To answer these questions, it is necessary to go back a little into the history of the Hebrew Sabbath and the Christian Sunday. However, it is not needful to go much into detail, or consume this precious hour in a learned discussion on antiquarian matters which concern none but scholars.
With the Hebrews the actual observance of Sat.u.r.day--the Sabbath--as a day rest, seems to be of pretty late origin. The first mention of it in authentic Hebrew history, as actually observed, occurs about two hundred years after Samuel, and about six hundred after Moses--a little less than nine hundred before Christ. The pa.s.sage is found in 2 Kings 4: 23; a child had died, as the narrative relates--the mother wished to send for Elisha, "the man of G.o.d." Her husband objects, saying, "Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day? it is neither new moon nor Sabbath." This connection with the new moon is significant. In the earlier historical books of Joshua, Judges, the two books of Samuel, and the first of Kings, there is no mention of the Sabbath, not the least allusion to it.
This seems to have been the origin of its observance:--The worship of one G.o.d, with the distinctive name Jehovah, gradually got established in the Hebrew nation; for this they seem largely indebted to Moses.
Gradually this worship of Jehovah became connected with a body of priests, who were regularly organized at length, and claimed descent from Levi--some of them from Aaron, his celebrated descendant, the elder brother of Moses. The rise of the Levitical priesthood is remarkable, and easily traced in the Old Testament. Some books are entirely dest.i.tute of a Levitical spirit, such as Genesis and Judges; others are filled with it, as Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the books of Chronicles.
With the priesthood it seems there came the observance of certain days for religious or festal purposes--New Moon days, Full Moon days, and the like. These seem to have been derived from the nations about them, with whom the moon--deified as Astarte, the Queen and Mother of Heaven, and under other names--was long an object of worship. The observance of those days points back to the period when Fetichism, the worship of Nature, was the prominent form of religion. With the other days of religious observance came the seventh day, called the Sabbath. No one knows its true historical origin. The statement respecting its origin, in the fourth commandment, and elsewhere in the Old Testament, can hardly be accepted as literally true by any one in this century. No scientific man, in the present stage of philosophic inquiry, will believe that G.o.d created the universe in six days, and then rested on the seventh. Did other nations observe this day before the Hebrews; was it also connected with some Fetichistic form of worship; what was the historical event which led to the selection of that day in special? This it is easy to ask, but perhaps not possible to answer. These are curious questions; they are of little practical importance to us at this moment.
After the Hebrew inst.i.tutions of religion got fixed--the worship of Jehovah, the Levitical priesthood, and the peculiar forms of sacrifice--it became common to refer their origin back to the time of Moses, who lived fourteen or fifteen hundred years before Christ. Since few memorials from his age have come down to us, it is plain we can know little of him. But from the impression which his character left on his nation, and through them on the whole world; from the myths so early connected with his name, it seems pretty clear that he was one of the greatest and most extraordinary men that ever lived. Mankind seldom tell great things of little men. It is difficult to say what share he had in making the laws of the Hebrew nation which are commonly referred to him,--and, as it is popularly taught, revealed to him directly by Jehovah. Perhaps we are not safe in referring to him even the whole of the ten commandments; surely not in any one of their present forms.[3]
Was the Sabbath observed as a day of rest before Moses? Was its observance enforced by him? Was it even known to him? These questions are not easily answered. This is only certain: from the time of Moses to that of Jehoram, a period of about six hundred years, there is no historical mention of its observance, not the least allusion to it. Yet we have doc.u.ments which treat of that period,--the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and the Kings,--some of them historical doc.u.ments, which go into the minute detail of the national peculiarities, and were evidently written with a good deal of concern for strict integrity and truth; they refer to the national rite of circ.u.mcision. Now, if the Sabbath had been observed during that period, it is difficult to believe it would have received no pa.s.sing notice in those historical books. But not only is there no mention of it therein, none even in the times of David and Solomon, who favored the priesthood so strongly; but in the book of Chronicles, the most Levitical book in the Bible, at a date more than two hundred years later than the time of Jehoram, it is distinctly declared that the Sabbath had not been kept for nearly five hundred years.[4] But even if this statement is true, which is scarcely probable, it is plain from the frequent mention of the Sabbath in the writings of the latter part of that period--Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others--that the inst.i.tution was one well known and highly regarded by religious men. After the return from the Babylonian exile, it seems to have been kept with considerable rigor; this we learn from the book of Nehemiah.
The Hebrew law, as it is contained in the Pentateuch, is a singular mixture of conflicting statutes, evidently belonging to different ages, many of them wholly unsuitable to the condition of the people when the laws are alleged to have been given. However, they are all referred back to the time of Moses in the Pentateuch itself, and by the popular theology at the present day. In the law the command is given to keep the seventh day as a day of rest, and that command is referred distinctly to Jehovah himself. The reason is given for choosing that day:--"For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed;" the Sabbath, therefore, was to be kept in commemoration of the fact, that after Jehovah had spent the week in creating the world, "he rested and was refreshed." It was to be a day of rest for master and slave, for man and beast. A special sacrifice was offered on that day, in addition to the usual ceremonies, but no provision was made for the religious instruction of the people.
