RATIONAL OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 6887, 18 May 1883, Page 2

RATIONAL OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY.

It is a striking illustration of tho influence which the old Puritans and Covenanters, with all their earnest reverence, their high integrity, their truthfulness and courage, and yet with all their narrow-mindedness, their fanaticism, and their Pharisaism, exercise upon us, that we still adhere to views elsewhere regarded as quite obsolete with regard to the use of our Sundays. To the average Britisher, the sacred day—wisely held sacred for its great uses as a day of rest, recreation, and enjoyment—is a time of conformity to a dull, dreary, ceremonial routine, aping the form of an extravagantly high-pitched piety, but destitute altogether of its spirit. And if the friends of sanitary progress, intellectual enjoyment, and blameless social intercourse, at any time contend that the day should be wisely used, and the Libraries, Museums, and Art Galleries should be thrown open, and thoughtful lectures on philosophy be listened to, and people walk among the graceful flowers and forest trees of our publ'c gardens, or from the sea side, or on its bosom jjaze with delight on what (Escltlus called “ tho merry twinkling smile of ocean,” they are told with lofty disdain that they “ are trying to introduce a Continental Sabbath.” As if, forsooth, that was a fatal objection ! We should like to know who gave the Britisher in his insular pride authority to lay down the law of thought and

sentiment dogmatically to all Europe, and even to those of his own people who had dared to think for themselves and worship their Creator as they see him in His works around them, rather than choose the bettor part and sleep under the sermons of a dull priest, and wake to slander their neighbors’ characters, and ridicule the esthetic shortcomings of their dress ? We purposely omit all detailed reference to the occupations of those who at present attend neither Church nor Public Library, but lazily loaf about tho streets for want of something to do, or surreptitiously frequent publichouse bars to drink beer or whiskey which they do not require, merely to pass the time. It is not worth while to discuss tho question whether such persons would be better employed as at present, or in reading, thinking, and otherwise cultivating their minds. But tho spirit of reform is abroad, and though Great Britain is slow to be influenced by it, the colonies have long since, especially in Australasia, joined in the chorus —

“ King out the old, ring in the new.”

The keen-witted people of Victoria led the van fifteen years ago, and began to throw open their Athemoums and Mechanics’ Institutes’ libraries, and now wo hear by cable message that the great city of Melbourne has participated in the reform, and that the Melbourne Library—we presume that that splendid institution the Melbourne Public Library is meant —is henceforth to be opened on Sundays. The matter has been taken up in New Zealand. In Invercargill, as far back as the early part of 187 G, it was decided by a majority of 150 against 117 subscribers that the local Athenmum shouldbe openedon Sundayafteruoous, and as the Librarian objected on conscientious grounds to attend at that time, tho members of the Committee agreed each to take his turn in being present to open and close the institution. Even in respectable ecclesiastical Christchurch the Museum was thrown open at the same time of the week some years back, and the Public Library within the last two years. Wellington is at present behindhand in joining in the reform ; but it ought not to be. We trust that, as a new Committee is about to be chosen, they will be at once instructed by the subscribers at the first meeting to follow the examples of Christchurch and Melbourne. It will not be creditable if Wellington, the Empire City of New Zealand, is the last to join in the needful reform we have referred to.

And all the more enlightened men even among the clergy and the theologians will not care to censure them for taking action in getting the Public Library here thrown open on Sundays, at least in the afternoons. Tho great lights of the Christian Church have centuries ago given expression to their views on what is now called the Sabbatarian question. The Great Founder of Christianity defended his disciples, not censured them, for breaking the Sabbath. Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, reckoned the Sabbath among tho obsolete Jewish festivals, and placed it alongside the Feast of New Moons. All the later writers of the New Testament canon preserve an ominous silence on the subject. In the early Christian Church, as Neander, the most learned, pious, and sober-minded of all Church historians, tells us, there was no universally acknowledged rule regarding the observation of the seventh or any other .day as sacred, and some Churches kept the seventh day of the week, some the first, and some both. At the time o the great religious movement of the sixteenth century the leaders held very free views on the question Melanctiion denied tho permanent binding obligation of the injunction to the Jews to keep a Sabbath, and Luther used regularly to order hu meat on Sundays to vindicate his re Jigious liberty. The austere Calvin in his “ Institutes,” styled the allegec command to keep a Christian Sabbatl- “ a doctrine of false teachers,” anc Knox was in the habit of holding political meetings on what some called the Sabbath day. In our own times, the foremost men personally in tho Church— Arnold, Maurice, Kingsley, Robertson, Stanley, Norman McLeod —have all followed in the wake of Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and Knox. Indeed, the observance of one special day in seven, as sacred by special divine command, instead of its being merely a convenient time of meeting for public worship, arose out of the tyranny of the early Stuart Kings, when that contemptible dynasty of cowards, liars, tyrants, and bigots ordered the reading of the “ Book of Sports ” in the churches, as a direct insult to the piously inclined reformers of the day, and these last, being hard up for precedents to act, went back to the Old Testament, and tho era of the wars of the Jews. It is time that in this young colony, and in our own city, there should be sufficient independence of thought for people to consider for themselves the true nature of the day of rest. On the importance of observing that day as a day of rest, as an opportunity for ceasing from toil, and turning to the higher kind of thought, whether religious, philosophical, or artistic, and of recruiting the body, we are as strongly convinced as any one cau be. The Sunday, without doubt, is a vast blessing. With quaint old George Herbert, we can call it “ The couch of time, care’s balm and bay.” But we are very confident that it is kept, not in gloom and in Pharisaic solemnity, not in sleeping, eating, drinking, talking of scandal, or criticism of dress, but in public worship by those who wish for that, and also in recreation of body and enlightenment of mind by all who wish for those.