tant. At its summit there is an octagonal Corinthian work, such as surmounts the tower of the present St. Dunstan's, in the Strand. In this grand edifice Cotton preached most assiduously for somewhat more than twice seven years, and wrought a wonderful improvement in the moral and spiritual condition of the town. His influence in relation to everything concerning the welfare of the place was extraordinary. But he shared to the full in the Puritan feeling opposed to the Popish ceremonies which had been retained in the English Church, and dispensed with the obnoxious forms very freely in conducting the public worship. His people went with him in these innovations. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, his diocesan, was his friend, and was not disposed to molest him. But as Williams lost favour at court, and Laud grew in power, it became evident that his Nonconformity must soon bring him into serious difficulties. In the meanwhile, like many others, Cotton had passed the line of Puritanism, and had become ripe for separation in the Congregational way. He came to see that a Church should consist of spiritual persons, and that every such Church should be self-governed. When Winthorp and his associates were about to sail from Southampton, in 1629, that they might contribute their potent influence towards the establishment of a New Boston in New England, Cotton made a journey from Lincolnshire to Hampshire, not a slight thing in those days, -to bid them God-speed. On his return, attempts were made to arrest him by the officers of the Court of High Commission. Happily they did not succeed; and after being concealed for a while by friends in London, the fugitive got to sea, and changed his vicarage in the Old Boston of Old England for a rude dwelling in the New Boston of New England. That magnificent church too, in which he had so often officiated amidst his thousands of hearers, was exchanged for a mud-wall building, less than twenty feet high, covered with thatch, with its plain cottage doorway, and its three gunhole windows on either side! But such are the sacrifices which the human spirit can make when smitten with the beauty of some great principle. As I stood in the church at Boston, I could not but remember that those were the old walls, the massy pillars, and the lofty roof which had often reverberated to the full and eloquent voice of John Cotton. There is no transept to the church, but near the tower there is a lateral building, commonly described as John Cotton's chapel. Some years since it had fallen into much decay, when some of Cotton's descendants in New England, and other friends there, contributed somewhat more than two thousand dollars to repair and restore this chapel, introducing a beautiful stained glass window, and fixing an inscription in monumental brass upon the wall. The inscription was written by the Hon. Edward Everett, U.S. It is in Latin, but the following is the literal translation : "In perpetual remembrance of John Cotton, who, during the reigns of James and Charles, was for many years a grave, skilful, learned, and laborious vicar of this church. Afterwards, on account of the miserable commotion amongst sacred affairs in his own country, he sought a new settlement in a new world, and remained even to the end of his life a pastor and teacher of the greatest reputation and of the greatest authority, in the first church of Boston in New England, which bears this venerable name in honour of Cotton. Two hundred and twenty-five years having passed away since his migration, his descendants and the American citizens of Boston were invited to this pious work by their English brethren, in order that the name of an illustrious man, the love and honour of both worlds, might not any longer be banished from that noble temple, in which he diligently, learnedly, and sacredly expounded the Divine Oracles for so many years; and they have willingly and gratuitously caused this shrine to be restored, and this tablet to be erected, in the year of our recovered salvation, 1855." May it be given to all the readers of the Christian Witness wisely to venerate the memory of such men as William Brewster and Richard Clifton, John Bradford and John Cotton. THE MEANING AND MEMORIES OF SUNDAY. From "Notes of the Christian Life," by Reb. H. R. Reynolds, B.J. THE observance of the first day of the week in England is a notorious and interesting fact. By this I mean that the English Sunday is a thing talked of, inquired into, philosophised about, from one end of the world to another. One day out of seven we witness a strange phenomenon, a sudden cessation of ninety-nine out of a hundred of the businesses of ordinary life. The great thoroughfares of the busiest city in the world are comparatively forsaken for some hours of that day; the miles of shops are shuttered, and dark and silent as midnight; the rattle of ten thousand mills is hushed. Great orders may have arrived, but they lie idle in the post-bag or the desk. Even the railways and the post-office are compelled to yield, in some measure, to the general pause. Justice does not summon her courts; Equity, Exchequer, and Chancery must wait till to-morrow. The most exciting political question cannot prevail on the parliament of England to continue its functions; and even the hungry creditor must be content until the