THE SUNDAY QUESTION.
It is related that once upon a time, a number of grave and reverend rabbins earnestly disputed among themselves, whether it was lawful or not to eat an egg that was laid upon the Sabbath day. In the minds of some of these grave and wise masters it was held to be a prohibited egg, but in the stomachs of others of their number such eggs were held as too good to be despised.
In the Blue Laws of Connecticut by Rev. Sam Peters, we have Puritan scruples put in rhyme:
“Upon the Sabbath day they’ll no physick take,
Lest it should worke, and so the Sabbath breake.”
There have always been great disputes over this subject which we call in general terms the “Sunday Question.” Why do so many misunderstandings arise upon this matter? Simply because people do not understand the question. Millions of devout worshippers use the terms Sunday and Sabbath as if they were synonymous. Millions of superstitious persons cherish obligations to maintain better conduct on Sunday than on any other day in the week. They cannot understand that it is fit and proper to do on Sunday anything that it is fit and proper to do on any other day. The tendency to perform the duties of life correctly on Sunday leaves room and disposition not to perform them so well on the other six days of the week. Such people live cream lives on Sunday and skim-milk lives all the rest of the week. It won’t do; because it tends to demoralize rather than establish the noble sentiments of morality and manhood. If we would know how to observe Sunday we must know something more about it than we have unconsciously learned from the nursery stories of our childhood. Let us begin with the names of