that in plucking up the tares, there is danger lest the wheat also be
uprooted, at least trodden down. In America, especially in New England,
every thing is intense, with of course a tendency to extravagance, to
fanaticism. Look at some of the most obvious signs of that intensity. No
conservatism in the world is so bigoted as American conservatism; no
democracy so intense. Nowhere else can you find such thorough-going
defenders of the existing state of things, social, ecclesiastical,
civil; such defenders of drunkenness, ignorance, superstition, slavery,
and war; nowhere such radical enemies to the existing state of things;
such foes of drunkenness, ignorance, superstition, slavery, and war. No
"Revivals of religion" are like the American; none of old were like
these. See how the American soldiers fight; how the American men will
work. Puritanism was intense enough in England; in the New World it was
yet more so. Our fathers were intense Calvinists; more Calvinistic than
Calvin--they became Hopkinsian. They hated the Pope; kings and bishops
were their aversion. They feared God. Did they love him--love him as
much? They had an intense religious activity, but they had another
intensity. It is better that we should say it, rather than men who do
not honor them. That intensity of action, when turned towards material
things, or, as they called them, "carnal things," needed some powerful
check. It was found in their bigotry and superstition. In such an age as
theirs, when the Reformation broke down all the ordinary restraints of
society, and rent asunder the golden ties which bound man to the past;
when the Anglican church ended in fire, and the English monarchy in
blood; when men full of piety thanked God for the fire and the
bloodshed, and felt the wrongs of a thousand years driving them almost
to madness--what was there to keep such men within bounds, and restrain
them from the wildest license and unbridled anarchy? Nothing but
superstition; nothing short of fear of hell. They broke down the
monarchy; they trod the church under their feet. She who had once been
counted as the queen and mother of society, was now to be regarded only
as the Apocalyptical woman in scarlet, the mother of abominations, bride
of the devil, and queen of hell. The Old Testament wrought on the minds
of these men like a charm, to stimulate and to soothe. "One day," said
they, "is made holy by God; in it shall no work be done by man or beast,
or thing inanimate. On that day all must attend church as an act of
religion." Here, then, was a bar extending across the stream of
worldliness, filling one seventh part of its channel, wide and deep, and
wonderfully interrupting its whelming tide. I admire the divine skill
which compounds the gases in the air; which balances centripetal and
centrifugal forces into harmonious proportions,--those fair ellipses in
the unseen air; but still more marvellous is that same skill, diviner
now, which compounds the folly and the wisdom of mankind; balances
centripetal and centrifugal forces here, stilling the noise of kings and
the tumult of the people, making their wrath to serve him, and the
remnant thereof restraining forever.
On Sunday, master and man, the slave stolen from the wilderness, the
servant--a Christian man bought from some Christian conqueror,--must
cease from their work. Did the covetous, the cruel, the strong, oppress
the weak for six days, the Sabbath said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but
no further." The servant was free from his master, and the weary was at
rest. The plough stood still in the furrow; the sheaf lay neglected in
the field; the horse and the ox enjoyed their master's Sabbath of rest,
all heedless of the divine decrees, of election or reprobation, yet not
the less watched over by that dear Providence which numbered the hairs
of the head, and overruled the falling of a sparrow for the sparrow's
good. All must attend church, master and man, rich and poor, oppressor
and oppressed. Good things and great things got read out of the Bible,
it was the book of the people, the New Testament, written much of it in
the interest of all mankind, with special emphasis laid on the rights of
the weak and the duties of the strong. Good things got said in sermon
and in prayer. The speakers must think, the hearers think, as well as
tremble. Begin to think in a circle narrow as a lady's ring, or the
Assembly's Catechism, you will think out; for thought, like all
movement, tends to the right line. Calvinism has always bred thinkers,
and when barbarism was the first danger was perhaps the only thing which
could do it. Calvinism, too, has always shown itself in favor of popular
liberty to a certain degree, and though it stops far short of the mark,
yet goes far beyond the Catholic or Episcopalian.
Sunday, thus enforced by superstition, has yet been the education-day of
New England; the national school-time for the culture of man's highest
powers; therein have the clergy been our educators, and done a vast
service which mankind will not soon forget. It was good seed they sowed
on this soil of the New World; the harvest is proof of that. They
builded wiser than they knew. Their unconscious hands constructed the
thought of God. Even their superstition and bigotry did much to preserve
church and clergy to us; much also to educate and develop the highest
powers of man. But for that superstition we might have seen the same
anarchy, the same unbridled license in the seventeenth century, which we
saw in the eighteenth, as a consequence of a similar revolution, a
similar reaction; only it would have been carried out with the intensity
of that most masculine and earnest race of men. How much further English
atrocities would have gone than the French did go; how long it would
have taken mankind, by their proper motion, to reascend from a fall so
adverse and so low, I cannot tell. I see what saved them from the
plunge.
