The Mondayish Feeling

It is just fifteen minutes of five by the clock on my mantel, and Monday morning. Heaven is looking in at both windows — the sun rising with a very red eye, as if it had not slept much last night. The birds are all up, some singing, but two of them seem to be quarreling, as if they had had trouble in the choir yesterday. The world never before looked so fair from my window. Can it be that there is any such thing as trouble? I have waded up to my study-table, not like the Israelites coming dry-shod, but through a bath-tub and nothing but dullness drowned.

Thank God for water and a Turkish towel! Alas for those who have only an old-time wash-basin at the spout outside the front door, and who think they have done their duty when they have cleansed their finger-tips and the corners of their eyes! A continent, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, ought to take the hint and be very clean.

THE MONDA YISH FEELING. 20”J

I wonder if on this Monday morning all the world is rested? No, no! Many of the best people of the world feel Mondayish. They overdid the Sunday and had no rest. They rose at six to study their Bible-lesson. They attended two preaching services, and had a hankering after the third. They went twice to a Sabbath-school. They took part in a prayer meeting. They visited two of the sick. They have been on a religious spree and are drunk with meetings. Monday morning: is a weariness to them. The devil knows they are good, and is trying to work them to death, and get them out of the way. They are beckoning to their undertaker, and committing suicide with golden extract of over- worked Sunday.

Now, every man is entitled to a rest. He sins when at least once a week he does not take it. On Sabbath let him sleep an hour longer in the morning, or snatch up a nap in the afternoon, or put on his slippers for a little while, with his feet up on the next chair, and make himself believe at any rate that he is resting. Doing too many things on Sunday, he does nothing well. He must take time to cool off. It is dangerous to load a cannon while the touch-hole is hot. Some Christians serve God so tremendously on Sunday that they are cross and crabbed all the week. Every Monday

2G3 ar:i::d the tea-table.

morning ouorht to be set to the tune of “Ariel”’ 01 “Antioch,” and nor to “Windham” or “Naomi.”

Many of the ministers feel Mondayish. They rise this morning with their mouth tasting badly, and eo about stretching- and yawning as thou they were getting the chills and fever — the meanest thine a man ever Q-ers. Saturday study makes this. One who has been two consecutiye days on the strain must feel the bad reaction. He took all Saturday to load the gun. and all Sunday to shoot i: off and the gun has kicked.

Saturday afternoon free from work is a cure for Mondayishness. If you want a Sunday to sail well, you ouofht to launch it Saturday afternoon. If a minister has to study exhausting’ the latter part of the week., it is generally because he has been lazy in the former part of the week. There is nothing- that so hurts a sermon as to iam it between the wheels of Saturday night and Sunday morning. One of the ablest ministers of the Reformed Church used to say that he did all his hard mental work after ten o’clock Saturday night. At that late hour he would take to his study a tea-pot and pack of first-rate cigars and go at his two sermons. He quit life early and went away, compelled to leave behind him his tea-pot and box of cigars. I should rather go up in almost any other chariot than in a cloud of tobacco smoke. Xot

Saturday night, but Wednesday and Thursday are the best cradles in which to rock a sermon after it has been born.

The Mondayish feeling sometimes comes to the ministry because that is the day the clerical profession do what they call “odds and ends,” and visit the sick. Instead of taking it easy that morning, they are worried about the many errands they have to do. Monday is a poor day for visiting the sick. It is bad for the minister and the invalid to whom he goes. When I am sick, save me from a minister who himself has “the dumps.” We need to be strong when we go to help the weak. What the sick most need is a dose of sunshine; and how shall we pour it out for them unless we have a steady hand? There is no use of going in to sit on the bedside and help the invalid groan. Better take to him your tuning-fork and give him the pitch of “the new song.” Do not spend Monday in rushing about; “odds and ends” have killed many a minister. Sunday is a trying day; let Saturday on one side of it, and Monday on the other side of it, take hold its arms and help it through. Do not spend Monday in going round to see “how the sermon took.” If it was faithful, I warrant that in some quarters it did not take at all. Do not ask a child afterward whether he enjoys calomel and jalap; of course he does not.

When I preach a sermon on Sunday that makes “the fur fly,” I spend Monday at Coney Island.

The Mondayish feeling often comes to the minister through worriment at the inefficiency of Sunday’s work. But what is the use of fretting if we did as well as we could? We ought not to expect to make “a ten-strike” at every roll. What though the sermon was spoiled by the poor ventilation of the church, or by the titteration in the gallery, or the elder with creaky shoes who went out twice during the sermon to see what was the matter, or the old man’s clearing his throat with a racket that seemed to imply that he had taken a contract for removing all the colds of a lifetime at one spit? Do not let us fret over the poor sermons of yesterday, for brooding over them will only hatch more of the same breed. Besides that, our most insignificant effort may be raised in greatest power. Christ used spittle to cure the blind man.

I write these things for young ministers just starting. Formerly, Mondays almost killed me; but by observing the two or three rules above mentioned, Monday has come to be the brightest day of all the week. As I go down the street I can hardly keep my feet to the pavement, and go round the corner with a skip, first having glanced both ways to see that nobody is looking. Let Monday be the golden beach of the Christian Sabbath. Its pebbles are pearls, and the surf that strikes it are the songs of heaven, like the voice of many waters. Next to the Sabbath in joyful experiences stands Monday. Two blissful days! I am glad they have been married.