THE SUNDAY QUESTION IN AUCKLAND.

Evening Star, Issue 3445, 7 March 1874, Page 3

THE SUNDAY QUESTION IN AUCKLAND.

i The controversy on the, question of Fabbath observance still rages in'the Auckland press. The Rev. in a Ptter to the * Daily Southern Cross,’ asks the Rev |l)rs Maunaell ahd Vi allis, of' the’dhurch of England, a number of questions, of which the following is thnfiratSeeing that the Jewish Sabbath is abandoned, "by what authority can the Jewish command respect:mg the seventh day be applied to a quite different day ?• So loose a method of treating is Divine command «ii certainly not Biblical.”:. Another con espondent in reply, pufoa- .few hard questions to Mr Edger, thnsl:—; ' ; ' ;

i Noiv I wish in my tura to ask Mr Edger a knotty, question or two, bearing on question No 1 .mhis before-mentioned letter. —Some thirty-. years ago, : before New Zealand was proclaimed a Butisli Colony, some English,-French / were settled on Now tbew>ere great and bitter disputes between the English, together with the 4) reach Jews, on the one hand, and the German and Americans on - the other. English and French Jews, who; reckoned their longitude; ifrom the zeros of Greenwich and Paris, respectively kept their Sabbath on Saturday ; the Gernyrn; and, American Jews, who reckoned from Ferro, and Washington, respectively, cbsecved as $. Sabbath, actually, our Christian Sunday—that is to say, the “quite a .different day ’ of Mr Edger.—Again there is ,a small inland pd the Pacific, about one degree north, of the Equator - I am not ceitain about the English name, blit it is .called on German maps “Howland.” This island was settled!upon, once upon a time by ja special colony of French Jews. Now some of these Jews were very scientific, and they soon found out that their land was bisected by the. 180 th degree of meridian reckoning from the zero of Paris, t and it further struck then, how the curiosity of this feature might be heightened by having the middle of the main istreet of their town coincident with the merijdiaii -line. —-Now mark the consequences!— Jwery sixth and seventh day ‘there: was the scandal of one side of the main street (their Queen street, say), being decked out for trade -1 mean alluring shop fronts and open doors—- ; While the other.side had nothing open but the {synagogues. ; One side, kept the Sabbath ■on the Christian Sunday, the other on ;the Saturday. The native Polynesians did mot know what to make of these Hurias, |as they called them. The disputes and ex;communicationsand counter-excommunications on: each side were something awful A Jew of Asia Minor who was sent for direct, from Jerusalem, iu order to fettle the question, proposed throwing over the datum of Paris, and adopting that of Mount Sinai. This iseemed a good idea, excepting that the identity ;of the true Mount Sinai is a matter* of dispute .among the learned, and also that the difficulty would thereby be shifted on to the islands of Pauraotu group, where there were several devout descendants of the lost tribes, who would be in a continual state of, miserable uncertainty as to whether the Sabbath they kept was} not, after all, “ quite a different day.” In conclusion, I ask Mr Edger whichwere right—- ; the "English,‘French, German,'Americam qr Sinaitic Jews—sie Saturday WflU or the Sunday a Or is there no right about it except the le that one day out of seven is to be ob--1