Descrating or Keeping the Sabbath

1906

SABBATH DESECRATION
(Christian Herald.)

During the last decade there has been a greater change in Sunday observance than in all the preceding years back to the time the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, and while not advocating a return to the "blue-laws" of the seventeenth century, one cannot but admit that the change has not been for the better. Instead of an American Sunday, we are getting the European Sunday. On the other side of the Atlantic, especially on the continent, Sunday is not, nor has been in modern times, a day of rest. People there may, or may not go to church in the morning, but practically all go for a picnic, or to the theater, or the races, and other places of amusement in the afternoon. The evening resembles a carnival. There is no spirit of worship, no sense of restfulness. With the great influx of foreigners from continental countries, things in America began to take on an European aspect. Amusement places at our beach resorts began open their doors on the Lord's day, then we got the Sunday concert, which has now degenerated to the level of an ordinary vaudeville show.

All this involves a great many bad features, and no good ones, so far as we have been able to discover. Our young people must necessarily lose reverence for a day that is devoted to athletic sports and social affairs, while theoretically it stands for something else. The thought of church-going becomes irksome to them, and is finally abandoned altogether. Thousands of people who are entitled to their day of rest are debarred from it, through the selfishness of the amusement seekers. Motormen and conductors must take them to the parks and beaches, and the people who are employed in stores and restaurants must rush themselves to the point of exhaustion, so that on Monday, instead of rising refreshed, and heartened for the week's toil, they appear at their work unfitted for the task before them.

Several organizations have been formed for the protection of the American Sunday, and they are being aided, to a certain extent, by labor bodies, who believe that their members should have the rest accorded to others. Europe is feeling that a reaction must come, unless its people become moral degenerates. In England, the bishops are preaching against the desecration of the day by fashionable week-end parties, racing and cards being popular Sunday diversions.

If we keep on at the present rate, much that we have gained in national character by keeping Sunday as a holy day, and not as a holiday, will be lost, and, once lost, cannot be regained, unless there comes a marked quickening of the public conscience. Sunday should mean a day that stands apart from the others of the week, when men's thoughts can turn to something higher than the sordidness of money-getting and money-spending, a day for worship, for the reunion of parents and children, a day of preparation for the week to come.

--The Weekly Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, April 18, 1906, page 4, editorial.