True, the Sunday was not what it should be, more than the week;
preaching was not what it should be, more than practice. But without
that Sunday, and without that preaching, New England would have been a
quite different land; America another nation altogether; the world by no
means so far advanced as now. New England with her descendants has
always been the superior portion of America. I flatter no man's
prejudice, but speak a plain truth. She is superior in intelligence, in
morality--that is too plain for proof. The prime cause of that
superiority must be sought in the character of the fathers of New
England; but a secondary and most powerful cause is to be found also in
those two institutions--Sunday and preaching. Why is it that all great
movements, from the American Revolution down to anti-slavery, have begun
here? Why is it that education societies, missionary societies, Bible
societies, and all the movements for the advance of mankind, begin here?
Why, it is no more an accident than the rising of the tide. Find much of
the cause in the superior character, and therefore in the superior aims
of the forefathers, much also will be found due to this--Once in the
week they paused from all work; they thought of their God, who had
delivered them from the iron house and yoke of bondage; they listened to
the words of able men, exhorting them to justice, piety, and a heavenly
walk with God; they trembled at fear of hell; they rejoiced at hope of
heaven. The church--no, the "meeting-house"--was the common property of
all; the minister the common friend. The slave looked up to him; the
chief magistrate dared not look down on him. For more than a hundred
years the ablest men of New England went into the pulpit. No talent was
thought too great, no learning too rich and profound, no genius too holy
and divine, for the work of teaching men their highest duty, and
helping to their highest bliss. He was the minister to all. There was
not then a church for the rich, and a chapel for the poor; the rich and
the poor met together, for one God was the maker of them all--their
Father too; they had one Gospel, one Redeemer,--their Brother not less
than their God; they journeyed toward the same heaven, which had but one
entrance for great and little; they prayed all the same prayer. The
effect of this socialism of religion is seldom noticed; so we walk on
moist earth, not thinking that we tread on the thunder-cloud and the
lightning. But it is not in human nature for men of intense religious
activity to meet in the same church, sing the same psalm, pray the same
prayer, partake the same elements of communion, and not be touched with
compassion--each for all, and all for each. The same causes which built
up religion in New England, built up democracy along with it. Is it not
easy to see the cause which made the rich men of New England the most
benevolent of rich men; gave them their character for generosity and
public spirit--yes, for eminent humanity? The acorn is not more
obviously the parent of the oak than those two institutions of New
England the parent of such masculine virtues as distinguish her sons.
Regarded merely as a day of rest from labor, the Sunday has been of
great value to us. Considering the intense character of the nation, our
tendency to material things, and our restless love of work, it seems as
if a Moses of the nineteenth century, legislating for us, would enact
two rest-days in the week, rather than one. It is a good thing that a
man once a week pauses from his work, arrays himself in clean garments,
and is at rest.
Regarded in its other aspects, Sunday has aided the intellectual culture
of the people to a degree not often appreciated. To many a man, yes, to
most men, it is their only reading day, and they will read "secular"
books, spite of the clerical admonition. Many a poor boy in New England,
who has toiled all the week, and would gladly have studied all the
night, did not obstinate Nature forbid, has studied stealthily all
Sunday, not Jeremiah and the prophets, but Homer and the mathematics,
and risen at length to eminence amongst cultivated men;--he has to thank
the Sunday for the beginnings of that manly growth.
The moral and religious effect of the day is yet more important. One
seventh part of the time was to be devoted to moral and religious
culture. The clergy watched diligently over Sunday, as their own day.
Work was then the accident; religion was the business. Every thing with
us becomes earnest; Sunday as earnest as the week. It must not be spent
idly. Perhaps no body of clergymen, for two hundred years, on the whole,
were ever so wakeful and active as the American. They also are earnest
and full of intensity, especially in the more serious sects. I think I
am not very superstitious; not often inclined to lean on my father's
staff rather than walk on my own feet; not over-much accustomed to take
things on trust because they have been trusted to all along: but I must
confess that I see a vast amount of good achieved by the aid of these
two institutions, the Sunday and preaching, which could not have been
done without them. I know I have my prejudices; I love the Sunday; a
professional bias may warp me aside, for I am a preacher--the pulpit is
my joy and my throne. Judge you how far my profession and my prejudice
have led me astray in estimating the value of the Sunday, its preaching,
and the good they have achieved for us in New England. I know what
superstition, what bigotry, has been connected with both; I know it has
kept grim and terrible guard about these institutions. I look upon that
superstition and bigotry, as on the old New England guns which were
fought with in the Indian wars, the French wars, and the
Revolution;--things that did service when men knew not how to defend
what they valued most with better tools and more Christian. I look on
both with the same melancholy veneration, but honor them the more that
now they are old, battered, unfit for use and covered with rust; I would
respectfully hang them up, superstition and the musket, side by side;
honorable, but harmless, with their muzzles down, and pray God it might
never be my lot to handle such ungodly weapons, though in a cause never
so humane and holy.
