The Oasis

The sabbath is God’s gracious present to a working world; and for wearied minds and bodies it is the grand restorative. The Creator has given us a natural restorative — sleep; and a moral restorative — sabbath-keeping; and it is ruin to dispense with either. Under the pressure of high excitement, individuals have passed weeks together with little sleep, or none; but when the process is long-continued, the over-driven powers rebel, and fever, delirium, and death, come on. Nor can the natural amount be regularly curtailed without corresponding mischief. The sabbath does not arrive like sleep. The day of rest does not steal over us like the hour of slumber. It does not entrance us whether we will or not; but addressing us as intelligent beings, our Creator assures us that we need it, and bids us

THE OASIS
Va-e .VElt vo„K

ASTOR. LE.lox INO notice its return, and court its renovation. And if, rushing in the face of our Creator’s kindness, we force ourselves to work all days alike, it is not long till we pay the forfeit. The mental worker — the man of business or the man of letters — finds his ideas coming turbid and slow; the equipoise of his faculties is upset; he grows moody, fitful, and capricious; and with his mental elasticity broken, should any disaster occur, he subsides into habitual melancholy, or in self-destruction speeds his guilty exit from a gloomy world. And the manual worker — the artisan, the eno-ineer — fao-orins: on

from day to day, and week to week, the bright intuition of his eye gets blunted, and, forgetful of their cunning, his fingers no longer perform their feats of twinkling agility, nor, by a plastic and tuneful touch, mould dead matter, or wield mechanic power; but, mingling his life’s blood in his daily drudgery, his locks are prematurely gray, his genial humor sours, and, slaving it till he has become a morose or- reckless man,

for any extra eftbrt, or any blink of balmy feeling, he must stand indebted to opium or alcohol. To an industrious population so essential is the periodic rest, that when, in France, the attempt was made to abolish the weekly sabbath, it was found necessary to issue a decree, suspending labor one day in every ten. And in our own country, when at attempt was made, in time of war, to work a royal manufactory without a pause — at the end of a few months, it was ascertained that the largest amount of work had been accomplished by the hands exempted from Sunday labor.* Master manufacturers have stated that they could perceive an evident

* “Not many years ago, a contractor went on to the west with his hired men and teams to make a turnpike road. At first he paid no regard to the sabbath; but continued his work as on other days. He soon found, however, that the ordinances of nature, no less than the moral law, were against him. His laborers became sickly, his teams grew poor and feeble, and he was fully convinced that more was lost than gained by working on the Lord’s day. So true is it that the sabbath-day laborer, like the glutton and the drunkard, undermines his health, and j)rematurely hastens the infirmities of age, and his exit from the world.” — Dr. Humphrey of America. deterioration in the quality of the goods produced as the week drew near a close, just because the tact, alertness, and energy of the workers began to experience inevitable exhaustion. When a steamer on the Thames blew up, not long ago, the firemen and stokers laid the blame on their broken sabbath: it stupified and embittered them — made them blunder at their work, and heedless what havoc these blunders might create. And we have been informed that, when the engines of an extensive steam-packet company in the south of England were getting constantly damaged, the mischief was instantly repaired by giving the men, what the bounty of their Creator had given them long before, the rest of each seventh day. And what is so essential to industrial efficiency, is no less indispensable to the laborer’s health and longevity. This was well explained before a committee of the house of commons by an accomplished physician. Dr. Farre: —

“Although the night apparently equalizes the circulation well, yet it does not sufficiently restore its balance for the attainment of a loiifT life. Hence one day in seven, by the bounty of Providence, is thrown in as a day of compensation, to perfect by its repose the animal system. You may easily determine this question as a mailer of fact, by trying it on beasts of burden. Take that fine animal the horse, and work him to the full extent of his powers every day of the week, or give him rest one day in seven, and you will soon perceive, by the superior vigor, with which he performs his functions on the other six days, that this rest is necessary to his well-being. Man, possessing a superior nature, is borne along by the very vigor of his mind, so that the injury oi continued diurnal exertion and excitement on his animal system is not so immediately apparent as it is in the brute; but, in the long run, he breaks down more suddenly: it abridges the length of his life and that vigor of his old age, which (as to mere animal power) ought to be the object of his preservation. * * * This Is said simply as a physician, and without reference at’all to the theological question; but if you consider further the proper effect of real Christianity, namely, peace of mind, confiding trust in God, and goodwill to man, you will perceive in this source of renewed visfor to the mind, and through the mind to the body, an additional spring of life imparted from this higher use of the sabbath as a holy rest.”

