and difficulties of the experiments in living that we have tried; but
the difficulties in others that we are intending to try have not yet
come to light. The Puritan Sabbath had great and very obvious evils. Its
wearisome restraints and over-strictness cast a gloom on religion, and
arrayed against the day itself the active prejudices that now are
undermining it and threatening its extinction. But it had great merits
and virtues, and produced effects on society that we cannot well afford
to dispense with. The clearing of a whole day from all possibilities of
labor and amusement necessarily produced a grave and thoughtful people;
and a democratic republic can be carried on by no other. In lands which
have Sabbaths of mere amusement, mere gala-days, republics rise and fall
as fast as children’s card-houses; and the reason is, they are built by
those whose political and religious education has been childish. The
common people of Europe have been sedulously nursed on amusements by the
reigning powers, to keep them from meddling with serious matters; their
religion has been sensuous and sentimental, and their Sabbaths
thoughtless holidays. The common people of New England are educated to
think, to reason, to examine all questions of politics and religion for
themselves; and one deeply thoughtful day every week baptizes and
strengthens their reflective and reasoning faculties. The Sunday schools
of Paris are whirligigs where Young France rides round and round on
little hobby-horses till his brain spins even faster than Nature made it
to spin; and when he grows up, his political experiments are as
whirligig as his Sunday education. If I were to choose between the
Sabbath of France and the old Puritan Sabbath, I should hold up both
hands for the latter, with all its objectionable features.”
“Well,” said my wife, “cannot we contrive to retain all that is really
valuable of the Sabbath, and to ameliorate and smooth away what is
forbidding?”
“That is the problem of our day,” said I. “We do not want the Sabbath of
Continental Europe: it does not suit democratic institutions; it cannot
be made even a quiet or a safe day, except by means of that ever-present
armed police that exists there. If the Sabbath of America is simply to
be a universal loafing, picnicking, dining-out day, as it is now with
all our foreign population, we shall need what they have in Europe, the
gendarmes at every turn, to protect the fruit on our trees and the
melons in our fields. People who live a little out from great cities see
enough, and more than enough, of this sort of Sabbath-keeping, with our
loose American police.
“The fact is, our system of government was organized to go by moral
influences as much as mills by water, and Sunday was the great day for
concentrating these influences and bringing them to bear; and we might
just as well break down all the dams and let out all the water of the
Lowell mills, and expect still to work the looms, as to expect to work
our laws and constitution with European notions of religion.
“It is true the Puritan Sabbath had its disagreeable points. So have the
laws of Nature. They are of a most uncomfortable sternness and rigidity;
yet for all that, we would hardly join in a petition to have them
repealed, or made wavering and uncertain for human convenience. We can
bend to them in a thousand ways, and live very comfortably under them.”
“But,” said Bob, “Sabbath-keeping is the iron rod of bigots; they don’t
allow a man any liberty of his own. One says it’s wicked to write a
letter Sunday; another holds that you must read no book but the Bible;
and a third is scandalized, if you take a walk, ever so quietly, in the
fields. There are all sorts of quips and turns. We may fasten things
with pins of a Sunday, but it’s wicked to fasten with needle and thread,
and so on, and so on; and each one, planting himself on his own
individual mode of keeping Sunday, points his guns and frowns severely
over the battlements on his neighbors whose opinions and practice are
different from his.”
“Yet,” said I, “Sabbath-days are expressly mentioned by Saint Paul as
among those things concerning which no man should judge another. It
seems to me that the error as regards the Puritan Sabbath was in
representing it, not as a gift from God to man, but as a tribute of man
to God. Hence all these hagglings and nice questions and exactions to
the uttermost farthing. The holy time must be weighed and measured. It
must begin at twelve o’clock of one night, and end at twelve o’clock of
another; and from beginning to end, the mind must be kept in a state of
tension by the effort not to think any of its usual thoughts or do any
of its usual works. The fact is, that the metaphysical, defining,
hair-splitting mind of New England, turning its whole powers on this one
bit of ritual, this one only day of divine service, which was left of
all the feasts and fasts of the old churches, made of it a thing
straighter and stricter than ever the old Jews dreamed of.
“The old Jewish Sabbath entered only into the physical region, merely
enjoining cessation from physical toil. ‘Thou shalt not _labor_ nor do
any _work_,’ covered the whole ground. In other respects than this it
was a joyful festival, resembling, in the mode of keeping it, the
Christmas of the modern Church. It was a day of social hilarity,—the
Jewish law strictly forbidding mourning and gloom during festivals. The
people were commanded on feast-days to rejoice before the Lord their God
with all their might. We fancy there were no houses where children were
afraid to laugh, where the voice of social cheerfulness quavered away in
terror lest it should awake a wrathful God. The Jewish Sabbath was
instituted, in the absence of printing, of books, and of all the
advantages of literature, to be the great means of preserving sacred
history,—a day cleared from all possibility of other employment than
social and family communion, when the heads of families and the elders
of tribes might instruct the young in those religious traditions which
have thus come down to us.
