Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 2 (of 2)Holyoake, George Jacob
Philosophy
Bygones Worth Remembering, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Holyoake, George Jacob
Holyoake, George Jacob, 1817-1906; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Working class -- Great Britain -- Biography
None of our Sunday Societies or Sunday Leagues seem ever to have thought
of the advantages of advocating as I have long done--two Sundays--a
Devotional Sunday and a Secular Sunday.
The advocacy of two Sundays would put an end to the fear or pretence
that anybody wants to destroy the one we have.
The Policy of a Second Sunday is a necessity.
It would put an end to the belief that the working classes are mad, and
not content with working six days want to work on the seventh.
It would preserve the present Sunday as a day of real rest and devotion.
The one Sunday we now have is neither one thing nor the other. Its
insufficiency for rest prevents it being an honest day of devotion.
Proper recreation is out of the question. There is too little time for
excursions out of town on the Saturday half-day holiday. Imprisonment in
town irritates rather than refreshes--mere rest is not recreation.
"A want of occupation gives no rest
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed."
Those who would provide recreation in the country find it not worth
while for the precarious chance of half-day visitors. On a Secular
Sunday recreation would be organised and be more self-respecting than it
now can be.
1. It would conduce to the public health. The manufacturing towns of
England are mostly pandemoniums of smoke or blast-furnace fumes. The
winds of heaven cannot clear them away in one day--less than forty-eight
hours of cessation of fire and fume would not render the air breathable.
2. With two Sundays one would be left undisturbed, devoted to repose, to
piety, contemplation and improvement of the mind.
3. It would give the preacher intelligent, fresh-minded and
fruitful-minded hearers, instead of the listless, wearied, barren-headed
auditors, who lower the standard of his own mind by forcing upon him the
endeavour to speak to the level of theirs.
4. A second Sunday would give the people real rest when nobody would
frown upon them, nor preach against them, nor pray against them.
5. It would be cheaper to millowners to stop their works two clear days
than run them on short days; and there need not be fears of claims of
further reduction of forty-eight hours a week on the part of workpeople,
who would have a real sense of freedom from unending toil with two days'
rest and peace. Manufacturing towns would no longer be, as now,
penal settlements of industry. Holiness would no longer be felt to be
wearisomeness.
But for Moses, the changes here sought would have existed long ago. One
day's rest in the week was enough for Jews who were doing nothing when
one Sunday was prescribed to them. Had Moses foreseen the manufacturing
system, instead of saying "six days," he would have said, "Five days
shalt thou labour."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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