The Sun.
London, England, 1853-02-10 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, THURSDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 10, 1853.

force men to church, even if they were prevented from
going elsewhere. (Hear, hear.) The opposition of the
publicans was easily understood : no malt liquor was to
be sold in the Crystal Palace. (Cheers.) Hence the
opposition of the great brewers, whose liberality was
such that, while the materials of their manufacture had
fallen 50 per cent., they still exacted the same price from
the working man for his pot of beer. (Hear, hear.)
Such was the intolerance of some of the clergy that
they would not only shut up every railway and
stop the steam-boats, but would hardly allow the sun
to shine if they could help it, and would like to see a
November fog every Sunday. (Cheers and laughter.)
The Rev. John Jordan, vicar of Enstone, in a recent
publication, said that no one ought to walk farther on
Sunday than to church and back. (Laughter.) It was
not by such means that the clergy could win the hearts
of the people—already sufficiently alienated from them.
The great principle of the Anglo-Saxon race was free-
dom, not only of trade, but of conscience ; and the ob-
ject now sought was one means of asserting that free-
dom. (Cheers.)
Mr. MACKAY, bookbinder, seconded the adoption of
the petition. The clergy had never come to the rescue
of the working classes when the oppressor's foot was
upon them. In proof of this, he would refer to the po-
sition of his own trade, and to what had been done with
the binders for the Bible Society. (Hear.) Their wages
had been reduced no less than 30 per cent. (Hear.) If
the clergy were really the friends of the working classes,
they would support the opening of this Sunday
School." (Loud cheers.)
The petition was adopted amidst loud cheering.
The CHAIRMAN said the meeting was one entirely of
working men, at whose cost the theatre had been en-
gaged ; and a subscription would be opened to defray
those expenses. Next day a deputation of working men
would wait on Lord Palmerston, to lay the case before
him. (Cheers.)
On the motion of Mr. NEWTON, the thanks of the
meeting were voted to the chairman.

THE POOR MAIV'S SUNDAY.

(From Eliza Cook's Journal. )

What shall the poor, and not the poor only, but
those who work hard all the week without much chance
of getting a holiday, do on Sunday ? That is a question
which is just now agitating what is called the religious
world and the circle outside it—a question that must soon
practically be settled. It has been raised incidentally by
the !rebuilding at Sydenham of that fairy glasslpalace
which, in 1851, stood in Hyde Park. After serving its
turn as the Palace of Industry, it is to become the Palace
of the People --such a palace as the people never had.
It is to be stored with works of art culled from the
studios of Italy ; with the choicest productions of industry
wherever they are to be found ; with all that can elevate
the taste—much that will increase the knowledge of the
visitors. Debasing associations are to be shut out,tde-
grading habits to be kept at a distance. In the pure air,
in the midst of a beautiful country, surrounded by the
lovely sylvan scenery of a park, the structure is to rise
like some work of the fabled genii of old ; and man,
wearied with toil, and woman, pale with wearing work,
will walk amid the vegetation of foreign lands, listening
to the music of bubbling fountains, which spring upward
to the blue sky, seen through the transparent dome, and
get some glimpses of joy and goodness through the
avenue of the beautiful.
Shall this be done on Sunday ? Those who are con-
cerned in the profits of the undertaking intend to apply
to Parliament for a charter, containing, among other
powers, the authority to open the palace to the Sunday
pleasure seekers, and a loud no" arises from many who
deeni that a desecration of the day of rest. They say
that those who have invested money in the " speculation'
seek to realize profits by drawing man from the house of
God to the house of pleasure, and that they ought not to
be allowed, for the sake of gain, publicly and underlegis-
lative sanction, to divert the institution of the Sabbath
from its proper uses. Taking the objection upon this
the lowest ground upon which it can be put, we are
ready to admit that commercial motives have had a great
deal—not all—to do with the project of opening the
palace on Sunday; but it strikes us that that objection
opens up another and far more important side of the
question. We are not concerned to defend the spirit of
commerce for itself. We do not think that the desire to
heap up wealth is among the noblest of human motives ;
but we cannot help recognising the fact that to the com-
mercial spirit we owe most of the benefits we have, and
so long as society continues in its present state, upon it
we must, to a great extent, rest our hopes of further
progress. -We may regret it, but we cannot shut our
eyes to the truth, that men in the mass will do nothing
for their fellows unless it will pay, and that leads us—
leaving " the speculators" to take care of themselves—
to ask, what does their desire of Sunday opening mean
with reference to the public ? Obviously it means that they
are aware many will come on that day who will not come
if the doors be shut on the Sabbath, for the shillings on
the one hand will be measured, by the people on the other.
That is, no doubt, a correct estimate. Those who know
how busy men, and women too, are on the working days
of the week, how hard they have to struggle during the
hours allotted to labour to keep their places in the world,
how early they must rise and how late bend over their
toil to prevent their being swept away in the current of
life, well know that if the palace be not open on Sunday
not a tenth of those who might visit it many times in a
year would see it once in that space of time.
An eminent divine has lately published a letter, in
which he says that men work too hard, too constantly,
during the week ; that they ought to deduct from their
hours of toil a few for relaxation and pleasure, for the
enjoyment of life. That is, no doubt, true, but the
answer is patent to every one—is it possible ? Work as
hard as they, may, they do not get too much, often not
enough, to procure those comforts which labour ought to
bring, and to support their families as they ought to be
supported. Cheap as food and clothing are, cheaper as
they promise to be, yet men with wives and children, no
matter how industrious, cannot get on without pinching
and scraping, without such shifts as the better-off know
nothing of. The meal does not always come up to the
measure of the appetite ; the clothes are often ragged ;
they cannot command such house-room as gives a fair
chance of health. The pence which ought to go weekly
for education often too greatly reduce the scanty re-
sources of the household to be spared. Few can lay by
for contingences. They must not relax, great as their
exertions are—they must keep up to the mark; and unless
that happens which is not very likely—unless they can
gain in five days what the labour of six fails to provide
them with, or unless employers are inclined to give more
for less work, those who are so situated will see the
Crystal Palace but once or twice in a lifetime, perhaps
not at all. Why, when the Exhibition stood in Hyde-park,
when it furnished the stimulant of being a merely tem-
porary show,—the opportunity of seeing which once
missed could never be regained,—there were thousands
in London who could never give a day to visit it,—re-
moved to Sydenham, with a long prospect of chances
by-and-bye to full desire, and those thousands would be
multiplied by how many ?
It is plain, then, that to be seen by all who:wish to see
it, the Crystal Palace must be open on Sunday ; but then
comes the question, whether there are not higher consi-
derations which demand that it should be :closed although
the poor never see it at all. If we had only the maw-
worms and canters, the pharisees of Christianity,' to deal
with, we should not think it worth while to waste a word
upon them. They might turn up their eyes and vent
pious ejaculations, and prophecy of coming judgments
for the sin of Sabbath-breaking, We should have no
fear either of their feelings being hurt, or of the glass
fabric being hurt by an expressly-commissioned thunder-
bolt in answer to their prayers. But there are fervent,
pious, conscientious men engaged in the attempt to re-
strict the pleasures of the people • men who believe that
they are doing God's service by nuking others go to a
place of worship for sheer lack of other Sunday occupa-
tion. However we differ from their scruples, we must
accord them the'respect which sincerity always demands ;
and of them we beg attention to one or two thoughts
upon the subject.

