SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3094, 28 May 1881, Page 3

SUNDAY AND ITS OBSERVANCE.

A Scotch University Professor (Dr. Blackie .has been attacking the present system of Sunday observance in a way which completely upsets preconceived opinions on the subject. His remarks have given rise to a good deal of comment, and various allusions to them have been made by the Press of this colony, as also by that of other parts. His remarks were embodied in a lecture delivered before a Glasgow audience, and are summarised as follows :— CONSTITUTION OF THE OBSERVANCE.

That branch of the subject was divided into three heads : —l. Though the observance of certain recurrent periods of rest in this working world is natural and beneficial, the observance of one day in seven for this purpose is of Jewish and not of Christian obligation, and can in no sense be regarded as a divinely appointed ordinance belonging essentially to the framework of Christianity. 2. The Lord's Day is an observance of the nature of a religious festival, resting on national propriety, apostolic authority, and es~ly Christian practice; and for 'easons obligatory on all professing Christians. 3. Aa a religious festival, the direct demands of the Lord's Day are satisfied by the practice of religious worship and meditation ; indirectly, and as conducive to the religious end, abstinence from all unnecessary work is enjoined on this day; not, however, by divine institution, but from the nature of the case, first by ecclesiastical, then by civil authority; but innocent recreation on this day is not forbidden by any law, human or divine. Now, he said, let them try their tusks upon that. (Laughter.) He then praceeded, in an elaborate argument, relieved by occasional characteristic anecdotes and digressions, in which hejattacked the orthodox theologians and materialistic philosophers indiscriminately, to show that the Sabbath was essentially a Jewish institution ; that it rested on statutory and not on moral law ; that it was repudiated by the Apostle Paul, and disowned for three hundred years by the Christian fathers, as simply a part of the Mosaic law. In proceeding further he read the following rules which he had drawn up under the head HOW TO SPEND THE STTNDAY. (l.y In all Christian countries a considerable part of the Lord's Day ought to be devoted to religious exercises, religious worship in the Church, and religious training in the family. (2.) Advantage will wisely be taken of the general tone and temper of this religious festival in a religion so essentially moral as Christianity to apply part of this day for the purpose of moral selfreview j that is to say, on Sundays a man might make a serious survey, retrospective and prospective, of the part which he is playing in the great drama of life, and specially endeavor to repent heartily of the faults and follies of the past week, and firmly resolve to do better for the week to come. I think it is an excellent plan also to map out on Sunday evening the general course of action for the following week, and •resolve emphatically that the week shall not run its course at random without some well-

marked point of progress beingregistored. (3) Next to the study of the Bible in a more broad, continuous, and intellectual fashion than is necessary for purposes of devotion, tho best sort of teaching for Sunday unquestionably is biography — biographies, of course, of great, noble, generous, and genial men who have devoted their lives to the service of humanity and the progress of society. Along with this, of course, all poetry and philosophy might be profitably read which tends to purify the passions and to olovato the platform of human life, as the works of iEschylug, Plato, Marcus, Antonhis, Epictetus, Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and hosts of others. (4.) Tho rest and repose which tho practice of Christian countries enjoins on tho Lord'sday, proceeding as it does partly from tho demands of our physical constitution, implies mainly a cessation from all work, or, generally, the daily business of each man's life, and this not only in outward act hut in inward thought, not only the remission of shop attendance and professional work, but as much as possible the dismissal of shop imaginations from the thoughts and shop discourse from the tongue. A wise man ought to look on every Sunday as a golden day of liberation from the sorrowing influence and cramping supremacy of uninterrupted professional work. Of course, there are certain ministrations which society requires, which must be performed on Sunday as well as Saturday; but the more these ministrations can be curtailed on the day of rest the better. Especially must it ; be borne in mind that Sunday is the poor man's day, and the working man's day, and all employers of labour ought to make it a point of conscience to reduce to a minimum the hours of labour exacted on that day from the sons of toil. (5.) This consideration, of course, applies also to the recreation which is allowable and profitable on Sunday, as distinguished from the week-day. Amusements ought to be avoided that tend to rob the working classes of that rest which their bodily frame requires, and that leisure which is necessary for a participation in acts of religious service. Large dinner parties, for instance, ought specially to be eschewed; but innocent games —such as cricket, croquet, lawn tennis, cards, billiards, backgammmon, or chess should be free to all who care for them. (Hisses and applause.) To working men of an active mind and an intellectual turn the pursuit of scientific studies in the hours not necessarily given to religious exercise may often be the best recreation, for the works of God are as plainly as worthy of study as the Word of God; and vast numbers who have no opportunity of studying science on the week days should not he deprived of the opportunity which the Sunday's re3t affords for this valuable increment to their human culture. (Applause.) In connection with this, of course, it is needless to mention that all public museums of science and art, botanic gardens, and other fields of intellectual recreation should be open to the public on Sunday for a certain limited time. (Hisse3 and applause.) To grudge any slight amount of easy ministral attendance which this might necesssitate on the part of the keepers and officers of such storehouses of scientific material, implies a painful scrupulosity of observance more allied to the Jewish Pharisaism so reprehended by our Saviour than to the rational Chrisianity which would have approved itself to the great practical intellect of St. Paul. (Loud applause.)