Having thus effectually “borne testimony” and quenched the spirits of the juvenile members of the family, who, fully knowing what Sunday means to them, have learned experimentally that
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,”
he sits down gazing at his book, fancying, in some vague way, that he is doing God service (though how or to what end would seem indistinct, since, according to his most cherished doctrine, there is no merit whatever in good works). He hears with disgust the bell of the irreligious milkman, sees the unsanctified horse-car pass his door, the irreverent baker make his round, and notes the profane newsboy cry the Sunday papers. This last is the most afflictive dispensation of all, and the one against which he has most vainly and frequently petitioned, never thinking that, even on his own grounds, the real gravamen is in the papers of Monday morning, the work for which must necessarily be done on Sunday. Breakfast comes at length—eaten in solemn silence—the children being “hard up” for an apposite moral or religious observation, and fearful lest, should they
say anything, it might be something mundane. Nor can the mother help them to diminish the gloom of the occasion, having been herself furtively engaged in eking out the shortcomings of the servant in preparing the meal, and painfully aware that, according to the family scheme of orthodoxy, she has not been sanctifying the Sabbath. Family worship (on this day longer in the prayer than usual) adds in no way to the general cheerfulness. Each boy and girl, supplied with a Sunday-school book of the stereotyped pattern and contents, and given to understand the enormity of even the desire to take a walk on that day, longs in the inmost heart that the day were over. Church time comes, when, with a warning that they will be expected to answer on the text, the sermon, and an admonition against drowsiness, all are trooped off to meeting, the parents bringing up the rear. Then ensues an hour and a half of dreary listening to what most of them cannot, by the remotest possibility, comprehend. More than likely some of them may have been overcome by sleep; in which case even the negative pleasure of apathy is taken away, and its place supplied by a fearful looking-for of judgment, either by rebuke or castigation. The dinner is, in want of hilarity, a repetition of the breakfast; for no secular idea may be expressed, and the spirit does not move the younger branches, in any special degree, to an interest in the rather languid remarks of the paterfamilias upon the theological tendencies of the sermon; said observations being delivered in his Sunday tone, compared with which a gush of tears would be exhilarating. Books are retaken; no cheerful game or romp among the children;
no free play or interchange of ideas between the parents. To write a letter would be a crying sin for the father. It is a heinous fault when his mind spontaneously wanders to that note of his due on Wednesday next; and although the mother had the interesting and enlivening lucubrations of Edwards on the Will in her hands, yet there is much reason to believe that the washing of to-morrow has more than once intervened to prove Edwards in the right; not to mention the occasion on which she caught herself recalling the trimmings of Mrs. X—‘s bonnet in the front pew. No visit from, none to, any family of their acquaintance; either would be a sin against the sanctity of the Sabbath! We need not visit the Sunday-school, to which the superstitious folly of the parents, fear of their fellow church-members, the Mrs. Grundyism of sects, or an unfounded belief that something valuable is learned there compels the parents to send their children. Probably most of our readers know how these things are managed; what is the causa causativa of a Sunday-school superintendent; what is the calibre of the young men who teach, and the object which takes them there. We all, of course, know and recognize the high moral aims as well as the literary and theological ability of the misses who form the grand staff of instructors in those institutions! But we must not be diverted from our sabbatarian Sunday.
Then follows a dreary tea, meeting and sermonizing again, from which two of the children, having gone hopelessly asleep soon after the exordium, are brought home in a dazed state, nor does a protracted bout of family worship much assist in arousing them therefrom; and then to bed! We suppose the father
to be honest. Many such men are. We doubt not but many of the Puritans were sincere, and slit the ears of the Quakers with the serenity of good men engaged in the performance of a virtuous action. But let us put the question squarely to reasonable men: Will it be a matter of surprise if this man’s children, when they grow up, loathe and abhor all religion, thinking it all of a piece with that in which they were brought up—if they turn out, in short, what the descendants of the Puritans have become? Why, the writer is acquainted with a school, kept by a well-meaning man, in which, by tedious Bible-reading, hymn-singing, and long-winded prayers at the school opening and closing, the teacher is unwittingly the cause of more of what he would consider sacrilege, in an hour, than is heard of profanity among all the hackmen of New York on the longest day of the year; and his great object, which is to bring up Presbyterians, is thereby rendered as utterly futile as though he were an ingenious man doing his utmost to make infidels of them.
Curiously enough, people of this kind (we refer to the strict keeping of Sunday) are never satisfied with the liberty they enjoy (and which nobody wishes to curtail) of observing the day just as rigorously as they may desire. Not at all. There is no happiness or ease of spirit for them until by legal pains and penalties they can force you, me, and all their neighbors to their own peculiar way of thinking and acting. This was well illustrated by the Scotchman who, in telling how pious a people he had got among, said: “Last Sabbath, joost as the kirk was skailin’, there was a drover chiel comin’ alang the road,
whustlin’ an’ lookin’ as happy as gin it was the middle o’ the week. Weel, sir, oor lads is a God-fearin’ set o’ lads, an’ they wur joost comin’ oot o’ kirk. Od! they yokit on him, an’ amaist kilt him.” This is, after all, the point of the matter. We neither can, by right, ought to have, nor have we any objection to any observance of the Sunday, however rigid or however much (to our mind) it may seem strained, overdone, and even ludicrous. That is the affair of the man himself, and should lie between his own conscience and his Creator, where we have no right to interfere. But we all want and have a right to the same privilege for own conviction, or want of conviction, that we cheerfully accord to him. Now, this such people as he never will accord to us so long as they can possibly prevent it. They never have done so in the history of the world, and, taking experience for our guide, we have no reason to suppose that they ever will. They prate largely of liberty of conscience, but that phrase means in their mouth liberty to think as you please, so long as you think with them. Though he is my neighbor, may not my daughter play the piano on Sunday on account of his tender conscience? Must I not, because he fancies the Sunday thereby desecrated, practise the flute? I do not attempt to interfere with his drone of family worship; why should he be eternally petitioning to stop the delivery of my letters, or to prevent my going down-town in the horse-cars on that day? I insist that he has as much as he is called on to do in attending to the affairs of his own conscience; that the contract is quite as much as he can conveniently and creditably get through with