The Scotch take their amusement and their relaxation on the Sabbath as other people do on the Sunday. They rest from work, they attend divine service, and for relaxation they awaken those gloomy and fanatical thoughts which give them pleasure. For these are to them pleasure, just as much as gaiety is to other people.
Do not doubt that it is real pleasure to them. Men's hearts are tuned to many keys, and there is a minor as well as a major. It is true that it is difficult for those who rejoice in light and sunshine, in gaiety and humour, who revolt from grey skies and shaded days, from gloomy thoughts and dreams of hell, to realise that there are men to whom these are in harmony.
Most of us would forget hell if we could, would banish the thought if it arose, but some love to dwell upon it, to repeat it, to preach of it. The idea thrills them as blood and massacre do others. Some men would go miles to avoid seeing an execution, others would go as many miles to see it. Emotions are of all sorts, and what to some is horrible is to others attractive.
"Will the doctrine of eternal punishment be preached there?" asked the owner of a large room suitable for meetings to one who would have hired it to preach there. And when the answer was that the subject would not be touched on the room was refused. "Ay, but I hold to that doctrine," he repeated to every objection.
Widely, therefore, as the Continental Sunday and the Scotch Sabbath differ in appearance, they arise from the same causes, they result in the same effects.
They are caused by the desire for bodily rest, for soul nourishment, for mental relaxation, necessities of mankind, and each people so frames its conception of the proper way to keep the day as to attain those ends. For "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath," and men adapt their religious teaching to suit their necessities.