The Indiana State sentinel., 1880-12-29
When Does Sunday Begin? When Does it
End?
professor TyndAu in Nineteenth Century.l

End?
Professor Ty ndan in Nineteenth Century.l
Theologians were Mortified when first in
formed that our planet was a sphere. The
question of antipodes exercised them for a
long time, most of them pouring ridicule on
the idea that men could exist with their feet
toward US, and with their heads pointing
downward. l think it is Sir George Airy
who refers to the case of an over-curious in
dividual asking what we should see if we
went to the edge OF the world and looked
over. That the earth was a fiat surface on
which the sky rested was the belief enter
tanned by the founders of all our great re.
ligious systems. Even liberal Protestant
theologians stigmatized the Copernican
theory as being "built on fallible phenomena
and advanced by many arbitrary assump-
tions against evident testimonies of Scrip
ture." Newton finally placed his intel!ec-
tual erowbar beneath those ancient notions,
and heaved them intoirretrievabler leruin. Then
it was that penetrating minds, seeing the ma
ture ofthe change wrought by the new astron-
omy in our conceptions of the universe, also
discerned the difficulty, if not the impossi-
bility, of accepting literally the Mosaic ac-
count of creation. They did not reject it,
but they assigned to it meaning entirely
new. DR.. Samuel Clarke, who was
the personal friend of Newton and
a supporter of his theory, threw out the
idea that "possibly the six DAYS of Gre
alton might be typical representation of
some greater periods" Carke's contempo-
rary, DR.. Thomas Burnet, wrote with greater
decision in the same strain. The Sabbath
being regarded as shadow or type of that
heavenly repose which the righteous will en-
JOY when this world has passed away, $50
these six days ofcreation areso many periods
or millenniums for which the world and the
tolls and labors of our present state are
destined to endure The Mosaic account
was thus reduced to poetic myth--a view
which afterward found expression in the vast
reveries of Hugh Miller. But if this symbolic
Interpretation, which is now generally ac-
cepted, be the true one, what becomes of the
Sabbath day? 1t Is absolutely without &C.
clesiastical meaning; and the man who was
executed for gathering sticks on that day
must be regarded as the victim of rude
legal rendering of a religious epic. There
are many minor offshoots of discussion from
the great central controversy. Bishop
Horsley had defined day Gas consisting of
one evening and one morning, or, as the
Hebrew words literally import, of the decay
of light and the return OF it." But what
then, it is asked, becomes of the Sabbath in
the Arctic regions, where light takes six
months to 'decay," and as long TO ''retnrn2"
Differences of longitude, moreover, render
the observance of the Sabbath at the
same hours impossible. To some people such
questions might appear trihing; to others
they were of the gravest import. Whether
the Sabbath should stretch from sunset to
sunset, or from midnight TO midnight, was
also a subject of discussion. Voices, more
over, were heard refusing to acknowledge
the propriety of the change from Saturday
to Sunday, and the doctrine of Seventh Day
observance was afterward represented by a
sect. The esrth's sphericity and rotation,
which had at first been received with such
alright, came eventually to the aid of those
afflicted with qualms and difficulties regard
ing the respective claims of Saturday and
Sunday. The sun apparently moves from
east to west. Suppose, then, we start on a
voyage round the world in a westerly direc-
ton In doing so, we sail away, as it were,
from the sun, which follows and periodically
overtakes us, reaching the meridian of our
ship each succeeding day somewhat later
than if we stood still. For every 15' of
longitude traversed by the vessel the sun
will be exactly an hour late; and after the
ship has traversed twenty-four times l5o or
S60o-that is to say. the entire circle of the
earth-the sun will be exactly day behind
Here. then, is the expedient suggested by
Dr. Wallis, f. Il. s., Savilian Professor of
Geometry in the University Of Oxford, to
quiet the minds of those in doubt regarding
Saturday observance. He recommends
them to make a voyage round the world, as
Sir Francis Drake did, "going out of the
Atlantic Ocean westward by the Straits of
Magellan to the East Indies, and then from
the east. returning by the Cape of Good
Hope homeward, and let them keep their
Saturday Sabbath all the way. When they
come home to England they will find their
Saturday to fall upon our Sunday, and they
NAV thenceforth continue to observe their
Saturday-Sabbath on the same day with u.s."