The Brightest of Days

“And call the Sabbath a delight.” — Isaiah lviii., 13.

THERE is an element of gloom striking through all false religions. Paganism is a brood of horrors. The god of Confucius frowned upon its victims with blind fate. Moliammedanism promises nothing to those exhausted with sin in this world but an eternity of the same passional indulgences. The papacy prostrates its devotees with fastings and kneelings and merciless taxation of the poor man’s wages, and tugs until it sweats, from January to December, in trying to pull its dead priests and archbishops out of purgatory. But God intended that our religion should have the grand characteristic of cheerfulness. St. Paul struck the key-note when he said, “Rejoice evermore; and again I say, rejoice.” This religion has no spikes for the feet; it has no hooks for the shoulder; it has no long pilgrimages to take; it has no funeral-pyres upon which to leap; it has no Juggernauts before which to fall. Its good cheer is symbolized in the Bible by the brightness of waters, and the redolence of lilies, and the sweetness of music, and the hilarities of a banquet. A choir of seraphim chanted at its induction, and pealing trumpet, and waving palm, and flapping wing of archangel are to celebrate its triumphs. It began its chief mission with the shout, “Glory to God in the highest!” and it will close its earthly mission with the ascription, “Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!”

But men have said that our religion is not cheerful, because we have such a doleful Sabbath. Thev say, “You can have your religious assemblages, and your long faces, and your sniffling cant, and your psalm-books, and your Bibles. Give us the Sunday excursion, and the horse-race, and the convivial laughter. We have so much joy that we want to spread it all over the seven days of the week, and you shall not have one of our days of worldly satisfaction for religious dolefulness.” I want to show these men — if there are any such in the house this morning — that they are under a great delusion, and that God intended the fifty-two Sundays of the year to be hung up like bells in a tower, beating a perpetual chime of joy and glory and salvation and heaven; for I want you to carry out the idea of the text, “and call the Sabbath a delight.”

I remark, in the first place, we are to find in this day the joy of healthy repose. In this democratic country we all have to work — some with hand, some with brain, some with foot. If there is in all this house a hand that has not, during the past year, been stretched forth to some kind of toil, let it be lifted. Not one, not one. You sell the goods. You teach the school. You doctor in the sick-room. You practice at the bar. You edit a newspaper. You tan the hides. You preach the Gospel. You mend the shoes. You sit at the shuttle. You carry the hod of bricks up the ladder on the wall. And the one occupation is as honorable as the other, provided God calls you to it. I care not what you do, if you only do it well. But when Saturday night comes, you are jaded and worn. The hand can not so skillfully manufacture; the eye can not see as well; the brain is not so clear; the judgment is not so well balanced. A prominent manufacturer told me that he could see a difference between the goods which went out of his establishment on Saturday from the goods that went out on Monday. He said, “They were very different indeed. Those that were made in the former part of the week, because of the rest that had been previously given, were better than those that were made in the latter part of the week, when the men were tired out.” The Sabbath comes, and it bathes the soreness from the limbs, quiets the agitated brain, and puts out the fires of anxiety that have been burning all the week. Our bodies are seven-day clocks, and unless on the seventh day they are wound up, they run down into the grave. The Sabbath was intended as a savingsbank; into it we are to gather the resources upon which we are to draw all the week. That man who breaks the Sabbath robs his own nerve, his own muscle, his own brain, his own bones. He dips up the wine of his own life, and throws it away. He who breaks the Lord’s day gives a mortgage to disease and death upon his entire physical estate, and at the most unexpected moment that mortgage will be foreclosed, and the soul ejected from the premises. Every gland, and pore, and cell, and fingernail demands the seventh day for repose. The respiration of the lungs, the throb of the pulse in the wrist, the motion of the bone in its socket declare, “Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy.” There are thousands of men who have had their lives dashed out against the golden gates of the Sabbath. A prominent London merchant testifies that thirty years ago he went to London.

He says, ^’ I have during that time watched minutely, and 1 have noticed that the men who went to business on the Lord’s day, or opened their counting-houses, have, without a single exception, come to failure.” A prominent Christian merchant in Boston says, “I find it don’t pay to work on Sunday. When I was a boy, I noticed cut on Long Wharf there were merchants who loaded their vessels on the Sabbath-day, keeping their men busy from morning till night, and it is my observation that they themselves came to nothing — these merchants — and their children came to nothing. It doesn’t pay,” he says, “to work on the Sabbath.”