The sabbath is God’s special present to the working man, and one chief object is to prolong his life and preserve efficient his working tone. In the vital system it acts like a compensation-pond: it replenishes the spirits, the elasticity, and vigor, which the last six days have drained away, and supplies the force which is to fill the six days succeeding. And in the economy of existence it answers the same purpose as, in the economy of income, is answered by a savings’ bank. The frugal man who puts aside a pound to-day, and another pound next monlh, and who in a quiet way is always putting past his stated pound from time to time, when he grows old and frail gets not only the same pounds back again, but a good many pounds besides. And the conscientious man who husband’s one day of existence every week — who, instead of allowing the sabbath to be trampled and torn in the hurry and scramble of life, treasures it devoutly up — the Lord of the sabbath keeps it for him, and in length of days and a hale old age gives it back with usury. The saving’s bank of human existence is the weekly sabbath-day.

Another purpose for which the Father of earth’s families has presented the workman with this day, is to enhance his domestic comfort and make him happy in his home. If it were not for this beneficent arrangement, many a toiling man would scarcely ever know the gentle glories and sweet endearments of his own fireside. Idle people are sometimes surfeited with the society of one another, and wealthy people, however busy, can buy an occasional holyday. But though the working-man gets from his employer only one or two days of pastime in all the year, his God has given him two-and-fifty sabbaths; and it is these sabbaths which impart the sanctity and sweetness to the poor man’s home. If he has finished his marketing, and cleared off his secular engagements on Saturday night, it is marvellous what a look of leisure and bright welcome ushers in the morrow, and what a spirit of serene expectancy breathes through the tidy and well-trimmed chamber. The peace of God lights up the pious laborer’s dwelling, and, reserved fjom a toil-worn week, the radiance of true love pours freely forth in these gleams of sabbath sunshine. With graceful tint it touches the deal chairs and homely table, and converts a fathom of gray carpet into “a wonder of the loom.” It plays iridescent among the quaint ornaments of the mantel-shelf, streams over the hearth-stone, and perches on the eight-day clock — the St.

Elm of rough weather past — the omen of good days to come. It penetrates affectionate bosoms, and revives old memories deep and tender, which, but for such weekly resurrection, might have died for ever; and with early interest and endearment it suffuses that face which on sabbath morns is always young, and reminds the proud possessor of that wealth of quiet wisdom and thoughtful kindness with which the Lord has blessed his lot. And in the thaw of friendly and thankful feelings, in the flow of emotions cordial and devout, silent praises sparkle in the eye, and the husband’s love and the father’s joy well up to the verybrim.

“Hail, sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man’s day: On other days the man of toil is doomed To eat his joyless bread, lonely; the ground Both seat and board, screened from the winter’s cold And summer’s heat by neighboring hedge or tree. But on this day, embosomed in his home, He shares the frugal meal with those he loves; “With those he loves he shares the heartfelt joy Of giving thanks to God.”

