" GUTHRIE'S SUNDAY ABROAD."

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 150, 17 March 1876, Page 15

" GUTHRIE'S SUNDAY ABROAD."

■M On this subject a " Manchester Catholic " writes :— The doctor is certainly candid, and in general writes in a fair and impartial spirit, though at times he exldbits no inconsiderable amount of bigotry. The London ' Times ' once said : " The Glasgow tradesman pulls down his blind on a Sunday, and gets blind drunk." I trust there are not many such, though it is well known that some do things quite as incongruous. I have often seen the terrible straining at the gnat, and the ready swallowing of the camel, and have been intensely disgusted thereby. The doctor first of all explains why he calls the Day of Rest, Sunday, and not Sabbath, giving precisely the same reason which the Catholic does, viz., Apostolic tradition. He condemns strongly the "extremely rigid and gloomy views" which some sort of ministers, with " sour faces and overflowing bile, with bitter tongues and uncharitable tempers, with dogmatism and self-conceit " — seek to enforce upon others their Sabbatarian notions. He says he cannot see the difference between washing one's face and shaving on a Sunday ; but he adds : " In, hundreds of houses in Scotland you could not get, for love 'or money, one drop of hot water to share with on the Lord's Day ; yet you could get plenty wherewith to brew whiskey toddy ; as if whiskey was not the bane of the country, the present and the eternal ruin of thousands, aa well as the main cause both of our poverty and crime." Dr Guthrie writes strongly against Sunday amusements on the Continent, and states that in Roman Catholic countries it is all but universal to open shops on Sunday. The ' Saturday' here tells him he is unfair, and reminds him that the " Roman Catholic Church haa always denounced ' servile work,' on that festival as strongly as he cau do himself." It adds : "It is, no doubt, very general on the Continent, and universal, or nearly so, in foreigu Protestant churches, but, so far i rom the Church of Rome being responsible for this, the opening of -Oiops on Sundays uiay practicably be taken as a guage of the influence of the priesthood." •' Rome under the Papal Government presented all the appearance of London on a Sunday ; at Munich the shops are "closed except for an hour or two, when hardly any one enters them, while they are open at Berlin, and so agaiu they are closed in the Catholic town of Lucerne, while at the Protestant Interlachen they seem to drive a roaring trade on that day." On the other hand, he has the candor to contrast the sobriety of Florence, where, during a week's stay, he did not see a single instance of intoxication, with the drunken " Protestantism and piety of his own land." The doctor pays a rich tribute to the nuns of Aix-les-Bains, of whom he says : " In devoting their youth and energies, and affections to the works of benevolence and charity, mistaken though they might be, they are an honor to their sex, and a blessing to society." He speaks of Knox " wringing tears from Queen Mary and the liberties of her country from her bloody hand." This is monstrous indeed ! The ' Saturday ' calls Knox coarse and brutal — mild terms for such a ruffian. I will not venture to describe him, as fear I might use unparliamentary language j but poor Mary Stuart ! Faultless she was not ; far from it ; but was ever Queen so circumstanced ? If she erred in life, she atoned for it by dying the death of a saint and a martyr. Dr Guthrie speaks of the fires of Sinithfield. The ' Saturday ' concludes the critique by saying : " The claws of the tiger are clipped happily, or the heretical lamb might have little less to foar from the tender mercies of Exeter Hall than of the Vatican."