The Sabbath was what its Hebrew name implies, a rest from all labor. The law, in general terms, forbade all work; but, not content with that, it descends to minute details, specifically prohibiting by statute the gathering or preparation of food on the Sabbath, even of food to be consumed on that day itself; the lighting of a fire, or the removal from one"s place; and, by a decision where the statute did not apply, forbade the gathering of sticks of wood. The punishment for violating the Sabbath in general, or in any one of these particulars, was death: "Whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death." However, amus.e.m.e.nt was not prohibited, nor eating and drinking, only work. The command, "Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day," at a later period, was liberally interpreted, and a man was allowed to go two thousand cubits, a Sabbath-day"s journey.
Long after the time of Moses, some of the Hebrews returned from exile amongst a more civilized and refined people. It seems probable that only the stricter portion returned and established themselves in the land of their fathers. Nehemiah, their leader, enforced the observance of the Sabbath with a strictness and rigor of which earlier times afford no evidence. But the nation was not content with making it a day of idleness. They established synagogues, where the people freely a.s.sembled on the Sabbath and other public days, for religious instruction, and thus founded an excellent inst.i.tution which has shown itself fruitful of good results. So far as I know, that is the earliest instance on record of provision being made for the regular religious instruction of the whole people. Experience has shown its value, and now all the most highly civilized nations of the earth have established similar inst.i.tutions. However, in the synagogues the business of religious instruction was not at all in the hands of the priests, but in those of the people, acting in their primary character without regard to Levitical establishments. A priest, as such, is never an instructor of the people; he is to go through his ritual, not beyond it.
It is easy to learn from the New Testament what were the current opinions about the Sabbath in the time of Christ. It was unlawful to gather a head of wheat on the Sabbath, as a man walked through the fields; it was unlawful to cure a sick man, though that cure could be effected by a touch or a word; unlawful for a man to walk home and carry the light cushion on which he had lain. What was unlawful was reckoned wicked also; for what is a crime in the eyes of the priest, he commonly pretends is likewise a sin before the eyes of G.o.d. Yet it was not unlawful to eat, drink, and be merry on the Sabbath; nor to lift a sheep out of the ditch; nor to quarrel with a man who came to deliver mankind from their worst enemies. It was lawful to perform the rite of circ.u.mcision on the Sabbath, but unlawful to cure a man of any sickness.
Jesus once placed these two, the allowing of that ritual mutilation and the prohibition of the humane act of curing the sick on the Sabbath, in ridiculous contrast. In the fourth gospel he goes further, and actually denies the alleged ground for the original inst.i.tution of the Sabbath; he denies that G.o.d had ever ceased from his work, or rested: "My father worketh hitherto."[5] However, in effecting these cures he committed a capital offence; the Pharisees so regarded it, and took measures to insure his punishment. It does not appear that they were illegal measures. It is probable they took regular and legal means to bring him to condign punishment as a Sabbath-breaker. He escaped by flight.
Such was the Sabbath with the Hebrews, such the recorded opinion of Jesus concerning it. There were also other days in which labor was forbidden, but with them we have nothing to do at present. Jesus taught piety and goodness without the Hebrew limitations; of course, then, the new wine of Christianity could not be put into the old bottles of the Jews. Their fast days and Sabbath days, their rites and forms, were not for him.
Now, not long after the death of Christ, his followers became gradually divided into two parties. First, there were the Jewish Christians; that was the oldest portion, the old school of Christians. They are mentioned in ecclesiastical history as the Ebionites, Nazarines, and under yet other names. Peter and James were the great men in that division of the early Christians. Matthew, and the author of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, were their evangelists. The church at Jerusalem was their strong-hold. They kept the whole Hebrew law; all its burdensome ritual, its circ.u.mcision and its sacrifices, its new-moon days and its full-moon days, Sabbath, fasts, and feasts; the first fifteen bishops of the church at Jerusalem were circ.u.mcised Jews. It seems to me they misunderstood Jesus fatally; counting him nothing but the Messiah of the Old Testament, and Christianity, therefore, nothing but Judaism brightened up and restored to its original purity.
I have often mentioned how strongly Matthew, taking him for the author of the first gospel, favors this way of thinking. He represents Jesus as commanding his disciples to observe all the Mosaic law, as the Pharisees interpreted that law,[6] though such a command is utterly inconsistent with the general spirit of Christ"s teachings, and even with his plain declaration, as preserved in other parts of the same gospel. It is worthy of note, that this command is peculiar to Matthew. But there is another instance of the same Jewish tendency, though not so obvious at first sight. Matthew represents Jesus as saying, "The Son of man," that is, the Messiah, "is Lord even of the Sabbath day." Accordingly, he is competent to expound the law correctly, and determine what is lawful to do on that day. In Matthew, therefore, Jesus, in his character of Messiah, is represented as giving a judicial opinion, and ruling that it "is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." Now, Mark and Luke represent it a little different. In Mark, Jesus himself declares that "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Matthew entirely omits that remarkable saying. According to Mark, Jesus declares in general terms, that man is of more consequence than the observance of the Sabbath, while Matthew only considers that the Messiah is "Lord of the Sabbath day." The cause of this diversity is quite plain. Matthew was a Jewish Christian, and thought Christianity was nothing but restored Judaism.
