The Cecil Whig., 1872-12-07

| q AZ
Months % and 25 per cent additional Three change
allowed to yearly advertisers without additional charge
change of moral diet and rest in many
weary faculties. People do not need to
rest on Sunday from bodily labors or busi-
ness occupations only. They need rest al.
so from the monotony of lives of care, of
thrift, of ambition and cupidity.
The moral and mental Alternative proyid.
ed by Sunday is immense and general. To
millions it is the only truly domestic day
in the week. 1t is, too, the laborers', the
clerks, the officials sole day of escape
from sense of slavery. The Sunday
breaks more chains every week than Mr..
Lincoln or the Emperor of Russia did in
their great act of emancipation. I will
not conceal my own belief that the unsys-
tematic uses of Sunday, its uses independ-
ent of ecclesiastical institutions, or public
worship, as a day of rest from toll, rest
from the control of masters of all sorts, .
day of leisure, of free breathing, a day
which every man may put to his own use,
under certain general and necessary re-
straints; a day of domestic intercourse, of
opportunity to visit the country, to walk
in parks and gardens, to call on old COM
panions and keep up valued but endanger-
| cd friendships; to make love; to write letters
home; to read and think for continuous
hours-is one of the greatest uses to which
it could be put, and one which no system
| attic use of it should be allowed to make
impossible.
In regard to attendance on public wor-
ship, morning and afternoon or evening,
| although complaints are made of a falling
off, l cannot think that We have any
grounds of serious complaint. Doubtless
there is less superstition in regard to the
virtue of attending public worship than
once prevailed, and corresponding lessen
ing of compulsory comers, but more free
dom of personal choice and more voluntary
attendance. Church going alone does not
establish mans moral reputation or pious
character, or neglect of it, alone, mark him
as dangerous citizen and an ungodly
person. The Church is beginning to sus-
pect itself of faultiness when it fails to
command the interest of those within the
sound of its bells, and not to lay all the
blame on the absentees. 1t perceives, too,
that great rival attractions have arisen un-
der the new conditions of modern life; that
everybody reads; that books and magazines
and newspapers are cheap; that moral and
religious instruction is no longer in the
exclusive hands of the clergy; that many
or most of the freest, most genuine and at
tractive preachers neither stand in modern
pulpits nor write sermons with texts and
conventional divisions; but, in essays re-
views, secular, and religious newspapers,
in novels and dramas and poems, address
indirectly the conscience, heart and will,
and feed, inflame, and guide the moral and
religious feelings of mankind. Thousands
of intelligent, worthy Christian people, in
places where only formal, dry or uninspir-
ed public ministrations are within reach,
spend the hours they or their predecessors
once devoted to church-going in reading
that is more nutritious and attractive and
more creative of religious faith and conso-
lation than the Sunday preaching offers
them.
Many minds, too, from independent re-
sources, delicate tastes, or original views,
have become kings and priests unto them
selves; and, doubling the force of the old
ar ,p1o 1,os, LA
in their private homes and hearts, and
withdraw from public religious services.
1t does not seem worth while to spend re-
proaches or waste time upon considera-
BILE class of people who have thus outgrown
the religious usages of this generation, so
long as we have nothing to complain of in
their lives or to regret in their personal
character. The testimony they offer to
the inadequacy Of our usual public wor-
ship to satisfy their want, and to the need
of some change in it's character, to COM
mand the respect and interest of thought
ful, free, and earnest men and women, is
itself, perhaps, the best service such per-
sons could render to the church. The only
example they would set by attendance is
one neither wholesome nor genuine. 1t
would be an example of formality, pro-
tense, and hypocrisy, and as such is neither
needed nor desired
This does not imply n loss of Christian
faith or of reverence for religion, but only
that the religious life of the world has &C
quired force and power enough to flow in
other channels beside the old ecclesiastical
one; that other and unbadged teachers of
morals and faith have brought the official
ones into less exclusive reverence and less
general following. We ought not to COM
plain of the logical result Of separating re-
ligion from the State, and leaving the
Church to depend for support on the affec-
tionate allegiance of its members. In the
true religion, not against it. Is there one
voluntary function in all the world 80 sus-
tanned and so honored as the Christian
Church? If it be only department of
factor in civilization and human further
anc,, is it not ono of the most precious, the
most widely recognized, and the most in
dispensible? The world, thank God has
many modern and glorious saving and re-
generating influences at work upon it.
Yet none which fully occupy the sphere or
fnlfill the duty, or antiquate or supersede
the functions of Christian Churches, or
the religious use of the Sunday or the
Church.
TEMPERANCE STATIsTIcs.-An eminent
English statistician, wholly unconnected
with the temperance movement, has pub
lished a series of tables showing that tho
mortality among temperance men insured
in number of life insurance offices in
England during the last five years, was
twenty-six per cent, below the averages
upon which the tables are calculated,
whilst in the general section" which is
open to the public, it was only seven per