THE SUNDAY

SUNDAY QUESTION.

THIS question interests, or ought to interest, all classes.

THIS

Unfor

tunately, the question has been rendered distasteful to many who would otherwise give it candid consideration, by the stormy feebleness and not entirely Christ-like way in which it has been sometimes treated.

On this question, as on many others, the extremists have done harm. One section of writers, professing to honour God, have not fulfilled the law of Christ. Probably they have never understood it. The opposing extremists have not unfrequently exhibited an ostentatious readiness to insult the opinions, and-what is more dangerous -the sentiments of a people profoundly attached to ancient usage. The old and illogical arguments have been dressed up and used remorselessly. "It is ancient, and therefore venerable," has been answered by the plea, " Ancient usage is only a phrase for unreasoning prejudice." The law of Moses has been cited as though a Prophet greater than Moses had never spoken. The argument from sacred considerations has been ignored, as though the great Legislator of Israel had been an insignificant personage, and as though Christ's words, that the Sabbath was made for man, had no more than a negative meaning. The extremists ruin causes everywhere because they alienate the central portion of society. The issue is fought out between extremes. The disgust felt by reflecting men is counted selfish indifference by the fanatic and the partisan; Wisdom is obliged to cry in the street, because she is expelled from the houses of the Pharisee and the Sadducee.

Something better is wanted. A great question-and, rightly understood, the Sunday Question is a great one-needs to be lifted into a higher region, and to be taken out of the hands of the hyste

rical and the heedless. We want calm, reverent, patriotic thinkers to take up this question; and, if I might venture to do so, I would earnestly appeal to those whose experience, knowledge, and unquestioned seriousness entitle them to speak, to give light and leading on this subject.

It will be admitted that Sunday is not regarded in some sections of society as it was a few years ago. Whether the change is for the better or the worse will be a matter of opinion. That the change, whatever it is, should be guided by ripe and considerate judgment, will be admitted.

Is the change for the better? To answer this it will be well to understand the nature of the change.

The following extract is from the Daily Telegraph, March 2, 1888. It occurs in an article on the "Sunday Question" which was written in anticipation of a discussion on the subject in the Convocation of Canterbury, and refers to a memorial presented to Convocation by the Bishop of Exeter :

"It will be open to the bishop, in support of his argument, to dwell upon newspaper descriptions of Sunday Ten o'clocks,' Sunday parades in Hyde Park, Crystal Palace Sunday dinners, an exhibition at the Yankeries, the Sunday before Ascot, set dinner parties with recitations and humorous songs by actors and actresses, supper parties, garden parties along the river Thames with sundry theatrical performances, punting on the Thames, the Church parade at Cowes, sparring matches at a club, Sunday sailings of pleasure-vessels, 'Show' Sunday in the studios, smoking concerts, coach drives at Richmond and Hampton Court, lawn tennis, dances, and so forth.

"All these doings have been carefully chronicled, but it is possible that the Bishop of Exeter may defer his observations until his reply, as he has already spoken. Down to the present he has confined himself to the general principle that the loosening of the observance of the Lord's Day would eventually result in the working classes being obliged to labour seven days a week with a six days' wage. Any remonstrance, he said, from their lordships' House would awaken a strong echo from the poorer classes, and he deprecates the lapse into a French Sunday as tending to the breaking down of the sobriety of the English character."

In the debate which took place on that occasion, the Bishop of Exeter read the following extract from a newspaper :

"How many coaches went out of London this very last Sunday? As many almost as are built. There are still a few sticklers for puritanical propriety, who assemble their guests in obscure mews and leave London by depressingly low neighbourhoods, in which they are not likely to encounter their friends; but, as a rule, the coaches make a bold show in Piccadilly on their way to Hampton Court and Richmond. There is now a club formed for the express purpose of driving to Richmond on a Sunday. Its members are miscellaneous may be, though two-thirds are to be found without much trouble in 'Burke' or Debrett,' and the tedium of the old Sunday is utterly lost on them. And, above all, London has the river, only of recent years opened to it on the Sunday any more than the Serpentine was till this summer, Sunday up the River' being as much a recognized phrase now as the five-o'clock tea. Paddington is crammed with those intent on catching the early train to Maidenhead; Waterloo

is packed with those content to take the smaller and later journeys; and the river from Moulsey to Pangbourne is thronged. There once was a time when this would have been thought wrong, and even now there are those who would oppose the letting out of boats on the Serpentine to men who have no other chance of a holiday. The race of congenital idiots will in all probability never die out. A pull in a boat, a run through glorious scenery in a steam launch, are not likely to do any one harm. And returning, one need not be bored of an evening, as was wont to be the fashion. At the New Club one can see plays; at the Pelican Club one can see boxing, and hear the pick of the music-hall talent. Sunday dances are now freely given. Some of the best little hops of this year have been given on the Sabbath, to say nothing of the charming entertainment at the Gaiety Theatre. For the present, at least, there is no need for spending the day in-doors in a discontented frame of mind, and retiring to bed early, morose and melancholy that there should have been such a day in the week as the old-fashioned Sunday.

In discussing the significance of the state of things here described, I propose to lay aside the more usual religious view. I desire to treat the subject from another standpoint, which I believe is ultimately a truly religious one. I do not propose to speak of what is called. the desecration of the Sabbath. I may say, in passing, that I am profoundly convinced that it is fit and wise that a nation should recognize in some clear and unmistakable way the fact that it has a divine calling, and that it lives and acts within the laws and limits of the Kingdom of God. But I do not, as I said, propose to speak of the desecration of the day, because, for the moment, I am thinking of the desecration of men's thoughts and characters.