The other party may be called liberal Christians, though they must not be confounded with the party which now bears that name. They were the new school of the early Christians. They rejected the Hebrew law, so far as it did not rest on human nature, and considered that Christianity was a new thing; Christ, not a mere Jew, but a universal man, who had thrown down the wall of part.i.tion between Jews and Gentiles. All the old, artificial distinctions, therefore, were done away with at once. Paul was the head of the liberal party among the primitive Christians. He was considered a heretic; and though he was more efficient than any of the other early preachers of Christianity, yet the author of the Apocalypse thought him not worthy of a place in the foundation of the new Jerusalem, which rests on the twelve apostles.[7] The fourth gospel with peculiarities of its own, is written wholly in the interest of this party; James is not mentioned in it at all, and Peter plays but quite a subordinate part, and is thrown into the shade by John. The disciples are spoken of as often misunderstanding their great Teacher. These peculiarities cannot be considered as accidental; they are monuments of the controversy then going on between the two parties. Paul stood in direct opposition to the Jewish Christians. This is plain from the epistle to the Galatians, in which the heads of the rival sects appear very unlike the description given of them in the book of Acts. The observance of Jewish sacred days was one of the subjects of controversy.
Let us look only at the matter of the Sabbath, as it came in question between the two parties. Paul exalts Christ far above the Messianic predictions of the Old Testament, calling him an image of the invisible G.o.d, and declaring that all the fulness of divinity dwells in him, and adds, that he had annulled the old Hebrew law. "Therefore," says Paul, "let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath."[8] Here he distinctly states the issue between the two Christian sects. Elsewhere he speaks of the Jewish party, as men that "would pervert the gospel of Christ," by teaching that a man was "justified by the works of the law;" that is, by a minute observance of the Hebrew ritual.[9] Paul rejects the authority of the Old Testament. The law of Moses was but a schoolmaster"s servant, to bring us to Christ; man had come to Christ, and needed that servant no longer; the law was a taskmaster and guardian set over man in his minority, now he had come of age, and was free; the law was a shadow of good things, and they had come; it was a law of sin and death, which no man could bear, and now the law of the spirit of life, as revealed by Jesus Christ, had made men free from the law of sin and death. Such was the work of the glorious gospel of the blessed G.o.d. Thus sweeping off the authority of the old law in general, he proceeds to particulars: he rejects circ.u.mcision, and the offering of sacrifices; rejects the distinction of nations as Jew and Gentile; the distinction of meats as clean and unclean, and all distinction of days, as holy and not holy. If one man thought one day holier than another day; if another man thought all days equally holy, he would have each man true to his conviction, but not seek to impose that conviction on his brothers. Such was Paul"s opinion of "The law of Moses;" such, of the Sabbath; the Christians were not "subject to ordinances."
Let us come now to the common practice of the early Christians. The apostles went about and preached Christianity, as they severally understood it. They spoke as they found opportunity; on the Sabbath to the Jews in the synagogues, and on other days, as they found time and hearers. It does not appear from the New Testament, that they limited themselves to any particular day; they were missionaries, some of them remained but a little while in a place, making the most of their time.
It seems that the early Christians, who lived in large towns, met every day for religious purposes. But as that would be found inconvenient, one day came to be regarded as the regular time of their meetings. The Jewish Christians observed the Sabbath with pharisaic rigor, while the liberal Christians neglected it. But both parties of Christians observed, at length, the first day of the week as a peculiar day. No one knows when this observance of the Sunday began; it is difficult to find proof in the New Testament, that the apostles regarded it as a peculiar day; it seems plain that Paul did not. But it is certain that in the second century after Jesus, the Christians in general did so regard it, and perhaps all of them.
Why was the Sunday chosen as the regular day for religious meeting? It was regarded as the day on which Jesus rose from the dead; and, following the mythical account in Genesis, it was the day on which G.o.d began the creation, and actually created the light. Here there were two reasons for the selection of that day; both are frequently mentioned by the early Christian writers. Sunday, therefore, was to them a symbol of the new creation, and of the light that had come into the world. The liberal Christians, in separating from the Jewish Sabbath, would naturally exalt the new religious day. Athanasius, I think, is the first who ascribes a divine origin to the inst.i.tution of Sunday. He says, "The Lord changed this day from the Sabbath to the Sunday;" but Athanasius lived three centuries after Christ, and seems to have known little about the matter.