I appeal to your own observation. Where are the men who twenty years ago were Sabbath-breakers, and who have been Sabbath-breakers ever since? Without a single exception, you will tell me, they have come either to financial or to moral beggary. I defy you to point out a single exception, and you can take the whole world for your field. It has either been a financial or moral defalcation in every instance. Six hundred and forty physicians in London petition Parliament, saying: “We must have the Sabbath obeyed. We can not have health in this city and in this nation unless the Sabbath is observed.” Those in our own country have given evidence on the same side. The man who takes down the shutters of his store on the Sabbath takes down the curse of Almighty God. That farmer who cultures his ground on the Sabbath-day raises a crop of neuralgia, and of consumption, and of death. A farmer said, “I defy your Christian Sabbath. I will raise a Sunday crop.” So he went to work and plowed the ground on Sunday, and harrowed it on Sunday, and he planted corn on Sunday, and he reaped the corn on Sunday, and he gathered it into the barn on Sunday. “There,” he says, “I have proved to you that all this idea about a fatality accompanying Sabbath work is a perfect sham. My crop is garnered, and all is well.” But before many weeks passed the Lord God struck that barn with his lightnings, and away went the Sunday crop.

So great is the moral depression coming upon those who toil upon the Sabbath-day, that you may have noticed (if you have not, I call your attention to the fact) that in cases where the public interest demands Sabbath toil the moral depression is so great that there are but very few who can stand it. For instance, the police service, without which not one of our houses would be safe — there are very few who can stand the pressure and temptation of it. In London, where there are five thousand policemen, the statistic is given that in one year nine hundred and twenty-one of that five thousand were dismissed, five hundred and twenty -three were suspended, and two thousand four hundred and ninety-two were fined. Now, if the moral depression be so great in occupations that are positively necessary for the peace and prosperity of society, I ask you what must be the moral depression in those cases where there is no necessity for Sabbath work, and where a man chooses woi-ldly business on the Lord’s day just because he likes it, or wants to add to his emoluments? During the last war, it was found out that those public works which paused on the seventh day turned out more war material than those which worked all the seven days. Mr. Bagnall, a prominent iron merchant, gives this testimony: “1 find we have fewer accidents in our establishment and fewer interruptions, now we observe the Lord’s day; and at the close of the year, now that we keep the Sabbath, I find we turn out more iron and have larger profits than any year when we worked all the seven days.” The fact is, Sabbath-made ropes will break, and Sabbath-made shoes will leak, and Sabbath-made coats will rip, and Sabbath-made muskets will miss fire, and Sabbath occupations will be blasted. A gentleman said, “I invented a shuttle on the Lord’s day. I was very busy, so I made the model of that new shuttle on the Lord’s day. So very busy was I during the week that I had to occupy many Sabbaths. It was a great success. I enlarged my buildings; I built new factories, and made hundreds of thousands of dollars; but I have to tell you that all the result of that work on the Sabbath has been to me ruin. I enlarged my buildings, I made a great many thousands of dollars, but I have lost all, and I charge it to the fixct of that Sunday shuttle.” I will place in two companies the men in this community who break the Sabbath and the men who keep it, and then I ask you who are the best friends of society? Who are the best friends of morals? Who have the best prospects for this world? Who have the best for the world that is to come?

Sabbath morning comes in the household. I suppose that the mere philosopher would say that the Sabbath light comes in a wave current, just like any other light; but it does not seem so to me. It seems as if it touched the eyelids more gently, and threw a brighter glow on the mantel ornaments, and cast a better cheerfulness on the faces of the children, and threw a supernatural glory over the old family Bible. Hail! Sabbath light! We rejoice in it. Rest comes in through the window, or it

^46 ^IIE BRIGHTEST OF DAYS.

leaps up from the fire, or it rolls out in the old arm-chair, or it catches up the body into ecstasy, and swings open before the soul the twelve gates which are twelve pearls. The bar of the unopened warehouse, the hinges of the unfastened store - window, the quiet of the commercial warehouse seem to say, “This is the day the Lord hath made.” Rest for the sewing-woman, with weary hands, and aching side, and sick heart. Rest for the overtasked workman in the mine, or out on the wall, or in the sweltering factory. Hang up the plane, drop the adze, slip the band from the wheel, put out the fire. Rest for the body, for the mind, and for the soul.

