The German Sunday. 63 



and other European settlers were equally attached to the 

 Sunday of their own old homes. And it was, indeed, a result 

 of the old French war, as our fathers used to call it — the most 

 momentous of all our wars in its results — I often think that 

 the English Sunday was established as the custom of the 

 country. In Lower Canada the French left their Sunday with 

 their religion at that period, but every where else, in Canada 

 and in the future United States, England planted her own 

 usage as to the observance of every seventh day. 



Unhappily however the importation of this English custom 

 took place just at a period when the custom itself was a subject of 

 controversy in the mother country. The Puritans had made it 

 one of their leading purposes to reform the national habits of 

 Sunday observance ; had recalled from the Bible the name of 

 Sabbath for the day ; and were enforcing, as far as they could, 

 the substitution of a strict Sabbath, like that of the Jews as 

 they understood it, for the Sunday which the Eeformation had 

 left to the English people. Our sympathies in all parts of the 

 conflict between the Church of England and the Puritans are 

 likely to be biassed by our own present affinities, but it seems 

 to me that any fair-minded man ought to look back to the two 

 parties with a readiness to interpret the action of either in the 

 light of the provocation of the other. They were about as 

 wrong-headed in those days, as we are now, with the difference 

 that it was a more earnest age than this in the maintenance of 

 principles, whether civil or religious. The enormity of the 

 " Book of Sports " on the one hand, is only explained by the 

 the aggressive strictness of Puritan books and enactments on 

 the other, and vice versa. Hence it came that when a Puritan 

 commonwealth was founded on our shores, the Sabbath was 

 imposed with all the greater strictness because i1> had been 

 fought for in England. The rulers and people would have it 

 and enforce it, and prove their doctrine about it by a demon- 

 stration. I need not quote the blue-laws which even made 

 Sabbath-breaking a capital offence, and then by prohibiting 



