The Bozeman courier. (Bozeman, Mont.) 1919-1954, 1923-08-22
SOME SUNDAYS

How many of you failed to go plasuring in one way or another
last Sunday? The highways are dangerous with Joy riders, the
golf course was congested, the fishing places were crowded, base
ball was busy in hundreds of towns, picnics were plentiful in
every canyon and all manner of games and diversions common
and well attended. Even the church attendance was fair, enough
people attending to make a good showing out OF those who were
willing to put off diversions until after church service.
If grandfather, Scotch Presbyterian and strict Calvinist that
he was, might come back long enough to observe a 1928 Sunday
he'd be entirely content to get back into his grave and forego
further associations with a "froward generation whose feet" to
his mind, take hold on hell" For Sunday, or as he would have
referred to the day "the Sabbath" was a vastly different day
about his premises.
He had been brought up in a strict family where Sunday
began on Saturday at shutdown and continued until shutdown Sun
day evening. Between these two there was no sign of Unnecessary
work. No meals were cooked, no labor performed except the care
of the animals, the brutes dependent on man and the care of man.
Not even a fire was built. There was a Sabbath stiffness about
the place disturbed only by the morning family service and the
preparations for "kirk." They went in meekness to listen to long
discussions of REORGANIZATION and the abject state of man. 1t
was the old hardshen doctrine and the puritanical Sabbath but
they kept it as they believed. To be sure it was a seemingly
hearthss creed which bore more upon punishment than upon
love and found salvation through severity, but whether through
fear or faith they kept the law as they believed it to be. And
lgayety or recreation or play was a damnable thing of Sundays.
Time modified grandfathers customs whether it changed
his belief or not. His family kept Sunday more loosely. 1t began
at midnight instead of shutdown on Saturdays. They cooked meals
on Sundays. The boys and girls went buggy riding on the day.
Times they sang and the singing was not always psalms but at
tempt at frivolous songs brought instant rebuke and command to
cease on Sunday. Only the lost and unregenerate went fishing of
Sunday. None but those alien from church and God played ball in
the pasture of some landowner also a lost and condemned soul and
only the most desperate sinners went hunting on Sunday. Hell
was very close to heaven then and the path between was narrow
and slippery. Grandfather scrupled not to classify and direct the
sheep and the goats. And the fathers and grandfathers of the
church were mainly of his type.
Grandfather as a good Cavinist and a believer in foreordin
alton used to have his doubts as to his own f~oreordained fma
landing place and at time went about in an agony of soul convincet
that he was one of these fated from the beginning to be foreve
with the damned but he never questioned the correctness of his
belief or the justice of the ordainng. After a time he would be
given a sign" that all was right with him and then be highl!
content until another spasm of uncertainty overwhelmed him
No wonder such men holding such beliefs along with such I'm