130 JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
tendance on the part even of those who are reckoned not among 
those admittedly churchless. A revolt against the traditional 
observance of what is now all but universally known, not as the 
Sabbath but as Sunday, is spreading, remarks a Toronto daily. 
Dr. Howle, Minister United Free Church, Glasgow, puts down 
the numbers of non-church going population as 420,000, while 
only 19 per cent. attended service in Dundee. In many of the 
rural districts the rebellion is even more open and defiant. 
This reaction was long foreseen. It is a mere repetition (in a 
milder form) of what occurred on the accession of the worst 
of the Stuarts, Charles IL After the fanatical bigotry of the 
puritanical commonwealth, the offshoot of the old theological 
teaching is unbelief, pure and simple, asserts a recent writer; 
while the Rev. J. Minot Savage, in a paper entitled “The 
Agencies which are working a revolution in Theology,” states 
the real infidelity to-day is to be found with those who stand 
with back to the sunrise, and see no reality except in the 
shadows of the night, which is passing away. God is the 
power that is wheeling the earth into a new day. Such herti- 
cal ideas may not meet with the approval of churches estab- 
ilshed either in medizval times or even subsequently. Refute 
them if you can. Abuse is no argument, and only is a mere 
acknowledgment of an impossibility of any satisfactory reply. 
And what advantage can be gained by reverend gentlemen 
adopting or foll6wing the example of the street Arab. Sun- 
day observance was without direct spiritual authority, and is 
simply an ordinance of the primitive church, remarks a Bishop 
of the Anglican Church. The statement'has been fully con- 
firmed since, and others have also admitted there was no law 
‘in the Bible for keeping Sunday, and where no law there can 
be no transgression. ‘The first day of the week, the solar holi- 
day of Paganism, dedicated to sun worship in Egypt, Babylon, 
Syria, etc., was selected originally by the early Christian 
church for the same reason as the birthday of Churst was fixed 
on as the 25th December. It was found difficult to induce the 
Pagan Romans to abandon the dates of the ancient festivals, 
<¢ they were appropriated for Christian purposes. A fact new 
