SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 278, 24 November 1888, Page 5

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.

SOME AMERICAN REMINISCENCES.

Thb Rev. Mr Chew, pastor of the Beres-ford-street Congregational Church, was in. terviewed by a Star representative yesterday afternoon, and courteously furnished his experiences of Sunday observance in America.

( In the large cities like New York and Chicago, said Mr Chew, fchey have a good deal of license with respect; fco Sabbath observance. In Chicago I saw the theatres open on Sunday, bub in New England, which is bhe besb part of America, there was a very careful observance of the Sabbath day. Ifc j s so also in the Western States, where ib might be expected that people would bo more lax. 'I have often had occasion fco refer to fche almost universal observance of tho Sabbath in Kansas, for instance. There are two or three cities that aro exceptions, and one was the city in which I resided last— Atchison. Tho people have, as a rule, one service on the Sunday, and many very good people maintain thab one public service a day is sufficient, especially with the addition of the Sunday school work. The Sunday school, too, has only one session a week, and nofc two sessions as we have here. For these reasons the morning church services are much better attended than the evening services, and many ministers do nofc prepare so carefully for the evening as for the morning service. Of course there are those who are very rigid and Puritanic m their observance of bhe Sabbath in Kansas, as olsewhere, and, whilst it is very common for religious Christian people to go for drives on Sunday, there aro ofchera wiio_ condemn ib, bufc not many. In California ifc was worse than in Kansas, alike in fche country and in bhe city. I should also have told you that in Atchison fchey had tramcars running on tho Sunday, end many shops and stores open. They had also baseball matches out of town, and thafc used to shock me very much. I found riiafc fchu exercises in American Sundayschools were more bright and cheerful, and consequently more attractive, than in England. The Sabbat h evening service was not seldom varied with a programme of sacred music, which always drew. Temperance meetings, in which .several churches united, occasionally took the place of the ordinary services. The Episcopalian Church, answer ing to the Anglican here and at Home, invariably refused to be a party to such arrangement.. I, too, objected to relinquish Gospel meetings for temperance meetings, and once got into trouble w:th my friends, the prohibitionists, for openly protesting against closing all the churches for a Sunday evening convention to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the passing of the Prohibition Act in the State, and which from its occasion would be strictly a political meeting. If we were to forego publicwornhipon .Sabbath evenings, fche early result would probably be the opening of our sacred or other large buildings either for entertainment* or for political and other general purposes. 1 so recently preached to a large congregation on the subject of " Sabbath Observance" that my personal opinions need not be re-stated, tho rather as they were partly reproduced in the Star at tho time.