sacred day has passed, before he can claim payment of his bill or serve his writ. It is true that certain trades are practised on this day, and that much inconsistency and inconvenience arise in connection with this singular arrangement; but there it is, a startling, conspicuous fact in this nineteenth century of grace: the exceptions to it prove the rule, and the parties who are excepted, reasonably groan under their burden, and feel that a wrong is inflicted upon them. Whatever may be the deep reasons for this sabbatic interruption of all ordinary business, the economic result on the grand scale is, that every hard-working man obtains an additional day's wage. If the Sunday were abolished, he and his masters might work the seven days through, and receive no higher remuneration than before. The practical result is, that the working life of every sober man is prolonged, his ability for service increased, his wits sharpened, and his health promoted by the period of relaxation and rest. So thoroughly is this understood, that those who look merely on the material aspects of the question do not hesitate to regard the Sunday as every English man's boon, and as a conventional right of such value and importance, that it must not be trifled with. Almost all aree-ready to allow that we owe so much of our manly independence, of our reflective common sense, of our self-education, of our vigorous life, to the action and influences of the Sunday that it would be a treason, a folly incalculable, to destroy so venerable a custom. Yes, verily, to say nothing of conscience, of God's law, or of Christ's love, it would be an unspeakable madness, and a great and wicked injustice, to rob the Englishman of his day of rest. There is at least one day in seven, when the roar of the tidal swell of human toil is hushed; when man is not the creature of others, nor their slave; when his time cannot be claimed by another, when his freewill has freer scope, when he may remember, and does reflect who and what he is, and what he was sent into this world to accomplish. There is one day in the week, when the unseen and the everlasting can at least come from their hiding-places, and draw aside the veils which otherwise hang so heavy and dusky over their awful countenances; and when the voices of truth, and righteousness, and solace, can be poured into deafened, but not unwilling ears. To rob you of your Sunday, would rob you of what is most valuable and essential to your physical, intellectual, moral, and religious life. no mere customs of society, no mere love of idleness, no economical purpose, no deep understanding of the intellectual and physical benefits it would confer. It was not an arbitrary arrangement of our rulers, nor any study of physiology which conferred this rest upon us. The legislature may do much now in preserving it for us, that is, by letting it alone, but the legislature did not create it. The law of it lies much deeper down in our nature than our puritan, or catholic, or heathen ancestors;-the inspiration of it is not the clock of St. Stephen's, nor the wisdom of Downing-street. It has arisen out of a deep conviction of Divine authority, a strong persuasion of godly men, a profound faith in unseen realities, a love of God and of man, and the hope of everlasting life. Religion has been the basis, the mother, the nurse of the English day of rest. It has sprung out of deep convictions of the sacredness of life, the holiness of law, the certainty of judgment, and the prospect of heaven. We owe much of its present form to the earnest reverence for God's revelation, the strong religious convictions, the intense love of freedom, and the vigour of spiritual life which characterised those who were bent on reforming the Church in England. We hold it now as a portion of a glorious inheritance which has been bequeathed to us. It savours of earnest days and harrassed nights, of Smithfield fires and Oxford martyrdoms, of pilgrim fathers and bloody assizes, of days and of men, that, in spite of every mistake and every reverse, are acknowledged by all to have given deep roots to our national greatness, and both flowers and fruitage to its spreading branches. " The English Sunday will not be preserved without the continued operation of this religious principle. The love of money will be stronger than the love of rest. Competition can wage successful battles with anything short of conscience; God knows that it often avails to conquer this. But religious convictions are stronger, more widely spread, more deeply penetrating than any notions of conventional right, than any laws of a shallow expediency. If you try, if the nation tries, if a few noisy talkers try, to found the sanctity of the sabbath on the advantages of recreation-rational or irrational-there will be very soon an end of its sacredness altogether. Let Sunday become the day on which ordinary travelling for recreation takes place and it will occupy tens of thousands of hands, who will find that day, as many do on the continent of Europe, the hardest and most laborious of the seven. Let recreation and amusement be the main reasons upon which you ask for the preservation of this day of rest, and will have it invaded at every you point. Let us be distinctly forewarned, that if the great use of a Sunday is a holiday; if we have no deeper reason