This sort of man is already predominant in Great Britain, as well as in America; and multiplication of the type elsewhere is fostered by mighty tendencies. The duty of treating every form of religion according to ethical and not theological standards is rapidly becoming the practice of all civilised governments; and persecution is peculiar to Turkey and Russia. These two despotisms form, with Germany, the principal exceptions to the rule that political liberty is on the increase throughout Europe, especially in the form of local self-government. The nineteenth century has made even the poorest people more secure than ever before from oppression and lawless violence, as well as from pestilence and famine. Destitution is relieved more amply and wisely, while industry and intelligence are encouraged by opportunity to enjoy comforts and luxuries once almost or altogether out of the reach of monarchs. The fetters formerly laid on trade of cities with their own suburbs have been broken; and the examples of Great Britain and New South Wales are proving that nations profit more by helping than hindering one another in the broad paths of commerce. Industrial efficiency has certainly been much promoted by the tendency, not only of scientific education but of manual training, to substitute knowledge of realities for quarrels about abstractions. All these changes favour the extension of free institutions and also of individual liberty, wherever peace can be maintained. Industrial nations gain more than warlike ones by encouraging intellectual independence; but the general advantage is great enough to ensure the final triumph of liberty.
APPENDIX: SUNDAY RECREATION
THIS is much more common in New England and Great Britain than it was in the eighteenth century. The dinner has become the best, instead of the worst in the week. Scarcely anyone rises early; and nobody is shocked at reading novels. There is an enormous circulation in both English and American cities of Sunday papers whose aim is simply amusement. There is plenty of lively music in the parlours, as well as of merry talk in which clergymen are ready to lead. People who have comfortable homes can easily make Sunday the pleasant-est day of the week.
For people who cannot get much recreation at home, there are increasing opportunities to go to concerts, picture-galleries, and museums. Among the reading-rooms thrown open on Sunday in America about 1870 was that of the Boston Public Library; and no difference is now made in this great institution among the seven days, except that more children's books and magazines are accessible on Sunday. What important museums are now open in London, Boston, and New York have been already mentioned in Chapter VI. These opportunities are still limited; but there is no obstacle, except that of bad weather, to excursions on foot or bicycle, behind horse or locomotive, in electric car or steamboat, to beaches, ponds, and other places of amusement. The public parks are crowded all day long in summer; and people who go to church in the morning have no scruple about walking or riding for pleasure in the afternoon. These practices were expressly sanctioned by Massachusetts in 1887, and by New Jersey in 1893; and the old law against Sunday visiting has been repealed since 1880 in Vermont.
The newer States have taken care not to pass such absurd statutes. I believe that the majority of our people were willing, as for instance was that prominent Episcopalian, Bishop Potter, to have the Chicago Exposition open on Sundays. Theatres and baseball grounds attract crowds of visitors in our cities, especially those west of the Alleghanies. Whatever changes are made in the East will probably be in the direction of greater liberty. The only question is how fast the present opportunities of recreation ought to be increased.
No one would now agree with Dr. Chalmers in calling the Sabbath "an expedient for pacifying the jealousies of a God of vengeance." Good people have ceased to think, as the Puritans did, that "Pleasures are most carefully to be avoided" on every day of the week, or that "Amity to ourselves is enmity against God." Preachers no longer recommend "abstaining not only from unlawful pleasures, but also from lawful delights." Popular clergymen now say with Dr. Bellows: "Amusement is not only a privilege but a duty, indispensable to health of body and mind, and essential even to the best development of religion itself." "I put amusement among the necessaries and not the luxuries of life." "It is as good a friend to the church as to the theatre, to sound morals and unsuperstitious piety as to health and happiness,... an interest of society which the religious class instead of regarding with hostility and jealousy, ought to encourage and direct." "There is hardly a more baleful error in the world than that which has produced the feud between morality and amusement, piety and pleasure."
