Staunton Spectator

The question of discontinuing Sunday trains on the Virginia Central Railroad, has been agitated at every meeting of the stockholders for several years past. A former Superintendent of the road has demonstrated by facts and figures that Sunday trains do not pay; public sentiment, we believe, is in favor of the reform; and we have no doubt that at least a portion of the Directory feel and lament the demoralizing influence of this kind of Sabbath desecration. Yet for some reason or other the passenger trains continue to run on Sunday. We are not in despair, however, of a correction of the evil, and at any rate shall continue to do our duty in the premises by continuing to call attention to the subject. It is not a question of dollars and cents, but one involving the highest moral interests of the community, in comparison with which pecuniary profit and loss sink into insignificancy. We are reminded of the subject at this time by an excellent article on the observance of the Sabbath, in that excellent and influential journal, the Baltimore American. "With the theological discussions belonging to the subject," says the American, "it is not our purpose, of course, to meddle. There is just this much, however, to be said-if the authority of God has anything at all to do with the appointment of the Christian Sabbath, it is not possible that He would formally set apart a day to be observed by men, merely or principally for the purpose of giving them rest from bodily toil, or for the seeking of mere amusement, however innocent. By the very constitution of their nature--by all those attributes that distinguish men from brutes--are they bound to devote such a day to intellectual and spiritual cultivation. "But our concern is with the law of the land. It plainly and stringently forbids all kinds of traffic on the Sabbath, and it is a law of universal application. It compels the dealer in dry goods or hardware to close his store, and makes no exceptions in favor of liquor sellers, cigar and tobacco dealers, or ice cream saloons." Not exactly "of universal application"--While restrictions are laid upon individuals, the great incorporated Sabbath breakers, whose influence is ten fold more injurious, run riot through the land. "We discover," says the American, "how priceless a jewel consistency is, in discussing this subject. Pious people--(and the pious people in this community are not a beggarly minority)--look with horror upon railroad travel on the Sabbath. If an omnibus company proposed to run a line on Sunday, even for the accommodation of persons who lived too far from church,--the Company would be overwhelmed with a storm of indignant rebuke." The American concludes its articles with the following extract from an address put forth five years ago by a large and influential body of men: "Finally, the Sabbath is a sign of God's covenant with us. It is a brilliant bow of promise upon the very darkest cloud that hangs upon the horizon of our country. So long as we observe it, so long shall the flood of despotism, infidelity and anarchy threaten us in vain. If we abandon it, or treat it with contempt, then comes merited vengeance; the opening of the windows of Heaven, the breaking up of the foundations of the deep, and a shoreless ocean, engulphing all that has exalted us, and made us prosperous as a people, and the brightest hopes and anticipations of the nations of the earth."

J. S. G.

Urbane