The officers and the order of services in the churches on the Sunday seem derived from the usages of the Jewish synagogues. The Sunday was thus observed: the people came together in the morning; the exercises consisted of readings from the Old Testament and such writings of the Christians as the a.s.sembly saw fit to have read to them. In respect to these writings there was a wide difference in the different churches, some accepting more and others less. The overseer, or bishop, made an address, perhaps an exposition of the pa.s.sage of Scripture. Prayers were said and hymns chanted; the Lord"s supper was celebrated. The form no doubt differed, and widely, too, in different places. It was not the form of servitude but the spirit of freedom, they observed. But all these things were done, likewise, on other days; the Lord"s supper could be celebrated on any day, and is on every day by the Catholic church, even now; for the Catholics have been true to the early practices in more points than the Protestants are willing to admit. In some places it is certain there was a "communion" every day. Sunday was regarded holy by the early Christians, just as certain festivals are regarded holy by the Catholics, the Episcopalians, and the Lutherans, at this day; as the New Englanders regard Thanksgiving day as holy. Other days, likewise, were regarded as holy; were used in the same manner as the Sunday. Such days were observed in honor of particular events in the life of Jesus, or in honor of saints and martyrs, or they were days consecrated by older festivals belonging to the more ancient forms of religion. In the Catholic church such days are still numerous. It is only the Puritans who have completely rejected them, and they have been obliged to subst.i.tute new ones in their place. However, there was one peculiarity of the Sunday which distinguished it from most or all other days. It was a day of religious rejoicing. On other days the Christians knelt in prayer; on the Sunday they stood up on joyful feet, for light had come into the world. Sunday was a day of gladness and rejoicing. The early Christians had many fasts; they were commonly held on Wednesdays and Fridays, often on Sat.u.r.day also, the more completely to get rid of the Jewish superst.i.tion which consecrated that day; but on Sunday there must be no fast. He would be a heretic who should fast on Sunday. It is strictly forbidden in the "canons of the apostles;" a clergyman must be degraded and a layman excommunicated, for the offence. Says St.
Ignatius, in the second century, if the epistle be genuine, "Every lover of Christ feasts on the Lord"s day." "We deem it wicked," says Tertullian in the third century, "to fast on the Sunday, or to pray on our knees." "Oh," says St. Jerome, "that we could fast on the Sunday, as Paul did and they that were with him." St. Ambrose says, the "Manichees were d.a.m.ned for fasting on the Lord"s day." At this day the Catholic church allows no fast on Sunday, save the Sunday before the crucifixion; even Lent ceases on that day.
It does not appear that labor ceased on Sunday, in the earliest age of Christianity. But when Sunday became the regular and most important day for holding religious meetings, less labor must of course be performed on that day. At length it became common in some places to abstain from ordinary work on the Sunday. It is not easy to say how early this was brought about. But after Christianity had become "respectable," and found its way to the ranks of the wealthy, cultivated and powerful, laws got enacted in its favor. Now, the Romans, like all other ancient nations, had certain festal days in which it was not thought proper to labor unless work was pressing. It was disreputable to continue common labor on such days without an urgent reason; they were pretty numerous in the Roman calendar. Courts did not sit on those days; no public business was transacted. They were observed as Christmas and the more important saints" days in Catholic countries; as Thanksgiving day and the Fourth of July with us. In the year three hundred and twenty-one, Constantine, the first Christian emperor of Rome, placed Sunday among their ferial days. This was perhaps the first legislative action concerning the day. The statute forbids labor in towns, but expressly excludes all prohibition of field-labor in the country.[10] About three hundred and sixty-six or seven, the Council of Laodicea decreed that Christians "ought not to Judaize and be idle on the Sabbath, but to work on that day; especially observing the Lord"s day, and if it is possible, as Christians, resting from labor." Afterwards the Emperor Theodosius forbade certain public games on Sunday, Christmas, Epiphany, and the whole time from Easter to Pentecost. Justinian likewise forbade theatrical exhibitions, races in the circus, and the fights of wild beasts, on Sunday, under severe penalties. This was done in order that the religious services of the Christians might not be disturbed. By his laws the Sunday continued to be a day in which public business was not to be transacted. But the Christmas days, the fifteen days of Easter, and numerous other days previously observed by Christians or pagans, were put in the same cla.s.s by the law. All this it seems was done from no superst.i.tious notions respecting those days, but for the sake of public utility and convenience. However, the rigor of the Jewish Sabbatical laws was by no means followed. Labors of love, _opera caritatis_, were considered as suitable business for those days. The very statute of Theodosius recommended the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves on Sunday. All impediments to their liberation were removed on that day, and though judicial proceedings in all other matters were forbidden on Sunday, an exception was expressly made in favor of emanc.i.p.ating slaves.
This statute was preserved in the code of Justinian.[11] All these laws go to show that there were similar customs previously established among the Christians, without the aid of legislation.
About the middle of the sixth century the Council of Orleans forbade labor in the fields, though it did not forbid travelling with cattle and oxen, the preparation of food, or any work necessary to the cleanliness of the house or the person--declaring that rigors of that sort belong more to a Jewish than to a Christian observance of the day. That, I think, is the earliest ecclesiastical decree which has come down to us forbidding field-labor in the country; a decree unknown till five hundred and thirty-eight years after Christ. But before that, in the year three hundred and thirteen, the Council of Elvira in Spain decreed, that if any one in a city absented himself three Sundays consecutively from the church, he should be suspended from communion for a short time. Such a regulation, however, was founded purely on considerations of public utility. Many church establishments have thought it necessary to protect themselves from desertion by similar penal laws.
