The notion that Sunday should be a day of gloom and that religion should be divorced from cheerfulness found no support in Punch. A few years later, that is in 1871, he records with amazement the utterance of a Scottish minister who, at a children's soirée held at Kincardine, forbade them to applaud, and told them "there would be nothing of that kind, and no laughter in Heaven." In the same year, under the heading of "Sabbatarian Progress," we read:—
The Sunday Closing Bill's referred
To a select committee,
We view concession to absurd
Fanaticism with pity.
It was the same year that Punch got into hot water over a picture of Keene's. In it an old lady remarks to a guest: "They're all alike, my dear. There's our Susan (it's true she's a Dissenter), but I've allowed her to go to Chapel three times every Sunday since she has lived with me, and I assure you she doesn't cook a bit better than she did the first day!!" The Young Men's Christian Association at Dover, in consequence of this flippancy, decided that they would not take in Punch as being a paper hostile to religion. Punch displayed a ribald impenitence, making great play with the speeches delivered by the Mayor, Mr. Knocker, and a Mr. Mowll, and the hostile decree was rescinded shortly afterwards.
Glaring Contrasts in the Church
When the scandal of the sale by public auction of pews in fashionable churches came up in 1858 it was used as a stick with which to beat Puseyism. But when the Bishop of Exeter, on April 23, made an eloquent appeal in connexion with the want of church accommodation for the people, denounced the pew system as illegal, and declared that to seat only fifty-eight per cent. of the inhabitants of London 670,000 sittings would be required, Punch, forgetting his ancient feud with "Henry of Exeter," congratulated him on these gleams of real liberality. But what chiefly concerned Punch as a Church Reformer were the glaring contrasts which existed in the "richest and poorest Church in the world." He was disgusted at the "snobbery" of the archbishops in kindly sanctioning a Registry for Curates, like a Registry for Servants:—
... It would appear from these figures [quoted from The Times], that Curates are expected to perform the cure of souls about as cheaply as the salters work the cure of herrings. Well, Floreat Ecclesia! and Heaven bless the Bishops! Of course, it's all just as it should be, or the Registry of Church Servants would never have been sanctioned. The Bishops have full knowledge of the present scale of wages at which Curates may be hired, and by sanctioning the registry they, of course, approve the scale. So, Floreat Ecclesia! and Heaven bless the Bishops! The Curates are the men-of-all-work in the Church, and receive as recompense a maid-of-all-work's wages. Proportionally, their pay is really not much more: for they have to live like gentlemen, which kitchen servants have not.