“The Christian Sabbath is meant to supply the same moral need in that
improved and higher state of society which Christianity introduced. Thus
it was changed from the day representing the creation of the world to
the resurrection-day of Him who came to make all things new. The Jewish
Sabbath was buried with Christ in the sepulchre, and arose with Him, not
a Jewish, but a Christian festival, still holding in itself that
provision for man’s needs which the old institution possessed, but with
a wider and more generous freedom of application. It was given to the
Christian world as a day of rest, of refreshment, of hope and joy,—and
of worship. The manner of making it such a day was left open and free to
the needs and convenience of the varying circumstances and characters of
those for whose benefit it was instituted.”
“Well,” said Bob, “don’t you think there is a deal of nonsense about
Sabbath-keeping?”
“There is a deal of nonsense about everything human beings have to deal
with,” said I.
“And,” said Marianne, “how to find out what is nonsense?”
“By clear conceptions,” said I, “of what the day is for. I should define
the Sabbath as a divine and fatherly gift to man,—a day expressly set
apart for the cultivation of his moral nature. Its object is not merely
physical rest and recreation, but moral improvement. The former are
proper to the day only so far as they are subservient to the latter. The
whole human race have the conscious need of being made better, purer,
and more spiritual; the whole human race have one common danger of
sinking to a mere animal life under the pressure of labor or in the
dissipations of pleasure; and of the whole human race the proverb holds
good, that what may be done any time is done at no time. Hence the
Heavenly Father appoints one day as a special season for the culture of
man’s highest faculties. Accordingly, whatever ways and practices
interfere with the purpose of the Sabbath as a day of worship and moral
culture should be avoided; and all family arrangements for the day
should be made with reference thereto.”
“Cold dinners on Sunday, for example,” said Bob. “Marianne holds these
as prime articles of faith.”
“Yes,—they doubtless are most worthy and merciful, in giving to the poor
cook one day she may call her own, and rest from the heat of range and
cooking-stove. For the same reason, I would suspend as far as possible
all travelling, and all public labor, on Sunday. The hundreds of hands
that these things require to carry them on are the hands of human
beings, whose right to this merciful pause of rest is as clear as their
humanity. Let them have their day to look upward.”
“But the little ones,” said my oldest matron daughter, who had not as
yet spoken,—“they are the problem. Oh, this weary labor of making
children keep Sunday! If I try it, I have no rest at all myself. If I
must talk to them or read to them to keep them from play, my Sabbath
becomes my hardest working-day.”
“And, pray, what commandment of the Bible ever said children should not
play on Sunday?” said I. “We are forbidden to work, and we see the
reason why; but lambs frisk and robins sing on Sunday; and little
children, who are as yet more than half animals, must not be made to
keep the day in the manner proper to our more developed faculties. As
much cheerful, attractive religious instruction as they can bear without
weariness may be given, and then they may simply be restrained from
disturbing others. Say to the little one,—‘This day we have noble and
beautiful things to think of that interest us deeply; you are a child;
you cannot read and think and enjoy such things as much as we can; you
may play softly and quietly, and remember not to make a disturbance.’ I
would take a child to public worship at least once of a Sunday; it forms
a good habit in him. If the sermon be long and unintelligible, there are
the little Sabbath-school books in every child’s hands; and while the
grown people are getting what they understand, who shall forbid a
child’s getting what is suited to him in a way that interests him and
disturbs nobody? The Sabbath school is the child’s church; and happily
it is yearly becoming a more and more attractive institution. I approve
the custom of those who beautify the Sabbath school-room with plants,
flowers, and pictures, thus making it an attractive place to the
childish eye. The more this custom prevails, the more charming in after
years will be the memories of Sunday.
“It is most especially to be desired that the whole air and aspect of
the day should be one of cheerfulness. Even the new dresses, new
bonnets, and new shoes, in which children delight of a Sunday, should
not be despised. They have their value in marking the day as a festival;
and it is better for the child to long for Sunday for the sake of his
little new shoes than that he should hate and dread it as a period of
wearisome restraint. All the latitude should be given to children that
can be, consistently with fixing in their minds the idea of a sacred
season. I would rather that the atmosphere of the day should resemble
that of a weekly Thanksgiving than that it should make its mark on the
tender mind only by the memory of deprivations and restrictions.”
“Well,” said Bob, “here’s Marianne always breaking her heart about my
reading on Sunday. Now I hold that what is bad on Sunday is bad on
Monday,—and what is good on Monday is good on Sunday.”
