We would not impeach the motives or the philanthropy of those who talk in this style. Doubtless they are sincere; for there is certainly an extreme plausibility in such a view of the matter, especially as respects that class who have no other day of relaxation. There are parts of the picture, too, to which the sternest Sabbatarian would take no objection, if in any way they could be practically separated from the rest. Pure air is certainly favorable, not only to the physical, but to the moral health. The observation of nature, to say the least, is not opposed to devotion, although it requires some previous devotion to make that observation what it ought to be, or to prevent its being consistent with the most profane and godless state of the mind and heart. Where these can be enjoyed without danger of perverted example, or other evils, which, in respect to our crowded city population are almost inseparable from such indulgence, he must be a bigot indeed who would deny them to the poor, or regard them as a desecration of the Sabbath.
But there is another side to this picture, and other truths having a bearing upon the argument, in support of which we might let go all a priori reasoning, and appeal directly to facts of observation. We will not take an extreme case, or rather, what is well known to be a common case with the Sabbath haunters of Hoboken and other rural purlieus. We will not take the intemperate, the gambling, or the debauched. Let two sober and industrious families be selected from the ranks of the laboring poor. One man devotes the day to pleasant rural excursions with his wife and children. We would not pass upon him a sanctimonious censure, although we might doubt the philosophy as well as the piety of his course. He has abstained from intoxicating drinks, from the lower sensual indulgences, from profane and vicious company. But he has sought simply relaxation for the body, and the negative pleasure of vacancy or of passive musing for the mind. The other pater-familias would, indeed, desire pure air for himself and little ones, purer air than can be obtained in the confined and populous street, and under other circumstances he would, doubtless, freely indulge in such a luxury; but then he knows there is a higher atmosphere still—a spiritual atmosphere—and that this, above all others, is the day in which he is to breathe its purity, and inhale a new inspiration from its invigorating life. He kneels with his children around the morning household altar—he goes with them to the Sabbath-school and to church—the remainder of the day is spent in devotion or meditation—and the evening, perhaps, is given to the social prayer-meeting. Oh, the gloomy drudgery! some would be ready to exclaim. We would not deny that there might be excess even here; but can we hesitate in deciding which of these two families will proceed to their weekly toil on Monday morning with more invigoration of spirit—ay, and of body, too, derived from the soul's refreshment? To which has the day been the truest Sabbath, the most real test? In deciding this question, we need only advert to our former analysis. There has been, in the one case, an utter mistaking of the true idea of rest. Experience has shown, and ever will show, that all mere pleasure-seeking, for its own sake, all vacancy or passivity of soul, ever exhausts, ever dissipates, and, in the end, renders both mind and body less fitted for the rugged duties of life than continued labor itself. In the train of these evils come also satiety, disappointment, a sense of personal degradation that no philosophy can wholly separate from idle enjoyment; and all these combined produce that aversion to regular labor, which is so often to be observed as the result of an ill-spent Sabbath. The body, it is true, belonging as it does wholly to the world of material nature, needs the repose of passivity; but the spirit can never indulge itself long in conscious indolence without risking the loss of spiritual power as well as moral dignity. Its true rest—we can not too often repeat it—is not the rest of inertia, but that which comes from an intercommuning with a higher world of thought and a higher sphere of spiritual life. This it finds in those great truths Christianity has brought down to us, and by the weekly exhibition of which, more than any thing else, our modern world is distinguished from the ancient.
The picture we have presented of the Sabbath-keeping laborer is no rare or fancy sketch. The socialist, indeed, ignores his existence. Such writers as Fourier, and Prudhom, and Louis Blanc, and Victor Hugo, and Martineau, know nothing about him. They see, and are determined to see, in the condition of the poor only a physical degradation, from which their own earthy and earthly-minded philosophy can alone relieve him. Nothing is more wholly inconceivable to a philanthropist of this class than what Chalmers styles "the charm of intercourse" with the lowly pious, or the moral sublime of that character—the Christian poor man. And yet it is neither rare nor strange. We make bold to affirm that it may be realized in almost every church in our city.
In this thought, too, do we find the surest test of all true social reforms. A dislike of the Sabbath, and especially of its religious observance, is an indication of their character that can not be mistaken. It is the Ithuriel's spear to detect every species of spurious philanthropy. We would not impeach the benevolent sincerity of these warm advocates of socialism. We would commend their zeal to the imitation of our Christian churches. But still it is for us a sufficient objection to the phalanx and the social commune that they know no Sabbath. Periods of festivity and relaxation they acknowledge, but no fixed days of holy spiritual rest, of serious thought, of soul-expanding and soul-invigorating meditation on the great things of another life. Radical as they boast to be, they present no recognition of that most radical truth, the ground of all real reforms, and so full of encouragement to the real reformer, that physical depression can not possibly continue for any length of time where there has been a true spiritual elevation—or, in other words, that this world can only be lifted from its sunken, miry social degradation by keeping strong and firmly fastened every chain that binds it to the world above.
To these ends it is not enough that each one should determine for himself the portion and proportion of his own Sabbatical times. "Six days shalt thou labor; but the seventh is the Sabbath of the Lord." We urge it not as Scriptural proof—which would be contrary to the leading design and method of our argument—but as illustrative of the importance of one recurring period for all, and of the benefits to be derived from a community of act and feeling in its observance. We need all the strength that can come from a common prejudice, if any should choose so to call it, in favor of certain stated and well-known times. In distinction from the profanity that would utterly deny a Sabbath, there is a false hyper-spiritualism that would make all seasons, all places, and all acts, alike holy—or, in its sentimental cant, every day a Sabbath, every work a worship, and every feeling a prayer. Now, besides destroying the radical sense of the word holy, this is in opposition alike to Scripture and to human experience. Both teach us that there must be (at least in our present state) alternations of the holy and the common, the spiritual and the worldly, and that each interest is periled, as well by their false fusion, as by that destruction of the true analogy which would cause the one to be out of all proportion to the other. A stated period, too, is required to give intensity to thought and warmth to devotion. The greatest pleasure of a truly devout mind, is in the idea of contemporary communion with others, and nothing is more repugnant to it than a proud reliance upon its own individual spirituality.
To give the day, then, all its rightful power over the soul, there is needed that hallowed character which can only come from what may be called a sacred conventionality. Every one who has been brought up in a religious community must feel the force of this, even if he does not understand its philosophy. In consequence of it, the Sabbath seems to differ, physically, as well as morally, from all other days. In its deep religiousness every thing puts on a changed appearance. Nature reposes in the embrace of a heavenly quietude. There seems to be a different air, a different sky; the clouds are more serene; the sun shines with a more placid glory. There is a holiness in the trees, in the waters, in the everlasting hills, such as the mind associates with no other period. Thousands have felt it, but never was it better described than in the lines of Leyden:
With silent awe I hail the sacred morn,
That scarcely wakes while all the fields are still;
A soothing calm on every breeze is borne,
A graver murmur echoes from the hill,
And softer sings the linnet from the thorn,
The sky-lark warbles in a tone less shrill—
Hail light serene! hail sacred Sabbath morn!
Or in those verses of Graham, which, if an imitation, are certainly an improvement—especially in the moral conception which forms the close of his entrancing picture:
Calmness seems throned on yon unmoving cloud,
The black-bird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tuned song; the lulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-sunk glen;
While from yon lowly roof whose curling smoke
O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals
The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.