The good effect on a nation's health and happiness produced by the
return of the sabbath, with its cessation from work, cannot be
overestimated. It is needed to repair and restore the body after six
days of work. It is proved that a man can do more in six days than in
seven. Lord Beaconsfield. said: "Of all divine institutions, the most
divine is that which secures a day of rest for man. I hold it to be
the most valuable blessing conceded to man. It is the corner-stone of
all civilization, and its removal might affect even the health of the
people." Mr. Gladstone recently told a friend that the secret of his
long life is that amid all the pressure of public cares he never
forgot the sabbath, with its rest for the body and the soul. The
constitution of the United States protects the president in his weekly
day of rest. He has ten days, "Sundays excepted," in which to consider
a bill that has been sent to him for signature. Every workingman in
the republic ought to be as thoroughly protected as the president. If
workingmen got up a strike against unnecessary work on the sabbath,
they would have the sympathy of a good many.
"Our bodies are seven-day clocks," says Talmage, "and they need to be
wound up, and if they are not wound up they run down into the grave.
No man can continuously break the sabbath and keep his physical and
mental health. Ask aged men, and they will tell you they never knew
men who continuously broke the sabbath, who did not fail in mind,
body, or moral principles."
All that has been said about rest for man is true for working animals.
God didn't forget them in this commandment, and man should not forget
them either.