The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-06-05 00:00:00

THE SUNDAY SOCIETY.

In London, on Saturday, the Earl of Dunraven,
president of the Sunday Society—which was formed
to obtain the opening of museums, art galleries,
libraries, and gardens on Sundays—took the chair on
Saturday at the fifth public annual meeting of its sup-
porters in the large hall of Freemason's Tavern.
Among those present were Lard Powerscourt, Sir
Henry Thompson, Sir Arthur Hobhouse, Mr. P. A.
Taylor' M.P., Major Noel, the Rev. Canon Shuttle-
worth, Professor C. J. Plumptre, the Rev. Dr. Stanton,
of Cirencester, the Rev. C. Voysey, Mr. H. J. Freeland,
Professor Corfield, Mr. Hancock, Mr. Frank Dicksee,
Dr. Wild, Mr. J. Comyns Carr, director of the
Grosvenor Gallery, and Mr. Mark H. Judge, hon.
secretary of the society. There were many ladies
present.
The secretary read a report on the progress of the
society, and, referring to the effect the general election
might have upon this movement, said the result of
the election could not be better described than in the
words of the committee of the Lord's Day Observance
Society, who, in a letter just issued to their members,
said:—
_ _ _

"A crisis may be expected in the struggle over the Sunday
opening of museums and art galleries. Seven members of
the new Cabinet have voted for the Sunday opening of
museums, while only four have voted against the opening.
Of the whole Ministry thirteen are avowedly in favour of
opening and but seven pledged against it. Of the other four-
teen who are pledged to neither way it may be feared that
a majority are not friendly to the Lord's Day (in a Sabba-
tarian sense). The probability is that in the Ministry we
(the Sabbatarians) may reckon on twenty-two unfriendly
votes to twelve on our side. Of the 229 members of the
Lower House who voted in 1877 on our (the Sabbatarian)
side against the Sunday opening of museums only 127 have
seats in this Parliament."

Lord Dunraven, in his address as president, spoke
first of the progress which had been made since the
last meeting. By the kindness of Sir Coutts Lindsay
the Grosvenor Gallery was opened on two Sundays in
the summer and on two Sundays in the winter, and
about 6,000 persons visited the gallery on these
occasions. Other exhibitions held during the year
had been attended by many. The principles advo-
cated by this society were spreading rapidly over the
country. In Manchester the Royal Institution was
opened on 11 Sundays and visited by 51,000 people,
and in the various libraries to which the pßblic had
access on Sunday in that city there were 125,000
readers during the year. There was nothing so
hard to overcome as religious scruples and,
after all, the religious objection was the only
thing worth considering. The society did not want
people to work on Sunday. Their efforts were
in a totally opposite direction. As to the Continental
Sabbath, there was nothing whatever in the feelings
and characteristics of the English people that was
likely to lead them to adopt the habits and customs
of foreign nations in that respect. On the contrary,
the growing tendency in England was for shorter
hours of labour' and there was not the slightest
danger that any British workman would make a bad
use of any liberty that was given him for recreation
on a Sunday or would abuse that liberty by desiring
to pursue his ordinary avocations on that day. As
to emptying churches, the idea was ridiculous.
Would not those who had learnt to spend their
holidays rationally and intelligently be in a fitter
state of mind to enter churches than those who spend
their Sundays wandering aimlessly about dirty streets
or lounging outside public-house doors when the
hour of opening arrived, immediately seeking in
the excitement of drink that change of thouOt
and forgetfulness of troubles and worldly cares which
this society would offer by perfectiy innocent and
legitimate means To say that the opening of such
buildings as the British Museum would lead the work-
ing classes or any class to clamour for the opening of
music-halls was to insult the intelligence of those
classes. The religious objection was founded on the
unshaken supposition of the identity of the Christian
Sunday with the Jewish Sabbath and upon a false
estimate of the real nature of both institutions. Why
force upon us the law of Moses on a single point?
Endeavouring to carry out the Mosaic laws and in-
stitutions in the present day would lead us into
all kinds of absurdities and impossible positions.
How would Moses have dealt with the seventh day if
some of his people had resided on the other side of the
world? It might be a sin for a man to send on Sunday.
a telegram from London which a man in San Francisco
might innocently receive because it would reach him on
Saturday night. Dealing next with the teaching of the
early Christian Church and of the Reformers, he claimed
Luther, Calvin, and Melancthon as approving in.
principle such freedom as that which this society con-
tended for. In conclusion, he said that our bodies
were the subject of much thought in Parliament. We
legislated to secure as large a measure of bodily and
creature comforts as possible, but too little was
thought of nourishment and refreshment for the mind.
Cheap luxuries did not constitute the sum and sub-
stance of human happiness. A man soured, dreary,
disappointed by a life of toil unenlivened by
rational enjoyment on his weekly holiday, his dis-
content perhaps intensified by a holiday devoted to
coarse enjoyment or dissipation, would not be
made a happy man by free sugar or cheap
tea. He thought it would be well not to push the
matter in Parliament this year. The Session was short,
and there was much business to be got through—
among other measures, he believed a Burials Bill. He
hoped that measure would pass, and when it had
passed, and when a sense of justice allowed Noncon-
formists to take their long rest in their own parish
churchyards, to which as Englishmen they had a right,
he trusted that they, in their turn, would have enough
sense of justice to cease from opposing a measure
which would give their countrymen the opportunity
of a little rest in those public buildings to which as
Englishmen they also had a right.
Resolutions approving the objects of the society
were moved and supported by Mr. P. A. Taylor,
M.P., Lord Powerscourt, Mr. J. Comyns Carr, Pro-
fessor C. J. Plumptre (who read a paper on one of the
resolutions by Professor J. R. Seeley, of Cambridge),
and the Rev. Canon Shuttleworth.

