two merks for having “had a roast at the fire during sermon time.”
It is told of an English lady of rank in our own day that, having procured some Dorking fowl, she some time after asked the servant who attended to them whether they were laying many eggs; to which the latter replied with great earnestness: “Indeed, my lady, they lay every day, not excepting even the blessed Sabbath!” Nor is the puritanic feeling still existing to a considerable extent among some few of the sectaries in Scotland badly illustrated by Sandie’s remark when he saw a hare skipping along the road as the people were gathering for sermon: “Ay! yon beast kens weel eneuch it’s the Sabbath day!” And the countryman passing on his way to “meeting,” who, when asked by a tourist the name of a picturesque ruin in the vicinity, answered: “It’s no the day to be speerin’ sic like things,” gives the reader an idea of certain peculiarities (formerly quite prevalent among Protestants, and still too common for the comfort of those who have many of the straiter sort for neighbors) which, we believe, are gradually but surely fading out before the progress of intelligence and with the wave of superstition and intolerance. For it must be borne in mind that the same Westminster Confession, relying too on Scripture, insists on the right and power of the civil magistrate circa sacra, contends that “he beareth not the sword in vain,” and that kings should be “nursing fathers” and queens “nursing mothers” to the church. We will do our modern Presbyterians the charity to believe that in subscribing to this instrument, they do so with some “mental reservation”; otherwise the cry against union of church and state
that we so frequently hear from them would (when taken in connection with their former antecedents as a sect and their present professed standards) be quite unintelligible.
Now, of the mode of keeping Sunday followed by Protestants in Continental Europe we need not speak, nor of the practice of Anglicans in the same regard, save in so far as the latter have (principally through the lower or evangelical division of their body) been modified and influenced by its former subjection and present proximity to the Puritan element of the English population. In the countries of Europe claimed as Protestant, and as a very natural as well as logical result of the indifferentism taught by the so-called fathers of reform, Luther and Calvin, it is difficult for the tourist to discern in Prussia, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, or Norway, save by the greater number of people at the theatres, concerts, and exhibitions, in the beer-gardens, taverns, and other places of resort, whether the day be Sunday or not. Some, of course, attend church on that day, it being almost the only day of the week on which such service is ever held. Geneva and the non-Catholic cantons of Switzerland may be passed with the same description, which completely exhausts Protestant Continental territory in Europe. Nor of the mode of observing Sunday inculcated by the Anglicans in England can we say that it is at all overdone or puritanical. They have, at least, escaped the dismal parody of asceticism which distinguishes such of their Scotch neighbors as have any trace of the ancient practice left.[152] Let us
glance a moment at the laws of our Puritan friends of New England, that we may get an idea of bigotry run mad, and of the deductions that may be drawn from Vincent Bownde’s book and the teachings of the Westminster divines. “Having themselves,” as Washington Irving well observes,” served a regular apprenticeship in the school of persecution, it behoved them to show that they were proficients in the art.” The Puritans of Massachusetts thus legislate in regard to the “Sabbath” in the “Plymouth Code”:
“This court, taking notice of the great abuse and many misdemeanors committed by divers persons profaning the Sabbath, or Lord’s day, to the great dishonor of God, reproach of religion, and grief of spirit of God’s people, do therefore order that whosoever shall profane the Lord’s day by doing unnecessary servile work, by unnecessary travelling, or by sports or recreations, he or they that so trespass shall forfeit, for every such default, forty shillings, or be publicly whipped; but if it clearly appear that the sin was proudly, presumptuously, and with a high hand committed, against the known command and authority of the Blessed God, such a person, therein despising and reproaching the Lord, SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH, or grievously punished, at the discretion of the court.”
In support of the same wretched Sabbath superstition the colonies of Hartford and New Haven issue the following edicts:
21. “No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.”
22. “No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave on the Sabbath day.”
23. “No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or fasting day.”