SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. SOME AMERICAN REMINISCENCES. Auckland, Nov. 26.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 320, 28 November 1888, Page 4

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. SOME AM E R ICAN REMINISCENCES. Auckland, Nov. 26.

Tin; Hew Mr Chew, pastor of the Beres-ford-strcct Congregational Church, was in. terviewed by a Star representative yesterday afternoon, and courteously iurnished his experiences of Sunday observance in America. In the large cities like "New York and Chicago, fcaid Mr Chew, they have a good deal of license with respect" to Sabbath observance. In Chicago I saw the theatres open on Sunday, but in New England, which is the best part of America, there was a very careful observance of the Sabbath day. It is so also in the Western States, where it might be expected that people would be more la\. I have often had occasion to refer to the almost universal observance of the Sabbath in Kansas, for instance. There aro two or three cities that are exceptions, and cue was the city in which I resided last — Atchi?on. The people have, as a rule, one seruce on "the- Sunday, and many very good people maintain that one public service a day is sufficient, e&pecially with the addition of the Sunday school work. The Sunday school, too. has only one session a week, and not two sessions as we have here. For these reasons the morning chuich services are much better attended than the evening services, and many ministers do not prepare so carefully for the evening as for the morning service. Of course there are those who are very rigid and Puritanic in their observance of the Sabbath in Kansas, as elsewhere, and, whilst it is very common for religious Christian people to go for drives on Sunday, there aro others who condemn it, but not many. In California it was worse than in Kansas, alike in the country and in the city. I should also have told you that in Atchison they had tramcars running on the Sunday, and many shops and stores open. They had also baseball matches out ol town, and that used to shock me very much. I found that the exercises in American Sundayschools were more bright and cheerful, and consequently more attractive, than in England. The Sabbath evening service was not seldom varied with a programme of sacred music, which always drew. Temperance meetings, in which several churches united, occasionally took the place of the ordinary services. The Episcopalian Church, answering to the Anglican here and at Home, invariably refused to be a party to such arrangements. I, too, objected to relinquish Gospel meetings for temperance meetings, and once got into trouble with my friends, the prohibitionists, for openly protesting against closing all the churches for a Sunday evening convention to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the passing of the Prohibition Act in the State, and which from its occasion would be strictly a political meeting. If we wore to forego public worship on Sabbath evenings, the early result would probably be the opening of our sacred or other large buildings either for entertainments or for political and other general purposes. 1 so recently preached to a large congregation on the subject of " Sabbath Observance" that my personal opinions need nob be re-stated, the rather as they were partly reproduced in the Star at the time.