Rev. Mr. Hatch and the Sunday Question

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Rev. Mr. Hatch and the Sunday Question

We publish elsewhere in to-day's paper a communication from a so-called Rev. gentleman, not altogether unknown by name to the readers of the TIMES, in which he accuses us, in not the most courteous language, and certainly not in the best possible English, of having at various times contradicted ourselves on the important question of Sunday travel.

Mr. Hatch seems so utterly and so ridiculously to misunderstand the course of this paper in regard to this Sabbatarian question that we deem a few words on the subject due to those who may possibly be misled by the curiously assorted citations which the Rev. gentleman has gathered from our files.¹

There has never yet appeared an anti-Sabbatarian article in any copy of the TIMES. We have uniformly recognized, honored and respected the religious character of Sunday. All we ever have objected to was a Puritanical and narrow-minded observance of that day, which, if followed out, would bring us back to the old blue-laws of New England. We have advocated all along the right of a man to eat a hot dinner on Sunday, if he can get it—the right of a man to kiss his wife or child on Sunday if he be blessed with those tender relations—and the right of the poor man to the means of transit on Sunday, provided he has occasion to travel or chooses to think he has. We fully believe in the doctrine of the "sovereignty of the individual" (taking that phrase in its best and only true sense), or in other words the right of every man to dispose of his time as he pleases on Sunday or any other day of the week, provided that, by so doing he does not infringe upon the equally sacred rights of his neighbor who may elect to pass his leisure hours in a different manner. If this be anti-Sabbatarianism we are willing to abide by, and stick to it. This is the sound, common-sense feeling which we are sure pervades the mass of right-thinking men, and beyond this we do not care to go.

But when we see a man who pretends to be a minister of Christianity—albeit his quondam compeers have eschewed him altogether—fighting against the most common observances of the creed of which he pretends to be a disciple—writing ribald verses, which any decent print would be ashamed to publish, against things sacred and pure—we feel a mingled sentiment of pity and disgust which it would be difficult to express. We respectfully decline to publish any of the Rev. Mr. Hatch's doggerel. We trust we can fill the space allotted us with more profit to our readers, and more satisfaction to ourselves. Rev. Mr. H. will allow us to remark that a woman unsexed is bad enough, but a clergyman who dons the cap and bells and leaps into the ring in a clown's dress to sing his maudlin songs and utter his stale witticisms, is many degrees lower still.

We sincerely lament that the cause of real progress and liberality of feeling should be obstructed by such individuals as Mr. Hatch. This gentleman is accustomed to prate about the "fanaticism" of those who advocate a rigid observance of the Christian Sabbath. We should like to see a more bigoted, not to say frenzied, fanatic than Mr. H. has shown himself to be on the other side. His letter—for the writing of which there was no imaginable cause that we can divine, except a morbid love of noteriety​ —is about the most incoherent and ridiculous document that has fallen under our attention for a long time.

If we have of late relaxed somewhat in our endeavors to further the cause of a rational, as opposed to a Puritanical, observation of the Sunday, it has been caused, more than anything else, by the disgust which we could not avoid feeling in view of the "fantastic tricks" which such reverend mountebanks as Mr. Hatch play "before high heaven."

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