TUESDAY, 23rd OCTOBER, 1888.

EVENING SESSION.

The VENERABLE ARCHDEACON EVANS, M.A., Montreal, occupied the chair.

Hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers" was sung, after which REV. JOHN LATHERN, D.D., of Halifax, N.S., offered up prayer. TOPIC: NATIONAL PERILS.

CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS.

VEN. ARCHDEACON EVANS, M.A., MONTREAL.

My Christian Brethren.—I very fully appreciate the high honor which has been put upon me by the brethren of the Montreal branch of the Evangelical Alliance, in asking me to preside at this noble and all-important meeting to-night. I conceive, however, that the great requisites for an efficient chairman are that he should look as wise and say as little as possible. On this line do I purpose to endeavor to fill my position as chairman this evening. Weighty and important subjects are before us this evening, and glancing at names, we are thankful to say they rest in strong and sufficient hands, and we believe at the outset that they will be dealt with in a masterly and all-efficient manner. Let me say by way of preface, we are dealing as Christian men and ministers with national, and, what I may call, patriotic subjects, and we may lay it down as a scriptural principle, that where true religion as it is in Christ runs in the soul, then, by implication we may expect to find the best and most loyal citizens in the highest and best of senses. God has inseparably joined himself with the spirit of true patriotism and national loyalty.-" Fear God and honor the King." this spirit I trust we shall approach the considerations of this evening. We are, for the time being, as it were, in the position of patriots and statesmen, in the truest and most loyal sense. We are going to deal with the enemies of our country,-two of them, Sabbath Desecration and Intemperance—and you will readily

In

agree, the strongest chains the enemy of souls has forged for the enslavement and destruction of humanity. Our prayer is, that, guided by the Holy Spirit, there may be brought to bear upon these all-important subjects to-night, the truth of God, the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. We pray that in the meek and lowly spirit of the crucified Redeemer, thoughts and ideas may come before us so that every Christian man and every Christian woman in this assembly may go away quickened and stimulated, and resolve by the help of God, and in the spirit of consecration, which well becomes the disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified, that they will fight against the enemies of fatherland, so that our land may become a Christian land, and our people a people of God. The Rev. John Hall, of New York, who is to deal with one of those subjects, needs no introduction to a Canadian audience.

SABBATH DESECRATION.

REV. JOHN HALL, D.D., NEW YORK.

Brethren.—I do not intend to speak to-night in any oratorical fulness. I wish to speak in a conversational way, suggesting thoughts rather than illustrating them, and I have no doubt that the gentlemen who have the management of the press in charge, will be able to give the rhetorical finish. There are a few cautionary statements I would make at the beginning. I would not have it supposed that the Sabbath has a lower place in the view of Christendom than it used to have. Those who talk to you about the old English and Scotch Sabbaths, and those who remember descriptions of them may be easily tempted into that view. In point of fact, there is a larger proportion of our race keeping the Sabbath than at any former time, but we have real difficulties, and we have to be put on our guard against them. Some years ago, I was in a small country town not very far from Birmingham, in England. An intelligent old inhabitant of the town took me to what was the market place, and described to me what some of the living residents remembered, when the people of the town and neighborhood used to gather in the market-place on Sunday afternoon and witness the bull fights. We have not yet gone so far back as that, thank God, and I do not think we should be discouraged. The other cautionary statement:-there is a tendency in our time to divide, a tendency to offer and adopt an elective

system of virtue and vice. Vice is divided among persons and societies, and they take their particular vices and dwell upon them. I dare say it is good that there should be a division of labor, but I hope we shall not fall into that practice. Make the tree good and the fruit will be good. We should live soberly, righteously, and godly in all things. Let it not be said of any of us—“ He has no religion in particular, but he is down upon the drink.” "He has not any religion particularly, but he is a great Sabbatarian." We have to take virtue as a whole, and stand up for it and promote it, and vice as a whole, and fight against it upon God's plan. Now, as to the Sabbath itself :—

If anything is to be carried in a great community it must have a lodgment in the understanding of the people that make up the community, and what I aim at doing to-night is to recall to those who are gathered together here the grounds upon which we stand up for the day of weekly rest. I would like young men, for example, and maidens who are here to know that it is not from simple sentiment, nor from mere fashion, nor from mere tradition, but, as the lawyers say, for cause. It is because there are reasons that we can explain, maintain and defend, that we, remember the Sabbath, the Lord's day, to keep it holy.

If we had only to live in this present world and there were no existence beyond it, this matter would be of less importance than it is; but you and I know that there is another world into which we go, and which is eternal, a world of joy or of woe. We are in danger of forgetting that great fact. Anything, any institution that brings it to our thoughts and keeps it before our minds is a friend to us and we ought to be friends to it.

