A Critical History of Sunday Legislation. By A. H. Lewis,
D.D. (Appleton, New York.)—One may not agree with Dr. Lewis's views—which he hints at rather than fully expresses, at all events in this volume—and yet freely admit that this is at once a scholarly book, and much handier for consulting purposes than Mr. Robert Cox's well-known treatise. In about two hundred and fifty pages, Dr. Lewis gives both the facts and the evolution of Sunday legislation from B.C. 321, when was issued the first Sunday edict,—" Let all judges and all city people and all tradesmen rest upon the venerable day of the sun,"—to the present year. He shows us the character of Sunday legislation under the Roman Empire and after its fall, the Saxon Sunday laws, Sunday in the days of Puritan supremacy, Sunday in Scotland (here Dr. Lewis might with advantage have been fuller and more descriptive), in Ireland, in Wales, and in Holland. The last three chapters are devoted to Sunday legislation in America, before and after the War of Independence. A copious index enhances the value of this work as a dictionary of the Sunday question. It is intended, no doubt, to be something more ; but it is for the reader to ascertain Dr. Lewis's deductions from the teaching of history, and to accept or reject them.
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