The following article on Sunday is attributed to the "Rev. Theodore Parker." We do not say but that the suggestions there given are good enough for the day. Indeed the very genius of the institution does not attach to it anything very sacred. The mind of the Romish Church which is the author of Sunday observance, is thus declared by Cardinal Wiseman: "The Roman Catholic Church have ever held that, religious duties being duly performed, the Christian Sunday was to be regarded and used by all, especially by the great bulk of the people, as a day of innocent amusement and recreation." But the significance of Mr. Parker's remarks lies in the fact that he doubtless considers Sunday the divinely appointed Sabbath of the Christian dispensation, and would apply to it the requirements of the fourth commandment, and all the promises of reward and threats of punishment which God has thrown around his holy day, to secure its just observance. If we have rightly judged in this, it is not difficult to see how much importance Mr. Parker attaches to the promises and threatenings of the word of God, and how he trails in the dust his standard of divine things. In this light we think we may study the article with profit, as an index of the moral tendency of the times. He says:
I would not consider it an act of religion to attend church; only a good thing to go there when the way of improvement leads through it—when you are made wiser and better by being there. I am pained to see a man spend the whole of a Sunday in going to church, and forgetting himself in getting acquainted with the words of the preacher. I think most intelligent hearers, and most intelligent and Christian preachers, will confess that two sermons are better than three, and one better than two. One need only look at the afternoon face of a congregation in the city to be satisfied of this. If one-half the day were devoted to public worship, the other half might be free for private studies at home, for private devotion, for social relaxation, for intercourse with one's own family and friends. Then Sunday afternoon and evening would afford an excellent opportunity for meetings for the promotion of the great humane movements of the day, which some would not think evangelical enough to be treated of in the morning. Would it be inconsistent with the great purposes of the day, inconsistent with Christianity, to have lectures on science, literature and similar subjects delivered then? I do not believe the Catholic custom of spending the Sunday afternoon in recreation in England, before the Reformation, was a good one. It diverted men from the higher end to the lower.
I cannot think that here and now we need amusement so much as society, instruction, refinement and devotion. Yet it seems to me unwise to restrain the innocent sports of children, of a Sunday, to the same degree our fathers did—to make Sunday to them a day of gloom and sadness. Thoughtful parents are now much troubled in this matter; they cannot enforce the old discipline, so disastrous to themselves; they fear to trust their own sense of what is right—so, perhaps, get the ill of both schemes, and the good of neither. There are in Boston about thirty thousand Catholics, twenty-five thousand of them probably too ignorant to read with pleasure or profit any book. At home, amusement formed a part of their Sunday service; it was a part of their religion to make a festive use of Sunday afternoon. What shall they do? Is it Christian in us by statute to interdict them from their recreation? With the exception of children and these most ignorant persons, it does not appear that there is any class among us who need any part of the Sunday for sport.
I am not one of those who wish "to give up the Sunday," if indeed there be such men among us; I would make it more useful and profitable; I would remove from it the superstition and the bigotry which have so long been connected with it; I would use it freely as a Christian not enslaved by the letter of Judaism, but made free by an obedience to the law of the Spirit of life. I would use the Sunday for religion in the wide sense of that word; use it to promote piety and goodness, for science, for letters, for society. I would not abuse it by impotent license on the one hand, nor by slavish superstition on the other. We can easily escape the evils which come of the old abuse; can make the Sunday ten times more valuable than it is even now; can employ for it all the highest interests of mankind, and fear no reaction into libertinism.
The Sunday is made for man as are all other days; not man for the Sunday. Let us use it then, not consuming its hours in a Jewish observance; not devote it to the lower necessities of life, but the higher; not squander it in idleness, sloth, frivolity, or sleep; let us use it for the body's rest, for the mind's culture, for head and heart and soul.
Men and women, you have received the Sunday from your fathers as a day to be devoted to the highest interests of man. It has done great service for them and you. But it has come down accompanied with superstition, which robs it of half its value. It is easy for you to make the day far more profitable to yourselves than it ever was to your fathers; easy to divest it of all bigotry, to free it from all coldness of the letter; easy for you to leave it for your children an institution which shall bless them for ages yet to come; or it is easy to bind on them unnatural restraints, to impose on their conscience and understanding absurdities which at last they must repel with scorn and contempt.