solemn; and just then the door was shut--and so I never knew what the
question was--only I observed that James Martyrs seemed in some seventh
heaven for a week afterwards, and--and--you can finish for yourself,
lady.
THE SABBATH.
SKETCHES FROM A NOTE BOOK OF AN ELDERLY GENTLEMAN.
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 scepticism 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.
"O 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."
"O 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! O 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 business-like 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. Every thing 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
work-men 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 carolling 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 despatched 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 sinned 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.
ANOTHER SCENE.
"How late we are this morning!" said Mrs. Roberts to her husband,
glancing hurriedly at the clock, as they were sitting down to breakfast
on a Sabbath morning. "Really, it is a shame to us to be so late
Sundays. I wonder John and Henry are not up yet; Hannah, did you speak
to them?"
"Yes, ma'am, but I could not make them mind; they said it was Sunday,
and that we always have breakfast later Sundays."
"Well, it is a shame to us, I must say," said Mrs. Roberts, sitting down
to the table. "I never lie late myself unless something in particular
happens. Last night I was out very late, and Sabbath before last I had a
bad headache."
"Well, well, my dear," said Mr. Roberts, "it is not worth while to worry
yourself about it; Sunday is a day of rest; every body indulges a little
of a Sunday morning, it is so very natural, you know; one's work done
up, one feels like taking a little rest."
"Well, I must say it was not the way my mother brought me up," said Mrs.
Roberts; "and I really can't feel it to be right."
This last part of the discourse had been listened to by two
sleepy-looking boys, who had, meanwhile, taken their seats at table with
that listless air which is the result of late sleeping.
"O, by the by, my dear, what did you give for those hams Saturday?" said
Mr. Roberts.
"Eleven cents a pound, I believe," replied Mrs. Roberts; "but Stephens
and Philips have some much nicer, canvas and all, for ten cents. I think
we had better get our things at Stephens and Philips's in future, my
dear."
"Why? are they much cheaper?"
"O, a great deal; but I forget it is Sunday. We ought to be thinking of
other things. Boys, have you looked over your Sunday school lesson?"
"No, ma'am."
"Now, how strange! and here it wants only half an hour of the time, and
you are not dressed either. Now, see the bad effects of not being up in
time."
The boys looked sullen, and said "they were up as soon as any one else
in the house."
"Well, your father and I had some excuse, because we were out late last
night; you ought to have been up full three hours ago, and to have been
all ready, with your lessons learned. Now, what do you suppose you shall
do?"
"O mother, do let us stay at home this one morning; we don't know the
lesson, and it won't do any good for us to go."
"No, indeed, I shall not. You must go and get along as well as you can.
It is all your own fault. Now, go up stairs and hurry. We shall not find
time for prayers this morning."
The boys took themselves up stairs to "hurry," as directed, and soon one
of them called from the top of the stairs, "Mother! mother! the buttons
are off this vest; so I can't wear it!" and "Mother! here is a long rip
in my best coat!" said another.
"Why did you not tell me of it before?" said Mrs. Roberts, coming up
stairs.
"I forgot it," said the boy.
"Well, well, stand still; I must catch it together somehow, if it is
Sunday. There! there is the bell! Stand still a minute!" and Mrs.
Roberts plied needle, and thread, and scissors; "there, that will do for
to-day. Dear me, how confused every thing is to-day!"
"It is always just so Sundays," said John, flinging up his book and
catching it again as he ran down stairs.
"It is always just so Sundays." These words struck rather unpleasantly
on Mrs. Roberts's conscience, for something told her that, whatever the
reason might be, it _was_ just so. On Sunday every thing was later and
more irregular than any other day in the week.
"Hannah, you must boil that piece of beef for dinner to-day."
"I thought you told me you did not have cooking done on Sunday."
"No, I do not, generally. I am very sorry Mr. Roberts would get that
piece of meat yesterday. We did not need it; but here it is on our
hands; the weather is too hot to keep it. It won't do to let it spoil;
so I must have it boiled, for aught I see."
Hannah had lived four Sabbaths with Mrs. Roberts, and on two of them she
had been required to cook from similar reasoning. "_For once_" is apt,
in such cases, to become a phrase of very extensive signification.
"It really worries me to have things go on so as they do on Sundays,"
said Mrs. Roberts to her husband. "I never do feel as if we kept Sunday
as we ought."
"My dear, you have been saying so ever since we were married, and I do
not see what you are going to do about it. For my part I do not see why
we do not do as well as people in general. We do not visit, nor receive
company, nor read improper books. We go to church, and send the children
to Sunday school, and so the greater part of the day is spent in a
religious way. Then out of church we have the children's Sunday school
books, and one or two religious newspapers. I think that is quite
enough."
"But, somehow, when I was a child, my mother----" said Mrs. Roberts,
hesitating.
"O my dear, your mother must not be considered an exact pattern for
these days. People were too strict in your mother's time; they carried
the thing too far, altogether; every body allows it now."
Mrs. Roberts was silenced, but not satisfied. A strict religious
education had left just conscience enough on this subject to make her
uneasy.