“We cannot abridge other people’s liberty,” said I. “The generous,
confiding spirit of Christianity has imposed not a single restriction
upon us in reference to Sunday. The day is put at our disposal as a good
Father hands a piece of money to his child:—‘There it is; take it and
spend it well.’ The child knows from his father’s character what he
means by spending it well; but he is left free to use his own judgment
as to the mode.
“If a man conscientiously feels that reading of this or that description
is the best for him as regards his moral training and improvement, let
him pursue it, and let no man judge him. It is difficult, with the
varying temperaments of men, to decide what are or are not religious
books. One man is more religiously impressed by the reading of history
or astronomy than he would be by reading a sermon. There may be
overwrought and wearied states of the brain and nerves which require and
make proper the diversions of light literature; and if so, let it be
used. The mind must have its recreations as well as the body.”
“But for children and young people,” said my daughter,—“would you let
them read novels on Sunday?”
“That is exactly like asking, Would you let them talk with people on
Sunday? Now people are different; it depends, therefore, on who they
are. Some are trifling and flighty, some are positively bad-principled,
some are altogether good in their influence. So of the class of books
called novels. Some are merely frivolous, some are absolutely noxious
and dangerous, others again are written with a strong moral and
religious purpose, and, being vivid and interesting, produce far more
religious effect on the mind than dull treatises and sermons. The
parables of Christ sufficiently establish the point that there is no
inherent objection to the use of fiction in teaching religious truth.
Good religious fiction, thoughtfully read, may be quite as profitable as
any other reading.”
“But don’t you think,” said Marianne, “that there is danger in too much
fiction?”
“Yes,” said I. “But the chief danger of all that class of reading is its
_easiness_, and the indolent, careless mental habits it induces. A great
deal of the reading of young people on all days is really reading to no
purpose, its object being merely present amusement. It is a listless
yielding of the mind to be washed over by a stream which leaves no
fertilizing properties, and carries away by constant wear the good soil
of thought I should try to establish a barrier against this kind of
reading, not only on Sunday, but on Monday, on Tuesday, and on all days.
Instead, therefore, of objecting to any particular class of books for
Sunday reading, I should say in general, that reading merely for
pastime, without any moral aim, is the thing to be guarded against. That
which inspires no thought, no purpose, which steals away all our
strength and energy, and makes the Sabbath a day of dreams, is the
reading I would object to.
“So of music. I do not see the propriety of confining one’s self to
technical sacred music. Any grave, solemn, thoughtful, or pathetic music
has a proper relation to our higher spiritual nature, whether it be
printed in a church service-book or on secular sheets. On me, for
example, Beethoven’s Sonatas have a far more deeply religious influence
than much that has religious names and words. Music is to be judged of
by its effects.”
“Well,” said Bob, “if Sunday is given for our own individual
improvement, I for one should not go to church. I think I get a great
deal more good in staying at home and reading.”
“There are two considerations to be taken into account in reference to
this matter of church-going,” I replied. “One relates to our duty as
members of society in keeping up the influence of the Sabbath, and
causing it to be respected in the community; the other, to the proper
disposition of our time for our own moral improvement. As members of the
community, we should go to church, and do all in our power to support
the outward ordinances of religion. If a conscientious man makes up his
mind that Sunday is a day for outward acts of worship and reverence, he
should do his own part as an individual towards sustaining these
observances. Even though he may have such mental and moral resources
that as an individual he could gain much more in solitude than in a
congregation, still he owes to the congregation the influence of his
presence and sympathy. But I have never yet seen the man, however finely
gifted morally and intellectually, whom I thought in the long run a
gainer in either of these respects by the neglect of public worship. I
have seen many who in their pride kept aloof from the sympathies and
communion of their brethren, who lost strength morally, and deteriorated
in ways that made themselves painfully felt. Sunday is apt in such cases
to degenerate into a day of mere mental idleness and reverie, or to
become a sort of waste-paper box for scraps, odds and ends of secular
affairs.
“As to those very good people—and many such there are—who go straight on
with the work of life on Sunday, on the plea that “to labor is to pray,”
I simply think they are mistaken. In the first place, to labor is _not_
the same thing as to pray. It may sometimes be as good a thing to do,
and in some cases even a better thing; but it is not the same thing. A
man might as well never write a letter to his wife on the plea that
making money for her is writing to her. It may possibly be quite as
great a proof of love to work for a wife as to write to her, but few
wives would not say that both were not better than either alone.
Furthermore, there is no doubt that the intervention of one day of
spiritual rest and aspiration so refreshes a man’s whole nature, and
oils the many wheels of existence, that he who allows himself a weekly
Sabbath does more work in the course of his life for the omission of
work on that day.
