None of our Sunday Societies or Sunday Leagues seem ever to have thought of the advantages of advocating as I have long done—two Sundays—a Devotional Sunday and a Secular Sunday. The advocacy of two Sundays would put an end to the fear or pretence that anybody wants to destroy the one we have.
The Policy of a Second Sunday is a necessity.
It would put an end to the belief that the working classes are mad, and not content with working six days want to work on the seventh.
It would preserve the present Sunday as a day of real rest and devotion. The one Sunday we now have is neither one thing nor the other. Its insufficiency for rest prevents it being an honest day of devotion. Proper recreation is out of the question. There is too little time for excursions out of town on the Saturday half-day holiday. Imprisonment in town irritates rather than refreshes—mere rest is not recreation.
     "A want of occupation gives no rest
     A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."
Those who would provide recreation in the country find it not worth while for the precarious chance of half-day visitors. On a Secular Sunday recreation would be organised and be more self-respecting than it now can be.
1. It would conduce to the public health. The manufacturing towns of England are mostly pandemoniums of smoke or blast-furnace fumes. The winds of heaven cannot clear them away in one day—less than forty-eight hours of cessation of fire and fume would not render the ai............