“Ah! yes,” rejoined the signer; and dipping the pen anew in that famous ink-stand, with that noble grace of person so peculiar to him, he bent over the parchment once more, and added, of Carrollton. Surely Carrollton was the only manor of that name, and our Charles was the only master thereof. Hence the qualification which has since become useless—Charles Carroll of Carrollton. In our days the great American family knows only one Charles Carroll.
[151] A supernatural interlocutor in Father Faber’s Sights and Thoughts. London: Rivingtons, 1842, p. 181.
THE CATHOLIC SUNDAY AND PURITAN SABBATH.
“Mamma, what kind of a place is heaven?” inquired a boy, after a two hours’ Sunday session in a parlor corner, with the Bible for mental aliment. “Why, my child, heaven is one perpetual Sabbath!” “Well, ma! won’t they let me go out sometimes, just to play?” Absurd as was his mode of expressing it, the boy was right as to the fundamental idea; and though he could not have given the steps by which he reached the conclusion, yet he judged well that the Almighty, when sending us into this world, did not decree that we should be perpetually miserable in it. The enforced performance of what was intended for a devotional exercise was, in his case, beginning to bear its legitimate and inevitable fruits of irksomeness at the outset, wearisomeness while it lasts, and loathsomeness at the end.
All who claim the name of Christians observe, with greater or less strictness, one day in seven as a day of rest and worship; the devotional exercises conjoined therewith, emanating from the authority of the church in the case of Catholics, and from the varying taste and fancy of the sect, congregation, or even, it would seem, of the individual, among non-Catholics. We propose in this article to inquire into the origin of the Catholic usage regarding the Sunday; the grounds and mode of its observance among Protestants; the difference between the sectarian modes of keeping it and that enjoined by the church. And as about every religious practice where variance exists there must be a right and a wrong—a method of observance consistent with authority and reason,
and one either less so or entirely incongruous therewith—we shall try to find (apart from the authority of the church, which, though ample for us, would be of little avail for outsiders) on which side right reason is, and to show the absurdity of wrong custom in the matter.
The church tells us simply what the law of nature informs us of, the existence of God the Creator, and of our duty of worshipping him; but the time when all other things must be abandoned for this special purpose is subject to another law—the ceremonial—and as under the Mosaic dispensation that law was only a shadow of future good, to be laid aside when the true Light should descend upon earth, so the Jewish Sabbath, which was clearly established in the third commandment of the Decalogue, is no longer to be held sacred, but the first day of the week, which was consecrated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the descent of the Holy Ghost, is by her ordered to be kept holy; and she enjoins on all her children at least to hear Mass devoutly and to abstain from servile labor on that day. Having to provide, however, for all sorts and conditions of men, the church adds that reasons of necessity or transcendent charity will excuse us from either obligation. And this is all that our holy mother enjoins on the subject. As Catholics we accept and celebrate the Sunday wholly on her authority; and, à fortiori, we are not bound to any further observance of it than she dictates.
While it is clear from Holy Scripture that the apostles did meet with each other and with the early converts to Christianity twice on the Dominica or Lord’s day, yet there
is nothing to show that it was even habitual with them to convene on that day; still less is there anything, either in the form of precept or exhortation, in the entire New Testament, that would manifest the fact of any change in the ceremonial law of Moses on the subject. There is no announcement whatever either of the abrogation of the Sabbath of the Jews or of the establishment of Sunday instead; so that, had we but the Scripture to refer to, we should grope in the dark both as to the obligation itself and the mode of its fulfilment. But when we come to the fathers of the Church, the very earliest of them indicate distinctly that the Christians of their day did habitually meet together on the first day of the week (called by them κυριακὴ, or Dominica). As we go on we find them frequently enjoin, both expressly and by clear implication, the obligation resting upon all Christians of meeting together on that day for participation in the Holy Mysteries. Later still we find them affirm this duty as of apostolic institution. To give a single example of many, St. Saturninus, before suffering martyrdom at Abitina, in Africa, in the year 304, under Diocletian, for celebrating Mass on Sunday, exclaims, in presence of his judges: “The obligation of the Sunday is indispensable; it is not lawful for us to omit the duty of that day!” From the earliest Christian records to the present day there is no break, no link wanting. Historians have clearly shown the practice of the faithful, and councils have firmly enjoined and reiterated it. So much for the origin and history of Sunday worship in the Church.