第36章

"Otherwise we shall be compelled to remain till Monday afternoon at four o'clock.""Which we can very contentedly do."

"But lose a day."

"Keeping the Sabbath holy is never losing a day," replies his guide, philosopher, and friend, sententiously and severely, partly because she thinks so, and partly because she is well content to remain another day in Quebec.

"But as we shall not start till five o'clock," he lamely pleads, "we can go to church twice like saints.""And begin at five and travel like sinners."

"It will only be clipping off the little end of Sunday."Now that is a principle the beginning of which is as when one letteth out water, and I will no tolerate it. Short weights are an abomination to the Lord. I would rather steal outright than be mean. A highway robber has some claims upon respect;but a petty, pilfering, tricky Christian is a damning spot on our civilization. Lord Chesterfield asserts that a man's reputation for generosity does not depend so much on what he spends, as on his giving handsomely when it is proper to give at all; and the gay lord builded higher and struck deeper than he knew, or at least said. If a man thinks the Gospel does not require the Sabbath to be strictly kept, I have nothing to say;but if he pretends to keep it, let him keep the whole of it.

It takes twenty-four hours to make a day, whether it be the first or the last of the week. I utterly reject the idea of setting off a little nucleus of Sunday, just a few hours of sermon, and then evaporating into any common day. I want the good of Sunday from beginning to end. I want nothing but Sunday between Saturday and Monday. Week-days filtering in spoil the whole. What is the use of having a Sabbath-day, a rest-day, if Mondays and Tuesdays are to be making continual raids upon it? What good do dinner-party Sundays and travelling Sundays and novel-reading Sundays do? You want your Sunday for a rest,--a change,--a breakwater. It is a day yielded to the poetry, to the aspirations, to the best and highest and holiest part of man. I believe eminently in this world. I have no kind of faith in a system that would push men on to heaven without passing through a novitiate on earth.

What may be for us in the future is but vaguely revealed,--just enough to put hope at the bottom of our Pandora's box; but our business is in this world. Right through the thick and thin of this world our path lies. Our strength, our worth, our happiness, our glory, are to be attained through the occupations and advantages of this world. Yet through discipline, and not happiness, is the main staple here, it is not the only product.

Six days we must labor and do all work, but the seventh is a holiday. Then we may drop the absorbing now, and revel in anticipated joys,--lift ourselves above the dusty duties, the common pleasures that weary and ensoil, even while they ennoble us, and live for a little while in the bright clear atmosphere of another life,--soothed, comforted, stimulated by the sweetness of celestial harmonies.

"O day most calm, most bright, The fruit of this, the next world's bud, The indorsement of Supreme delight, Writ by a Friend, and with his blood,--The couch of time, care's balm and bay,--The week were dark but for thy light, Thy torch doth show the way."He is no friend to man who would abate one jot or tittle of our precious legacy.