THE SABBATH. 38 



twenty- four times 15, or 360, that is to say, the 

 entire circle of the eaith, the sun will be exactly a day 

 behind. Here, then, is the expedient suggested by 

 Dr. Wallis, F.R.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in 

 the University of Oxford, to quiet the minds of those 

 in doubt regarding Saturday observance. He recom- 

 mends them to make a voyage round the world, as Sir 

 Francis Drake did, ' going out of the Atlantic Ocean 

 westward by the Straits of Magellan to the East Indies, 

 and then from the east returning by the Cape of Good 

 Hope homeward, and let them keep their Saturday- 

 Sabbath all the way. When they come home to Eng- 

 land they will find their Saturday 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 Sab- 

 batarian conflict, 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 cannot 

 escape, and so far as it extenuates their errors it ought 

 to be pleaded in their iavour. 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: la 

 it not possible to rule the world in accordance with 



