The basic idea of the old Puritan Sunday was the direct opposite of that of Jesus. Following the old Mosaic law, which Jesus combatted, the Puritans planned their celebration of the day for the "honor and glory" of God, and not for the benefit of man. Conceiving this _God_, not as a loving Father, but as a stern, austere Judge, who, according to Jonathan Edwards, had reserved the bulk of mankind for burning, who demanded "sacrifice" and not "mercy," and was therefore to be propitiated and placated, the Puritan ministers succeeded, while they had the power, in imposing on their congregations a most atrocious travesty of the Sabbath of Jesus. Religious services were piled up like Pelion on Ossa, and every movement of the day was marked by gloom and austerity. No wonder that William Lloyd Garrison said of the observance of Sunday at a much later date: "The Sabbath, as now recognized and enforced, is one of the main pillars of priest-craft and superstition, and the stronghold of merely ceremonial religion." Jesus did not object to the Jewish observance of the Sabbath on the ground that it was too "lax" (to use a modern term), but on just the opposite ground--that certain of their restrictions on man's freedom of action on that day were unnecessary. But the Sabbath of that time, as the Jews celebrated it, and as, from all the accounts in the four Gospels, Jesus celebrated it, was a day of joyous rest and recreation, and in no sense a day of spiritual maceration. "The same character of cheerfulness, of happy rest from the toil and turmoil of the world's business; of quiet and peaceful return unto one's self; of joyous communion with friends and kindred over good cheer--in short, of mental and bodily relaxation and recreation that strengthens, braces, pacifies, and maketh the heart glad, while the sublime ideas which it symbolizes are recalled to the memory at every step and turn seems to have prevailed at all times down to our own, among the Jews." "Suffice it to reiterate that in every class, every age and every variety of Jews, from first to last, the Sabbath has been absolutely a day of joy and happiness, nay, of dancing, of singing, of eating and drinking, and of luxury." International Cyclopædia, Sabbath, Vol. XII, p. 857. This is the kind of a Sabbath which the Gospels picture Jesus as celebrating, attending feasts in the houses of His friends, walking in the fields with His disciples, or meeting with them in public places, and healing the sick when occasion offered (Matt. XII:1; Mark II:23; Luke VI:1; Luke XIV:1; John V:1, 2, 9; IX:1, 14). Hard as it may be for Anglo-Saxon prejudice to admit, yet it seems to be true, that the Spanish Sunday--mass in the morning and a bull-fight in the afternoon--is nearer than the Puritan Sunday to Jesus' ideas of the proper observance of the day, although He would probably approve, as little as we do, that particular form of amusement.