The General Assembly [pp. 536-562]

i877.] The General Assembly. 549
pecially of residence and business, are determined at once
by the necessities created and the conveniences afforded by
the modern modes of cheap and expeditious public conveyance. Thus, homes are pushed more and more away from the
seats of business, either in urban or suburban localities, these
new means of recent and quick conveyance virtually bridging
over the distance. The same is often true with reference to
schools and churches, and other necessities of civilized and
Christian life. And hence, while all ordinary transportation
should cease on that day, the movement of some cars may
be demanded by necessity and mercy, as involving far less of
labor to discharge the necessary offices of life and religion
than would result from their stoppage. They are in the methods of modern life, in such places as New York and its suburbs,
much in the position of the East and North river ferries. They
are in place of streets, roads and bridges, because by them
alone can multitudes of people now use these roads in which
these tracks are for purposes of necessary travel. To this it
is due that, notwithstanding all protests to the contrary from
ecclesiastical bodies in the earliest days of the practice, milktrains continue to be run, as the only means 6f supplying the
cities with that indispensable necessity of life, pure milk.
Presbyterian communicants and elders of unquestioned repute
for piety, after church on Sabbath, carry the milk of their
dairies to these trains, often for delivery to and consumption
by those other Presbyterian people who will use no other, because thus alone they judge that they get a pure article. All
this neither justifies nor palliates any movement of railroad
trains for business purely secular, for excursions of pleasure,
or for any purposes not fairly within the domain of necessity
or mercy. While much that is done on many railroads is clearly
not within this description, there is undoubtedly a considerable border-land in which opinions of persons, equally pure and
intelligent, might honestly differ, as almost always happens in
casuistry, or the application of undisputed principles, to cases of
disputed facts, or facts dubious in their inferential relations, if
notper se. But still, a large residuum is left of Sunday work done
by many railroads, which can be justified on no plausible plea of
necessity or mercy, and must, therefore, go to the account of
Sabbath desecration, pure and simple. We do not, then, regard
(New,Series, No22.2 2. 35