The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1920-04-19
Monday, April 10, 1920
MAN AND THE SABBATH

how the Sabbath began at sundown
Saturday and ended at sundown
Sunday; how all the household work
stopped at the former hour, and, at
the latter, the women of the family
gathered around to wash the dishes
and make up the beds; how the whole
family, one by one, Saturday night
took their turn in the zinc tub, then
mother laid out fathers and the chill
dren's clean clothes against their
early rising Sunday morning ready
for go-to-meeting; no games to be
played no books to be read except the
Bible; no riding, no pleasuring of any
sort. In some of the families of GER
tain denominations catechism recita-
ton and psalm singing were the only
relaxations from the monotony on
Sunday afternoon.
Some of these things are not so far
from the memory of the Sabbaths of
our own childhood-memories of long
hours in a straight-back, cushionless
pew, staring at carpet patterns,
fidgeting, playing with hymn book
until one of the elders gave us
pinch on the leg, then pretending to
listen to the rhetorical periods Of
ministerial discourse, not one word IN
ten of which we even remotely COM
pretended, marveling secretly the
while at the vagaries Of our elders
who would sit so placidly under SER
.monizing. After church home to the
usual good, cold Sunday dinner, al
ways prepared the day before and
generally ended up with chocolate
cake or cold egg custard. Sunday
school was always in the mornings in
those days so we were left a long af-
ternoon to while away by using the
only permitted means-the Bible story
book, Pilgrims Progress or that
square edition of Dante's Inferno il
Illustrated most hideously by Dore.
The Puritans had a reason. The
Sabbath which they found in the
seventeenth century England had
been plentifully profaned by the
cavaliers. We are wont to blame our
Puritan forefathers for the gloomy
Sabbath. The people we ought to
blame were the dissolute English up
per classes, who had so degraded the
name of pleasure that they made the
Puritans think it was pleasure and
not the misuse of it which was evil.
1t is true that the Puritans were
radicals in many respects but to
overcome the wanton dissoluteness of
the degraded and licentious cavaliers
NAV be the Puritan roundheads had
to 20 to the other limit to obtain a
medium good average Sabbath Oh
servance. Those Puritans who re-
fused to eat an egg for Mondays
breakfast which the hen had worked i
to lay on Sabbath certainly did 60 to I,
the last extreme: Butt Sabbath had
been given over to a misuse of :,
legitimate pleasure and every shady
exhibition, bear batting, cock fight
ing the presentation of the newest
lewd play of the Jacobean dramatists
was given on Sabbath.
Even today Continental Europeans
view what survives, in both England
and this country, her progeny, of the
Puritan Sabbath with mixture Of
amazement and derision. With themrit.
is day to enjoy. And it must be ad-
mitted that they excel in ingenious
and innocent ways of doing so.
Their influence is making itself
felt among US. Our foreign popula-
tions, given half chance, can teach US
the art of having a good time for
very little money, plat of green
grass, a lunch basket, the shade of a
tree, a running brook, with no sacri-
flee of piety or deistical respect.
The automobile has pried the old
fashioned Sabbath much wider open.
We began by using the machine for
Sunday visit to grandmother. We
have ended by taking grandmother