2. It is necessary for our Mental Health. Man is not a mere animal. He has a life of the mind which like- wise demands occasional relief from the wearing toils and anxieties of secular life. Our nervous force, which lies at the basis of thought and feeling, can bear only a certain amount of strain, and if this be transgressed, an impaired and morbid condition of mind is sure to be the result. Every one knows that incessant and anxious brooding over any one subject or idea will induce melancholy and even insanity.
'Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay.
^ Very weighty are the words of John Burns on this question : "Sunday rest is physically good, mentally invigorating, and morally healthful. It has been commercially beneficial to the people of this land. It has done more than anything else to buttress and maintain the excellent institution we call 'home.' The day of rest is, from every point of view, a national treasure." So, too, writes a great French statesman. President Arnot : " The Sunday rest is an essentially democratic institution, more needed now than ever owing to the high pressure at which we live." ^
U We have a picture given to us of how one who was no grim Puritan or narrow-minded Pharisee spent Sunday in his home, and there is nothing in it which might not be reproduced, so far as the surroundings of our lives allow, in English homes to-day. " The Sundays were bright to the children, who began the day with decking the graves in the churchyard, an example which the poor people learned to follow, so that it looked like a garden. And when his day's work was done — and Sunday was the busiest day of the week to him — there was always the Sunday walk, a
1 B. H. Carroll, « C. J. Ridgeway.
ST. MARK 109
stroll on the moors, some fresh object of beauty pointed out. Or indoors the Sunday picture-books were brought out. Each child had its own book and chose its subject for father to draw — some short story, or bird or beast or flower mentioned in the Bible. Happy Sundays ! never associated with gloom or restriction, but with God's works or God's Word." Such was Sunday in the home of Charles Kingsley.
^ " Do the birds know when it is Sunday ? " a little girl asked her mother ; " they always seem to be more cheerful, and sing much more, on Sundays." I remember having heard a child ask on a similar occasion, why the birds did not rest on Sundays. In these two questions there seems to lie the whole difference between the keeping of Sunday and the desecration of it : the former child knew what a true keeping of the Sunday is ; the latter did not.^
3. It is necessary for our Moral Health. The quality of our moral character is vitally influenced by the habit of regular cessation from the more sordid cares and efforts of life. Con- tentment of spirit, cheerfulness of disposition, clearness of judgment, sensitiveness of conscience, strength and directness of will, are all to some extent dependent upon physical conditions, while these human excellences can certainly not be cultivated to their highest pitch without regular opportunities for the con- templation of moral truth and exalted ideals. Nations have become morally debased and have been torn by anarchic convul- sions when deprived of opportunities of this sort. At the end of the last century a sad illustration of this was presented to the world. The Sabbath was abolished in France. Every trace of religion was as far as possible wiped out. Eeason was worshipped as a goddess. The names of the days were altered, and decades took the place of weeks. The results were most disastrous. It was not long before the whole nation was thrown into disorder. All morality languished. Every heart trembled before the greed and tyranny that were practised by those in power. And at length the people, almost in despair, and clinging to the spars of goodness and virtue that alone remained to them in their wreck, welcomed those against whom they had fought, and by the help of their foes restored the weekly Sabbath. How true are the words of Blackstone, the greatest of our lawyers — " A corruption of morals usually follows a profanation of the Sabbath." * 1 James Gordon. « "W. Spiers.
no THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
^ Although I would not pin my faith to any political party or religious sect ; and though I would not advocate or practise all the Puritan restrictions, yet I agree with Fred. W. Eobertson, when he says : " If we must choose between Puritan over-precision, on the one hand, and, on the other, the laxity which, in many parts of the Continent, has marked that day from other days only by more riotous worldliness and a more entire abandonment of the whole community to amusement, no Christian would hesitate — no English Christian, at least, to whom that day is hallowed by all that is endearing in early associations, and who feels how much it is the very bulwark of his country's moral purity." ^
^ Although certain superstitious fears that I had detract somewhat from my thought of the Sabbath of my childhood, yet the thought of my father and mother remains; the sanctity of that day remains; its stillness remains. When I waked up in the morning, and found the Sabbath morning's sun pouring full into my room ; it was the carpet on the floor and the paper on the wall ; for there was none other but the golden sunlight. When I remember the voice of the cock (and there were no wheels rolling to disturb the clarion tones), when I remember how deep the heaven was all the day, when I remember what a strange and awe-inspiring sadness there was in my little soul, when I remember the going down of the sun and the creeping on of the twilight, there is not in my memory anything that impresses me as so rich in all the tropics as a Christian Sabbath on the old Litchfield hills. My children have not that — woe to me — and their children, I am afraid, will not have it ; but you take out of the portfolio of my memory the choicest engravings if you take away from me the old Puritan Sunday of Connecticut. Let the framework stand ; but unite with it a better usage. Bring into it less sanctity of the superstitious kind, less rigour, less restriction, but more love, more singing, more exultation, more life. Make the Sabbath honourable and joyful. Then the people will accept it, and it will stand as immovable as the mountains.^