Mexico weekly ledger., 1881-05-26
SUNDAY

The LEDGER has invariably advo-
Gated Sunday as an appropriate day
for rest and worship, and now inserts
with pleasure q communication from
"The Ladies Sabbath Reform Society,"
its views Of Sunday and
its observance, rendered necessary,
perhaps, by certain recent sermons
and addresses.
The community is certainly to be
congratulated that our ladies have
had the good sense to have refrained
from insisting upon either a Jewish
or Puritanical observance of Sunday.
Neither the Sabbath of Moses, nor
that Of Nehemiah, or Ezra, nor of
the modern Puritans, presents suit
able model for Sunday observance IN
our midst. Moses prohibited the
gathering of wood and the kindllng
of fires on the seventh day of the
week; but such a Sunday law in win
ter, in such a climate as ours, would
be as unnatural as it would be intol-
erabie and to have Sunday enforced
by the military, as was done at Jeru-
salem by the lieutenant of Cyrus, or
even by the sheriff or constable, as
more recently by Puritans, would be
destructive of freedom. Neither
would the Sabbath as expounded by
Ezra and the Seventy, when it was
said, "Go your way, eat the fat and
drink the sweet and send portions
unto them, for whom nothing is pre-
pared, for this day is holy unto our
Lord" suit our modern ascetic no.
tons of Sunday observance any more
than other Jewish religious and fes-
tive ceremonies, in which the timbrel
and the dance formed prominent
parts of worship, and such charac-
ters as Miriam and David were active
participants.
Neither, so far as our observation
extends, will decentralization of Sun
day by applying to it the law of the
Sabbaths of unleavened bread, which
prohibited only servile labor, be ex-
extensively tolerated in or out Of the
church, as rest from work on Sunday
is as necessary and beneficial to mas
ter as to servant, and to freedman as
to slave. The fourth commandment
forbade all work on the seventh day,
and at least the spirit of 50 much of
the moral law as related to time of
rest is applicable to Sunday. Neither,
in our opinion, can anything be gained
by making Sunday a commemoration
of the rest of God or of creation, as
distinguished from it's commemora-
ton of the resurrection of Christ.
Certainly no reason for such change
can be found in the fact, that st the
crucifixion, the regular Jewish weekly
Sabbath and the first Sabbath of the
feast of unleavened bread, no doubt
through Divine pre-arrangement, fell
upon the day that followed Christ's
death, or the further fact, that the
Evangclists used Sabboton in its plu'
raj form to designate both a weekly
| and festive Sabbath in unusual con
junction. and the weeks or Sabbaths
extending to Pentecost from tho
close or end, or, perhaps, more
properly, the dying out, if mo-
death of the conjoined weekly ane
festive Sabbaths commemorating thu
rest of God and the exodus from
Egypt. (See Luke 6:1; Lev. 23:15
and Deut. 16:9.)
What is universally insisted on is I
weekly day of rest for laborers en-
forced by law, because their well
being demands it, and because th
appointment and regulation of sucl
a period falls as appropriately withl1
civil jurisdiction as other sanitar.
measures. If government can pro
vide against the everlasting of chill
dren, who can, with reason, objec
to statutes against the overtasking G
men? And if the State can arrang
for the education of youth, who sha
deny opportunity for Improvement t
the mature? And if the sale of liquo
and gambling, improper conduc'
l drunkenness, blasphemy and immor'