THE REPORT OF THE SENATE ON THE SUNDAY MAILS. The Portsmouth
Advertiser has attacked this Report, "tooth and nail," imputing
to it an influence as disastrous as that which attends the
writings of Tom Paine or Citizen Brisset. The writer states, that
the Senate by adopting it, "has virtually declared, that the laws
of Almighty God are no rule for human legislation." We will give
one more extract from these remarks, to enable our readers to
form a judgment of the writer's character. He must certainly
belong to that unfortunate class of the community, for whom
"strait-jackets and a spare diet," are usually prescribed.
"By this report, Col. Johnson has put weapons into the hands of
infidelity to annoy and harass that very portion of the
republican community, which furnishes the only hope, and pledge,
that our free institutions will continue permanent."
* * * * *
The following account of a Parisian Sabbath we find in the "Salem Observer"
of 1830:
PARISIAN SABBATH. There is little in the appearance of Paris on a
Sabbath morning to remind us that it is a day of rest; the
markets are thronged as on other days, carts and drays and all
sorts of vehicles, designed for the transportation of merchandise
are in motion; buying and selling and manual labor proceed as
usual; there is rest for neither man nor beast. In the afternoon
the shops are usually closed; and labor is suspended, and the
remainder of the day is devoted to pleasure. Few of those who go
to church appear to have any other motive than amusement. They
walk about the aisles, gazing at the pictures, and listening to
the solemn music of the mass and go away when they are tired.
Those whom I have seen really engaged in worship appeared to
belong to the lower classes; and with the exception of those few,
the persons you see in church are merely idle spectators,
attracted thither by curiosity, or to pass an idle half hour
before they go to promenade in the gardens.
--_Wheaton's Travels_.
* * * * *
In the "Salem Observer" of Dec. 10, 1829, is the following notice on the
Sunday-mail question:--
SUNDAY MAILS. The following resolution on the subject of stopping
the mails on Sundays, was passed at a recent session of the Salem
Baptist Association in Kentucky:--
"_Resolved_, That we as an Association cordially approve the
Report and resolution, as presented to the Senate of the United
States, by Col. R.M. Johnson, Chairman of the Committee upon the
subject of the petition to stop the mail on the Sabbath: and
sincerely advise all friends of civil and religious liberty, to
refuse to subscribe any petition that has the least tendency to
influence the legislative powers to act upon _religious matters_;
for we consider an association of _civil_ and _ecclesiastical_
power or an union of _Church_ and _State_, as one of the greatest
calamities which could befal our country, and that it should be
resisted in every possible shape in which it may be presented."
* * * * *
A great change has taken place in some of our towns within a few years in
reference to the Sunday mail. Twenty-five years ago it was rare to see a
person belonging to one of the Evangelical sects at the post-office at the
time of the opening of the mail on Sunday noon; whereas now it is not
uncommon to see deacons and numerous other members of such churches hurry
from their several places of worship to get their letters and papers with
as much eagerness as "heretics." Sunday papers moreover are now bought by
the same class. The same change too is observable in the use of horse-cars
on Sunday. Few men are governed by the conscientious scruples once held
about riding to and from church, especially if the day happens to be hot or
stormy. This may or may not be an improvement; it depends upon the point
of view from which we look at it.
One of the most radical men we ever knew, one who thought "Sunday should be
abolished" and a "new Bible made by men of modern ideas, and reasonable
views introduced, and the old one discarded," said he was brought to these
views by having been forced when young to attend church and engage in
religious exercises, and told that he must conform to the established
belief and never ask any questions. It will be said that this man was an
exception to the general rule. Perhaps so, for one taking such an extreme
view; but we must all know cases somewhat similar. A careful inquiry will
show that if we look around among the clergy even, we shall find that the
most radical preachers of the day were brought up in the Orthodox ranks.
Who would wish to re-establish the gloomy Puritan Sabbath, with its barren
meeting-house, without fires or music, and its tedious, uninteresting
sermon, running on to "fifteenthly," gauged by an hour-glass turned over
perhaps once or twice during the discourse?
Speaking of the change of habits in New England, even, it is noticeable
how much more prevalent colds and other slight indispositions are now to
what they used to be on Sunday. The very thought of going to church makes
some people cough or have a headache. Theatres or concerts never seem to
affect these people in the same way. Even the weather, which keeps people
in-doors on Sunday, never keeps them in on other days.