The fact is that pleasure means health. As I have said in a newspaper entitled The Index: "It is a violation of the laws of health for anyone, not absolutely bed-ridden or crushed by fatigue, to spend thirty-six hours without some active exercise in the open air. Trying to take enough on Saturday to last until Monday, is dangerous, and most people have little chance for healthy exercise except on Sunday. The poor, ignorant girl who has had no fresh air for six days ought to be encouraged to take it freely on the seventh. And we all need our daily exercise just as much as our regular food and sleep. The two thousand delegates who asked, in behalf of ninety thousand working men, in 1853, to have the Crystal Palace open on Sundays, were right in declaring that 'Physical recreation is as necessary to the working man as food and drink on the Sabbath.' The fact is that pleasure is naturally healthy even when not involving active exercise. Dark thoughts breed disease like dark rooms. The man who never laughs has something wrong about his digestion or his conscience. Herbert Spencer has proved that our pleasant actions are beneficial, while painful ones are injurious both to ourselves and to our race. (Principles of Psychology, vol. i., pp. 278-286; Am. Ed.). Thus Sunday amusements are needed for the general health.
"They are also necessary for the preservation of morality. This consists in performing the actions which benefit ourselves and our neighbours, in other words, pleasant ones, and abstaining from whatever is painful and injurious. It is only in exceptional cases that we can make others happy by suffering pain ourselves. Now and then the paths of virtue and pleasure diverge; but they always come together again. As a rule, they traverse precisely the same ground and in exactly the same direction. This is very fortunate; for if pleasure were always vicious, virtue would be hateful and impossible. The most blessed of all peacemakers is he who keeps virtue and pleasure from falling out. There is no better text than that which the little girl said she had learned at Sunday-school: 'Chain up a child and away she will go!' Even so strict a man as Dr. Johnson said: 'I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep people from vice.' Is there no need of them on the day when there is more drinking, gambling, and other gross vice than on any other? Need I say what day keeps our policemen and criminal courts most busy, or crowds our hospitals with sufferers from riotous brawls? Has not the experience of two hundred and fifty years justified those English statesmen who showed themselves much wiser than their Puritan contemporaries in recommending archery, dancing, and other diversions on Sunday, because forbidding them 'sets up filthy tippling and drunkenness?' To keep a man who does not care to go to church from getting any amusement, is to push him towards the saloon. And not only the laws against liquor selling, but others even more necessary for our safety, would be much better enforced if we did not encourage lawlessness by keeping up statutes which our best men and women violate without scruple and with impunity, or which actually prevent good people from taking such recreation as they know they ought to have. Outgrown ordinances should not be suffered to drag just and necessary laws down into contempt. "Nobody wants to revive those old laws of Massachusetts Bay which forbade people to wear lace, or buy foreign fruit, or charge more than a fixed price for a day's work. No more Quakers will ever swing from a Boston gallows merely for preaching. But our laws against Sunday amusements are in the same spirit as that which hung Mary Dyer. In old times, government kept continually telling people what to do, and took especial pains to make them go to church on Sunday. If they stayed away, they were fined; if they did not become members, they were not allowed to vote; if they got up rival services, they were hung; if they took any amusement on Sunday, they were whipped. All four classes of laws for the same unjust end have passed away, except that against Sunday recreation. This still survives in a modified form. But even in this shape it is utterly irreconcilable with the fundamental principles of our government. All American legislation, from the Declaration of Independence, rests on the great truth that our government is founded in order to secure us in our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our State is a limited partnership for mutual protection. We carry it on in order to make our freedom more complete; and we tolerate no restrictions on ourselves except such as are necessary conditions of the greatest possible liberty. These principles are already fully acknowledged on six days of the week, but only partly on the seventh. Still, there is a growing recognition of the likeness between laws against Sunday amusements and such prohibitions of eating meat in Lent as once caused people to be burned alive."
A weekly day of rest is a blessing; but David Swing is right in saying that "Absolute rest, perfectly satisfactory to horse and dog, is not adequate to the high nature of man." Complete torpor of mind and body is more characteristic of a Hindoo fakir than of a Christian saint. Should those who wish to rest as much as possible on Sunday sleep in church? There is nothing irreligious in fresh air. The tendency of outdoor exercise to purify and elevate our thoughts is so strong that Kingsley actually defended playing cricket on Sunday as "a carrying out of the divineness of the Sabbath." If there is no hostility between religion and amusement on six days of the week, there cannot be much on the seventh.