In Catholic countries, at the present day, the morning of Sunday is appropriated to public worship, the people flocking to church. But the afternoon and evening are devoted to society, to amus.e.m.e.nt of various kinds. Nothing appears sombre, but every thing has a festive air; even the theatres are open. Sunday is like Christmas, or a Thanksgiving day in Boston, only the festive demonstrations are more public. It is so in the Protestant countries on the continent of Europe. Work is suspended, public and private, except what is necessary for the observance of the day; public lectures are suspended; public libraries closed; but galleries of paintings and statues are thrown open and crowded; the public walks are thronged. In Southern Germany, and, doubtless, elsewhere, young men and women have I seen in summer, of a Sunday afternoon, dancing on the green, the clergyman, Protestant or Catholic, looking on and enjoying the cheerfulness of the young people. Americans think their mode of keeping Sunday is unholy; they, that ours is Jewish and pharisaical. In Paris, sometimes, courses of scientific lectures are delivered after the hours of religious services, to men who are busy during the week with other cares, and who gladly take the hours of their only leisure day to gain a little intellectual instruction.
When England was a Catholic country, Catholic notions of Sunday of course prevailed. Labor was suspended; there was service in the churches, and afterwards there were sports for the people, but they were attended with quarrelling, noise, uproar, and continual drunkenness. It was so after the Reformation. In the time of Elizabeth, the laws forbade labor except in time of harvest, when it was thought right to work, if need were, and "save the thing that G.o.d hath sent." Some of the Protestants wished to reform those disorders, and convert the Sunday to a higher use. The government, and sometimes the superior clergy, for a long time interfered to prevent the reform, often to protect the abuse.
The "Book of Sports," appointed to be read in churches, is well known to us from the just indignation with which it filled our fathers.
Now, it is plain, that in England, before the Reformation, the Sunday was not appropriated to its highest use; not to the highest interests of mankind; no, not to the highest concerns, which the people, at that time, were capable of appreciating. The attempts, made then and subsequently, by government, to enforce the observance of the day, for purposes not the highest, led to a fearful reaction; that to other and counter reactions. The ill consequences of those movements have not yet ceased on either side of the ocean.
The Puritans represented the spirit of reaction against ecclesiastical and other abuses of their time, and the age before them. Let me do these men no injustice. I honor the heroic virtues of our fathers not less because I see their faults; see the cause of their faults, and the occasion which demanded such masculine and terrible virtues as the Puritans unquestionably possessed. I speak only of their doctrine of the Sunday. They were driven from one extreme to the other, for oppression makes wise men mad. They took mainly the notions of the Sabbath, which belong to the later portions of the Old Testament; they interpreted them with the most pharisaical rigor, and then applied them to the Sunday.
Did they find no warrant for that rigor in the New Testament? they found enough in the Old; enough in their own character, and their consequent notions of G.o.d. They thus introduced a set of ideas respecting the Sunday, which the Christian church had never known before, and rigidly enforced an observance thereof utterly foreign both to the letter and spirit of the New Testament. They made Sunday a terrible day; a day of fear, and of fasting, and of trembling under the terrors of the Lord.
They even called it by the Hebrew name--the Sabbath. The Catholics had said it was not safe to trust the Scriptures in the hands of the people, for an inspired Word needed an expositor also inspired. The abuse which the Puritans made of the Bible by their notions of the Sunday, seemed a fulfilment of the Catholic prophecy. But the Catholics did not see what is plain to all men now--that this very abuse of Sunday and Scripture was only the reaction against other abuses, ancient, venerated, and enforced by the Catholic church itself.
Every sect has some inst.i.tution which is the symbol of its religious consciousness, though not devised for that purpose. With the early Christians, it was their love-feasts and communion; with the Catholics, it is their gorgeous ritual with its ancient date and divine pretensions--a ritual so imposing to many; with the Quakers, who scorn all that is symbolic, the symbol equally appears in the plain dress and the plain speech, the broad brim, and _thee_ and _thou_. With the Puritans, this symbol was the Sabbath, not the Sunday. Their Sabbath was like themselves, austere, inflexible as their "divine decrees;" not human and of man, but Hebrew and of the Jews, stern, cold, and sad.
The Puritans were possessed with the sentiment of fear before G.o.d; they had ideas a.n.a.logous to that sentiment, and wrought out actions akin to those ideas. They brought to America their ideas and sentiments. Behold the effect of their actions. Let us walk reverently backward, with averted eyes to cover up their folly, their shame, and their sin, as they could not walk to conceal the folly of their progenitors. The Puritans are the fathers of New England and her descendant States; the fathers of the American idea; of most things in America that are good; surely, of most that is best. They seem made on purpose for their work of conquering a wilderness and founding a State. It is not with gentle hands, not with the dalliance of effeminate fingers, that such a task is done. The work required energy the most masculine, in heart, head, and hands. None but the Puritans could have done such a work. They could fast as no men; none could work like them; none preach; none pray; none could fight as they fought. They have left a most precious inheritance to men who have the same greatness of soul, but have fallen on happier times. Yet this inheritance is fatal to mere imitators, who will go on planting of vineyards, where the first planter fell intoxicated with the fruit of his own toil. This inheritance is dangerous to men who will be no wiser than their ancestors. Let us honor the good deeds of our fathers; and not eat, but reverently bury their honored bones.
