512  Sunday  as  a  Religious  Institution.    {A^VembeMsSf ' 
increasing  amount  of  the  first  is  constantly  falling  into  the  second 
class.  The  thinking  of  yesterday  in  this  connection  will  not  do 
to-day  nor  will  the  codes  and  catalogues  of  former  generations  serve 
the  present  one.  The  question  in  just  what  individual  cases  Sunday 
rest  were  a  crime  and  in  just  what  individual  cases  Sunday  labor  is 
a  sin  must  be  settled  piecemeal  and  for  every  individual.  There 
can  be  no  single,  sweeping,  definite,  dogmatic  statement. 
And,  yet  once  more,  there  is  a  third  thing  which  I  conceive  to  be 
a  subject  apart  from  the  theme  you  have  set  me.  Besides  the  so- 
called  "  observance  "  of  the  day  by  going  to  church  and  the  so-called 
"  breaking  "  of  the  day  by  working  upon  it,  there  is  the  so-called 
u  desecration  "  of  the  day  by  playing  upon  it.  This  is  a  subject 
upon  which  I  may  feel  as  strongly  as  I  will,  but  at  the  same  time  it 
is  one  upon  which  I  realize  that  I  had  better  feel  normally.  The 
Puritan,  that  harsh  mentor  who  scathed  the  world  with  his  con- 
demnation and  robbed  it  of  its  cherished  delights,  did  not  strike  the 
human  average  and  his  system  has  suffered  accordingly.  Ruskin 
once  wrote  "  God  forgive  me  those  who  trained  me,  how  I  hate  this 
day!"  This  is  one  extreme  form  of  observance  and  its  result.  As 
a  type  of  the  other  extreme,  witness  last  Sunday's  baseball  game 
in  Chicago  with  its  thirty-five  thousand  spectators.  There  is  some- 
where a  normal  mean  between  that  morbidness  which  counts  a 
laugh  a  sin  on  Sunday  and  that  flippancy  which  counts  a  sin 
something  to  laugh  at  any  day,  but  it  is  hard  to  find.  It  is  hard 
to  find  because  individual  temperament,  the  personal  equation  and 
the  point  of  view,  all  have  importance,  and  the  time,  the  place,  the 
circumstances  and  the  motive  all  must  be  considered  in  relation  to 
each  action.  The  solving  of  this  problem  is  a  task  all  by  itself. 
It  is  a  mighty  task,  moreover,  since  he  who  performs  it  must  frame 
an  entire  critique  of  amusements  as  such. 
Now  I  am  sure  that  by  this  time  1  seem  to  have  been  talking 
around  my  subject  and  not  upon  it,  and  to  have  spent  so  much  time 
making  these  three  negative  statements  that  there  is  scant  space 
left  for  the  positive  one.  But  that  has  been  precisely  my  purpose ; 
for,  if  these  points  are  cleared  up  and  cleared  away,  the  real  point 
may  be  tersely  put  and  briefly  discussed,  the  real  problem  phrased 
in  very  few  words  and  its  solution  set  forth  in  fully  as  few.  The 
process  is  like  the  removing  of  casings  or  hulls  from  a  nut  which, 
when  thus  bared,  is  easily  cracked.    Or,  once  again,  to  change  a 
