^ Dr. Haegler, in his Expenditure and Repair of Vital Force, says that the night succeeding a day's labour does not afford a complete recuperation of zig-zag lines. The Monday line shows a man at his maximum strength. With each succeeding day the line is shortened a little. On Tuesday morning the workman, refreshed by sleep, has regained most of his lost energy, but not all. On Wednesday the line is shorter still, that is, there is a larger margin of loss. On Thursday and Friday and Saturday the lines are shortened more and more. On Saturday night the minimum of strength is reached. Now comes Sunday. If the workman observes it, he regains his full normal vigour and begins again where he began a week ago. If he refuses to observe it, and keeps on doing so, he will never regain his normal standard of vital force, but will suffer a constant drain and decline until he ends in physical breakdown. Thus it appears as a scientific fact that the man who habitually refuses to rest on Sunday is living on his reserve. He is literally working himself to death.
3. The need for the observance of set days is embedded in human nature. Eternal as the constitution of the soul of man is the necessity for the existence of a day of rest. And on this ground alone can we find an impregnable defence of \jh.Q proportion one day in seven. The seventh being altered to the first, one might ask why one in seven might not be altered to one in ten. The thing has been tried ; and by the necessities of human nature the change has been found pernicious. One day in ten, prescribed by revolutionary France, was actually pronounced by physiologists insufficient. So that we begin to find that, in a deeper sense than we at first suspected, " the sabbath was made for man." Even in the contrivance of one day in seven, it was arranged by unerring wisdom. Just because the Sabbath was made for man, and not because man was ordained to keep the Sabbath-day, we cannot tamper even with the iota, one day in seven.
\ Professor Hodge of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., demonstrated in his biological laboratory that the nerve cells are not fully restored from a day's wear by a night's rest, and that they need to be fully restored every few days, and that such perfect restoration cannot be accomplished with less than thirty to thirty-six hours of continuous rest, which means a rest-day
36 THE LORD'S DAY
added to the adjoining two nights, a rest such as the Sabbath regularly affords.
^ " I beg and pray of you," said Dolly Winthrop, " to leave off weaving of a Sunday, for it's bad for soul and body — and the money as comes i' that way 'ull be a bad bed to lie down on at the last, if it doesn't fly away, nobody knows where, like the white frost. And you'll excuse me being that free with you, Master Marner, for I wish you well — I do." ^
^ I certainly do feel by experience the eternal obligation because of the eternal necessity of the Sabbath. The soul withers without it ; it thrives in proportion to the fidelity of its observance. Nay, I even believe the stern rigour of the Puritan Sabbath had a grand effect upon the soul. Fancy a man thrown in upon himself, with no permitted music, nor relaxation, nor literature, nor secular conversation — nothing but his Bible, his own soul and God's silence ! What hearts of iron this system must have made. How different from our stuffed-arm-chair religion and " gospel of comfort!" as if to be made comfortable were the great end of religion. I am persuaded, however, that the Sabbath must rest not on an enactment, but on the necessities of human nature. It is necessary not because it is commanded ; but it is commanded because it is necessary. If the Bible says, " Eat the herb of the field," sustenance does not become a duty in consequence of the enactment, but the enactment is only a statement of the law of human nature. And so with the Sabbath, and this appears to be a truer and far more impregnable base to place it on. You cannot base it on a law ; but you can show that the law was based on an eternal fitness. There I think it never can be dislodged.^
^ Sunday is a quiet hollow, scooped out of the windy hill of the week.3
4. To observe a day in any worthy sense, one must enter into its spirit. The true worth of Sunday to us all depends on our coming to find in it the opportunity, the hope, the means of some such rising al)ove this world as that of which St. John speaks ; some approach towards that entrance among things eternal which he links with the Lord's Day. Yes, whatever may be our place and work in life, our share in its pleasures and hardships and interests and sorrows, if Sunday is to mean more and not less to us as the years go by, we must be using it to learn a little more of
* George Eliot, Silas Marner.
^ Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 211.