Year: 1878

The Americans Sabbath.


We made mention says the n. Y.
Observer, at the time of its delivery of the
sermon preached in Grace church, on Sun
day May 10, by Rev. DR.. Henry C. Potter,
rector, at the request of the N. Y Sabbath
committee. The discourse has since been
published by the committee and deserves
a wide circulation. We make an extract
on the claims of the American people to
their own Sabbath


at is surely pertinent inquiry, whose
country is this, and what language does it
speak, and By what sacred traditions is it
hallowed? Who first sought it out, and
settled it,-subduing its wilderness and
founding its cities, and opening It's sea-
ports? From whence got it its law and
faith, and its Christian civilization ? Who
have hallowed its hills and its valleys By
their blood, shed once and yet again in its
defense? Call it fanaticism, call it intol.
erance, call it political infatuatiOn, what
you viii, venture to declare that iG is
high time that our brethren Of other lands,
and other races, and other religions, or no
religion at all, understood clearly and dis
tinctly that while we welcome them to as
similation to our National life, America
is for Amricans; and that while we viii
welcome every foreigner, Christian or Jew,
Pagan or Positivist, to our shores, they
are our shores not his, and are to be ruled
by our traditions, not those Of other people.
1t is in fact as utter an impertinence for
the German or the Frenchman, for the
Jew or the Mohammedan, to come here
demanding that we shall waive the customs
and repeal the laws that hallowed our
Lords day, as that we shall surrender our
language for the dialect of the Black For
est or our marriage relations for domestic
usages of the Sultan. No one comes here
in ignorance of American usage or tradi-
tions on these points. 1t is, I repeat,
a solemn impertinence when any foreigner
demands that we shall surrender those us
ages because they do not happen to have
been his And it does not become less of
an impertinence because, in any particular
community,-in New York for instrnce-
the numerical majority may happen to be
in favor of radical changes in, or even the
utter abolition of, our Sunday laws. A
half dozen ship loads of people landed ut
New Bedford, on the coast Of Massachu-
sets, might convert that decent and self
respecting and monogamic community in
twenty-four hours into city in which the
majority Of the people were in favor of
the ysligion of Joe Smith and the domestic
usages Of Mormonism. But / have yet
to learn that that would be valid reason
for repeating the laws of Massachusetts,
SO far as they are applied to the town Of
New Bedford, in regard to the matter of
polygamy. There is something besides
the accidental presence of mere numbers
to be reckoned in estimating the moral SEN
timent and intelligent determination of the
community; and it IS the majority not Of
the idle, and vicious, and thriffless, of the
ignorant, of aliens and of agitators, but
the majority of the upright and industri-
Gus, the frugal and temperate, the thought
ful and the self-respecting, whose voice
should, on this point, be potential For
one, have no apprehension as to its YER
dict, if only it shall insist upon being
heard


"But that,-Christian men and women
of New York,-that is the duty of the
hour. 1t is one of the most remarkable
facts Of our time that those older nations
from which some of us propose to borrow
our habit of disregard for the Lord s-day,
are striving at this very moment, with
most impressive earnestness to restore the
earlier sacredness Of that day. In Ger
many, in Switzerland, and in France, there,
are already organizations Of serious and
thoughtful men who are seeking to Danish
the Continental Sunday. They have seen,
on the one hand as any one may seein France
to-day, that the removal of the sacred
sanctions, which with US, hold the first. day
of the week in kind of chaste reserve,
have eventuated not merely in degrading
it to the level of vulgar holiday, but also
of degrading and enslaving him for whom
its privileges were, most of all, Designed
the wearied, oyerworked and poorly paid,
laboring man. They have seen that in
such capitalas Paris, it has already come
to pass that the working-man's Sunday Is
often as tOilsOme day as any other; and
that since the law no longer guards the
dag from labor, the capitalist and contrac-
tor no longer spare nor regard the laborer.
He is person out of whom the most is to
be got, and if he can work six days he
may as well work the seventh also, so long
as there is nothing to forbid it. Such
condition of things may not directly threat
en- those of us who are protected by wealth
from the necessities of daily labor, but, if
ours is this more favored condition, all the
more do we owe it to our brother man,
who is less favored, to see to it that he
shall have every sanction with which the
law can furnish him to guard his day Of
rest from being perverted and revolution
lied into day of toll. And if he himself
does not see that the more that we assimi-
late Sunday to other days by the amuae-


ments, the occupations, the teaching and
reading and thinking with which we I'll


it, the greater is the danger that ultimately


we shall lose it altogether, the more earn


estly are we bound to strive to disseminate
those sounder ideas which shall set this


first day of the week, and its devout OBJ


servance before our fellow men and women


of the laboring classes, in its true light,


and 50 help and teach them how, NOT to