It has often struck me as an impressive coincidence that it was when Dr. Johnson was approaching his fiftieth birthday—life's Saturday morning—that he discovered a significance in Saturday that, until then, had eluded him. He felt, as we all feel on Saturdays, that the time had come to clear up, to put things in their places and to overtake neglected tasks. And this is the entry he makes in his Journal:
'Having lived, not without an habitual reverence for the Sabbath, yet without that attention to its religious duties which Christianity requires: I resolve henceforth—First, to rise early on Sabbath morning, and, in order to that, to go to sleep early on Saturday night. Second, to use some more than ordinary devotion as soon as I rise. Third, to examine into the tenor of my life, and particularly the last week, and to mark my advances in religion, or my recessions from it. Fourth, to read the Scriptures methodically, with such helps as are at hand. Fifth, to go to church twice. Sixth, to read books of divinity, either speculative or practical. Seventh, to instruct my family. Eighth, to wear off by meditation any worldly soil contracted in the week.'
The significance of this heroic record lies in the resolve that Saturday, so far from unfitting him for Sunday, shall lead up to it as a stately avenue leads up to a noble entrance-hall. 'I resolve to go to sleep early on Saturday night.' Exactly a hundred years after the great doctor had inscribed this famous entry on the pages of his Journal, Charlotte Elliott wrote her well-known hymn in praise of Saturday:
Before the Majesty of heaven
To-morrow we appear;
No honor half so great is given
Throughout man's sojourn here.
The altar must be cleansed to-day,
Meet for the offered lamb;
The wood in order we must lay,