The Sabbath in the Arctic Regions.
By C. A.
I AM not about to give account of any in the frigid zone who are keeping the Sabbath; for I do not know of any there who do keep it, or who have any desire to keep it. The object of these lines is only to show that the people of that region might keep it if they should choose to do so. It is necessary to show this because there are some here in the temperate zone who decline keeping the Sabbath unless it can be shown that it can be kept in the Arctic regions! What reason they have for this—whether they intend ever moving to that delectable portion of the globe, or whether they choose to make the Esquimaux and Laplanders their standard of obedience, refusing to keep any command of God which these tribes might find it difficult to obey, it is perhaps not the province of this article to endeavor to determine. Their objection, however, is this: If the termination and commencement of the day is determined by the setting of the sun, and the seventh day thus designated is the Sabbath, how can the Sabbath be kept in those northern regions where for weeks together the sun is above or below the horizon—where in summer there are several weeks of continuous day, and in winter a like period of continual night? This objection is used for two purposes: By some it is used as an objection to the observance of the Sabbath at all. With such we care not to contend. Their controversy is between themselves and God, who has given a command which is unmistakably binding upon all habitable parts of his globe in all time. With the life-long and futile task upon their hands of endeavoring to harmonize their theory with his justice and wisdom, we leave them in their unenviable position. By others it is used as an objection to commencing the day at sunset, and in favor of commencing it at 6 o'clock. But how a 6 o'clock arrangement would help the Sabbath-keeping Laplander, does not seem to us quite so evident. In this case the day must be determined by accurate time-pieces; but in the absence of direct testimony on the subject, it would be safe to conclude that among the rude tribes inhabiting those desolate regions, those appendages of civilization known as clocks, would be about as scarce as their daylight in winter; and hence practically they must determine the day in some other way, or not at all. But suppose, which of course might be possible, that they had clocks in Lapland and Greenland. There is still a difficulty. Clocks are dependent for their regulation upon the sun. No time-piece could be regulated were it not for the sun. Now if nothing can be determined by the sun in the Arctic regions, in relation to time and the succession of days, people there would have nothing by which to regulate their clocks, and hence their clocks would be useless; and thus the poor Laplander would be left in spite of both nature and art in the most hopeless bewilderment. But hold! We are borrowing trouble for these poor people of which they themselves never dreamed. It would be well if people would wait and let statements of difficulties come from those who are actually involved therein. On any other subject but the Sabbath men would perhaps be content to pursue this course; but here, such is their anxiety to avoid its claims, they will imagine that somebody else, three thousand miles away, would get into difficulty in trying to observe it, therefore they will not keep it. Away with these quibbles. The truth is, the Sabbath can be kept without difficulty in the most northern latitudes. The commencement and close of each day can be determined with sufficient accuracy for all practical and religious purposes. Fortunately we have the experience and observation of one who has passed a portion of both a summer and a winter in that region, and who has borne testimony on this very point. Bayard Taylor, the distinguished American tourist, describes the close of one, and the commencement of a new, day, in mid summer. Writing from the steamer Gyller, Arctic Ocean, July 27, 1857, he says:— “It was now 11 o’clock, and Sværholt glowed in fiery bronze lustre as we rounded it, the eddies of returning birds that had been frightened from their roosts by the firing of the steamer’s gun, gleaming golden in the nocturnal sun, like drifts of beech leaves in the October air. Far to the north the sun lay in a bed of saffron light over the clear horizon of the Arctic ocean. A few bars of dazzling orange cloud floated above him, and still higher in the sky, where the saffron melted through delicate rose color into blue hung light leaves of vapor, touched with pearly, opaline flushes of pink and golden gray. The sea was like a web of pale slate color shot through and through with threads of orange and saffron, from the dance of a myriad shifting and twinkling ripples. The air was filled and permeated with the soft, mysterious glow, and even the very azure of the southern sky seemed to shine through a net of golden gauze. The headlands of this deeply indented coast—the capes of Laxe and Porsanger Fiords, and of Mageröe—lay around us in different degrees of distance, but all with foreheads touched with supernatural glory. Far to the north-east was Nordkys, the most northern point of the mainland of Europe, gleaming rosily and faint in the full beams of the sun, and just as our watches denoted midnight, the North Cape appeared in the westward—a long line of purple bluff, presenting a verticle front of 960 feet in height to the Polar Sea. Midway between those two magnificent headlands stood the midnight sun shining on us with subdued fires, and with the gorgeous coloring of an hour for which we have no name, since it is neither sunset nor sunrise, but the blended loveliness of both—but shining at the same moment in the heat and splendor of noonday, on the Pacific Isles.” “This was the midnight sun as I had dreamed it—as I had hoped to see it.” “Within fifteen minutes after midnight, there was a perceptible increase of altitude, and in less than half an hour the whole line of sky had changed, the yellow brightening into orange, and the saffron melting into the pale vermilion of dawn. Yet it was neither the colors, nor the same character of light as we had had, half an hour before midnight. The difference was so slight as scarcely to be described, but it was the difference between evening and morning. The faintest transfusion of one prevailing tint into another, had changed the whole expression of heaven and earth, and so imperceptibly and miraculously that a new day was already present to our consciousness.” Such is the testimony of a stranger in those latitudes. No doubt with those who dwell in those regions, and who have consequently made these distinguishing features their study, the “new day” would be more immediately “present to their consciousness,” than it could be to that of any stranger. It appears that in that season of the year when the sun is above the horizon for weeks together, it describes one continuous circle in the heavens. At midday, its altitude is the highest; at midnight, so to speak, it is lowest. Consequently each time it reaches the point nearest the horizon, it marks a revolution of the earth and the expiration of a day; and this point is no less observable to the dwellers there than sunset is to us here.