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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 19, 6 February 1891, Page 31

His Eminence Cardinal Lavigene is one of those grand old men whosa zeal njver slackens, ana whos» work is never done TLe other day t» c Cardinal started with six miwoianes from Alters for Biskra, where he is about t.» organise a body which is to be known as the P.oueers or Btotheis of tne Sahara, the obi - c t in view being the penetration of the great desert. A house has oeen erected at Bibkra, and here the task ot founding a permanent establishment for the Pioneers is to be commenced. As a beginning fifty men are required ; already 150 have offered themselves to the Cardinal's committee in Pans. There is something woich smacks of ancient Catholic heroism in the spectacle of this venerable prelate heading a band of desert exploreis. b Cardinal Gibbons has been recently interviewed by the New York Sun on the subject of Sunday observance. His Eminence s iid • —I think that Sunday should be, first of all, a day devote 1 to religious worship, and second, to inuocent and healthful recreation as being the only day m which the great masses of the peoph have time to seek relaxation from their work. The danger is in the excess either way and I deprecate the closing of our art galleries and libraries. Presupposing that a certain portion of the day is set aDirt for religious exercises, 1 think that any recreation that will contribute to the physical, mental, and moral benefit and enjoyment ot the masses should be encouraged. I think that baseball is a «m> that is in coiiflict with the quiet decorum and tramiuihty that should characterise the observance of the Lord's Day, and is 100 violent a? exercige to be conductive to such harmony. But whatever may be the abuses arising from Sunday biseball, I regard the baseball players and observers of the game as far less reprebensib'e than those who would utter from the pulpit on tne Lord's Day unjust aud uncharitable statements about their neighbour The Christian religion orescribes the golden mean between rig.d Sabbatarianism on the' one hand and lax indulgence on the other. There ,s little doubt that the revulsions in public sentiment from a rigorous to a loose obs.rvance of the Lord's Day can be ascribed to the sincere, but misguided, zeal of the Puritans, who confounded the Christian SudSav with the Jewish Sabbath, and imposed restraints on the neoole whirh were repulsive to Chri.tian freedom, and which were not warranted by the Gospel dispensation. The Lord's Day to the Chr.sti ,n h« art is always a day ut joy. Trie Courcb desires us on that day to ba cheerful without cissipation, grave and religious without sadness and melancholy She forbids, indeed, all unnecessary servile work on Se^t^'h" V? B Sabba K h "^ "^ f ° r man and not m°n for the Sabbath ehe allows such work wherever chaiity or necessity may demand it. As it is a day consecrated not only to religion, but to relaxation of mind and body, she permits us to spend a portion of it in innocent recreation, p uu Ul II