SABBATH BREAKING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 100, 5 June 1900, Page 4

SABBATH BREAKING.

The Dunedin Outlook of Saturday last makes the following vigorous protest against the fast developing practice of Sabbath breaking:— "Mr. M'Gowan, the Minister of Mines, has been making a tour of the Otago gold mining districts. In this tour we regret to day he appears neither to have feared God nor regarded man so far as Sabbath sanctity is concerned. Mr. Robert Gilkison, Mr, Bennett, M.H.R., and Mr. Mac George, representing a number of interests, waited upon the Minister, So far as we can make out this was done on Sunday afternoon. That at least is the inference we are compelled to draw j from the newspaper report. If we are, mistaken we shall be delighted to be assured of ifc. But whether it is so or not in this case a paragraph in the Otago Daily Times stated that the Rev. Mr. M'Oully, Presbyterian minister at i Riverton, protested against the action of Mr. M'Gowan when in that district inspecting some mines there on the Sabbath. It seems to us, therefore, pretty certain that Mr. M'Gowan has deliberately chosen to violate the sanctity of the Day of Rest, and to lead fcores of other people to do the same thing. What have the people of Otago done that they should have inflictions of this kind put upon them every now and again by peripatetic Government officials? We protest with all our power against this sort of conduct. It is unworthy of Mr. M'Gowan. It is a direct insult to the Christian conscience of the community, A week or two ago a correspondent drew attention to the ever-increasing waggon traffic in the goldfields districts driving its way through the sanctity of the Lord's Day. If this sort of thing is alowed to go on we shall soon loose our Sabbath altogether. If the Christian community of the colony does not assert itself it will be a partner in the crime which is thus perpetrated against God and man. Gold is very desirab.'o, no doubt, but even it may ba bought too dearly if it is purchased at the price of the manhood and the womanhood of a nation, or at the price of those institutions that, like the Lord's Day, guard the spiritual and eternal interests of life. If that is so, then, as the great piophet of our generation, John Ruskin, says: " That which seems to be wealth may in .verity be only the gilded index of far-reaching ruin ; a wrecker's handful of coin gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy; a camp follower's bundle of rags unwrapped from the breasts of soldiers dead; the purchase pieces of potters fields wherein shall be buried together the citizen and the stranger." These are very true words. Dr. Alexander Whyte says" It may be said of the Sabbath among divine institutions what Lutber said of justification by faith that it is a sign of a standing and a falling church." It is also, and, therefore, the sign of a standing and a falling nation. Are the Christians shareholders in these mining companies aware that while they sit in church their servants are driving waggons on the Lord's Day through the country ? Are the Christian electors of the colony willing to sit quietly still while Government and its servants not simply pin prick the Sabbath but drive a coach and four through this palladium of a nation's well being ? If they are then they deserve what they will assuredly receive—the overthrow of that light and liberty which have lifted the Anglo-Saxon race above the status of emigrating rats and free-loving baboons. We are glad to see that the Trades and Labour Council is taking alarm at the growing increase of Lord's Day labour in Government works. It does well to do so. For it is the working man that will go down first and deepest with the downfall of the Sabbath. Government is the servant of the people, and every people has the Government it deserves. This sort of thing can be stopped if the master—the people choose to do it. And we must earnestly appeal to the Christian colonists not to be at ease in Zion when its bulwarks are threatened.