time in the public and
private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up
in the works of necessity and mercy."[371:1] This interpretation and
expansion of the Fourth Commandment has never attained to more than a
sectarian and provincial authority; but the overmastering Puritan
influence, both of Virginia and of New England, combined with the
Scotch-Irish influence, made it for a long time dominant in America.
Even those who quite declined to admit the divine authority of the
glosses upon the commandment felt constrained to "submit to the
ordinances of man for the Lord's sake." But it was inevitable that with
the vast increase of the travel and sojourn of American Christians in
other lands of Christendom, and the multitudinous immigration into
America from other lands than Great Britain, the tradition from the
Westminster elders should come to be openly disputed within the church,
and should be disregarded even when not denied. It was not only
inevitable; it was a Christian duty distinctly enjoined by apostolic
authority.[372:1] The five years of war, during which Christians of
various lands and creeds intermingled as never before, and the Sunday
laws were dumb "_inter arma_" not only in the field but among the home
churches, did perhaps even more to break the force of the tradition, and
to lead in a perilous and demoralizing reaction. Some reaction was
inevitable. The church must needs suffer the evil consequence of
overstraining the law of God. From the Sunday of ascetic self-denial--"a
day for a man to afflict his soul"--there was a ready rush into utter
recklessness of the law and privilege of rest. In the church there was
wrought sore damage to weak consciences; men acted, not from intelligent
conviction, but from lack of conviction, and allowing themselves in
self-indulgences of the rightfulness of which they were dubious, they
"condemned themselves in that which they allowed." The consequence in
civil society was alike disastrous. Early legislation had not steered
clear of the error of attempting to enforce Sabbath-keeping as a
religious duty by civil penalties; and some relics of that mistake
remained, and still remain, on some of the statute-books. The just
protest against this wrong was, of course, undiscriminating, tending to
defeat the righteous and most salutary laws that aimed simply to secure
for the citizen the privilege of a weekly day of rest and to secure the
holiday thus ordained