There is one great law of a nation's life which can never be broken with impunity. It is the law which is expressed in three great words— Duty, Love, Sacrifice. It is the law which was uttered by Christ when He said, "He that would be first among you, let him be the servant of all," and has been echoed back with joy by the lips of hundreds and thousands till it is at last accepted, in theory at least, by the whole world. It was adopted by Auguste Comte when he summed up his teaching in the borrowed words: "It is more blessed to give than to receive." It was formulated in another fashion by a genius as great as Comte, when George Sand wrote: "There is but one sole virtue in the world-the eternal sacrifice of self." This law, enunciated with such solemnity and accepted with practical unanimity, is essential to the social well-being of a great people. To forget it is to disintegrate society. The man who forgets it desecrates himself.

Let us ask, On what principle is this Sunday Question to be settled ? Some claim that it shall be settled by the principle of individual freedom. "Every man is free, and his conscience is responsible to God and himself. Sunday is a free day, and in a free land ought to I may use it as I please. The offender against liberty is the sour-visaged Puritan who frowns upon my innocent pleasures, and who has the spirit, though not the power, of the tyrant. I claim to settle the Sunday Question by the principle of individual freedom."

be so.

There is much in this plea. In England at least the reverence for individual liberty is so strong that an appeal based upon it is certain to meet with applause. It would moreover be a bad day for England were this principle to be trodden under foot. It is probably better to leave responsible beings free, even though they may not make the best use of their freedom, than to destroy their responsibility by depriving them of their freedom.

But though the principle of individual rights is a bulwark of liberty, it is not the only principle in the world; and it is not the principle from which the surest progress of a nation or of the world can be secured. Having granted the principle of individual freedom, we have still to ask whether there is not a principle to guide the free man in the exercise of his liberty? It is in answering this question that the great law of love and sacrifice comes to guide us. Man is not man till he is free; but the nobility of the man who is free is tested by the way in which he uses his freedom. He shows himself worthy of his freedom when he resolves "by love to serve others," and to consecrate his liberty to the good of the community. In other words, the value of individual freedom is never more conspicuously seen than where it is used as the fulcrum of self-sacrifice. Man is greatest when, having received his freedom, he lays it freely down for the sake of others. most truly saving his life in the seeming losing of it. He becomes chief in being the servant of all. The assertion of individual rights is the bulwark of freedom. The recognition of the duty of selfsacrifice is the guarantee of a people's power, for it witnesses to the greatness of their character. It was the remembrance of this which made Mazzini write: "Whoever examines things at all seriously will perceive that the doctrine of individual rights is essentially and in principle only a great and holy protest in favour of human liberty against oppression of every kind. Its value, therefore, is purely negative. It is able to destroy; it is impotent to found. It is mighty to break chains; it has no power to knit bonds of co-operation and love."*

He is then

If this be true, I claim that the Sunday Question ought not to be settled by the principle of individual rights. If on any question we have a right to plead that individual freedom should be used, not for self-gratification, but for social service, surely we have the right to do so on the Sunday Question. Sunday is the nation's day much more than it is the individual's day. It is the day of all others on which may be found the noblest opportunities of sacrificing individual freedom for the good of others. It is the day on which the most scrupulous self-denial and the warmest neighbour-regarding love should be exercised. If in any sense it is God's day, it is the day on which that work of God, which is love and self-sacrifice, should be shown.

"Thoughts on Democracy," chap. ii.

As a day of national opportunity, it should be the day of individual self-denial on the part of all, and most of all on the part of those who have ample wealth and abundant leisure.

By the principle of service and love the Sunday Question should be settled; and in the light of this principle we may consider the changes which are taking place in regard to the observance of the Sunday. One thing strikes us at once on reading the extracts we have cited. The descriptions of those Sunday pleasures suggest the possession of wealth. Men cannot indulge in Crystal Palace dinners, give dinner parties at which actors and actresses recite, or garden parties accompanied by theatrical performances, unless they have money at command. The steam-launch, the coaching excursions to Richmond, the lawn tennis, the Pelican Club, do not altogether sound like the recreations of the classes to whom six days of prolonged labour is a sad and stern necessity. These are the pleasures of the rich, and not the recreations of the poor. Of those who indulge in them, we are

told that two-thirds of their names occur in "Burke" and "Debrett." "Debrett" does not pause to chronicle the name of Adam Bede or Little Hodge; "Burke " does not stoop to register the abode or the lineage of the dock labourer, the hard-worked shopman, or the small City clerk. So far as these are descriptions of amusements pursued by people of leisure, I cannot consider the change to be for the better.

Socially, it is not a change for the better. We may argue as we please about the innocency of this amusement or that on the Sunday, but we cannot argue away one fact, and that is that the enjoyment of one class can only be purchased by the toil of another. The pleasure of the rich means the labour of the poor. The uninterrupted continuance of these pleasures means the continuance also of the poor man's labour.

There may be many things lawful to the individual which are not lawful to the community. There may be many things which are no harm, as people say--meaning no harm to themselves-but which involve great harm to others. The man who realizes that Sunday is a day of opportunity for rest, recreation, and elevation will be the man who is readiest to deny himself rather than rob his brother man of that opportunity. Self-denial must be the rule for the community. Whatever tends to deprive others of their opportunity ought, as far as possible, to be avoided. A certain amount of labour I suppose there must be; but the labour should be reduced to the minimum. Self-denial is needed to do this. It should be practised by all; but, above all, it ought, for the love of humanity and for the love of God, to be practised chiefest and most scrupulously by those who, because of wealth and leisure, can command their pleasures and recreations six days out of seven. The rich should be foremost in this self-denial. Many would be glad to see picture galleries and museums opened on Sunday