But we would hasten to another and a third view, which may be characterized as being more catholic, or rather less sectarian, than the first, and, at the same time, more spiritual, or less secular, than the second. To firm believers in the positive divine institution of the Sabbath (among whom we have no hesitation in avowing ourselves) the merely worldly argument would appear, sometimes, to betray, rather than support, the very cause it professes to advocate. On the other hand, there are, doubtless, many inquiring minds to whom the Scriptural argument seems more or less defective, but who would, nevertheless, accept a more elevated and more religious view than the one we have denominated the physical or the secular. There are good men, very good men, and honest believers, too, in the written revelation, who have a prejudice against any thing positively outward and ritual in religion, on the ground of its savoring too much of what they deem the obsolete Jewish economy. There are others who do not so accept the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, that they would regard as conclusive any merely exegetical or traditionary argument. There are those, again, who wholly reject the authority of the commonly-received revelation. There are men who go farther than this—pantheists,—scientific theists, who recognize only an impersonal Power and Wisdom—men on the very verge of atheism, and some beyond all limits that the most tender charity can regard as separating us from that doleful region. And yet among them all—may we not say it without giving just offense to the strictest believer—among them all there may be sober men, thinking men, deeply serious men, for whom it is possible, and, if possible, most desirable, to frame an argument for a Sabbath that may steer clear of the apparent difficulties in the one view, and the really lowering and unspiritualizing tendency of the other.
Let those, then, who feel strong in that position, ground their reverence for the Sabbath in a positively revealed divine appointment. Among them would we class ourselves, even while endeavoring so to widen the platform as to embrace as many others as possible. Let those, again, who can take no higher view than that derived from its physical benefits, hold fast to such a faith. Frail as the plank may seem, it may deliver them from the shipwreck of total unbelief. The view indeed is a low one, and yet, if honestly held, may conduct the mind to a higher estimate. It is something,—it is much,—to believe truly that in the physical arrangements of the world, God has shown this kind care for our material well-being. If the soul is not utterly buried in earthliness, the thought of such a concern for the body must tend, at least, to the higher idea of a still higher concern for the blessedness of our spiritual nature.
Now it is in this thought we find that third view of the Sabbath which must have an interest, we would charitably hope, for all the classes that have been mentioned. Many believe that we need a day for special religious worship; others hold to the necessity of a day of bodily rest. But do we not all—whatever may be our creed, our belief or our unbelief—need a day, an oft-recurring day, of serious thought? Whatever may be our faith, or want of faith, every man who has not wholly sunk down into the mere animal nature, needs periods, oft-recurring and stated periods, in which he shall yield his whole soul to the questions—- What am I? Where am I? Whence came I? Why am I here? What have I to do? How am I doing it? Whither am I going? The tremendous interest of these questions is not to be measured by the excess or deficiency of our creeds, unless it be that the very lack of belief invests them with a more immeasurable importance, or that each presents a more serious problem for serious minds, until we come down to that "horror of great darkness," the death of all faith in a supernatural or truly spiritual world.
Take the man who calls himself the liberal or free-thinking Christian. We have no objection to the title, or want of charity toward him who assumes it. He needs a Sabbath for intense thought, not so much on the argumentative evidence of particular dogmas, as on the great yet simple questions, whether the liberality of his opinions, and the few difficulties they present to his own mind, may not be evidence of their having no foundation in any wide system of eternal truth,—whether a religious creed that has no profound awe for the soul, no fearful apprehensions, no deep moral anxieties, no absorbing interest in a life to come, does not, from the very fact of such deficiency, prove itself a contradiction and a lie. So too the man who is but beginning to doubt the full inspiration of the Scriptures needs a period of most earnest meditation on the risk he may be running of giving up an only guide, whose place can never be made good by any thing in nature, philosophy, or science. The professed infidel needs a Sabbath, an oft-recurring Sabbath, of serious thought on that question of questions—Has God indeed ever spoken to man, or spoken at all, except through physical laws?—Has the awful stillness of nature been ever broken by a true voice from a true supernatural world?—And the atheist, too,—has he no need of a Sabbath, a frequent day of thought and thoughtfulness, in which he may call up and spread before his mind, in all their fearful importance, the sombre articles of his own dark creed? For creed indeed he has, unsurpassed in solemnity by that of any religionist. It has been quite common to deny the possibility of atheism, but the history of the world and of the church is showing that it is the only legitimate antagonism to a true belief in positive revelation. The shallow sciolist may not perceive it, and yet this is the dark conclusion in which some of his favorite speculations must inevitably terminate. There is no man, therefore, who has a stronger demand upon our most tender charity than the atheist. No belief presents greater difficulties, and yet there is no one to which the thinking mind is more strongly impelled, when it has once learned to distrust the lamp of revelation, and to see only shadows and spectres in that "light shining in a dark place, and to which we do well to take heed, until the day dawn and the eternal day star arise in our souls."