The Puritans represented the natural reaction of mankind against old inst.i.tutions that were absurd or tyrannical. The Catholic church had multiplied feast days to an extreme, and taken unnecessary pains to promote fun and frolic. The Puritans would have none of the saints" days in their calendar; thought sport was wicked; cut down Maypoles, and punished a man who kept Christmas after the old fashion. The Catholic church had neglected her golden opportunities for giving the people moral and religious instruction; had quite too much neglected public prayer and preaching, but relied mainly on sensuous instruments--architecture, painting, music. In revenge, the Puritan had a meeting-house as plain as boards could make it; tore the pictures to pieces; thought an organ "was not of G.o.d," and had sermons long and numerous, and prayers full of earnestness, zeal, piety, and faith, in short, possessed of all desirable things except an end. Did the Catholics forbid the people the Bible, emphatically the book of the people--the Puritan would read no other book; called his children Hebrew names, and reenacted "the laws of G.o.d" in the Old Testament, "until we can make better." Did Henry and Elizabeth underrate the people and overvalue the monarchy, nature had her vengeance for that abuse, and the Puritan taught the world that kings, also, had a joint in their necks.
The Puritans went to the extreme in many things: in their contempt for amus.e.m.e.nts, for what was graceful in man or beautiful in woman; in their scorn of art, of elegant literature, even of music; in their general condemnation of the past, from which they would preserve little excepting what was Hebrew, which, of course, they over-honored as much as they undervalued all the rest. In their notions respecting the Sunday they went to the same extreme. The general reason is obvious. They wished to avoid old abuses, and thought they were not out of the water till they were in the fire. But there was a special reason, also: the English are the most empirical of all nations. They love a fact more than an idea, and often cling to an historical precedent rather than obey a great truth which transcends all precedents. The national tendency to external things, perhaps, helped lead them to these peculiar notions of the Sabbath. The precedent they found in "The chosen people,"
and established, as they thought, by G.o.d himself.
The ideas of the Puritans respecting the Sunday are still cherished in the popular theology of New England. There is one party in our churches possessed of many excellences, which has always had the merit of speaking out fully what it thinks and feels. At this day that party still represents the Puritanic opinions about the Sunday, though a little modified. They teach that G.o.d created the world in six days, and rested the seventh; that he commanded mankind, also, to rest on that day; commanded a man to be stoned to death for picking up sticks of a Sat.u.r.day; that by divine authority the first day of the week was subst.i.tuted for the seventh, and therefore that it is the religious duty of all men to rest from work on that day, for the Hebrew law of the Sabbath is binding on Christians for ever. It is maintained that abstinence from work on Sunday is as much a religious duty as abstinence from theft or hatred; that the day must be exclusively devoted to religion, in the technical sense of that word, to public or private worship, to religious reading, thought, or conversation. To attend church on that day is thought to be a good in itself, though it should lead to no further good, and therefore a duty as imperative as the duty of loving man and G.o.d. The preacher may not edify, still the duty of attending to his ministration of the word remains the same; for the attendance is a good in itself. It is taught that work, that amus.e.m.e.nt, common conversation, the reading of a book not technically religious, is a sin, just as clearly a sin as theft or hatred, though perhaps not so great. Writing a letter, even, is denounced as a sin, though the letter be written for the purpose of arresting the progress of a war, and securing life and freedom to millions of men.
Now, it is very plain that such ideas are not consistent with the truth.
In the language of the church, they are a heresy. As we learn the facts of the case we must give up such ideas concerning the Sunday. It is like any other day. Christianity knows no cla.s.ses of days, as holy or profane; all days are the Lord"s days, all time holy time.
But then comes the other question, What is the best use to be made of the day; the use most conducive to the highest interests of mankind?
Will it be most profitable to "give up the Sunday," to use it as the Catholics do, as the Puritans did, or to adopt some other method? To answer these questions fairly, let us look and see the effects of the present notions about the Sunday, and the stricter mode of observing it here in New England. The experience of two hundred years is worth looking at. Let us look at the good effects first.
