The Puritan Sabbath--is there such a thing existing now, or has it
gone with the things that were, to be looked at as a curiosity in
the museum of the past? Can any one, in memory, take himself back
to the unbroken stillness of that day, and recall the sense of
religious awe which seemed to brood in the very atmosphere, checking
the merry laugh of childhood, and chaining in unwonted stillness
the tongue of volatile youth, and imparting even to the sunshine
of heaven, and the unconscious notes of animals, a tone of its own
gravity and repose? If you cannot remember these things, go back
with me to the verge of early boyhood, and live with me one of the
Sabbaths that I have spent beneath the roof of my uncle, Phineas
Fletcher.
Imagine the long sunny hours of a Saturday afternoon insensibly
slipping away, as we youngsters are exploring the length and breadth
of a trout stream, or chasing gray squirrels, or building mud
milldams in the brook. The sun sinks lower and lower, but we still
think it does not want half an hour to sundown. At last, he so
evidently is really going down, that there is no room for skepticism
or latitude of opinion on the subject; and with many a lingering
regret, we began to put away our fish-hooks, and hang our hoops over
our arm, preparatory to trudging homeward.
"Oh, Henry, don't you wish that Saturday afternoons lasted longer?"
said little John to me.
"I do," says Cousin Bill, who was never the boy to mince matters in
giving his sentiments; "and I wouldn't care if Sunday didn't come
but once a year."
"Oh, Bill, that's wicked, I'm afraid," says little conscientious
Susan, who, with her doll in hand, was coming home from a Saturday
afternoon visit.
"Can't help it," says Bill, catching Susan's bag, and tossing it
in the air; "I never did like to sit still, and that's why I hate
Sundays."
"Hate Sundays! Oh, Bill! Why, Aunt Kezzy says heaven is an eternal
Sabbath--only think of that!"
"Well, I know I must be pretty different from what I am now before
I could sit still forever," said Bill in a lower and somewhat
disconcerted tone, as if admitting the force of the consideration.
The rest of us began to look very grave, and to think that we must
get to liking Sunday some time or other, or it would be a very
bad thing for us. As we drew near the dwelling, the compact and
businesslike form of Aunt Kezzy was seen emerging from the house to
hasten our approach.
"How often have I told you, young ones, not to stay out after
sundown on Saturday night? Don't you know it's the same as Sunday,
you wicked children, you? Come right into the house, every one of
you, and never let me hear of such a thing again."
This was Aunt Kezzy's regular exordium every Saturday night; for
we children, being blinded, as she supposed, by natural depravity,
always made strange mistakes in reckoning time on Saturday
afternoons. After being duly suppered and scrubbed, we were enjoined
to go to bed, and remember that to-morrow was Sunday, and that we
must not laugh and play in the morning. With many a sorrowful look
did Susan deposit her doll in the chest, and give one lingering
glance at the patchwork she was piecing for dolly's bed, while
William, John, and myself emptied our pockets of all superfluous
fish-hooks, bits of twine, popguns, slices of potato, marbles,
and all the various items of boy property, which, to keep us from
temptation, were taken into Aunt Kezzy's safe-keeping over Sunday.
My Uncle Phineas was a man of great exactness, and Sunday was the
centre of his whole worldly and religious system. Everything with
regard to his worldly business was so arranged that by Saturday noon
it seemed to come to a close of itself. All his accounts were looked
over, his workmen paid, all borrowed things returned, and lent
things sent after, and every tool and article belonging to the farm
was returned to its own place at exactly such an hour every Saturday
afternoon, and an hour before sundown every item of preparation,
even to the blacking of his Sunday shoes and the brushing of his
Sunday coat, was entirely concluded; and at the going down of the
sun, the stillness of the Sabbath seemed to settle down over the
whole dwelling.
And now it is Sunday morning; and though all without is fragrance,
and motion, and beauty, the dewdrops are twinkling, butterflies
fluttering, and merry birds caroling and racketing as if they never
could sing loud or fast enough, yet within there is such a stillness
that the tick of the tall mahogany clock is audible through the
whole house, and the buzz of the blue flies, as they whiz along up
and down the window-panes, is a distinct item of hearing. Look into
the best front room, and you may see the upright form of my Uncle
Phineas, in his immaculate Sunday clothes, with his Bible spread
open on the little stand before him, and even a deeper than usual
gravity settling down over his toil-worn features. Alongside, in
well-brushed Sunday clothes, with clean faces and smooth hair, sat
the whole of us younger people, each drawn up in a chair, with hat
and handkerchief, ready for the first stroke of the bell, while
Aunt Kezzy, all trimmed, and primmed, and made ready for meeting,
sat reading her psalm-book, only looking up occasionally to give
an additional jerk to some shirt-collar, or the fifteenth pull to
Susan's frock, or to repress any straggling looks that might be
wandering about, "beholding vanity."
A stranger, in glancing at Uncle Phineas as he sat intent on
his Sunday reading, might have seen that the Sabbath was in his
heart--there was no mistake about it. It was plain that he had put
by all worldly thoughts when he shut up his account-book, and that
his mind was as free from every earthly association as his Sunday
coat was from dust. The slave of worldliness, who is driven, by
perplexing business or adventurous speculation, through the hours of
a half-kept Sabbath to the fatigues of another week, might envy the
unbroken quiet, the sunny tranquillity, which hallowed the weekly
rest of my uncle.