* * * * *
Let us look a little at the ill effects of these notions of the Sunday
and the observance which they led to. It is thought an act of religion
to attend church and give a mere bodily presence there. Hence the
minister often relies on this circumstance to bring his audience
together; preaches sermons on the duty of going to church, while
ingenuous boys blush for his weakness, and ask, "Were it not better to
rely on your goodness, your piety, your wisdom; on your superior ability
to teach men, even on your eloquence, rather than tell them it is an act
of religion to come and hear you, when both they and you are painfully
conscious that they are thereby made no wiser, no better, nor more
Christian?" This notion is a dangerous one for a clergyman. It flatters
his pride and encourages his sloth. It blinds him to his own defects,
and leads him to attribute his empty benches to the perverseness of
human nature and the carnal heart, which a few snow-flakes can frighten
from his church, while a storm will not keep them from a lecture on
science or literature. No doubt it is a man's duty to seek all
opportunities of becoming wiser and better. So far as church-going helps
that work, so far it is a duty. But to count it in itself, irrespective
of its consequences, an act of religion, is to commit a dangerous
error, which has proved fatal to many a man's growth in goodness and
piety. Let us look to the end, not merely at the means.
This notion has also a bad effect on the hearers. It is thought an act
of religion to attend church, whether you are edified or not by sermon,
by psalm, or prayer; an act of religion, though you could more
profitably spend the time in your own closet at home, or with your own
thoughts in the fields. Of course, then, he who attends once a day is
thought a Christian to a certain degree; if twice, more so; if thrice,
why that denotes an additional amount of growth in grace. In this way
the day is often spent in a continual round of meetings. Sermon follows
sermon; prayer treads upon the footsteps of prayer; psalm effaces psalm,
till morning, afternoon, evening, all are gone. The Sunday is ended and
over; the man is tired--but has he been profited and made better
thereby? The sermons and the prayers have cancelled one another, been
heard and forgot. They were too numerous to remember or produce their
effect. So on a summer's lake, as the winds loiter and then pass by,
ripple follows ripple, and wave succeeds to wave, yet the next day the
wind has ceased and the unstable water bears no trace left there by all
the blowings of the former day, but bares its incontinent bosom to the
frailest and most fleeting clouds.
Another ill effect follows from regarding attendance at church as an act
of religion in itself:--It is forgotten that a man cannot teach what he
does not know. If you have more manhood than I, more religion; if you
are the more humane and the more divine, it is idle for me to try and
teach you divinity and humanity; idle in you to make believe you are
taught. The less must learn of the greater, not the greater directly of
the less. It is too often forgotten by the preacher that his hearers may
be capable of teaching him; that he cannot fill them out of an
emptiness, but a fulness. Hence, it comes to pass that no one, how
advanced soever, is allowed to graduate, so to say, from the church.
Perhaps it may do a great man, mature in Christianity, good to sit down
with his fellows and hear a little man talk who knows nothing of
religion; it may increase his sympathy with mankind. It can hardly be an
act of religion to such a man so advanced in his goodness and piety;
perhaps not the best use he could make of the hour.
The current opinion hinders social tendencies. A man must not meet with
his friend and neighbor, or if he does, he must talk with bated breath,
with ghostly countenance, and of a ghostly theme. From this abuse of the
Sunday comes much of the cold and unsocial character which strangers
charge us with. As things now go, there are many who have no opportunity
for social intercourse except the hours of the Sunday. Then it is
forbidden them. So they suffer and lose much of the charm of life;
become ungenial, unsocial, stiff, and hard, and cold.
This notion hinders men, also, from intellectual culture. They must read
no book but one professedly religious. Such works are commonly poor and
dull; written mainly by men of little ability, of little breadth of
view; not written in the interest of mankind, but only of a sect--the
Calvinists or Unitarians. A good man groans when he looks over the
immense piles of sectarian books written with good motives, and read
with the most devout of intentions, but which produce their best effect
when they lead only to sleep. Yet it is commonly taught that it is
religion to spend a part of Sunday in reading such works, in listening,
or in trying to listen, or in affecting to try and listen, to the most
watery sermons, while it is wicked to read some "secular" book,
philosophy, history, poem, or tale, which expands the mind and warms the
heart. Our poor but wisdom-seeking boy must read his Homer only by
stealth. There are many men who have no time for intellectual pursuits,
none for reading, except on Sunday. It is cruel to tell them they shall
read none but sectarian books or listen only to sectarian words.