“A young student in a French college, where the examinations are rigidly
severe, found by experience that he succeeded best in his examination by
allowing one day of entire rest just before it. His brain and nervous
system refreshed in this way carried him through the work better than if
taxed to the last moment. There are men transacting a large and
complicated business who can testify to the same influence from the
repose of the Sabbath.
“I believe those Christian people who from conscience and principle turn
their thoughts most entirely out of the current of worldly cares on
Sunday fulfil unconsciously a great law of health; and that, whether
their moral nature be thereby advanced or not, their brain will work
more healthfully and actively for it even in physical and worldly
matters. It is because the Sabbath thus harmonizes the physical and
moral laws of our being, that the injunction concerning it is placed
among the ten great commandments, each of which represents some one of
the immutable needs of humanity.”
“There is yet another point of family religion that ought to be thought
of,” said my wife: “I mean the customs of mourning. If there is anything
that ought to distinguish Christian families from Pagans, it should be
their way of looking at and meeting those inevitable events that must
from time to time break the family chain. It seems to be the peculiarity
of Christianity to shed hope on such events. And yet it seems to me as
if it were the very intention of many of the customs of society to add
tenfold to their gloom and horror,—such swathings of black crape, such
funereal mufflings of every pleasant object, such darkening of rooms,
and such seclusion from society and giving up to bitter thoughts and
lamentation. How can little children that look on such things believe
that there is a particle of truth in all they hear about the joyous and
comforting doctrines which the Bible holds forth for such times?”
“That subject is a difficult one,” I rejoined. “Nature seems to indicate
a propriety in some outward expressions of grief when we lose our
friends. All nations agree in these demonstrations. In a certain degree
they are soothing to sorrow; they are the language of external life made
to correspond to the internal. Wearing mourning has its advantages. It
is a protection to the feelings of the wearer, for whom it procures
sympathetic and tender consideration; it saves grief from many a hard
jostle in the ways of life; it prevents the necessity of many a trying
explanation, and is the ready apology for many an omission of those
tasks to which sorrow is unequal. For all these reasons I never could
join the crusade which some seem disposed to wage against it. Mourning,
however, ought not to be continued for years. Its uses are more for the
first few months of sorrow, when it serves the mourner as a safeguard
from intrusion, insuring quiet and leisure, in which to reunite the
broken threads of life, and to gather strength for a return to its
duties. But to wear mourning garments and forego society for two or
three years after the loss of any friend, however dear, I cannot but
regard as a morbid, unhealthy nursing of sorrow, unworthy of a
Christian.”
“And yet,” said my wife, “to such an unhealthy degree does this custom
prevail, that I have actually known young girls who have never worn any
other dress than mourning, and consequently never been into society,
during the entire period of their girlhood. First, the death of a father
necessitated three years of funereal garments and abandonment of social
relations; then the death of a brother added two years more; and before
that mourning was well ended, another of a wide circle of relatives
being taken, the habitual seclusion was still protracted. What must a
child think of the Christian doctrine of life and death, who has never
seen life except through black crape? We profess to believe in a better
life to which the departed good are called,—to believe in the shortness
of our separation, the certainty of reunion, and that all these events
are arranged in all their relations by an infinite tenderness which
cannot err. Surely, Christian funerals too often seem to say that
affliction “cometh of the dust,” and not from above.
“But,” said Bob, “after all, death is a horror; you can make nothing
less of it. You can’t smooth it over, nor dress it with flowers; it is
what Nature shudders at.”
“It is precisely for this reason,” said I, “that Christians should avoid
those customs which aggravate and intensify this natural dread. Why
overpower the senses with doleful and funereal images in the hour of
weakness and bereavement, when the soul needs all her force to rise
above the gloom of earth, and to realize the mysteries of faith? Why
shut the friendly sunshine from the mourner’s room? Why muffle in a
white shroud every picture that speaks a cheerful household word to the
eye? Why make a house look stiff and ghastly and cold as a corpse? In
some of our cities, on the occurrence of a death in the family, all the
shutters on the street are closed and tied with black crape, and so
remain for months. What an oppressive gloom must this bring on a house!
how like the very shadow of death! It is enlisting the nerves and the
senses against our religion, and making more difficult the great duty of
returning to life and its interests. I would have flowers and sunshine
in the deserted rooms, and make them symbolical of the cheerful mansions
above, to which our beloved ones are gone. Home ought to be so
religiously cheerful, so penetrated by the life of love and hope and
Christian faith, that the other world may be made real by it. Our home
life should be a type of the higher life. Our home should be so
sanctified, its joys and its sorrows so baptized and hallowed, that it
shall not be sacrilegious to think of heaven as a higher form of the
same thing,—a Father’s house in the better country, whose mansions are
many, whose love is perfect, whose joy is eternal.”
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