorious, the conduct of the bishop might have been pardonable; but the real state of the case is so well known to all who have to do with it, that we certainly should like to have a more open acknowledgment on his part of the evils which the petitioners deplored. The speech of the Bishop of Exeter was one which is calculated to do lasting harm to the cause of unity and brotherhood: we had almost said that it is as unchristian as it certainly is uncharitable. His lordship said :

"He regarded the history of Wesleyanism as a most marked proof of the extreme danger of the sin of schism. Persons committing themselves to that sin did not know to what lengths they might be carried. The experience of the Church regarding schism had shown that separation always produced heresy, and in no case had this been more strongly proved than in England. He lamented the schism which had been produced by Mr. Wesley, and entertained a feeling of pity for his followers; and if any indication was received that they wished to be received into the Church, he should be most anxious to encourage them. But, until that was the case, it was not a desirable or becoming course for the Church to take, to go begging to those persons and say, 'We are anxious to have you back again; we understand you, that our ordination is not rightly conducted, and in order to satisfy you we will do such and such things. It appeared to him that it would be most improper to take such a course. All he wanted was that the Wesleyans should acknowledge their error, and express a wish to be delivered from it. That must be accompanied with a feeling that their error was a sin. The Church ought to be very cautious how it received them, until they indicated some sense of the condition in which they must be regarded by every faithful member of the Church they were in a state of schism, and therefore in a state of sin.'

Such language as this will certainly never bring the Wesleyans back to our communion, and we cannot cease to regret that it was uttered. However, it will now be our duty more than ever to show by our lives and actions that the Church of England really supplies all those wants which the Wesleyans profess to seek for in vain, and the absence of which led them at first to leave her. We must strive to

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