The Times of Tuesday had the following leader on
the above proceedings of the Sunday Society:—

The aims and wishes of the society are sufficiently ex-
plained in the temperate and carefully measured speech of
the President, Lord Dunraven. There is no desire on the
part of the members of the society to interfere with the duo
observance of Sunday as a religious day or as a day of rest.
What they do seek is to give encouragement to its more
decent observance in both respects. The opening of muse-
ums and picture-galleries and libraries, and of such like
places of instructive amusement, would, Lord Dunraven
argues, not militate in any way with the most
strict notions as to the manner in which Sunday ought to
be kept. The practical choice is not between amusement
and religion, but between amusement of an elevating and of
a debasing kind—not between the picture-gallery and the
church, but between the picture-gallery and the public-house.
If the picture-galleries were opened, there is no reason to
suppose the churches would be at all less well attended
than they are now. The day is long enough for both, and it
would probably be divided between both. The one way of
passing the time is in no sense incongruous with
the other. But if some few persons could be at-
tracted away from the throng of loungers outside
the public-house door, the gain would be beyond all ques-
tion. Those who do not go to church now would be neither
more nor less likely to go to church if the British Museum
and the National Gallery were thrown open for them. But
there is all the difference in the world between the kind of
attraction offered to them then and now. If Sunday is to
be a mere holiday, it is better that it should be passed
in looking at the great works of nature and of art
than in the swilling of beer and in the gossip of
the public-house taproom. Its character as a day of
rest would be obviously more preserved. Which,
It may be asked, would be the more refreshed for the work
of the coming week, and the more likely to pass the coming
week decently, the man who had had a Sunday of rational
enjoyment in which his wife and family could accompany
him, or the man who had done nothing during the day except
loiter about the streets, or wait doggedly until the public-
house door was open, and had given up every available hour
afterwards to an uninterrupted course of drink? Church
first and a visit to the museum afterwards would
be a division of the day which many would be found to
choose. But where the public-house is the rival to the church,
it will be pretty certain to claim the whole man and the
whole day, and, further, to project its bad shadow well on-
ward into the week. It is nothing to the purpose that the
ledavthe e
tphiectiu.erme-agthalldeerryagwothueldy
muldan
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0-cnhlayrtmheofbetislteannidusfyuo
are. The best in such a case does not stand for any fixed
number incapable of being added to. It might be small at '
first, but it would extend by degrees, and might go on ex-
tending until it had taken in all but the desperate sots and
drunkards for whom nothing could be done, and to whom the
world of ideas which either church or museum could present
would be about equally dismal and unintelligible.
Of the objectors on religious or social grounds to the Sun-
day opening of places of public amusement we would speak
with tenderness and with respect. We do not suppose, how-
ever, that very many of them can feel towards the proposals
of the Sunday Society any strong dislike on their own ac-
count. What they do dislike are the consequences which
they believe to be involved by the admission they are asked
to make. Their fear is that the first step in such a matter
would not be the only step; that the English Sunday would
cease presently to be what it is for anybody, and that it
would grow to be like that bugbear of timid Sabbatarians,
the Continental Sunday. Now, Sabbatarianism, what- ,
ever may be urged against it in its extreme form, does '
certainly stand well in the way of a change so undesirable as
this. It asserts for the working man the right to one day in
the week in which he shall have his time to himself, and
which law and custom shall unite in preventing his employer
from taking from him. What use the working man may
please to make of the day thus secured to him is, it may be
urged, his own affair. The great point is that the choice
shall be kept open for him, and that he shall not be forced
to labour on the one day on which, by human or by divine
law, the original curse has been suspended. Moreover, if a