But beyond all these, God’s gift of the sabbath should be precious to the working world as its main opportunity for moral and spiritual improvement, and as its best preparative for a happy immortality. While eternity is hastening apace, the exigencies of each successive moment are banishing the thought of it, and many are surprised into the great hereafter before they have distinctly perceived that themselves are on the road to it. The sabbath brings a weekly pause, and in its own mild but earnest accents says to each, Whither art thou going? while its benignant hours invite the pilgrim of earth to that better country of which it is at once the angel and the specimen. The sabbath brings leisure; it gives a day for thinking; and it brings seclusion. From the daily vortex — from the crowd so dizzy and profane, it snatches the whirling waif — it pulls him aside into its little sanctuary, and leaves him alone with God On the table of the busy man, whether rich or poor, it spreads the open Bible, and wakes again the oracle which has spoken the saving word to thousands. To the intent and adoring eye it unveils that wondrous cross where redemption was achieved and God was reconciled; and by the vista of one radiant tomb it guides the musing spirit far beyond the land of graves; while perfumed gales and Eolian pulses from its opened window bespeak the nearer heaven, and stir the soul v. irh immortality. To the man who has got the sabbatic sentiment — to the man who has received from above the spiritual instinct, what a baptism of strength and joy does the Lord’s day bring! From prayerful slumber he wakes amid its gentle light, and finds it spreading round him like a balm. There are hope and comfort in its greeting, and from prayerful retirement he joins his family circle with peace in his conscience and freshness in all his feelings. The books which he reads, and the truths which he hears, expa’nd his intellect, and fill it with thoughts noble, pure, and heavenly The public worship gives rise, and by giving outlet, gives increase to hallowed emotions and Christian affections. The psalmody awakens gratitude, cheerfulness, and praise; and the comprehensive prayers and confessions remind him of evils which he himself has overlooked, and perils and temptations of which he was not aware. Interceding for others, his soul dilates in sympathy and public spirit. Friends vaguely remembered — friends long parted or on foreign shores, and on bustling days well-nigh forgotten — now join his earnest fellowship; and prayer hallows while it deepens ancient amity. The poor, the sick, the broken-hearted, prisoners, slaves, the whole family of sorrow, flit before the suppliant’s eye and leave him with a softer heart. And the realm and its rulers recur at this sacred moment, and every sentiment is merged in loyalty and Christian patriotism. And the heralds of salvation, pastors, teachers, missionaries, with all the evangelistic agency, are recalled to mind, and while his interest in Christ’s cause becomes more personal, his soul expands in catholicity. And, if in a willing mood, from the word read and expounded, he carries home enlightenment, invigoration, impulse; and with big emotions, and blessed hopes, the sabbath sends him forth on a busy week and a restless world, a tranquil presence and an elevating power.*

To cross an eastern desert is often arduous work. And as they jog on their grunting asses, or swing on their melancholy camels, — as the sun pours his downright embers, and shadows are projected short and round, — as the water-bags grow empty, and, for lack of pomegranate or citron, each squeezes in his cheek the juiciest pebble he can find, the travellers are apt to droop into a moody silence, and lose all liking for their journey. With dust in every pore, and fever in every vein, nobody cares for his neighbor, nor feels the slightest interest in any earthly thing. And should some

The foregoing paragraphs appeared in the North Brituh Review for May, 1848.

sprightly comrade still hold out, his wit is resented as rudeness, and he himself is hated for his irksome glee. But presently they glimpse the green banner in the distant sky, the palm-signal which tells of water, and verdure, and repose. And as they reach the leafy tent, and fling themselves on the cool ground, and climb for the date-clusters, and through the sandy filter scoop the hidden fountain, their soul is restored, and their interest in all things revives. Wife and children are dear again, and home is much desired; and as the artist points his pencil, and the scholar takes out his book, the caravan dissolves in friendly talk and flowing soul. And, reader, like that desert route, your daily toil is a life-wasting drudgery. Resumed morning by morning, and followed hour by hour, it drains the strength and dries the soul. But at the end of every weekly march, behold yon green oasis! Like palm-tree shadow, behold the welcome which the rest-day waves! And as it bids you eat and drink abundantly, do you obey the genial sign. Turn in to tarry beneath the refreshful canopy, and you will find the recompense in a replenished heart and a renovated home; and as, full of heaven’s peace and strength, you issue from its sweet asylum, you will resume life’s journey rejoicing.

But though we have mentioned the uses of the sabbath first, we must not forget its obligation. If you have got a healthy mind — one conscientious, and dutiful, and right with God — your main question will ever be, not, What is for my interest? but what is riglu? what would God have me to do? You will have no fear but that duty and interest will in the long run coincide; still, you will perceive a positive and immediate pleasure in obedience; it will be your meat and drink to do the will of your Father in heaven. And on this subject, the will of God is plain and peremptory. As early as the creation of the human race, he showed his purpose regarding the sabbath. “On the seventh day, God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made; and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” And accordingly, when, in all the pomp of Mount Sinai, that moral law was given which has ever since been the great standard of right and wrong, the fourth of the ten commandments was,” Remember the sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath-day and hallovTed it. And all through, from the first book of the Bible to the last, we find the primeval blessing still following the day, and the people of God devoutly keeping it. And perhaps there is no command which a special Providence has more signally guarded — none, the observance of which God has crowned with a more abundant recompense — and none of which the violation has been followed by a swifter or sorer frown. The will of God is clear; the command is plain and full; and it is not easy to estimate his guilt who tramples under foot an institution clothed with such divine authority, and fraught with such divine benignity.

