The Continental Sunday.
By Editor
A correspondent of the Christian Advocate sends the following extract from a letter, written by his son, in Heidelberg, Germany: O, these Continental Sundays! All the stores open; and more business done than on any other day of the week. Every one is on the streets; all the public gardens are full. Two or three bands playing all the time. Cafés crowded (the people eat all day long) and the castle an absolute impossibility on account of the crowds that swarm about the old ruin. One or two Sunday evenings ago, coming down the Philosophian Way on the hill across the river, where a Chicago boy and I had gone for a quiet walk, we passed a crowd of drunken revelers returning from "a big day"—men and women in each other's arms, and very profusely decorated with leaves and vines twined about their heads and bodies, singing and dancing; and a large wagon full of baskets and empty kegs bringing up the rear. Here among these beautiful hills, where everything is so peaceful in nature, and so worshipful, these Germans make the day a perfect desecration. But this correspondent should not find fault. All this has been characteristic of Sunday-keeping from ancient, idolatrous times. The Germans are merely keeping alive the ancient traditions. That can not be desecrated which is not sacred. When did Sunday become sacred?