Our own view of the subject is that while we should be glad to see more
interest taken in public worship than there is at present, we think people
should have the right of spending their Sundays in their own way,--always,
of course, provided they do not interfere with the rights and feelings of
others. It seems to us that the only way to have Sunday properly observed
is for those who are influential to make some little personal sacrifices,
if need be, to attend the Sunday services, and do all they can to promote
the most cheerful views of religion and make the services interesting.
Let those people who lament the decay of religious observances read the
following quotation from the "Salem Gazette" of 1830. Those who can
recollect how it was at that date must see that notwithstanding a perhaps
much smaller attendance now upon public worship, there is every reason to
believe that, at least as far as the native population is concerned, Sunday
is really more quiet than it was then. After reading this article we shall
perhaps be prepared to say that "tythingmen" may have been needed just
after the Revolution.
THE TIMES WE LIVE IN. The dreadful tragedy performed in this town
last April, and the subsequent arrests, developments,
confessions, trials, &c., by keeping the thoughts and
conversation of the community continually directed to that
enormity, have led to the general but very erroneous notion, that
there must have been a great deterioration of the public
morals.--If the words of the aged are to be received as true, the
very reverse is the fact. The revolutionary war left the whole
country as well depraved in morals as exhausted in resources.
This was particularly the case with such towns as Salem, which
had been largely exposed to the irresistibly corrupting influence
of privateering.
At that time, when the population of Salem was not half so great
as it is at present, more riot, debauchery, and vice, obtruded
themselves upon the sight in a week, than could now be discovered
by diligent search in a month. The corruption of manners was so
general, that almost none escaped from its contaminating
influence. Mechanics and other laboring men would leave their
business in the day, and their families in the evening, to spend
their time, dancing and drinking, in the dens of pollution which
then abounded in "Naugus-Hole" and "Button-Hole." Merchants,
professional men, &c. passed a great part of their time in
taverns, drinking and gambling. Quarrelling and fighting there
were not uncommon, and well-worn packs of cards were always lying
about the bar-room tables, (though seldom long unemployed,) ready
for the use of visitors,--the common game on these occasions
being All-Fours, and the common stake a bowl of punch or a mug of
flip. Pastimes like the above named, were current in every class
of society. When the regular hours of drinking approached, the
workmen left their labour to play at cards, the loser "treating
the shop's crew." In a large establishment a boy would be kept
running with his jug nearly the whole time, the contents being
freely shared amongst master, journeymen, boys, and numerous
visitors.
At this time, and long afterward, infamous houses were kept open
day and night, in the quarters of the town named in the preceding
paragraph. The fiddles were kept in constant motion, and if any
thought of stopping them they did not dare to attempt it. The
most flagrant disorders and outrages were continually occurring,
so that a timid man would go far out of his way to avoid passing
near those places. The churches on Sunday were not nearly so well
attended as they now are. The proportion of persons who made the
Sabbath a day of recreation, was much greater. The time was spent
in riding into the country, walking about the fields and
pastures, and visiting friends in town. But little order was
preserved in the streets on that day. People in passing to
meeting thro' Prison Lane, (as County-street was then called) and
its environs, encountered frequent and large groups of men and
boys, noisily engaged in gambling with props, pitching coppers,
&c. occasionally enlivened by the uproar of a quarrel.
The doctrines of Tom Paine and his French coadjutors, were much
more in vogue then than now. Infidelity stalked over the land
with a giant stride, to which the mincing pace of the fooleries
of Fanny Wright can bear no comparison; and virtue and good order
were almost put out of countenance. Intemperance, habitual or
occasional, was so common, as to be hardly considered a matter of
reproach; and the kindred vices abounded, which usually follow in
its train.
The state of society has been continually improving since. The
bad habits of that time have been discarded one after another, by
all who would maintain a reputable standing; and open immorality
now places a man at once in the lowest rank of society.
Intemperance has been diminished in a surprising degree.
Debauchery has been compelled to retreat to lurking holes and
corners, instead of obtruding its "horrid front" to the public
gaze. Education has been improved, and universally diffused; and
public worship is more generally attended.--Terrible crimes have
indeed been committed amongst us, and may be again, but the
habits and manners which lead to crime, are less prevalent at the
present time than they have been for fifty years before.