These worthy people had a sort of general idea that Sunday ought to be
kept, and they intended to keep it; but they had never taken the trouble
to investigate or inquire as to the most proper way, nor was it so much
an object of interest that their weekly arrangements were planned with
any reference to it. Mr. Roberts would often engage in business at the
close of the week, which he knew would so fatigue him that he would be
weary and listless on Sunday; and Mrs. Roberts would allow her family
cares to accumulate in the same way, so that she was either wearied with
efforts to accomplish it before the Sabbath, or perplexed and worried by
finding every thing at loose ends on that day. They had the idea that
Sunday was to be kept when it was perfectly convenient, and did not
demand any sacrifice of time or money. But if stopping to keep the
Sabbath in a journey would risk passage money or a seat in the stage,
or, in housekeeping, if it would involve any considerable inconvenience
or expense, it was deemed a providential intimation that it was "a work
of necessity and mercy" to attend to secular matters. To their minds the
fourth command read thus: "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy when
it comes convenient, and costs neither time nor money."
As to the effects of this on the children, there was neither enough of
strictness to make them respect the Sabbath, nor of religions interest
to make them love it; of course, the little restraint there was proved
just enough to lead them to dislike and despise it. Children soon
perceive the course of their parents' feelings, and it was evident
enough to the children of this family that their father and mother
generally found themselves hurried into the Sabbath with hearts and
minds full of this world, and their conversation and thoughts were so
constantly turning to worldly things, and so awkwardly drawn back by a
sense of religious obligation, that the Sabbath appeared more obviously
a clog and a fetter than it did under the strictest _regime_ of Puritan
days.
SKETCH SECOND.
The little quiet village of Camden stands under the brow of a rugged
hill in one of the most picturesque parts of New England; and its
regular, honest, and industrious villagers were not a little surprised
and pleased that Mr. James, a rich man, and pleasant-spoken withal, had
concluded to take up his residence among them. He brought with him a
pretty, genteel wife, and a group of rosy, romping, but amiable
children; and there was so much of good nature and kindness about the
manners of every member of the family, that the whole neighborhood were
prepossessed in their favor. Mr. James was a man of somewhat visionary
and theoretical turn of mind, and very much in the habit of following
out his own ideas of right and wrong, without troubling himself
particularly as to the appearance his course might make in the eyes of
others. He was a supporter of the ordinances of religion, and always
ready to give both time and money to promote any benevolent object; and
though he had never made any public profession of religion, nor
connected himself with any particular set of Christians, still he seemed
to possess great reverence for God, and to worship him in spirit and in
truth, and he professed to make the Bible the guide of his life. Mr.
James had been brought up under a system of injudicious religious
restraint. He had determined, in educating his children, to adopt an
exactly opposite course, and to make religion and all its institutions
sources of enjoyment. His aim, doubtless, was an appropriate one; but
his method of carrying it out, to say the least, was one which was not a
safe model for general imitation. In regard to the Sabbath, for example,
he considered that, although the plan of going to church twice a day,
and keeping all the family quiet within doors the rest of the time, was
good, other methods would be much better. Accordingly, after the morning
service, which he and his whole family regularly attended, he would
spend the rest of the day with his children. In bad weather he would
instruct them in natural history, show them pictures, and read them
various accounts of the works of God, combining all with such religious
instruction and influence as a devotional mind might furnish. When the
weather permitted, he would range with them through the fields,
collecting minerals and plants, or sail with them on the lake, meanwhile
directing the thoughts of his young listeners upward to God, by the many
beautiful traces of his presence and agency, which superior knowledge
and observation enabled him to discover and point out. These Sunday
strolls were seasons of most delightful enjoyment to the children.
Though it was with some difficulty that their father could restrain them
from loud and noisy demonstrations of delight, and he saw with some
regret that the mere animal excitement of the stroll seemed to draw the
attention too much from religious considerations, and, in particular, to
make the exercises of the morning seem like a preparatory penance to the
enjoyments of the afternoon, nevertheless, when Mr. James looked back to
his own boyhood, and remembered the frigid restraint, the entire want of
any kind of mental or bodily excitement, which had made the Sabbath so
much a weariness to him, he could not but congratulate himself when he
perceived his children looking forward to Sunday as a day of delight,
and found himself on that day continually surrounded by a circle of
smiling and cheerful faces. His talent of imparting religious
instruction in a simple and interesting form was remarkably happy, and
it is probable that there was among his children an uncommon degree of
real thought and feeling on religious subjects as the result.
The good people of Camden, however, knew not what to think of a course
that appeared to them an entire violation of all the requirements of the
Sabbath. The first impulse of human nature is to condemn at once all who
vary from what has been commonly regarded as the right way; and,
accordingly, Mr. James was unsparingly denounced, by many good people,
as a Sabbath breaker, an infidel, and an opposer to religion.
Such was the character heard of him by Mr. Richards, a young clergyman,
who, shortly after Mr. James fixed his residence in Camden, accepted the
pastoral charge of the village. It happened that Mr. Richards had known
Mr. James in college, and, remembering him as a remarkably serious,
amiable, and conscientious man, he resolved to ascertain from himself
the views which had led him to the course of conduct so offensive to the
good people of the neighborhood.