than the relaxation of our physical energies; no other attraction than that which music, or fresh air, or public amusement, may afford -we are destroying the great safeguard of the day, we are running in danger of being robbed altogether of a sacred and invaluable right. To reduce our English Sunday to the level of a continental or pleasuretaking Sunday, would be to deprive the people of England of their birthright; to hand labour, more than ever, over into the power of capital, and to open the door along which all kinds of toil must, as in other countries, infallibly follow. England would be tenfold worse off than any Roman Catholic country is, under such a calamity. In these countries there is a decided compensation for the loss, inasmuch as there are about twenty Saints'-day, or other days, that are kept with a sanctity far surpassing that of the continental Sabbath, and of which we Englishmen know nothing. There are works of necessity, of charity, of mercy; there are works which are a balance of inconveniences, and which are allowed by conscience as a choice of evils; there are certain persons who are, unfortunately, made to work on Sunday, in consequence of the religious spirit, the desire for worship on the part of others; but this evil has its limits, and is constantly correcting itself. It behoves all Christians to make as little demand as possible upon the persons whom they employ, or whose services they need; and to remember that this day belongs to each man, woman, and child, for himself, or herself, and that the method in which they employ it is a matter between them and God. In the name of your own rights, by reason of your own need, out of regard to the obvious necessities of the case, and in view of the experience of all Europe, beware how you trifle with the conscience, the religious spirit, the Christian consecration, the holy safeguards, of what, even in spite of yourselves, is blessing you. But let us attentively consider some of the religious principles which have given and hitherto preserved this holy day to us. Such an inquiry will form a useful matter of self examination, and will aid us in the holy life. I. In the first place, "the first day of the week" is a day of mighty memories-memories that we cannot let die! It is the appointed memorial of the most considerable facts in the history of the world. It is the standing register and monument of the influence of those facts upon the well-being of mankind. It is a perpetual declaration, on the part of Christian peoples, that they "remember their Creator;" and that they in all things and all beings-are the creatures of God. It is an utterance of the faith that "all souls are his," that all worlds are his; that "the firmament declares his glory," and "the earth is full of his goodness; that He made us, and not we ourselves. It is, accordingly, a profound confession of dependence, of obligation, of gratitude. This cessation of all other work, this freeing of the mind from other thought, this washing of the hands from worldly care, meant originally, and (wherever it is a religious act) still expresses, a humble desire to enter into the rest of God, to acknowledge His claim and His power, as well as to share in His glorious satisfaction and repose. Without entering into any of the theological controversies on the moral appointment of the seventh day for these high purposes, or the transference of the sabbatic rest from the Jewish Sabbath to the Lord's-day, I may say that Christianity, in its doctrine and its institutions, in its work and worship, is the heir of all previous dispensations, and has gathered up into itself all the desires of the nations. I may remind you that those requirements which were made on the world's grey fathers at the dawn of time, in the way of worship and sacrifice, and that the sorrows and aspirations, the symbols and the life, the struggles and the sins of Israel, have all been more or less sanctioned or fulfilled in the great work of Christ. Not one jot or tittle has failed from God's law-all is being fulfilled. (1). The celebration of the Lord'sday has never lost sight of that prime fact in all revelation and all religion --namely, the creation of the world and of man, and, consequently, all the claim of God's law upon our conscience, and of God's goodness on our gratitude. The main, the prime idea of the sabbatic rest, is, that man should occasionally lift his eyes from the clods of earth, and gaze upwards into the face of his Creator; that he should awake up to a conviction of that intimate relation that subsists between him and God, and ponder with reverent awe, with freedom of mind, and openness of eye, the link which binds him to the throne of God. It is, that with the most determined effort, man should emerge from the tyranny of the senses and the crushing cares of the world, and claim His heavenly relationship. This hushing of the power-loom, and closing of the shop, the office, the bank, and the theatre, is as a mighty whisper that goes over England and the world, saying, "We are the creatures of God-He made us, both body and soul." The bell-ringing of the Sunday morning, and the various other tokens of the day of rest, are voices of God, saying, "Oh, ye children of men, forget not that ye are the creatures of My hand, the sheep of My pasture, the subjects of My govern |