“Welcome, sweet day of rest,
That saw the Lord arise;
Welcome to this reviving breast,
And these rejoicing eyes.”

Again I remark, we ought to have in the Sabbath the joy of domestic reunion and consecration. There are some very good parents who have the faculty of making the Sabbath a great gloom. Their children run up against the wall of parental lugubriousness on that day. They are sorry when Sunday comes, and glad when it goes away. They think of every thing bad on that day. It is the worst day to them, really, in all the week. There are persons who, because they were brought up in Christian fiimilies where there were wrong notions about the Sabbath, have gone out into dissipation and will be lost. A man said to me, “I have a perfect disgust for the Sabbath-day. I never saw my father smile on Sunday. It was such a dreadful day to me when I was a boy, I never got over it, and never will.” Those.parents did not “call the Sabbath a delight;” they made it a gloom. But there are houses represented here this morning where the children say through the week, “I wonder when Sunday will come!” They are anxious to have it come. I hear their hosanna in the house; I hear their hosanna in the school. God intended the Sabbath to be especially a day for the father. The mother is home all the week. Sabbath-day comes, and God says to the father, who has been busy from Monday morning to Saturday night at the store, or away from home, “This is your day. See what you can do in this little flock in preparing them for heaven. This day I set apart for you.” You know very well that there are many parents who are mere sutlers of the household; they provide the food and raiment; once in a while, perhaps, they hear the child read a line or two in the new primer; or if there be a case of especial discipline, and the mother can not manage it, the child is brought up in the court-martial of the inther’s discipline and punished. That is all there is of it. No scrutiny of that child’s immortal interests, no realization of the fact that the child will soon go out in a world where there are gigantic and overwhelming temptations that have swamped millions. But in some households it is not that way; the home, beautiful on ordinary da3’s, is more beautiful now that the Sabbath has dawned. There is more joy in the “good-morning,” there is more tenderness in the morning prayer. The father looks at the child, and the child looks at the father. The little one dares now to ask questions without any fear of being answered, “Don’t bother me — I must be off to the store.” Now the father looks at the child, and he sees not merely the blue eyes, the arched brow, the long lashes, the sweet lip. He sees in that child a long line of earthly destinies; he sees in that child an immeasurable eternity. As he touches that child, he says, “I wonder what will be the destiny of this little one? I wonder if on this brow will come the coronet of God’s redemption or the iron crown of despair? I wonder if I will clasp this little one after all my Sabbaths have passed, and the doom of eternity has been announced? Will that little hand at last wave a palm or rattle a chain?” And while this Christian father is thinking and praying, the sweet promise flows through his soul, “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” And he feels a joy, not like that which sounds in the dance, or is wafted from the froth of the wine-cup, or that which is like the “crackling of thorns under a pot,” but the joy of domestic reunion and consecration.

Have I been picturing something that is merely fanciful, or is it possible for you and for me to have such a home as that? I believe it is possible. If we can have such a halo of grace and light and love and parental faithfulness around about our homes, we can expect for our little ones, when they go out in the world, a life of great usefulness, and finally a home in heaven.

I have a statistic that I would like to give you. A great many people, you know, say there is nothing in the Christian discipline of a household. In New Hampshire there were two neighborhoods — the one of six families, the other of five families. The six families disregarded the Sabbath. In time, five of these families were broken up by the separation of husbands and wives; the other by the father becoming a thief Eight or nine of the parents became drunkards, one committed suicide, and all came to penury. Of some forty or fifty descendants, about twenty are known to be drunkards and gamblers and dissolute. Four or five have been in State-prison. One fell in a duel. Some are in the almshouse. Only one became a Christian, and he after first having been outrageously dissipated. The other five families that regarded the Sabbath were all prospered. Eight or ten of the children are consistent members of the church. Some of them became ofl&cers in the church; one is a minister of the Gospel; one is a missionary to China. ISTo poverty among any of them. The homestead is now in the hands of the third generation. Those who have died have died in the peace of the Gospel. Oh, is there nothing in a household that remembers God’s holy day? Can it be possible that those who disregard this holy commandment can be prospered for this life, or have any good hope of the life that is to come?

