repose during certain specified hours; but only a cramped and sickly organization can be kept continuously in one position. Healthy mental gymnastic makes children willing law-abiders and docile pupils during the hours of lessons; but it emancipates them, by making impossible continuous interference with their mental freedom. Now a privileged class can better maintain its power over a sickly and vicious population than over a population of orderly free-thinkers.
A detestable practice prevails in Christian England, and is, I regret to say, on the increase, of teaching in Sunday-school after the same method as is found on week-days to answer the purpose of preparing children to pass Examinations successfully. The material of the lessons is changed on Sundays, the attitude is not; for the History of Rome or France is substituted that of Palestine; for the Logic of Aristotle that of Paul; for the Poetry of Shakspere that of Isaiah; the change is apparent, the monotony is terribly real. The children are subject, throughout their teaching, to the same grinding pressure. Surely religious people of all sorts might join in trying to put a stop to this hideous prostitution of the Blessed Sabbath to the purposes of making children slavish and helpless; and claim it for the purpose for which it was originally instituted,—the cultivation of freedom by reversal of attitude.
As for the manner in which reversal of attitude may be induced, that must depend on the subject which is occupying attention during work-hours. If a boy be engaged in weeding, the teacher of his Sabbath-school should point out to him that crops and weeds belong equally to the vegetable kingdom, and have many
