void; but generally they are binding, if good in other respects. Of course the name Sunday is the Anglo-Saxon Sunnan-dœg, equivalent to the Roman dies solis, so called in both tongues from its being anciently devoted to the worship of the sun. Sabbath is the Hebrew noun shabbāth (rest) from the verb shābath (to rest).
To ourselves and those who think with us that the state, in legislating about matters of religion, whether doctrinal or merely of exterior observance, is overstepping her proper limits—nay, who go further, and insist that government was no more instituted to educate our children than to feed and clothe them; that there is not an assignable ground for the former which would not be even more conclusive for the latter—it follows that all such legislation, from that of Cromwell’s Puritans and the Six Sessions of Scotland, down through the Blue Laws of Connecticut, to the last municipal regulation that allows no concert on Sunday unless it be a “sacred” one, and no procession accompanied by a band of music on that day, seems, what it really is, an absurdity and a monstrosity, a relic of odious strifes and bitter hates; and we would be glad, in common, we think, with sensible and tolerant men of all creeds, to see our statute-books rid of its remotest traces.
In speaking of any religious practice enjoined by the Catholic Church we have this advantage: viz., that what it is at one place or time it is in all places and at all times. The practice, then, of Catholics, in accordance with the church teachings above stated, is to hear Mass on Sunday, and, except in cases of necessity, to abstain from servile labor. Most Catholics also attend Vespers on that day, though
there be no absolute obligation. We take no extreme cases, either of the very pious on the one side who for their souls’ sake may be said to make a Sunday of every day in the week, or of those on the other hand whose religion sits so lightly upon them that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether, beyond a feeble claim to the name of Catholic, they have any religion at all. Among the 200,000,000 Catholics of the world are to be found many of both descriptions. We speak, however, of the average. Among these, Mass and Vespers being over, there will be found no strait-lacedness; no tone peculiar to a Sunday, put on for that day, and not observable on other days; no hesitation in conversing about sublunary affairs of all kinds that can and may engage the attention during the week. Should a concert-hall be open, as in Europe is often the case, the Catholic hesitates not to go there, providing it be one to which he would go on any day—i.e., if it be a proper place for himself or family under any circumstances. He converses on business or for pleasure with his friends in the public gardens, at the cafés; with his family he visits other families with whom they may be intimate. He does not hesitate to write a business letter, to view a lot which he thinks of purchasing, or to take the railway train on that day. It is needless to go further. He has complied with the command of the church, and, not being a law unto himself spiritually, he invents for himself no obligations superadded to those of the church, which, in accordance with the commands of Scripture, he believes himself bound to hear.
In speaking of Protestant doctrine or practice we are, of course,
more at a loss to speak definitely than when we lay down Catholic usage; since the former rarely remains the same on any single point, even within the same sect, for an ordinary generation of man. Why, fifty years ago Christmas was an abomination, “a rag of popery,” to all but the Anglicans. The sign of the cross was “the mark of the beast.” An organ in a meeting-house was “a seeking out of their own inventions.” Of the least approach to a liturgical observance, were it but the repetition of the Creed, it was said: “In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Now nearly all the sects make a feint of some sort of service or observance of the Christmas season; the cross is displayed within and without many church buildings; not merely organs but string and brass bands fill the choirs of Protestant fashionable churches; they may nearly all be heard falsely repeat, Sunday after Sunday, that they “believe in the holy Catholic Church”; and the prophet who should now foretell their changes in another half-century would run the risk of being mobbed in the public streets.
We give the doctrinal teaching of the Presbyterians on Sunday and its observance, or at least of so many of the different religious bodies going under that name as still subscribe to, and say they deduce their doctrines from the Bible via the Westminster Confession of Faith. It was formerly, and is to some extent still, the most generally received teaching on the subject of observing the Sabbath among English-speaking Protestants, who seem to have had a monopoly of spiritual information and an exclusive enlightenment on this whole matter. How much the bitter hatred
existing between Roundhead and Cavalier had to do with the firm hold the said observance took on Puritans and their descendants is not to the present purpose to inquire. In response to the question, “How is the Sabbath to be sanctified?” we have this answer:
“The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in public and private exercises of God’s worship, except so much as may be taken up in works of necessity and mercy.”
What was meant by this is sufficiently indicated by the legislation effected both before and subsequent to the meeting of the “Assembly of Divines.” We are assured by excellent authorities that in England, some twenty years after the appearance of Bownde’s book, people “dared not, for fear of breaking the Sabbath, kindle a fire, or dress meat, or visit their neighbors; nor sit at their own door nor walk abroad; nor even talk with each other, save and it were of godly matters.” In 1643 the Long Parliament enacted laws “for the more thorough observance of the Sabbath,” and caused to be burnt by the hangman James I.’s Book of Sports. In the next year the Court of Six Sessions forbade in Scotland all walking in the streets on the Sabbath after the noonday sermon; and soldiers patrolled the streets, arresting both old and young whom they should find outside their houses and not on the way to or from church. The gates of Edinburgh were ordered to be shut from ten P.M. of Saturday till four A.M. of Monday; and the case is on record of a widow who had to pay a fine of