SABBATTARIANISM IN CHRISTCHURCH.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3632, 3 March 1883, Page 4

SABBATTARIANISM IN CHRISTCHURCH.

The Timaru Herald has the following : — Mankind are much more easily led than driven. The Freethinkers at Christchurch have gone to work on that principle. They have organised Sunday picnics by way of undermining the Subbattarian institution, and at these picnics they have games and amusements, especially such as are calculated to afford gratification to children and young people. They hope, in fact, soon to make Sunday iv. Christ church "what it is on the continent of Europe, a day of recreation, a day of social gatherings, of family meetings, of decorous pleasure and health-giving relaxation. And what is more, they seem uncommonly likely to achieve their object. Their first picnic was a temendous success, and as there is nothing so catching as happiness in anj - form, we venture to think that the more picnics they have, the more recruits they will enlist. If this sort of thing spreads, it will soon affect the habits of society very much, and since a picnic is, in itself, one of the most innocent forms of human enjoyment, we think it will spread as soon as society get a little accustomed to the idea. Religious people will no doubt say that this is very shocking, that it is a perfidious attempt to undermine a sacred institution under the pretext of a harmless amusement, and that if it gains ground and prevails it will destroy public morality and eventually shake the social fabric to its foundations. Wo are not prepared to argue that point. On the contrary, we are quite willing to admit that the secularism of Sunday may be productive of a vast amount of mischief. But we think it is incumbent on those who object to Sunday picnics to show that the people who attend them would be better employed if there were none. We must say we can .onecive of nothing more melancholy than Sunday in a colonial town, especially as regards the young people of the poorer class. The day is not made attractive or improving to them in any way, but is iv numberless cases, merely a dreary, weary, time. It seems to us us that the young folks would be better out in the fields, getting fresh air and having plenty of fun, than lounging listlessly about the .streets, or standing , in groups at the corners exchanging" coarse chaff or perhaps getting into mischief. Young mcv would be better running races or playing cricket, than sitting all all day in their frowsy lodgings, sinoking and yarning ; and young women had far better'meet their sweethearts openly in a social way, than resort to secret and not over creditable ways of arriving at the same result. As for the children, it cannot be denied that the picnics are the finest things in the world for them, for Sunday is not only a miserable da}' but also a very injurioiis day for these poor little town dwellers. The conclusion seems to be this. If people go to church, and say their prayers, and meet in the family circle "for Bible reading and praise, and go to Sunday school, and visit the sick, and in short, really spend a Christian Sabbath, well and good, it would bo a grievous pity to make auy chango in their habits. " .But if they do nothing of the sort, if they only idle about and wish the day was over, and spend not only a heathen but also an idiotic Sunday, then, we say, they had better go forth with the Freethinkers and make merry and come back at least physically refreshed.