3i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



way. When they come home to England they will find their Satur- 

 day to fall upon our Sunday, and they may thenceforth continue to 

 observe their Saturday-Sabbath on the same day with us ! " 



Large and liberal minds were drawn into this Sabbatarian con- 

 flict, but they were not the majority. Between the booming of the 

 bigger guns we have an incessant clatter of small-arms. We ought 

 not to judge superior men without reference to the spirit of their age. 

 This is an influence from which they can not escape, and so far as it 

 extenuates their errors it ought to be pleaded in their favor. Even 

 the atrocities of the individual excite less abhorrence when they are 

 seen to be the outgrowth of his time. But the most fatal error that 

 could be committed by the leaders of religious thought is the attempt 

 to force into their own age conceptions which have lived their life, 

 and come to their natural end, in preceding ages. History is the 

 record of a vast experimental investigation of a search by man after 

 the best conditions of existence. The Puritan attempt was a grand 

 experiment. It had to be made. Sooner or later the question must 

 have forced itself upon earnest believers possessed of power, Is it 

 not possible to rule the world in accordance with the wishes of God 

 as revealed in the Bible ? Is it not possible to make human life the 

 copy of a divine pattern ? The question could only have occurred 

 in the first instance to the more exalted minds. But, instead of work- 

 ing upon the inner forces and convictions of men, legislation presented 

 itself as a speedier way to the attainment of the desired end. To 

 legislation, therefore, the Puritans resorted. Instead of guiding, they 

 repressed, and thus pitted themselves against the unconquerable im- 

 pulses of human nature. Believing that nature to be depraved, they 

 felt themselves logically warranted in putting it in irons. But they 

 failed ; and their failure ought to be a warning to their successors. 



Another error, of a far graver character than that jlist noticed, 

 may receive a i^assing mention here. At the time when the Sabbath 

 controversy was hottest, and the arm of the law enforcing the claims 

 of the Sabbath strongest and most unsijaring, another subject pro- 

 foundly stirred the religious mind of Scotland. A grave and serious 

 nation, believing intensely in its Bible, found therein recorded the 

 edicts of the Almighty against witches, wizards, and familiar spirits, 

 and were taught by their clergy that such edicts still held good. The 

 same belief had overspread the rest of Christendom, but in Scotland 

 it was intensified by the rule of Puritanism and the natural earnest- 

 ness of the people. I have given you a sample of the devilish cruelties 

 practiced on the Christians at Smyrna. These tortures were far less 

 shocking than those inflicted upon witches in Scotland. I say less 

 shocking, because the victims at Smyrna courted martyrdom. They 

 counted the sufferings of this present time as not worthy to be com- 

 pared with the glory to be revealed ; while the sufferers for witchcraft, 

 in the midst of all their agonies, felt themselves God-forsaken, and 