The good and evil of any age are commonly bound so closely together, that in plucking up the tares, there is danger lest the wheat also be uprooted, at least trodden down. In America, especially in New England, every thing is intense, with of course a tendency to extravagance, to fanaticism. Look at some of the most obvious signs of that intensity. No conservatism in the world is so bigoted as American conservatism; no democracy so intense. Nowhere else can you find such thorough-going defenders of the existing state of things, social, ecclesiastical, civil; such defenders of drunkenness, ignorance, superst.i.tion, slavery, and war; nowhere such radical enemies to the existing state of things; such foes of drunkenness, ignorance, superst.i.tion, slavery, and war. No "Revivals of religion" are like the American; none of old were like these. See how the American soldiers fight; how the American men will work. Puritanism was intense enough in England; in the New World it was yet more so. Our fathers were intense Calvinists; more Calvinistic than Calvin--they became Hopkinsian. They hated the Pope; kings and bishops were their aversion. They feared G.o.d. Did they love him--love him as much? They had an intense religious activity, but they had another intensity. It is better that we should say it, rather than men who do not honor them. That intensity of action, when turned towards material things, or, as they called them, "carnal things," needed some powerful check. It was found in their bigotry and superst.i.tion. In such an age as theirs, when the Reformation broke down all the ordinary restraints of society, and rent asunder the golden ties which bound man to the past; when the Anglican church ended in fire, and the English monarchy in blood; when men full of piety thanked G.o.d for the fire and the bloodshed, and felt the wrongs of a thousand years driving them almost to madness--what was there to keep such men within bounds, and restrain them from the wildest license and unbridled anarchy? Nothing but superst.i.tion; nothing short of fear of h.e.l.l. They broke down the monarchy; they trod the church under their feet. She who had once been counted as the queen and mother of society, was now to be regarded only as the Apocalyptical woman in scarlet, the mother of abominations, bride of the devil, and queen of h.e.l.l. The Old Testament wrought on the minds of these men like a charm, to stimulate and to soothe. "One day," said they, "is made holy by G.o.d; in it shall no work be done by man or beast, or thing inanimate. On that day all must attend church as an act of religion." Here, then, was a bar extending across the stream of worldliness, filling one seventh part of its channel, wide and deep, and wonderfully interrupting its whelming tide. I admire the divine skill which compounds the gases in the air; which balances centripetal and centrifugal forces into harmonious proportions,--those fair ellipses in the unseen air; but still more marvellous is that same skill, diviner now, which compounds the folly and the wisdom of mankind; balances centripetal and centrifugal forces here, stilling the noise of kings and the tumult of the people, making their wrath to serve him, and the remnant thereof restraining forever.
On Sunday, master and man, the slave stolen from the wilderness, the servant--a Christian man bought from some Christian conqueror,--must cease from their work. Did the covetous, the cruel, the strong, oppress the weak for six days, the Sabbath said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further." The servant was free from his master, and the weary was at rest. The plough stood still in the furrow; the sheaf lay neglected in the field; the horse and the ox enjoyed their master"s Sabbath of rest, all heedless of the divine decrees, of election or reprobation, yet not the less watched over by that dear Providence which numbered the hairs of the head, and overruled the falling of a sparrow for the sparrow"s good. All must attend church, master and man, rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed. Good things and great things got read out of the Bible, it was the book of the people, the New Testament, written much of it in the interest of all mankind, with special emphasis laid on the rights of the weak and the duties of the strong. Good things got said in sermon and in prayer. The speakers must think, the hearers think, as well as tremble. Begin to think in a circle narrow as a lady"s ring, or the a.s.sembly"s Catechism, you will think out; for thought, like all movement, tends to the right line. Calvinism has always bred thinkers, and when barbarism was the first danger was perhaps the only thing which could do it. Calvinism, too, has always shown itself in favor of popular liberty to a certain degree, and though it stops far short of the mark, yet goes far beyond the Catholic or Episcopalian.
Sunday, thus enforced by superst.i.tion, has yet been the education-day of New England; the national school-time for the culture of man"s highest powers; therein have the clergy been our educators, and done a vast service which mankind will not soon forget. It was good seed they sowed on this soil of the New World; the harvest is proof of that. They builded wiser than they knew. Their unconscious hands constructed the thought of G.o.d. Even their superst.i.tion and bigotry did much to preserve church and clergy to us; much also to educate and develop the highest powers of man. But for that superst.i.tion we might have seen the same anarchy, the same unbridled license in the seventeenth century, which we saw in the eighteenth, as a consequence of a similar revolution, a similar reaction; only it would have been carried out with the intensity of that most masculine and earnest race of men. How much further English atrocities would have gone than the French did go; how long it would have taken mankind, by their proper motion, to reascend from a fall so adverse and so low, I cannot tell. I see what saved them from the plunge.
True, the Sunday was not what it should be, more than the week; preaching was not what it should be, more than practice. But without that Sunday, and without that preaching, New England would have been a quite different land; America another nation altogether; the world by no means so far advanced as now. New England with her descendants has always been the superior portion of America. I flatter no man"s prejudice, but speak a plain truth. She is superior in intelligence, in morality--that is too plain for proof. The prime cause of that superiority must be sought in the character of the fathers of New England; but a secondary and most powerful cause is to be found also in those two inst.i.tutions--Sunday and preaching. Why is it that all great movements, from the American Revolution down to anti-slavery, have begun here? Why is it that education societies, missionary societies, Bible societies, and all the movements for the advance of mankind, begin here?