But there are other evils yet. These notions and the corresponding
practice tend to make religion external, consisting in obedience to
form, in compliance with custom; while religion is and can be only
piety and goodness, love to God and love to man. To keep the Sunday
idle, to attend church, is not being religious. It is easy to do that;
easy to stop there, and then to look at real, manly saints, who live in
the odor of sanctity, whose sentiment is a prayer, their deeds religion,
and their whole life a perpetual communion with God, and say, "Infidel!
Unbeliever."
Then, as one day is devoted to religion, it is thought that is enough;
that religion has no more business in the world than the world in
religion. So division is made of the territory of mortal life, in which
partition worldliness has six days, while poor religion has only the
Sunday, and content with her own limits, feels no salient wish to absorb
or annex the week! It is painful to see this abuse of an institution so
noble. No commonness of its occurrence renders it less painful. It is
painful to be told that men of the most scrupulous sects on Sunday, are
in the week the least scrupulous of men.
But even in religious matters it is thought all things which pertain
directly to the religious welfare of men are not proper to be discussed
on Sunday. One must not preach against intemperance, against slavery,
against war, on Sunday. It is not "evangelical;" not "preaching the
gospel." Yet it is thought proper to preach on total depravity, on
eternal damnation; to show that God will damn forever the majority of
mankind; that the apostle Peter was a Unitarian. The Sunday is not the
time, the pulpit not the place, preaching not the instrument, wherewith
to oppose the monstrous sins of our day, and secure education,
temperance, peace, freedom, for mankind. It is not evangelical, not
Christian, to do that of a Sunday! Yet wonderful to say, it is not
thought very wicked to hold a political caucus on Sunday for the merest
party purposes; not wicked at all to work all day at the navy-yards in
fitting out vessels, if they are only vessels of war; not at all wicked
to toil all Sunday, if it is only in aiming to kill men in regular
battle. Theological newspapers can expend their cheap censure on a
member of Congress for writing a letter on Sunday, yet have no word of
fault to find with the order which sets hundreds to work on Sunday in
preparing armaments of war; not a word against the war which sets men to
butcher their Christian brothers on the day which Christians celebrate
as the anniversary of Christ's triumph over death! These things show
that we have not yet arrived at the most profitable and Christian mode
of using the Sunday; and when I consider these abuses I wonder not that
the cry of "Infidel" is met by the unchristian taunt, yet more deserved
and biting, "Thou hypocrite!" I wonder not that some men say, "Let us
away with the Sunday altogether; and if we have no place for rest, we
will have none for hypocrisy."
The efforts honestly made by good and honest men, to Judaize the day
still more; to revive the sterner features of ancient worship; to put a
yoke on us which neither we nor our fathers could bear; to transform the
Christian Sunday into the Jewish Sabbath, must lead to a reaction. Abuse
on one side will be met by abuse on the other; despotic asceticism by
license; Judaism by heathenism. Superstition is the mother of denial.
Men will scorn the Sunday; abuse its timely rest. Its hours that may be
devoted to man's highest interests will be prostituted to low aims, and
worldliness make an unbroken sweep from one end of the month to the
other; and then it will take years of toil before mankind can get back
and secure the blessings now placed within an easy reach. I put it to
you, men whose heads time has crowned with white, or sprinkled with a
sober gray, if you would deem it salutary to enforce on your
grandchildren the Sabbath austerities which your parents imposed on you?
In your youth was the Sunday a welcome day; a genial day; or only
wearisome and sour? Was religion, dressed in her Sabbath dress, a
welcome guest; was she lovely and to be desired? Your faces answer. Let
us profit by your experience.
* * * * *
How can we make the Sunday yet more valuable? If we abandon the
superstitious notions respecting its origin and original design, the
evils that have hitherto hindered its use will soon perish of
themselves. They all grow out of that root. If men are not driven into
a reaction by pretensions for the Sunday which facts will not warrant;
if unreasonable austerities are not forced upon them in the name of the
law, and the name of God; there is no danger in our day that men will
abandon an institution which already has done so much service to
mankind. Let Sunday and preaching stand on their own merits, and they
will encounter no more opposition than the common school and the
work-days of the week. Then men will be ready enough to appropriate the
Sunday to the highest objects they know and can appreciate. Tell men the
Sunday is made for man, and they will use it for its highest use. Tell
them man is made for it, and they will war on it as a tyrant. I should
be sorry to see the Sunday devoted to common work; sorry to hear the
clatter of a mill, or the rattle of the wheels of business on that day.
I look with pain on men engaged needlessly in work on that day; not with
the pain of wounded superstition, but a deeper regret. I would not water
my garden with perfumes when common water was at hand. We shall always
have work enough in America; hand-work, and head-work, for common
purposes. There is danger that we shall not have enough of rest, of
intellectual cultivation, of refinement, of social intercourse; that our
time shall be too much devoted to the lower interests of life, to the
means of living and not the end.