And now the question comes round, how are we to spend the day so as to fulfil its Author’s gracious purposes?

Among sabbatic employments, the most obvious is the public and private worship of God. On other days you have little time for meditation and prayer; but on a sabbath morning you have leisure. Take your bible, read a portion, and think over it. In prayer, try to remember the sins and errors of the week, and ask pardon for the Saviour’s sake; and try to recall your recent mercies, and, as you reckon them one by one, bless the Lord for his benefits. And consider what farther blessings you stand in need of, and with humble earnestness implore them from that munificent Giver who bestows so bounteously, and “who upbraideth not.” And if you have a household, let prayer and a passage of God’s word begin your family day; and then let all resort to the house of God together; and when there, not only should you listen to the messages and lessons which God’s minister brings you, but seek to put your whole heart into the services of prayer and praise. The thing which has made you sometimes feel dull in a place of worship, was, that you did not worship. Your body was there, but your mind was everywhere. Pray that God would fix your thoughts; and if you be all ear when the chapter is read and the sermon preached, ail ^;oce when the psalms are sung, and all heart when the prayers are offered, yov will not weary at the time, and the hallowed effect will follow you home.

A great help toward spending the Lord’s day rightly is a well-selected library. From a friend you may borrow a good book, now and then; but it is desirable to have a little stock of your own. It would be a great matter if you could compass a book like “Henry’s Commentary,” or the commentary published by the Tract society; for, besides throwing great light on the Bible, it would furnish you with endless Sunday reading. And if you wish to get solid and extensive acquaintance with sacred truth, you can not do better than master “Dwight’s System of Theology.” We have known working men who did so. Books like the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and “D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation,” the Lives of Henry Martyn, and John Newton, and Colonel Gardiner, “Abbott’s Young Christian,” “Williams’s Missionary Enterprise in the South Seas,”

and “Moffat’s Labors in Africa,” — such books would be interesting to the young folk, as well as instructive to yourself. And it would be well to possess and read prayerfully such books as “Pike’s Persuasives to Early Piety,” and “James’s Anxious Inquirer,” and ‘• Baxter’s Saint’s Everlasting Rest.” All these books have been published in cheap forms; and in shops where they sell books second-hand, you may get the largest of them for very litde money. And the man who has such companions in his house, and who has any real earnestness about his immortal soul, will find ways and means to spend profitably each returning sabbath.

And in order to make it a cheerful day to your children, you would do well to enter zealously into their sabbath employments. It is likely that you send them to the Sunday-school; but the punctuality with which they attend, and the proficiency which they exhibit there, depend very much on their parents. If you invite them to repeat to you their hymns and other lessons — and if they find that diligence is rewarded, not only by a teacher’s love, but by a father’s smile — they will ply their tasks with new vivacity. And, as a reward of good conduct, you might read over to them, or allow them to read to you, one of the little books they bring home. Children are, in general, fond of music; and you might sometimes spend half an hour very sweetly in singing psalms or hymns together.

Addressing our industrious fellow-citizens, we can not close without warning them against a twofold jeopardy, which presently threatens the day marked off by God for the laborer’s leisure. There is an attempt on the part of some wealthy men to buy up the sabbath of the poor, and there is a tendency on the part of some working men to pilfer the sabbath of their fellow-workmen. Rich men, hasting to become still richer, are anxious to receive their letters on the Lord’s day; and in order to save time for business, they wish to perform their journeys on that day; and to increase the profits of their investments in railways, and steamers, and tea-gardens, and rural taverns, they are anxious to create amonoj the workins; classes a taste for Sunday trips and pleasure parties. They bribe the engineer and the letter-carrier; and, for the rich man’s money, these workmen barter their sabbath; and they tempt the town artisan and the city shopman, and, for the sake of the cheap excursion or the merry ploy, the artisan and shopman are enticed to squander both their money and their souls.

