Did it ever strike you that it is a most absurd and semi-barbaric thing
to set one day apart as holy? If you are a writer and a beautiful thought
comes to you, you never hesitate to write it down because it is Sunday
❦ If you are a painter, and the picture appears before you, vivid and
clear, you make haste to materialize it before the vision fades. If you
are a musician, you sing a song or play it on the piano, that it may
be etched upon your memory—and for the joy of it. ¶ But if you are a
cabinetmaker you may make a design, but you will have to halt before
you make the table, if the day happens to be the “Lord’s Day”; and if
you are a blacksmith, you will not dare to lift a hammer for fear of
conscience or the police. All of which is an admission that we regard
manual labor as a sort of necessary evil, which must be done only at
certain times and places. ¶ The orthodox reason for abstinence from all
manual labor on Sunday is that “God made the heavens and the earth in
six days and rested the seventh day”; therefore, man, created in the
image of his Maker, should hold this day sacred. How it can be possible
for a supreme, omnipotent and all-powerful being, without “body, parts
or passions,” to become wearied through physical exertion, is a question
that is yet unanswered. ¶ The idea of serving God on Sunday and then
forgetting Him all the rest of the week is a fallacy. Sunday with its
immunity from work was devised for slaves who got out of all the work
they could during the week. No man can violate the Sabbath; he can,
however, violate his own nature, and this he is more apt to do through
enforced idleness than through either work or play. Only running water
is pure; stagnant nature of any sort is dangerous, and a breeding-place
for disease. ¶ Change of occupation is necessary to mental and physical
health. As it is, most people get too much of one kind of work. All the
week they are chained to one task, a repugnant task because the dose is
too big. They have to do this particular job or starve. This is slavery,
quite as much as when man was bought and sold as a chattel. ¶ Will there
not come a time when all men and women will work because it is a blessed
gift—a privilege? Then, if all worked, wasteful consuming as a business
would cease ❦ As it is, there are many people who do not work at all, and
these pride themselves upon it and uphold the Sunday laws. If the idler
would work, no one would be over-worked. If this time ever comes, shall
we not cease to regard it as wicked to work at certain times, just as
much as we should count it absurd to pass a law making it illegal for us
to be happy on Wednesday? Isn’t good work an effort to produce a useful,
necessary or beautiful thing? If so, good work is a prayer, prompted by
a loving heart—a prayer to benefit and bless. If prayer is not a desire,
backed up by a right human effort to bring about its efficacy, then
what is it? ¶ Work is a service performed for ourselves and others. If
I love you I will surely work for you—in this way I reveal my love. And
to manifest my love in this manner is a joy and a gratification to me.
Thus, work is for the worker alone, and labor is its own reward. These
things being so, if it is wrong to work on Sunday, then it is wrong to
love on Sunday; every smile is a sin, every caress is a curse, and all
tenderness a crime. ¶ Must there not come a time when we shall cease to
differentiate and quit calling some work secular and some sacred? Isn’t
it as necessary for me to hoe corn and feed my loved ones (and also the
priest) as for the priest to preach and pray? ¶ Would any priest ever
preach and pray if somebody did not hoe? If life is from God, then all
useful effort is divine; and to work is the highest form of religion ❦
If God made us, surely He is pleased to see that His work is a success.
If we are miserable, willing to liberate life with a bare bodkin, we
certainly do not compliment our Maker in thus proclaiming His work a
failure. But if our lives are full of gladness and we are grateful for
feeling that we are one with Deity—helping God do His work—then, and only
then, do we truly serve Him. ¶ Isn’t it strange that men should have made
laws declaring that it is wicked for us to work?
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