The Decline of Sunday Observance.
By S.
Almost every writer and speaker in behalf of Sunday legislation has something to say about the “increasing desecration of the Lord’s day.” “The Sabbath is imperiled,” we are told, “by a growing tendency to secularize it, to neglect its religious privileges, to substitute the vulgarities of the Sunday press for communion with higher and sweeter themes, to devote its sacred hours to travel, to excursions of pleasure, and to mere social functions.” This is the statement made by Rev. R. F. Sample, a leading Presbyterian; and the like lament is heard everywhere from his contemporaries in the work of Sunday reform. There is no reason to doubt that Sunday desecration is increasing. The statements made by the friends of Sunday upon this point are no doubt substantially true. But those who are calling for Sunday laws as a remedy for the evil, as they view it, entirely miss the lesson that should be learned from it touching the preservation of the Sunday institution. The very fact that public regard for the day is fast being lost, is evidence that it is beyond the power of legislation to stay the decline that has overtaken it. Regard for an institution cannot be put into the484hearts of the people by law. Human statutes and acts of legislatures are powerless to control those influences by which an institution—as the Sunday sabbath—gains or loses in the belief and affections of mankind. Formerly Sunday was much more generally observed than it is to-day, because there was a more general belief in its claims as a sacred day, and a more general regard for it as such; now that belief and regard are on the decline, and no law can save the institution from the resulting disintegration. The only remedy for the situation must be something that will influence the minds and hearts of the people in favor of the claims made for Sunday as a sacred day. How such a remedy can be found, we do not know; indeed, we do not believe it can be found at all. The Scriptures evidently do not afford a foundation for belief in Sunday as against the claims of the seventh day, and while men can reasonably doubt the genuineness of its claims they cannot be expected to have any regard for it beyond that which may arise from purely selfish motives. With the Catholics Sunday rests upon tradition and the authority of the Catholic church, and this is the only stable foundation upon which the institution can be based. Protestants must either go over to this foundation for the day or see it lapse into complete decay and ruin. But if they go over to Rome’s foundation they will be no longer Protestants. Which course will they take? Will they give up Sunday or go back to the ground of tradition and church authority as the basis of religious obligation, which they abandoned at the Reformation? Evidently they must soon do either the one or the other; and meanwhile there is being held out to them the alternative of accepting the claims of the seventh day Sabbath of the fourth commandment, resting upon the word and authority of inspiration alone.