Year: 1872

AN ESSAY BY THE REV. DIR. BELLOWS.


At the recent Unitarian National Con-
ference, in Boston, the Rev. DR.. Bellows
read an essay on 1.-THE American Sunday"
rejecting views more liberal than those
usually held by Protestants. Independ-
ent of its religious uses, and considered
only as break in our hurrying current of
affairs a day of periodical rest, an altera-
tive, our Sunday, said DR.. Bellows, is of
priceless value. Nor is it chiefly the strain
ed muscles of toll that it supplies with a
stated relaxation. 1t is even more valua-
BILE as an interruption of business ambi-
tions, retardaton of the torrent of our
emulous competitions in trade, and cool
ing Of the heated brain of professional riv-
alres. The popular rejection of the as
cetic view of the uses of the day does not
imply a wish for its complete seculariza
ton. At no era has there been any gener-
al acquiescence in the Jewish or Puritan
idea of the Sunday. The vast majority of
the Christian world, both in Roman Cath
olic and in Protestant countries, have val
ued Sunday as sacred holiday, in which
labor and worship paused, that public wor
ship on the one hand and the relaxation
through domestic and social intercourse
and open air pleasures on the other might
divide the day between them. Sundny is
day not less marked in Catholic than in
Protestant countries. 1t is only different
ly marked. 1t is a day perhaps even more
welcomed and priced in Catholic Europe
than in Protestant America, because freer
from gloom and conventional restraints.
Nor is it necessarily less religious for being
more connected with public recreation; for
it's innocent pleasures are sometimes
brought under the protection of its piety,
and its priests share them. Before we
hastily and with spiritual self-complacency
condemn the European and Catholic uses
of Sunday we must recall the religious uses
the Roman Church makes of the other days
of the week. When Protestant churches
are kept open all other days as well as on
Sundays, and public prayers are daily cele-
brated in them morning and evening, and
Protestant Christians are found going by
early dawn to divine service all the days
in the year, as Catholic peasants do, it will
be time enough for them selfrighteously
to condemn the foreign and Roman freer
uses of Sunday.


In our own country the old New-Eng-
land Sabbath has already lost much of its
sour and ascetic character, because the
theological views that justified it have
weakened or relaxed their hold upon the
mind and conscience of the people. AL
though its old Puritan name, the Sabbath
is still maintained-often with polite aim,
but usually only from custom-among the
custodians of the faded remains of the old
New-England theology. its honest histori-
cal name, Sunday, is fast creeping into
general use, and must soon supplant the
old and misleading Jewish title, ''the Sab
bath" Clearly our Sunday is not what
it was in my own youth or a half century
ago. But if it has lost in severity, formal
respect, or ascetic usage, is it a day less
priced or put to less valuable sacred uses
On the contrary. it is day which, under
the breath of a new freedom, is getting a
fresh hold upon the people by accommo-
dating itself more plastically to their real
wants, and by affording them the rest they
need, not always in the form of physical
passivity, nor in any one form, but Of total