13 OCTOBER 1866, Page 1

The Church Congress at York has not been very fortunate

in obtaining good reports of its proceedings. The Archbishop of York's opening address was too much of a glorification of talk to be of great interest. The Bishop of Ripon succeeded with a paper on the Sabbath, maintaining that the Fourth Commandment determines the proportion of time to be devoted to religious rest, but not the special day,—a remark which the Rev. James Bandinel afterwards applied by inferring that any twenty-four hours would do, and that in point of fact the day kept varies with the longitude. The Bishop held the Sabbath still absolutely as bind- ing on us as upon the Jews, " works of necessity " only being per- mitted in both instances. The Congress appeared to agree so com- pletely on the .subj ect that it seems pretty certain the laymen of the Church were very feebly represented. Archdeacon Denison under- stood that the Sabbath was not properly observed " in the very highest quarters," which means, we suppose, by the Queen, though the Archdeacon himself appeared, on the late Mr. Keble's authority, to approve of moderate " cricket " on Sunday as no breach of the Sabbath. Does the Queen do anything worse than play cricket on a Sunday, or is it rather that the Archdeacon does not approve of her chaplains?