Sunday given up to work would be undesirable a Sunday
given up to ordinary amusements would be scarcely
less so. To have theatres and music-halls and dancing-halls
and racecourses open on a Sunday would be a change for the
worse in the view of many who did not feel it as a profanation.
Now, we will say at once that if opening museums and such
like places on Sunday were likely to lead to the dreaded fur-
ther movements in the direction of either work or play, we
would join heartily with ts opponents. But we doubt
the probability, almost the possibility, that it could have
such a result as this. Where could we look for ,the ad-
are afraid of? The members of the Sunday Society may be
vocates of the transformation which good Sabbatarians
taken to mean what they say, and they pronounce against it
in no doubtful words. But if the members of the Sunday
Society find it hard to carry their own moderate measure of
reform, we may judge how impracticable would be the at-
tempt to do what the Sunday Society and the Lord's Day
Observance Society would oppose with almost equal zeal.
No section of the English world large enough to be worth
consideringwould be in favour of it. We may add, further,
that if a first step is a surrender of the whole position,
the battle is already lost. Hampton Court is open to visitors
on Sunday, and we are not aware of any feeling on
the part of the public that Hampton Court ought to be
closed. What the Sunday Society aims at is that persons
who cannot afford a journey to the Hampton Court picture-
galleries, or who may be precluded by bad weather from
tda opennoi dud ebsti
it
uavwtrh who will wtl
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elnvi
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esk take
visited
drnadnabcyyhse advantagessiltne,
taking it, shall have nearer home the kind of enjoyment
which Hampton Court offers them. That there are multi-
, persons. The
Institutionr
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libraries in the same city had last year no less than
125,000 Sunday readers, or, in other words, something like a
quarter of the entire population of Manchester and Salford
together. If Londoners, therefore, had the same chance
they might be expected to avail themselves of it in numbers
tenfold those which Manchester has had to show. Some
extra Sunday work would be thus involved, but it
would be very little, it would touch
very few, and
those few might be compensated for taking their turn at
it. The privilege would be felt by an incomparably
larger class ; nor is there ally good reason to fear that
it would be made a precedent for something else not at all
like it, and which no one at the present moment is either
asking for or wishing for. That a thing admittedly good in
itself may PossiblY lead to something else admittedly bad,
and that it is therefore not to be done, is an argument of
' very slender force. If it is consistently urged, the reductio
ad absurdum is soon seen to be fatal to it; and if it is not
consistently urged, it sufficiently refutes itself.
There are great names of reformers and religious kali
to which Lord Dunravell appealtin support of tile gut
- Society's views. ads WilieePPola to OA feelings of En gib

men as safeguards against any systematic abuse of the liberty
he is arguing for is of even greater force. If the kind of re-
straints which Sunday imposes were felt impatiently by all
classes, if there were a general desire to make Sunday
either a working-day or a day of boisterous amuse-
ment, it might be pleaded with some reason that
any change was unsafe, and that it would be better
to keep exactly to our present rules, even if they are not
altogether perfect. But the danger is wholly imaginary.
The modern working man can seldom be induced to labour
for even six days in the week. That he would readily be
brought to labour for the whole seven days is simply a gra-
tuitous notion out of all agreement with facts. A day of
rest once in each week has been found by experience to
accord very well with man's wants and wishes. If some
Continental nations have not continued to enjoy this on
any one stated day, they have had a set-elf in the various
fetes and holidays which the calendar of their Church has
set apart for them. They are beginning now to come back to
the older rule, for an older rule it is—older even than the
religion which is supposed to sanction it. In this country
least of all can there be any fear that it will be forgotten;
nor do we see how shutting up places of quiet and thought-
ful amusement and leaving publichouses open can be termed
in auy intelligible sense paying honour to the Lord's Day