On the other hand, from improvidence, or indolence, or some other cause, the sabbath morning finds many working people with no food in their houses, and, going out to purchase it, they compel their fellow-workmen — the grocers, and butchers, and bakers, and their assistants — to toil in their service half the sabbath-day; while other workmen hie away to the river or the railway station, and compel another class of their fellow-workmen — sailors, and engine-drivers, and waiters in taverns — to toil till midnight in supplying them with pleasure. And in this way, in the capital of the kingdom, there are 20,000 people working in shops, and at least as many more connected with public conveyances and places of public entertainment, who never know a sabbath. And where are the robbers who have wrenched from these British citizens their birthright of a weekly repose? Who are the tyrants who thus grind the faces of the poor? We grieve to

swer — poor men — working men.

Now, recollecting that the sabbath is the poor man’s day — that it is the providential bulwark against over-production and under-payment — that it is the grand restorative of the laborer’s wasted strenijjth and spirits, and the reviver of his domestic joys — that it is, in short, the palladium of his present and eternal happiness, — and recollecting, farther, that if the poor lend it to one another, they must soon sell it to the rich, and by-and-by do seven days* work for the six days’ pay, — we put it to yourselves, if the workman who makes a merchandise of his sabbath is not a traitor to his class? And, leaving religious considerations out of view, we ask if the laborer who spurns the filthy lucre offered for his sabbath hours, and who, perhaps, sacrifices a good situation over and above — we ask, if, instead of being jeered for his scruples, he does not deserve the thanks of all his fellows, as the Hampden or the Tell of industrial freedom?

So far as the Sunday excursion goes, the workman forfeits little who does without it. ‘* As it is not all gold that glitters, neither is it all true pleasure that usurps the name. There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness. Never shall I forget the mournful accents with which a condemned criminal, shortly before he was executed, said in my hearing, that his crimes began with small thefts and pleasure excursions on the Lord’s day.“* To us, no excursion is pleasure which is not pleasant when ended. But in what does the pleasure of the Sunday ploy consist next morning? Is it in the choice friendships you have made, or the sum which you have added to your savings? Is it in the additional energy which bulges in your muscles, and the limpid clearness with which the stream of thought and feeling flows? Or is it in the great calm which fills your conscience — the happy thought how much you have done for God and for your fellow-men? Or is it in the unwonted neatness with which your habitation smiles on your return, and the fresh alacrity with which you resume the morrow’s task? “I lodged,” says a shrewd observer,” within a stone-cast of the great Manchester and Birmingham rail-

Dr. King’s Words to the Working Classes wi the Sabbath Question.

way. I could hear the roaring of the trains along the line, from morning till near mid-day, and during the whole afternoon; and, just as the evening was setting in, I sauntered down to the gate by which a return train was discharging its hundreds of passengers, fresh from the sabbath amusements of the country, that I might see how they looked. There did not seem much of enjoyment about the wearied and somewhat draggled groups: they wore, on the contrary, rather an unhappy physiognomy, as if they had missed spending the day quite to their minds, and were now returning, sad and disappointed, to the round of toil from which it ought to have proved a sweet interval of relief. A congregation just dismissed from hearing a vigorous discourse, would have borne, to a certainty, a more cheerful air.”*

Our reader has likely tried the plan of Sunday diversions already. Have they made you a healthier or a happier man? * Hugh Miller’s First Impressions of England.

Have they made you richer, or a more respected member of society? Or have they not consumed a large amount of your hard-won earning.-, and often sent you to Monday’s toils more weary than you lefl them on Saturday night? Have they not involved you with worthless and abandoned acquaintances, and sometimes left on your mind a gloomy foreboding and a guilty fear? And do you never tremble to think what the end of these things must be? Many a Sunday trip has had for its terminus the jail, the convict-ship, the scaffold. Many a broken sabbath has been the first step in a career which ended in drunkenness, in theft, in murder. And every sabbath-breaker is going forward to the bar of God. Dear reader, accept as a timely message these friendly lines. Sek pardon for the past, and, in the Lord’s strength, make trial of the belter way. For the sake of a peaceful conscience, for the sake of a prosperous week, for the sake of a happy home, for the sake of an approving God, “Remember the sabbath-day, to keep it holy;” and you will shortly prove the truth of the promise, “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou de-Hght thyself in the Lord, and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob, thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”