Morning journal and courier., 1881-03-19
The New Sunday. LInlius H W.nd ia 41,o A.1 .L,..

The day has been regarded heretofore so exclusively from it's religious side that i'm
 portant social and sanitary conditions have been quite overlooked. It still remains fact that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath The foremost point is that 1t shall continue to be day Inf rest. This alone furnishes the opportunity for its higher uses. But it can never apain be day of rest in the old Puritan sense. nor can it be regarded by all sorts of people as Gods time in special sense. Modern soci- ety in our great centres is so constituted that Sunday IS the only day when rest, recreation and education can be generally attended to and the wider and deeper interests of human life, as they are now understood, demand that they shall be used for great variety of purposes, which more or less entail labor upon the few. The claims of daily toll upon nlne-tenths or our population are imperative and exhausting. If one is to earn his bread he must work for it from Monday morning till Saturday night. It is not only constant work, but work under conditions which are unfavorable to health, such as bad air, phvsi- cal strain, mental wear and tear, all of which exhaust ones vitality and furnish no oppor tunlty for physical renewal or general cul- ture. Sunday Is the one day in the week when the overtasked laborer can sleep over when he has the sense of being master of his own household when he can think leisurelv of his relations to God and man. It is the only day for whatever lifts his intellectual and moral being to higher plane If he misses It's benehcent rest and recreation, he soon breaks down, like the French artisans and lights his own funeral pyre;' if he ignores the reading or social intercourse which turns his thoughts into new channels, the unused portions of his life run to waste; if he attends no religious services and gives no emphasis to spiritual things, he loses the moral atmos- phere in which one is spiritually renewed from day to day The provision of rest. sound, true, invlgorating rest no matter what form 1t may take, so that it be wholesome, is at the basis of sound morality Too little attention has been paid to the fact that immortality and crime usually proceed from low vitality. It is the sound body that fur nishes the sane mind and the strong heart The use of Sunday for sanitary purposes it's use simply for physical renewal has been largely lost sight of by a class of moralists who have imagined that religious exercises were the chief thing needful for a weary race; but more important than anything else in this crowded life of the nineteenth century is the use of Sunday in it's broadest and best sense as the day for recruiting the energies which converge to bread-winning and give larger meaning to ones life Be- yond and above everything which sanctions Sunday as the Lords day, the periodic rest is marked out as the great natural law by which the forces of life are to be con-
 
 as now demanded this rest. The men who carry the burdens of the worlds great indus- tries, the men who go from counting rooms to homes with their heads aching the men who have to work intensely as the only con- dition of working at all, are quite as much to be considered as those who do not carry to their pillows thousand anxieties God has always provided rest for men in the natural order, and whenever they work seven days in the week they pay the penalty. The tender point IS the unwilingness of some to con- cede that each one shall have the rest which he thinks that he needs. The restraint of social usage points to church-going, but the weary seamstress, the exhausted clerk the devitalized mechanic, the artisans of every class, not less than the tired brain-work- CTS, need perhaps something just the reverse Some need sleep some, sunshine some, domestic cheer some, an awakening book; some, the patch of fresh grass or the forest ramble; quiet of prayer; some, the words of the spir- itual teacher some, the great sacrament of spiritual refreshment. This large liberty is granted by the State, and is practically taken by it's citizens; but the friends of Christian ity, appreciating what sweetness and light Christ puts into life have hardly yet recog- nized what sad, weary world we live in; how much the religious life depends upon the vitality of the people, or how closely sanity of mind and soul is connected with healthy and restful body. The liberty to rest as each one thinks best on Sunday. and thereby not to cease to be respectable is slowly gaining ground with good people, and all true advance into the higher uses of Sun day IS based upon this concession on the part of those controlling the institutions which are the bulwarks of the Christian faith.