The Sabbath of the Puritan Christian was the golden day, and all
its associations, and all its thoughts, words, and deeds, were so
entirely distinct from the ordinary material of life, that it was
to him a sort of weekly translation--a quitting of this world to
sojourn a day in a better; and year after year, as each Sabbath set
its seal on the completed labors of a week, the pilgrim felt that
one more stage of his earthly journey was completed, and that he
was one week nearer to his eternal rest. And as years, with their
changes, came on, and the strong man grew old, and missed, one after
another, familiar forms that had risen around his earlier years, the
face of the Sabbath became like that of an old and tried friend,
carrying him back to the scenes of his youth, and connecting him
with scenes long gone by, restoring to him the dew and freshness of
brighter and more buoyant days.
Viewed simply as an institution for a Christian and mature mind,
nothing could be more perfect than the Puritan Sabbath: if it had
any failing, it was in the want of adaptation to children, and to
those not interested in its peculiar duties. If you had been in the
dwelling of my uncle of a Sabbath morning, you must have found the
unbroken stillness delightful; the calm and quiet must have soothed
and disposed you for contemplation, and the evident appearance of
single-hearted devotion to the duties of the day in the elder part
of the family must have been a striking addition to the picture.
But, then, if your eye had watched attentively the motions of us
juveniles, you might have seen that what was so very invigorating
to the disciplined Christian was a weariness to young flesh and
bones. Then there was not, as now, the intellectual relaxation
afforded by the Sunday-school, with its various forms of religious
exercise, its thousand modes of interesting and useful information.
Our whole stock in this line was the Bible and Primer, and these
were our main dependence for whiling away the tedious hours between
our early breakfast and the signal for meeting. How often was our
invention stretched to find wherewithal to keep up our stock of
excitement in a line with the duties of the day! For the first
half hour, perhaps, a story in the Bible answered our purpose very
well; but, having dispatched the history of Joseph, or the story
of the ten plagues, we then took to the Primer: and then there
was, first, the looking over the system of theological and ethical
teaching, commencing, "In Adam's fall we sinnéd all," and extending
through three or four pages of pictorial and poetic embellishment.
Next was the death of John Rogers, who was burned at Smithfield;
and for a while we could entertain ourselves with counting all his
"nine children and one at the breast," as in the picture they stand
in a regular row, like a pair of stairs. These being done, came
miscellaneous exercises of our own invention, such as counting all
the psalms in the psalm-book, backward and forward, to and from the
Doxology, or numbering the books in the Bible, or some other such
device as we deemed within the pale of religious employments. When
all these failed, and it still wanted an hour of meeting time, we
looked up at the ceiling, and down at the floor, and all around
into every corner, to see what we could do next; and happy was he
who could spy a pin gleaming in some distant crack, and forthwith
muster an occasion for getting down to pick it up. Then there was
the infallible recollection that we wanted a drink of water, as an
excuse to get out to the well; or else we heard some strange noise
among the chickens, and insisted that it was essential that we
should see what was the matter; or else pussy would jump on to the
table, when all of us would spring to drive her down; while there
was a most assiduous watching of the clock to see when the first
bell would ring. Happy was it for us, in the interim, if we did not
begin to look at each other and make up faces, or slyly slip off and
on our shoes, or some other incipient attempts at roguery, which
would gradually so undermine our gravity that there would be some
sudden explosion of merriment, whereat Uncle Phineas would look up
and say, "Tut, tut," and Aunt Kezzy would make a speech about wicked
children breaking the Sabbath day. I remember once how my Cousin
Bill got into deep disgrace one Sunday by a roguish trick. He was
just about to close his Bible with all sobriety, when snap came a
grasshopper through an open window, and alighted in the middle of
the page. Bill instantly kidnapped the intruder, for so important an
auxiliary in the way of employment was not to be despised. Presently
we children looked towards Bill, and there he sat, very demurely
reading his Bible, with the grasshopper hanging by one leg from the
corner of his mouth, kicking and sprawling, without in the least
disturbing Master William's gravity. We all burst into an uproarious
laugh. But it came to be rather a serious affair for Bill, as his
good father was in the practice of enforcing truth and duty by
certain modes of moral suasion much recommended by Solomon, though
fallen into disrepute at the present day.
This morning picture may give a good specimen of the whole livelong
Sunday, which presented only an alternation of similar scenes until
sunset, when a universal unchaining of tongues and a general scamper
proclaimed that the "sun was down."
But, it may be asked, what was the result of all this strictness?
Did it not disgust you with the Sabbath and with religion? No,
it did not. It did not, because it was the result of no unkindly
feeling, but of consistent principle; and consistency of principle
is what even children learn to appreciate and revere. The law
of obedience and of reverence for the Sabbath was constraining
so equally on the young and the old, that its claims came to be
regarded like those immutable laws of nature, which no one thinks
of being out of patience with, though they sometimes bear hard
on personal convenience. The effect of the system was to ingrain
into our character a veneration for the Sabbath which no friction
of after life would ever efface. I have lived to wander in many
climates and foreign lands, where the Sabbath is an unknown name, or
where it is only recognized by noisy mirth; but never has the day
returned without bringing with it a breathing of religious awe, and
even a yearning for the unbroken stillness, the placid repose, and
the simple devotion of the Puritan Sabbath.