Again, we ought to have in the Sabbath the joy of Christian assemblage. Where are all those people going on the Sabbath? You see them moving up and down the street. Is it a festal day? people might ask. Has there been some public edict commanding the people to come forth? Ko, they are only worshipers of God who are going to their places of religious service. In what delicate scale shall I weigh the joy of Christian convocation? It gives brightness to the eye, and a flush to the cheek, and a pressure to the hand, and a thrill to the heart. You see the aged man tottering along on his staff through the aisle. You see the little child led by the hand of its mother. You look around and rejoice that this is God’s day, and this’the communion of saints. “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” Some familiar tune sets all the soul a-quiver and a-quake with rapture.

We plunge into some old hymn, and all our cares and anxieties are bathed off. The glorious Gospel transports lis, the Spirit descends, Jesus appears, and we feel the bounding, spreading, electric joy of Christian convocation.

I look upon the Church of God as one vast hosanna. Joy dripping from the baptismal font, joy glowing in the sacramental cup, joy warbling in the anthem, joy beating against the gate of heaven with a hallelujah like the voice of mighty thunderings. Beautiful for situation! The joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion. It is the day and the place where Christ reviews his troops, bringing them out in companies and regiments and battalions, riding along the line, examining the battle-torn flags of past combat, and cheering them on to future victories. Oh the joy of Christian assemblage!

I remark also, we are to have in this day the joy of eternal Sabhatism. I do not believe it possible for any Christian to spend the Lord’s day here without thinking of heaven. There is something in the gathering of people in church on earth to make one think of the rapt assemblage of the skies. There is something in the song of the Christian Church to make one think of the song of the elders before the throne, the harpists and the trumpeters of God accompanying the haivnony. The light of a better Sabbath gilds the tops of this, and earth and heaven come within speaking distance of each other, the song of triumph waving backward and forward, now tossed tip by the Church of earth, now sent back by the Church of heaven.

“Day of all the week the best,
Emblem of eternal rest.”

The Christian man stands radiant in its light. His bereft heart rejoices at the thought of a country where there is neither a coffin nor grave; his weary body glows at the idea of a land where there are no burdens to carry, and no exhaustive journeys to take. He eats the grapes of Eshcol. He stands upon the mountain top and looks off upon the Promised Land. He hears the call of the eternal towers, and the tramp of the numberless multitLide with sins forgiven. This is the day which the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Oh ye who have been hunting for Sunday pleasures in the street, and on the river-bank, and in the houses of sin, I commend to you this holy day and holy service! I do not invite you to swallow a great bitterness, or to carry a heavy yoke; but I invite you to feel in body, mind, and soul the thrill of joy which God has handed down in the chalices of the golden Sabbath.

With what revulsion and with what pity we must look out on that large class of persons in our day who would, by legislative enactment, and by newspaper and magazine, and by their own personal example, throw discredit upon the Lord’s day. There are two things which Protestants ought never to give up: the one is the Bible, the other is the Sabbath. Take away one, and you take both. Take either, and farewell to Christianity in this country, farewell to our civil and religious liberties. When they go, all go. He who has ever spent Sunday in Paris, or Antwerp, or Rome, if he be an intelligent Christian, will pray God that the day will never come when the Sabbath of continental Europe shall put its foot upon our shores. I had a friend in Syracuse who lived to be one hundred vears of age. He said to me, in his ninety-ninth year, “I went across the mountains in the early history of this country. Sabbath morning came. ■, We were beyond the reach of civilization. My comrades were all going out for an excursion. I said, ‘No, I won’t go; it is Sunday.’ Why, they laughed. They said, ‘We haven’t any Sunday here.” Oh yes,’ I said, ’ you have. / brought it with me over the mountains.’’^’’

