Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-01-22
wEEN DOES SUNDAY BEGIN AND WHEN
DOES IT END?

Theologians were Mortified when first in
formed that our planet was 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 turned toward US, and with their
heads pointing downward. | think it is
Sir George Airy who refers to the case of
an over-curious individual 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 entertained by the
founders of all our great religious systems.
Even liberal Protestant theologians stig-
matzed the Copernican theory as being
"built on fallible phenomena and advanced
by many arbitrary assumptions against
evident testimonies of Scripture" New
ton finally placed his intellectual crowbar
beneath these ancient notions, and heaved
them into irretrievabie ruin. Then it was
that penetrating minds, seeing the nature
of the change wrought by the new astron-
omy in our conceptions OF the universe,
also discerned the difficulty, if not the i'm
possibility, of accepting literally the
Mosaic account of creation. They did
not reject it, but they assigned to it
meaning entirely new. Or. Samuel
Clarke, who was the personal friend of
Newton and supporter of his theory,
threw out the idea that "possibly
the six days OF creation might be
a typical representation of some greater
periods" Clarke's contemporary, DR..
Thomas Burnett, wrote with greater
decision in the same strain. The Sabbath
being regarded as shadow or type of that
heavenly repose which the righteous viii
enjoy when this world hes passed away,
so these six days Of creation are so 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 a poetic
myth-a view which afterward found eX-
preston in the vast reveries of Hugh Mil
ler But if this symbolic Interpretation,
which is now generally accepted, be the
true one, what becomes of the Sabbath day !?
1t is absolutely without ecclesiastical mean
ing; and the man who was executed for
gathering sticks on that day must be re-
garded as thevictim of rude legalrendering
of a religious epic. There are many minor
offshoots of discussion from the great cen.
trail controversy. Bishop Horsley had de-
fined day "as 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 was
asked, becomes of the Sabbath in the Arc
tic regions, where light takes six months
to decay" and as long to IS return -
Differences of longitude, moreover, render
the observance of the Sabbath at the same
hours impossible. To some people such
questions might appear trifiing to others
they were of the gravest import. Whether
the Sabbath should stretch from sun
set to sunset, or from midnight to mid
night, was also subject of dis
cussion. Voices, moreover, were heard
refusing to acknowledge the propriety
of the change from Saturday to Sunday,
and the doctrine of Seventh Day observ-
ance was afterwards represented by sect
The earth's sphericity and rotation, which
had at first been received with such af-
fright, came eventually to the aid OF those
afflicted with qualms and difficulties re-
garding the respective claims of Saturday
and Sunday. The sun apparently moves
from east to west. Suppose, then, we
start on voyage round the world in a
westerly direction. In doing so, we sail
away, as it were, from the sun, which fol-
lows and periodically overtakes US, reach
ing the meridian of our ship each succeed.
ing day somewhat later than if we stood
still. For every l5' of longitude traversed
by the vessel the sun will be exactly an
hour late; and after the ship has traversed
twenty -four times Is, or 36O'-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. R. S., Savilian Professor of Geometry
in the University of Oxford, to quiet the
minds of those in doubt regarding Satur.
day observance. He recommended them
to make voyage round the world, as Sir
Francis Drake did, ''going out of the At
lautic Ocean westward by the Straits Of
Magellan to the East Indies, and then from
theeast, returning by the Capeof Good Hope
homeward, and let them keep theirSaturday
Sabbath all the way. When they come
home to England, they will find their
Saturday to fall upon our Sunday, and they
may thenceforth continue to observe their
Saturday Sabbath on the same day with
u.s. - Professor Tyndah, in Nineteenth
Century.
DE-. UseARs LIQUOR AsrIDorE, carefully prepared
OF the best Quill Bark by NJ. 5. Hammer, druggist,