No man, then, we repeat it, stands more in want of a Sabbath than the atheist. No man has greater need of some such seasons in which he may perhaps find a cure for his dreadful spiritual blindness by giving himself up to all the terrific consequences of his gloomy creed. Let him devote one day in seven to the sober contemplation of a universe without a God, without a providence, without prayer, without a moral government,—religion, reverence, and worship forever dead and gone,—buried with them in their graves all that was most touching in poetry, beautiful in art, elevating in science, or sublime in philosophy,—all moral distinctions perished, of course, except those base counterfeits which resolve themselves into the pursuit of physical pleasure, or the avoidance of physical pain. Let him think of worlds on worlds teeming with life, yet all surrendered to the wheels of a blind and inexorable nature crushing on eternally with her mindless laws,—revolving in her slow but endlessly-recurring cycles,—making every seeming advance but the forerunner of the direst catastrophes of ruin,—or else in an apparent endless progression ever sacrificing individual parts and individual personalities to soulless wholes, yet furnishing to our philosophy no satisfactory ground on which to decide the question, whether the eternal drama in its most universal estimate is any more likely to be one of happiness than of intense and hopeless misery. Let the atheist, and the unbeliever who is on the road to atheism, fix his mind on thoughts like these until he begins to have some conception of what it is to be "without God and without hope in the world." Let him dwell on this sad orphanage, until in the intolerable loneliness of his spirit he is driven for shelter to the idea of a personal law-making, law-executing Deity, and is forced to admit that no doctrine of moral retribution, however stern, no creed, even of the most gloomy and fanatical religionist, ever presented so many difficulties as a rejection of those ideas on which all religion is founded.
Again, we need seasons of thought and thoughtfulness, not only on the ground that they are rational and demanded by the dignity of our rational nature, but because, moreover, they constitute the true rest of the soul. It is a gross and pernicious error that would make the idea of rest, especially spiritual rest, the same with that of indolence and passivity. It is as false as it would be in physics to confound rest with inertia. The former is the opposite of motion simply, the latter the negation of strength and force. Rest is equilibrium, a duality of forces;—indolence the loss of the soul's balance, and the consequent prostration of its power. Rest is refreshing; renewing, strengthening, recuperative;—indolence the generator of a greater and still greater lassitude. Rest is a positive,—indolence a negative state. Rest is resistance (re-sto), recovery, internal energy,—indolence a base and effeminate yielding, ever followed by a loss of spiritual vitality.
It is in the light of such a contrast we see how very different a thing is this true rest of the soul from that dissipation, or vacancy of all thought, with which some would confound it. Else it would not be held out to us, in the Scriptures, as the peculiar bliss, or blessedness, of the heavenly world. The idea this sweet and holy word presents to the contemplative mind is, indeed, the opposite of a busy, bustling, restless progress, the highest conception of which is an ever lasting movement of the intellect adding fact to fact, each as unsatisfactory as the preceding, and never bringing the soul nearer to any perfect quietude; but then, on the other hand, it is not the vacant passivity of which the transcendental Buddhist dreams, any more than the indolent lassitude of the Epicurean paradise. It is a contemplative energy, finding repose in itself, and deriving sustaining strength from its calm upward gaze upon the highest and most invigorating truth. In such an upward rather than onward movement is found the proper end and highest value of the Christian Sabbath.
Suave tempus consecratum
Spiritus ad requiem.
It is the nature of this elevated communion to strengthen instead of wearying the soul, and hence to impart to it a new energy for the performance of the duties of life.
We would confidently test the truth of these positions by an appeal to practical experience. There is exhibited now and then, a vast deal of sentimental philanthropy in decrying what are called the religious abuses of the Sabbath. It proceeds generally from those who would confine themselves to the physical or purely secular view. Great stress is laid on mere bodily relaxation. Utter vacancy, too, of mind, or what is worse, mere pleasure-seeking is held forth as the source of refreshment from past labors, and of recovered strength for those to come. The toil-worn mechanic is invited to the place of popular amusement, or to convey himself and his family to some scene of rural enchantment and festivity. We are pointed for appropriate examples to the parks of London, and the boulevards of Paris. The Sabbath, they say, is a noble institution; but then there should be great care to guard against the perversions of Pharisaic or Puritanical bigotry. It may be well to give a part of the day to the services of religion; but then, the purest religion consists in admiring God's works in the natural world; and the poor laborer who can take his wife and children on a ride to Bloomingdale, or indulges them with a walk in the Elysian Fields, is performing a more acceptable service than he who makes the Sabbath a weariness by confining himself to his own dwelling, or spending any considerable part of it within the still more gloomy walls of some religious conventicle.