We do not in the efficacy or worth of enforced
piety, whether enacted by laws to make men go to
church, or by the refusal of laws permitting them to go
elsewhere. We do not believe the real religionists set
any more store by that sort of devotion than we do. We
all, at least all that are worth thinking of or appealing
to, hold with Hood that—

Spontaneously to God should tend the soul
Like the magnetic needle to the pole.
And without that spontaneity the appearance of worship
is worse than naught. So that if the churches and chapels
would be filled with worshippers because on the leisure
day the Crystal Palace was hermetically sealed, no good
would be done. Bui then it is assumed that those who do
go to church now would not if the palace were opened.
Avoiding the holy fane, it is said they would troop off to
Sydenham out of love for the profane. We wonder that
the clergy, whose voices are the loudest in denunciation of
the proposed innovation, can put forward an argument so
degrading to themselves and so slighting to their mission.
Ask them who they are and what they have to do, and
they will tell you that they are the ministers of the
Supreme, engaged in the most holy cause upon earth,
cultivating the highest aspirations, and appealing to the
most powerful motives which can find place in the heart
or sway the human mind. What, then, do they pretend?
Do they admit that thus situated, thus invested with power
of the most awful character, they can be defeated by a
glass palace and works of art ? Surely they are putting
too low an estimate upon themselves, paying themselves
to ill a compliment ; or if it be the truth ; if, indeed,
they have sunk so low from their high estate ; if they
cannot make the word of God work as powerfully upon
minds as the hope of seeing statues and hearing foun-
tains play, surely that ought to prompt self-examination,
ought to point to some deficiency in that earnestness,
some lack of that power, some want of that fitness necea-

sary for their office, which calls upon them to exalt the
spiritual over the temporal. Why, if their assertion be
true, if they cannot hold their own followers, cannot re-
tain from one more pleasure those who are already sin-
cere, what hope can they have of winning estranged
souls, though all the world should crowd to public
prayer ? Our own opinion is more just to them than
theirs. We do not believe that they would lose one true
worshipper.
But many people would go to the Crystal Palace.
Assuredly they would, or why should it be opened. Those
who would go, however, are mainly those who go else-
where now. Is it supposed that the clergy have dominion
over the mass of the London population ? If any one
thinks so, let him go to the steam-boat wharfs on Sunday,
and see the packets swaying too and fro with their
overloads to Greenwich or Gravesend, Richmond or
Cremorne ; let him go to the railway stations, and notice
the thousands who swarm out of the dusty city for a
breath of pure air; let him go to the suburban tea-gardens
and calculate the consumption of liquors there ; let him
stroll along any of the great highways, north, east, south,
or west, and look at the road filled with vehicles, from
the humble donkey-cart upward, while dusty pedestrians
swarm theikide walks. These are people who habitually