It seems to us to be clearly a mistake for those of ultra-liberal notions
to suppose that all who cannot assent to their views of Sunday must of
necessity be either Pharisees or hypocrites,--quite as great a mistake as
that of the ultra-conservatives, who condemn as wicked all who do not
believe in a puritanical observance of Sunday.
Whatever we may think or say or do, people nowadays will not be forced to
attend church. Among all denominations the services are more attractive
than they once were, and every year there is less and less of the repulsive
kinds of doctrine preached. But in spite of this, while many men regard
attendance on divine service as both a pleasure and a privilege, there are
others, and they not few, whom no influence or persuasion can induce to
attend Sunday worship. Such persons must be left to spend the day as they
please.
A very large proportion of those who do not attend church services are
people of culture and character, from whom church-goers have nothing to
fear as regards a disturbance of their worship. Generally this class are
interested in having Sunday kept as a day of quiet and rest, and their
non-attendance at church is no evidence that they have any desire to
secularize Sunday.
An eminent writer has said: "We live in a transition period, when the old
faiths which comforted nations, and not only so, but made nations, seem to
have spent their force.... There is faith in chemistry, in meat and wine,
in wealth, in machinery, in the steam-engine, galvanic battery,
turbine-wheels, sewing-machines, and in public opinion; but not in divine
causes.... A silent revolution has loosed the tension of the old religious
sects, and in place of the gravity and permanence of those societies of
opinion, they run into freak and extravagance.... In creeds never was such
levity: witness the heathenisms in Christianity,--the periodic revivals,
the millennium mathematics, the peacock ritualism, the retrogression to
popery, the maundering of Mormons, the squalor of mesmerism, the
deliration of rappings, the rat-and-mouse revelation, thumps in
table-drawers, and black art ... By the irresistible maturing of the
general mind the Christian traditions have lost their hold."
If these statements are true, we have a sufficient answer to the question
so often asked: "Why do not people go to church as they once did?" They do
not go because they have lost their faith in churches and worship,--at
least such have as are appealed to from those holding liberal and
reasonable views. There are no doubt men who consider the too often
expensive ways in which churches are supported as altogether beyond their
means. The demands of civilization upon individuals in these restless
times, when there are so many organizations, secret, secular, and
religious, are indeed too great for small incomes, especially as the cost
of food is continually increasing, and as society in other ways makes so
many secular demands upon them. Public worship is after all, in the view of
many persons, not a necessity, but only a luxury which can easily be
dispensed with. It might perhaps have been better for the whole community
if churches had undertaken to do the work which is now in the hands of
many charitable and secret societies; then those who take so much interest
in these outside, often expensive, organizations would have had all their
interest in the churches. But the latter were for years so divided on
doctrines of belief that their whole attention has for the most part been
directed to other matters than their legitimate work, which has thus been
thrown into the hands of outside agencies. In these times it seems
difficult to maintain religious societies except where the element of fear
is dominant in the creed, where some remarkable preacher takes the
attention, or where the ritual or fashion attracts. Do not the papers often
speak of "fashionable" churches?
One thing which prevents many people from attending public worship on
Sunday is the increasing tendency towards ritualism,--or perhaps, we should
say, making the services less instructive than formerly, and more
devotional or emotional. This is seen not only in the Episcopal Church, but
also among many other denominations. Even Congregational
Orthodox--descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers--introduce prayer-books and
responsive services, and make their church buildings more ecclesiastical in
appearance, to look as much as possible like Episcopal churches. All these
things to many minds are not edifying, to say the least, and consequently
such persons absent themselves from service. Those too who are impressed by
emotional religion join the Episcopalians, so that for the time there is an
apparent increase in the attendance at the Episcopal churches, gained from
churches of other denominations; and especially too as fashion decrees
nowadays that "it is the proper thing to do" to go to the Episcopal Church,
whether you believe in its doctrines or not. So that at length there are a
great many people who think when church-going gets to be a matter of
fashion, there is quite as much real religion to be found outside as inside
the church; consequently they lose their interest. All these causes must be
taken together; of course no one thing alone accounts for the change in
regard to church attendance.
