One of these self-sufficient judges of judgments, and complacent dealers out of denunciations, converting the awful catastrophe triumphantly to the account of his own black and bitter creed--in which the Almighty figures as a sort of Ashantee Fetish, to be propitiated by death and destruction--has no hesitation in putting his finger on its immediate cause. Referring to the imprisoned passengers--men, women, and little children--many of them known to have been on their way to or from errands of friendship, mercy and family affection--he asks whether it was not "awful to think" that-- "They had been carried away when many of them must have known that they were transgressing the law of God." It might do this gentleman some good to reflect that it is possible to be "carried away" in another fashion, and to transgress a great law of God--"Judge not that ye be not judged," in a more questionable manner. To see the professing minister of a religion, of whose virtues one of its leading Apostles has declared charity the greatest, swept off his narrow line of literal sectarianism in a hurricane of bitter bigotry, is suggestive of reflections which, if not exactly "awful," are neither agreeable nor edifying. [Sidenote: _Sunday Pastime and Sunday Closing_] In the lines on "Our Sunday--down East"--permission to include which in the programme of any Sabbatarian Penny Reading was freely granted by _Punch_--he writes:-- Which is the day that _should_ be blest, And to the weary, work-opprest, Bring wholesome pleasure, peace, and rest? Our Sunday. Yet which the day of all the seven To our sour lives adds sourer leaven, And leaves poor folk most far from heaven? Our Sunday. The persistence of the Sabbatarian instinct, even where it was disregarded, is illustrated in the picture of the young lady on a railway platform asking her grandfather to hide their rackets: "We needn't show everybody that we are going to play lawn tennis on a Sunday afternoon." When in 1888 Sunday boating was allowed in the parks after church time, _Punch_ applauds "George Ranger" and Mr. David Plunket for the _act_ but not the language of the order, which he condemns as "Pharisaical trash." In the same year a largely signed petition was laid before the Upper House of Convocation of Canterbury protesting against the increasing pursuit of Sunday pastime by the "upper and fashionable classes of Society." _Punch_ ridicules the vagueness of the protest against "amusing programmes of fun and frolic," and sums up in these words:--