Why, it is no more an accident than the rising of the tide. Find much of the cause in the superior character, and therefore in the superior aims of the forefathers, much also will be found due to this--Once in the week they paused from all work; they thought of their G.o.d, who had delivered them from the iron house and yoke of bondage; they listened to the words of able men, exhorting them to justice, piety, and a heavenly walk with G.o.d; they trembled at fear of h.e.l.l; they rejoiced at hope of heaven. The church--no, the "meeting-house"--was the common property of all; the minister the common friend. The slave looked up to him; the chief magistrate dared not look down on him. For more than a hundred years the ablest men of New England went into the pulpit. No talent was thought too great, no learning too rich and profound, no genius too holy and divine, for the work of teaching men their highest duty, and helping to their highest bliss. He was the minister to all. There was not then a church for the rich, and a chapel for the poor; the rich and the poor met together, for one G.o.d was the maker of them all--their Father too; they had one Gospel, one Redeemer,--their Brother not less than their G.o.d; they journeyed toward the same heaven, which had but one entrance for great and little; they prayed all the same prayer. The effect of this socialism of religion is seldom noticed; so we walk on moist earth, not thinking that we tread on the thunder-cloud and the lightning. But it is not in human nature for men of intense religious activity to meet in the same church, sing the same psalm, pray the same prayer, partake the same elements of communion, and not be touched with compa.s.sion--each for all, and all for each. The same causes which built up religion in New England, built up democracy along with it. Is it not easy to see the cause which made the rich men of New England the most benevolent of rich men; gave them their character for generosity and public spirit--yes, for eminent humanity? The acorn is not more obviously the parent of the oak than those two inst.i.tutions of New England the parent of such masculine virtues as distinguish her sons.
Regarded merely as a day of rest from labor, the Sunday has been of great value to us. Considering the intense character of the nation, our tendency to material things, and our restless love of work, it seems as if a Moses of the nineteenth century, legislating for us, would enact two rest-days in the week, rather than one. It is a good thing that a man once a week pauses from his work, arrays himself in clean garments, and is at rest.
Regarded in its other aspects, Sunday has aided the intellectual culture of the people to a degree not often appreciated. To many a man, yes, to most men, it is their only reading day, and they will read "secular"
books, spite of the clerical admonition. Many a poor boy in New England, who has toiled all the week, and would gladly have studied all the night, did not obstinate Nature forbid, has studied stealthily all Sunday, not Jeremiah and the prophets, but Homer and the mathematics, and risen at length to eminence amongst cultivated men;--he has to thank the Sunday for the beginnings of that manly growth.
The moral and religious effect of the day is yet more important. One seventh part of the time was to be devoted to moral and religious culture. The clergy watched diligently over Sunday, as their own day.
Work was then the accident; religion was the business. Every thing with us becomes earnest; Sunday as earnest as the week. It must not be spent idly. Perhaps no body of clergymen, for two hundred years, on the whole, were ever so wakeful and active as the American. They also are earnest and full of intensity, especially in the more serious sects. I think I am not very superst.i.tious; not often inclined to lean on my father"s staff rather than walk on my own feet; not over-much accustomed to take things on trust because they have been trusted to all along: but I must confess that I see a vast amount of good achieved by the aid of these two inst.i.tutions, the Sunday and preaching, which could not have been done without them. I know I have my prejudices; I love the Sunday; a professional bias may warp me aside, for I am a preacher--the pulpit is my joy and my throne. Judge you how far my profession and my prejudice have led me astray in estimating the value of the Sunday, its preaching, and the good they have achieved for us in New England. I know what superst.i.tion, what bigotry, has been connected with both; I know it has kept grim and terrible guard about these inst.i.tutions. I look upon that superst.i.tion and bigotry, as on the old New England guns which were fought with in the Indian wars, the French wars, and the Revolution;--things that did service when men knew not how to defend what they valued most with better tools and more Christian. I look on both with the same melancholy veneration, but honor them the more that now they are old, battered, unfit for use and covered with rust; I would respectfully hang them up, superst.i.tion and the musket, side by side; honorable, but harmless, with their muzzles down, and pray G.o.d it might never be my lot to handle such unG.o.dly weapons, though in a cause never so humane and holy.
Let us look a little at the ill effects of these notions of the Sunday and the observance which they led to. It is thought an act of religion to attend church and give a mere bodily presence there. Hence the minister often relies on this circ.u.mstance to bring his audience together; preaches sermons on the duty of going to church, while ingenuous boys blush for his weakness, and ask, "Were it not better to rely on your goodness, your piety, your wisdom; on your superior ability to teach men, even on your eloquence, rather than tell them it is an act of religion to come and hear you, when both they and you are painfully conscious that they are thereby made no wiser, no better, nor more Christian?" This notion is a dangerous one for a clergyman. It flatters his pride and encourages his sloth. It blinds him to his own defects, and leads him to attribute his empty benches to the perverseness of human nature and the carnal heart, which a few snow-flakes can frighten from his church, while a storm will not keep them from a lecture on science or literature. No doubt it is a man"s duty to seek all opportunities of becoming wiser and better. So far as church-going helps that work, so far it is a duty. But to count it in itself, irrespective of its consequences, an act of religion, is to commit a dangerous error, which has proved fatal to many a man"s growth in goodness and piety. Let us look to the end, not merely at the means.