We quote the following remarks from a recent English paper ("The Unitarian
Herald"); they have a direct bearing on our subject, and are worthy of
consideration by those who neglect public worship or favor a more secular
Sunday. Among other things, the speaker (the Rev. John Page Hopps) says:
"So far as we can see, the old orthodox believers were right when
they called public worship 'a means of grace;' and if human
experience is of any value, it is an undoubted fact that a great
multitude which no man could number _have_ felt the grace-giving
influence of it. It is as true as ever that man cannot 'live by
bread alone,' but that he needs also the 'word that proceedeth
from the mouth of God;' and if it is true, as we believe, that
the word of God does come home with special force and pathos when
worship is joined in by kindred souls, the argument for public
worship, from this point of view, seems complete. And yet, half
in jest and half in earnest, and sometimes altogether in earnest,
we hear it said that a man can worship God in the fields quite as
well as in the church. 'Perhaps he can,' said a wise man once,
'but _does_ he?' I wonder whether we shall go on in this
direction until we hear it said that a man can worship God
playing at lawn-tennis as in attending public worship? Thus there
may actually come into existence a cant of the absentee which
shall be as really cant as the cant of the devotee; for the use
of the word 'worship' in such instances is a glaring case of
exaggeration tinged with self-deception, which is the very
essence of cant. Besides, one of the surest notes of the
worshipping spirit is an increase of sympathy and love,--sympathy
that suggests fellowship, and love that suggests anything but
selfish isolation.
"The irregularity also of attendance upon public worship might be
cited as an instance of neglect or levity which 'personal
consecration' alone can cure. In days gone by, attendance upon
public worship was a habit, and nothing that could be avoided was
allowed to interfere with it. Twice on the Sunday, too, was the
rule, and not, as now, the decided exception. But with many it is
now becoming once every other Sunday, or scarcely that; with so
little of 'personal consecration' in the matter that the need for
an umbrella may decide the doubter not to go.
"Do we not, again, listen too much merely for delight? and does
not the question, 'How did you like the sermon,' or 'How did you
like the service,' indicate that we join in the service and
listen to a sermon in an entirely wrong spirit? The critical or
self-regarding spirit has its uses, but it may be fatal to
'personal consecration' in public worship. How often does an
entire service depend upon our own temper, our own mood, our own
spirit? And how often is it true that a congregation has as much
to do with the making of a minister as the minister has to do
with the making of a congregation?
"'If I neglect public worship, then,' a man should say to
himself, 'the community is injured, the brotherhood is weakened,
the young are confused. It is a grave responsibility.'
"But now we must not shrink from the question: How far or how
long ought these considerations to hold the man who has lost
delight in public worship or faith in that to which it bears
witness? When should doubt make worship impossible, or unbelief
make worship wrong for the honest soul? When should 'personal
consecration' say to a man, not _stay_, but _depart_? It is a
grave question, and every one must shape his answer for himself.
All I would say is: Give worship the benefit of the doubt: ay!
give fellow-worshippers the benefit of the doubt. Continue with
them as long as you can; if not as a full believer, then as a
devout inquirer, a gentle seeker, a sympathetic friend. Why not?
That is possible with us; for the very bond of our union is
sympathetic regard for one another's freedom. It is also
specially possible with us because our teachings do not, at all
events, outrage the reason and shock the moral sense. Even an
agnostic might listen to us and hope that our Gospel is true.
"Special dangers call for special safeguards, special
consideration, special wariness. It is an age of splendid advance
in science, of restless energy in business, of stupendous
activity in politics, of daring questioning everywhere. All that
makes against public worship; and yet all that makes public
worship a greater necessity and demonstrates 'the pressing need
of personal consecration' to it. God only knows what we should
do without it and the blessed Sunday!
"'Dear old commemorative day,
For weary man designed
To help him on life's troubled way,
To give his spirit freer play,
To soothe his harassed mind!
"'A day of worship and of grace,
One calm, sweet day in seven,
To grant a little breathing space
To strengthen man life's work to face,
And lift his life to heaven.'"
In conclusion, let us add to the above speech the following remarks, which
we heartily approve,--
"Mr. Preston (London) testified to the falling off of attendance
at public worship, and he attributed this largely to the parents
not taking their children with them in early years, as of old
times. He deprecated the going to public worship to have the
brains tickled in hearing a particular man, and maintained that
this was in no sense 'public worship.' He emphasized strongly the
fact that those who say they can worship in the fields do not, in
fact, worship at all. He urged that in worship the musical and
devotional services should become more prominent, and the sermon
become frequently but subsidiary."
Benjamin H. Ticknor. Thomas B. Ticknor. George F. Godfrey.
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