Aug. 22.
MANY people will have read with dissent, many with sympathy, gall with respect, Mr. Harry "Kingman's article in another column on why he does not play baseball Sunday, And, perhaps one might venture a word of tribute for its simple sincerity and the very real sacrifice it implies. It is difficult to say more on the question of Sunday observance than Mr. Kingman has said; because, while he has no doubt at all what he himself ought to do and equally little as to what it is really best for others to do, he feels that each must. be left free to make his own decision, And unless we are to return to methods of discipline which now seem almost medieval, though they are strictly practised by the Roman Catholic Church, that is where we must all leave the matter, Nevertheless the question of Sunday observance is exercising many people, neither Chadbands nor Sabbatarians, Very few, we suppose, really wish to back to what Mr. Kingman calls the "blue, cheerless, painfully-pious" Sundays of the past. But from this to the total disregard of all religious practice in which vast numbers of people spend their Sundays, the recoil is too great, In a recent issue of the "Nineteenth Century" Bishop Frodsham discussed the so-called "Continental Sunday," showing that the idea which' the words convey to English minds is quite untrue of the reality. He wrote particularly of Italy,. where he felt bound to admit that Sunday was in general much more really kept than in England, The confusion of Sunday with the Hebrew seventh day abstention from any kind of doing not absolutely necessary, has never, Bishop Frodsham thinks, been made on the Continent. Sunday is a day for worship and praise and also for holiday-making and as such it presents a sympathetic spectacle to the - unbiased observer. From the present writer's experience, this is perfectly true of Italy. At first, it is almost a shock to see. how easily and unconcernedly the Italians treat their religion and their churches. A peasant woman, coming into Rome to market, drops in to Santa Mari Maggiore almost as if it were'a club, hears Mass, which is
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.