A Sunday well spent
Brings a week of content, And health for the toils of to-morrow.
But a Sunday profaned,
Whate'er may be gained. Is a certain precursor of sorrow.^
1. It is necessary for our Physical Health. The laws and couditions of man's bodily life and health are such as to make intervals of repose absolutely essential to the proper and continued performance of the labours that most men have to endure. In asserting this we do but affirm man to be a part of Nature, and human life to be no exception to earthly life in general, for rest is one of Nature's primal and universal laws. Without repose neither plant-life nor animal-life can reach the best possible forms. The soil must sometimes lie fallow, or its energies and treasures will ultimately become exhausted. No animal can long survive without rest and sleep. Men who systematically set at naught this physiological demand hasten on prematurely the infirmities and decay of old age.
The fundamental idea of the Sabbath is that of physical rest. "Eemember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." Then, as the first comment upon this — the only comment, indeed — abstinence from labour is enjoined, and enlarged upon to a degree somewhat unusual in a condensed code like the Ten Commandments. Take care of the body, it seems to say, as the foundation on which the spiritual and the intellectual are to rise. If we are ever tempted to be surprised at the purely physical aspect of this commandment, let us not forget the stress St. Paul lays on bodily culture. " Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own ; for ye are bought with a price ; therefore glorify God in your body." There the
^ 0. J. Kidgewaj.
ST. MARK 107
exhortation stops. The words "and in your spirit which are his," were added by some late hand. And the very fact that we are now and then startled by the emphasis that is laid by the Bible upon bodily culture is in itself a proof that we are on a wrong line of thought — the line of the mediaeval theology which viewed the body, not as God's agent, but as God's enemy ; not as a servant to be trained and developed to do His will, and to be the minister of mind and soul, but as an encumbrance to be ignored in mental and spiritual culture, and as a tempter and seducer, to be kept down by fasting and maceration. Too readily we fall into the habit of thinking that while we are cinder obligation to glorify God with our spirit, we may do with our body pretty much as we please. And as a correction of that error it will do us good to remember that God has wrought the obligation to our bodies into the very heart of the moral law as well as into the gospel.
^ Lord Beaconsfield once said, " Of all Divine institutions, the most Divine is that which secures a day of rest for man. It is the corner-stone of civilisation."
H There are about twentj^five millions of persons now in England and Wales. Let us drop the word millions and say, for simplicity's sake, that there are twenty-five, and that these twenty-five form (as, indeed, they do form in God's sight) a single family. Well, if so, these are their proportions and occupations : eight of the twenty-five are the young children, six are the women of the household, the rest are grown men ; of these men two till the soil, six are in shops or manufactories, one is a tradesman, one is in either the jail or the workhouse, and one belongs to the independent, the wealthy, or the professional classes. Now, even this one million of the ruling and the professional classes need Sunday as a day of holy rest ; but how much more do the eight million children, and the six million women, and the nine or ten million labourers, and artisans, and clerks, and shopmen need it ! ^
Tf Dr. Farre, as a physiologist, has demonstrated the fact that the rest of the night without the additional rest of the Sabbath is insufficient for the maintenance of bodily vigour, and for the prolongation of life. History confirms this. The National Convention in Paris abolished public worship in 1793, and appointed the tenth day instead of the seventh for the partial cessation of labour; but every one knows that it was at least * F. W. Farrar, Bells and Pomegrcmatet, 129.
io8 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
for the physical advantage of the nation when Napoleon restored the seventh day, in the year 1806.
^ Not only animals need regular off-days, when they are to do no work, but all mechanical and scientific instruments need it, in order to reach maximum usefulness. It has been demonstrated that a steam-engine, an axe, a hand-saw, will do more work in the long run with regular days of absolute rest. An instance is given in a late review by an experienced engineer, of two engines of hke pattern, capacity, and material. One was run every day so many hours. The other only six days in seven, but yet as many hours in the six days as the first in seven. The one which had its Sabbaths outlasted and outworked the other so far as to excite marked attention.^