Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/389

Rh dress meat, or visit the neighbors, or walk abroad in the fields. Acts intrinsically proper have been construed as crimes if done on Sunday. The absurdities of sabbatarian legislation illustrate the grossest superstitions of the past. The following statement from Cox's "Sabbath Laws" represents the character and logic of the old practices: "At Aberdeen, in the month of November, 1608, a great panic arose by reason of an earthquake which had visited the city, and as the cause of the earthquake was distinctly traceable to the custom of salmon-fishing on Sunday, the proprietors of the salmon-fishings were summoned before the Session and solemnly rebuked." This may seem ridiculous, but do we not still hear of the judgments that follow Sabbath-breaking?

And it is important to note that, when viewed even theologically, the strictness of the Puritan Sunday is without authority. If the Old Testament is appealed to, the fourth commandment forbids work with emphatic detail on the seventh day of the week, but forbids nothing else. If the New Testament is appealed to, we find Christ nowhere establishing Sunday, but entertaining such latitudinarian views on the subject as to incur the reproaches of the pietistic Pharisees for Sabbath-breaking. And in reply to their puritanical notions he curtly told them that "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Hence it has been justly said that "Christ himself did nothing more by word or act than protest against the superstitious abuses which in course of time had grown around the Sabbath." Paul exhorts the Colossians to independence of thought upon the subject, and to let no man judge them in respect of holidays, new moons, and Sabbath-days. It is alleged that there is no evidence that the early Christians kept Sunday, or the first day of the week, with Jewish strictness, but that it was first enforced by law in 386 by the Emperor Constantine, "who attached just as much importance to his own birthday as to the day of the Lord." But the puritanical spirit grew apace. "In proportion as the Church triumphed over paganism, so did the Christian days over those of the old world. The Church naturally used every effort to secure an increased respect for the days of its own creation. And though it was not till the time of Leo the Philosopher (889-910) that Sunday field-work was forbidden by an imperial law, in reference to public games and amusements the ascetic tendencies of the Church were earlier and more generally felt. The first innovation in this direction was the law of Theodosius the Elder, which included in its prohibition not only secular business but secular amusements. Abstinence, therefore, from toil and pleasure, having thus become the law of the Christian empire, the subsequent history of Sunday resolves itself simply into an extension of the principle."

Coming down to the Reformation, we find its master-spirits still struggling against the tendency to sabbatarian intolerance. "Cranmer speaks of Sunday and other days as mere 'appointments of the magistrates,' but considers that a sufficient reason for their observance." Tyndale says: "As for the Sabbath, we be lords of the Sabbath, and may yet change it into Monday, or into any other day as we see need, or may make every tenth day a holy day, only as we see cause why; neither need we any holy day at all if the people might be taught without." Luther said: "If anywhere any one sets up its observance on a Jewish foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride on it, to dance on it, to do anything that shall remove the encroachments on Christian liberty." Calvin, in this, was equally liberal, and set an example by playing the game of bowls on Sunday. In all these cases we note the recognition of Sunday as a human institution, subordinate