The Sun.
London, England, 1856-03-18 00:00:00

se', "UpUlOSity in- relation to the Sabbath which
Ica nt such a long way to disgust the English
pec -ple with religion in the time of the Common-
wea ltb, and to bring about that period of abo-
mint tble licence known as the reign of CHARLES

tbe ',SECOND. How many of them would have re-
fr sin•ed from an expression of incredulity had
tt Ley been informed at the time, that the whim-
si cal fancy of the satirist of that 'age typified
w hat would take place in this, and that the anti-
ty pe would be found in the metropolis 7 And yet,
howevor incredulous, they would have been de-
ceived, .as a, perusal of the speech of Mr. Buca-
STONE, at the anniversary banquet of the Royal
General 'Theatrical Fund, celebrated last evening
in the London Tavern, will show. That kindly,
open-hearted, and facetious personage, in alluding
to the sour intolerance of the Sabbatarianism of
the day, which " stands in the way of making our
Sundays a /Little more cheerful and more to be
welcomed by the working classes than they are at
present," told, it will be seen, a remarkable story
in point, in .connection with Exeter Hall, which
we will give in his own words :—" At that saintly
temple, whew rented by some friends of mine for
the purpose of giving concerts, the directors
actually obj'acted to the singing of that thoroughly
English ballad, Sally in our Alley,' unless the
verse was omitted which runs thus—

Of all the days that's in the week
I dearly love but one day,
And that's the day which comes between
A. Saturday and Monday.' "
We put it to our readers whether any of them
would retain their confidence in an Insurancle.
office that granted a policy on the Tortoiseshell
Tom or Queen belonging to any of these saintly
directors I`
Sabbatarianism is, without question, tile great
religious mania of the day, and it is carried to
such an extent as, in our hamble opinion, to
threaten much-enduring injury to the cause of
religion, while it is indicative of internal rotten-
ness. No man, we fancy, will undertake to say
that this is a period of religious earnestness, or
that the churches are making many converts
among the population. The ardent zeal and un-
wearying labour which characterised many of their
founders is not to be found among them. The
architecture of their places of worship is more
showy, the congregations more fashionably attired,
and rich members more looked up to ; but the
burning periods, the melting exhortations, the ex-

hibition of Christian virtues, and other adorn-
ments of the Christian life, where are they to be
found ? The poor perish in their ignorance, un-
cared for, godless, and unknown' around them,
hardly a movement is made after any representa-
tion, however touching, for their relief. But let
an attempt be made to relieve the oppressed
labourer of that weariness of spirit succeeding six
days unremitting toil, and divines whose ortho-
doxy, like their Apostolic zeal, is more than
doubted, and congregations that never gave any
one reason to suspect that they mortified the
lusts of the flesh, rise in arms against the audacious
innovators, and read their "bottomless pit homilies"
in terrorem, with a fierceness worthy of the
Furies. That were bad enough, as not being Chris-
tian nor graceful ; but these awakened firebrands
have recourse to misrepresentation and falsehood,
which we take to be the opposite of Christian as
of honest. The newly-discovered objects of their
zealous watchfulness and care have the grossest
misinterpretations of Scripture palmed off upon
them, being besieged with tracts, in which
the duty of keeping a day holy, which none
but the Jews respect at all, is laid
down, and that recreation is pronounced
a desecration which the LORD of the Sabbath
would not, when on earth, fOr a moment have
disallowed. Not content with this, the appre-
hensions of the workmen are unscrupulously
appealed to, and it is lyinzly asserted that the ob-
ject of his only real friends is not to give him an
opportunity to east off the slough of ignorance
that has impeded his moral and intellectual growth,
but to rob him of his Sunday, and buid him
until death to the wheel of toil. To say that
these misrepresentations have not had an influence
were false, but the effect they have produced
by no means describes all they are likely to pro-
duce. We would it did. When their hypo-
crisy and unscrupulosity of these teachers
are detected, as soon they must be, there
in much reason to fear that the cause of
religion and morality will suffer in that in-
stinctive revolt which will inevitably follow.
What workman, for instance, misled as to the
Sabbath question by these untoward bigots, but
must feel disgusted when he is told by some sin-
gularly impudent divine, as at Banbury, that the
majority of Sunday excursionists consists of "the
dirtiest, the silliest, the laziest, and poorest of
the toiling population," knowing, as he does, that
the very reverse is the fact ? Or that discovers
that the observance of Sunday is, after all, but a
human institution, but must be led to doubt in
other matters that authority on which he accepted
it as a Divine one ? It is offensive enough to
any friend of the poor to see them wronged by
Sabbatarian bigotry in being deprived of oppor-
tunity for innoeent recreation ; but that is a
matter of secondary importance when compared
with the false light in which religion is thus pre-
sented to them by its unworthy ministers. The
Sabbatarian yoke won't long be endured, but how
long the well-merited detestation of it will be
associated with religion, who shall tell ? A religious
reformation is sadly wanted, and most of all
among those who describe themselves as par excel-
lence the orthodox.