There are two or three ways in which we can war against Sabbath-breaking usages in this day; and the first thing is to get our children right upon this subject, and teach them that the Sabbath-day is the holiest of all the days, and the best and the gladdest. Unless you teach your child under the parental roof to keep the Lord’s day, there are nine hundred and ninety chances out of a thousand it will never learn to keep the Sabbath. You may think to shirk responsibility in the matter, and send your child to the Sabbath-school and the house of God; that will not relieve the matter. I want to tell you, in the name of Christ, my Maker and my Judge, that your example will be more potential than any instruction they get elsewhere; and if you disregard the Lord’s day yourself, or in any wise throw contempt upon it, you are blasting your children with an infinite curse. It is a rough truth, I know, told in a rough way; but it is God’s truth, nevertheless. Your child may go on to seventy or eighty years of nge, but that child will never get over the awful disadvantage of having had a Sabbath-breaking father or a Sabbath-breaking mother. It is the joy of many of us that we can look back to an early home where God was honored, and when the Sabbath came it was a day of great consecration and joy. We remember the old faces around the table that Sabbath morning. Our hearts melt when we think of those blessed associations, and we may have been off and committed many indiscretions and done many wTong things; but the day will never come when we forget the early home in which God’s day was regarded, and father and mother told us to keep hojy the Sabbath.

There is another way in which we can war against the Sabbath-breaking usages of the country at this time, and that is by making our houses of worship attractive and the religious services inspiriting. I plead not for a gorgeous audience-chamber; I plead not for groined rafters or magnificent fresco; but I do plead for comfortable churches, home-like churches — places where the church-going population behave as they ought to. Make the church welcome to all, however poorly clad they may be, or whatever may have been their past history; for I think the Church of God is not so much made for you who could have churches in your own house, but for the vast population of our great cities, who are treading on toward death, with no voice of mercy to arrest them. Ah! when the prodigal comes into the church, do not stare at him as though he had no right to come. Give him the best seat you can find for him. Sometimes a man wakes up from his sin, and he says, “I’ll go to the house of God.” Perhaps he comes from one motive, perhaps from another. He finds the church dark and the Christian people fi-igid (and there are no people on earth who can be more frigid than Christian people when they try), and the musicis dull, and he never comes again. Suppose one of these men enters the church. As he comes in he hears a song which his mother sang when he was a boy; he remembers it. He sits down, and some one hands him a book, open at

“Jerusalem, my happy home,
Name ever dear to me.”

“Yes,” he says, “I have heard that many times.” He sees cheerful Christian people there, every man’s face a psalm of thanksgiving to God. He says, “Do you have this so every Sunday? I have heard that the house of God was a doleful place, and Christians were lugubrious and repelling! I have really enjoyed myself!” The next Sabbath the man is again in the same place. Tears of repentance start down his cheek; he begins to pray; and when the communion-table is spread, he sits at it, and some one reaches over and says, “I am surprised to find you here. I thought you didn’t believe in such things.” “Ah!” he says, “I have been captured. I came in one day, and found you were all so loving and cheerful here that I concluded I would come among you. Where thou goest I will go; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried.”

Ah! you can’t drive men out of their sins, but you can coax them out — you can charm them out.

I would to God that we could all come to a higher appreciation of this Sabbath heritage! We can not count the treasures of one Christian Sabbath. It spreads out over us the two wings of the archangel of mercy Oh, blessed Sabbath! blessed Sabbath! They scoff a great deal about the old Puritanic Sabbaths, and there is a wonderful amount of wit expended upon that subject now — the Sabbaths they used to have in New England.

I never lived in New England, but I would rather trust the old Puritanic Sabbath, with all its faults, than this modern Sabbath, which is fast becoming no Sabbath at all. If our modern Sabbatism shall produce as stalwart Christian character as the old New England Puritanic Sabbatism, I shall be satisfied, and I shall be surprised.

Oh, blessed day! blessed day! I should like to die some Sabbath morning when the air is full of church music and the bells are ringing. Leaving my home group with a dying blessing, I should like to look off upon some Christian assemblage chanting the praises of God as I went up to join the one hundred and forty and four thousand and the thousands of thousands standing around the throne of Jesus. Hark! I hear the bell of the old kirk on the hill-side of heaven. It is a wedding-bell, for behold the Bridegroom cometh. It is a victor’s bell, for we are more than conquerors through Him who hath loved us. It is a Sabbath-bell, for it calls the nations of earth and heaven to everlasting repose.

“Oh when, thou city of my God,
Shall I thy courts ascend?
Where congregations ne’er break up,
And Sabbaths have no end.”