THE SABBATH.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 158, 11 April 1874, Page 2

THE SABBATH.

This question has raised up some fiery arguments, on both sides, in the Auckland Press. The Rev. Samuel Edger put the Rev. Drs. Maunsell and Wallis through their facings, by a series of questions. Referring to the Sabbath, he enquires thus in the D. 8. Cross :— Seeing that, the Jewish Sabbath is abandoned, by what authority cun the Jewish command respecting the seventh day be applied to a quite different, day ? So loose u method of treating a Divine command is certainly not Biblical. To which another correspondent replies as follows :— Now I wish'in my turn to ask Mr. Edger a knotty question or two, bearing on question No. 1 in his before mentioned letter :—Some thirty-five years ago, before New Zealand was proclaimed a British colony some English, French, German, and American Jews were settled on the Island. Now there were great and bitter disputes between the English, together with the French Jews, on ■ the one hand, and the German ana Americans on the other. English and French Jews, who reckoned their longitude from the zeros of Greenwich and Paris, respectively kept their Sabbath on Saturday; the German and American Jews, who reckoned from Ferro and Washington, respectively, observed as a Sabbath, actually, our Christian Sunday,— that is to say, the “quite a different day” of Mr. Edger.—Again there is a small island in the Pacific, about one degree •north of the Equator ; I am not certain about its English name, but it is called on German maps “Howland.” This island was settled upon, once upon a time, by a special colony of French Jews. Now some of these Jews were very scientific, and they soon found out tliat. their land was bisected by the 180th degree of meridian reckoning from the zero of Paris, und it further struck them how the curiosity of this feature might be heightened by having, the middle of the main street of their town coincident with the meridian line. Now mark the consequences! —Every sixth and seventh day there was the scandal of one side of the main street (their Queen-street, say,) being decked out for trade—l mean alluring shopfronts, and open doors, —while the other side had nothing open but the synagogues. One side kept the Sabbath on the Christian Sunday, the other on the Saturday. The native Polynesians didn’t know what, to make of these Hurias as they called them. The disputes and excommunications and counter-excommu-nications on each side were something awful. A Jew of Asia Minor, who was sent for direct from Jerusalem, in order to settle the question, proposed throwing over the datum of Paris, and adopting that of Mount Sinai. This seemed a good idea, excepting that the identity of the true Mount Sinai is a matter of dispute among the learned, and also that the difficulty would thereby be shifted on to the islands of the Paumotu group, where there were several devout descendants of the lost tribes, who would be in a continual state of miserable uncertainty as to whether the Sabbath they kept was not, after all, “ quite a different, day.” In conclusion I ask Mr. Edger which were right—The English, French, German, American, or Sinaitic Jews : —the Saturday men or the Sunday men ? Or is there no right about it excess the principle that one day out of seven is to be observed ?