There are many things that tempt us to forget this great fact. There is the large class of people who have to work that they may live, and I for one have the deepest sympathy with those who have thus to work, sometimes under great disadvantages; and there is the other class which does not need to work in order to live, which is frequently restless and thoughtless, which is occupied by day and by night, and by night more particularly, and which is tempted in the nature of the case to put away from itself that great concern that ought to be present to the mind of every one of us. The weekly day of rest recalls that great immortality to both classes, and because it does, it is our friend, and we should stand by our friend, particularly if there be enemies; and there are enemies in this particular case. It is easy to enumerate a few of them. There is avarice. Avarice is not a virtue. It means greed, when we take an old Saxon word for it. We get it from the Latin word "to covet." Avarice is greed of money, akin

to covetousness, and employers, companies and individuals frequently yield to the temptation of avarice, and insist upon those whom they employ working in such ways that they cannot perpetuate and enjoy this day of rest. We need to deal with this

enemy of the day.

There is another class of enemies to this day that you could not place in any way among the workers, whom you might describe as caterers to public pleasure, givers of entertainments and enjoyments, and who frequently profess the greatest public spirit, and claim to themselves to be in some sense the considerate benefactors of the hard working people of the community, and who sneer now and then at the classes who deprecate their proceedings in relation to this day. Where is the public spirit of these people? Where is their benevolence? Where are the institutions that they found for the benefit of the rich or the poor? What aim is there impelling them but the aim of making so much money, and how can they, seeing they only go into benevolence, as a rule when it can advertise their money-making schemes, assume the air of lofty scorn that they sometimes do to that great portion of the community we call the Church, which has done whatever has been done for the relief of misery, and for the lifting up of the helpless and the wretched among us?

In the third place, there is an enemy to this day in the natural enmity of the human heart against our holy Creator. That enmity speaks in a thousand ways. Why should men lecture upon Infidelity? Why should they take pains to prove that we need not have religious feelings and convictions ? What harm does Christianity do in this world? Is it not in some instances to be suspected that they are going upon the plan that the poet has described, whistling to keep their courage clear, talking loudly and blustering that they may silence the voice of conscience within them, and encourage themselves and one another in their hostility to Him whose holiness they hate with a deep and real hatred ? These are the enemies.

Now we should be prepared to stand by our friends as against these enemies, and one of the ways in which we can do it is to have distinct and definite convictions as to the grounds upon which we stand up for the day of rest; such convictions that a young man, for example, in a factory could tell them to his associates, such convictions that a young woman in a store could tell them to her friends so that they would see that she understood, and that they would carry away a distinct thought upon the matter. That is what I would like to give to you on this occasion.

Then we stand up for this day of rest because it dates back to the origin of the race, and is our Creator's appointment. "Oh, yes," says somebody, "now he is going to the Old Testament; have we not had enough of that? We are here in the 19th Century and under the New Testament." I do not want you to think meanly, dear friends, of the Old Testament. It is not obsolete. Take all the great institutions that you have and you will find that the elements of them are in that Old Testament and presented in such a way as to prepare us for receiving and intelligently accepting them. (1), The family, (2), the State, (3), the Nation, (4), Marriage, (5), the rights of property, the Church, the Officers of the Church; these, and very many other institutions of the like kind that we have among us have their germs in the Old Testament, and that man mistakes his Bible gravely who supposes he can understand the New if he ignores the Old. A pupil must learn something about axioms and definitions before he understands the 3rd book of Euclid.

"God rested the seventh day." "Why? "Why?" says somebody, "Was he weary, was he tired?" The strongest human minds do not rest only because they are tired. What is contemplation? What is reflection ? What makes the strongest man reflective? What is reflection? Bending the mind back upon the past. So He rested for an example to you and me, and for the framing of an institution that would be good for His creatures, not the intelligent only, but the unintelligent creation that He had called into being. He rested on that day from all his work, and there are a good many things in the history of the human race outside of the Mosaic narrative that go to corroborate the impression we have touching that matter..

What a curious thing it is that the number 7, for example, should be so generally a significant number as it has become. could understand the number 5 becoming a typical number; we have five fingers, ten fingers, five toes, ten toes, but as to the number 7 there is nothing of that suggestive nature about it. We have the Seven Ages and the Seven Heavens and the Seven Wise Men and the Seven Wonders of the world. We have a great number of these sevens spread by tradition all over the race wherever it has gone, just as we have the week. Tradition gives unconscious but mighty corroborative arguments in favor of that simple narrative that we have in the opening book of Genesis. Nor are we left to those strong probabilities. Somebody may say, "Ah, that resting and that suggestion of a day of rest for me—that is due altogether to Moses and is not to be found anywhere until you come to Sinai, and the ages after Sinai." History