Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1889 — DOLEFUL SABBATHS. [ARTICLE]

DOLEFUL SABBATHS.

BOLKMITY NOT ESSENTIAL TO TRUE RELIGION. Life Should Be Made Cheerful and Enjoyable and NoDolefulSabbaths Should Darlten t Ho.me». \ l ■*- " V A ■*s%- 'VR£v. Dr.n Talmage preached at the Brooklyn Tabernacle last Sunday. Text, Isaiah lviii, 13. He B&id: There is an element of gloom striSing through all false religions. .Paganism is a brood of horrors. The god 6f‘ Confucius frowned upon its victims with blind fate. Mohammedanism promises nothibgto those exhausted with sin in this world bat an eternity of the same passional indulgences. But God intended that our religion should have the grand characteristic of cheerfulness. This religion has no spikes for the feet; it has no hooks for the Shoulder; it has no long pilgrimages to take; it has no funeral pyres upon which to leap; it has no Juggernauts before which to fall, its good cheer is symbolised in the Bible by the brightness of waters, and the redolence of lilies, and the sweetness of music, and the hilarities of a banquet. A choir of Seraphims chanted at its induction, and pealing trumpet, and waving palm, and napping wing of archangel are to celebrate its triumphs. But men have said that our religion is not cheerful, because we have such a doleful Sabbath. They say: "You can haye your religious assemblages, and your long faces, and your sniffling cant, and your psalm books, and your Bibles. Give us the Sunday excursion, and the horse race, and the convivial laughter. 1 want to show these men that they are under a great delusion, and that God intended the fifty-two Sundays of the year to be hung up likfe bells in a tower, beating a perpetual chime of jov and glory and salvation and heaven; for I want you to carry out the idea of the text, “and call the Sabbath a delight.” I remark, in the first place, we are to to find in this day the joy of healthy repose. In this democratic country we all have to work—some with hand,some with brain, some with foot. If there is in all this house a hand that has not, during the past* year, been stretched forth to some kind of toil, let it be lifted. Not one, not one., You sell the goods. You teach the school. You doctor in the sick-room. You practice at the bar. You edit a newspaper. You tan the hides. You preach the Gospel. You mend the shoes. You sit at the shuttle. You carry the hod of bricks up the ladder on the wall. And the one occupation is as honorable as the other, provided God calls you to it. I care not what you do, if you only do it well. But when Saturday night comes you are jaded and worn. The hand can not bo skillfully manufacture; the eye can not see so well, the brain is not so clear; the judgment is not so well balanced. A prominent manufacturer told me that he could see a difference between the goods that went out of his establishment on Saturday from the goods that went out on Monday. He said: “They were very different, indeed. Those that were made in the former part oi the week, because of the rest that had been previously given, were better than those that were made in the latter part of the week when the men were tired out.” Sabbath comes, and it bathes the soreness from the limbs, quiets the agitated brain, and puts out the fires of anxiety that have been burning all the week. Our bodies are seven-day clocks, and, unless on the seventh day they are ; fpnad up, they run down into the grave. The Sabbath was intended as a savings bank; into it we are to gather the 'resources upon which we are to draw all the week. That man who breaks the Sabbath robs his own nerve, his own muscle, his own brain, his own bones. He dips up the wine of his own life and throws it away. He who breaks the Lord’s Day gives a mortgage to disease and death upon his entire physical estate, and at the most unexpected moment that mortgage will be and, the soul ejected from the premises. Every gland, and pore, and cell, and finger-nail demands the seventh day for repose. The respiration of. the? lungs, • the throb of the pulse in the wrist, the motion of the bone in its socket declare: "Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.” I appeal to your observation. Where are the men who twenty years ago were Sabbath-breakers, and who have been Sabbath-breakers ever since? Without a single exception, you will tell me, they have come either to financial or to moral beggary. I defy yon to point out a single exception, and you can take the whole world for your field. It has either been a financial or moral defalcation in every instance. The man who takes down the shutters oi his store on the Sabbath takes down the curse of Almighty God. That farmer who cultures his ground on the Sabbath-day raises a crop of neuralgia, and of consumption, and of death. So great is the moral depression coming upon those who toil upon the Sabbath day that you may have noticed (if you have not, I call your attention to the fact) that in cases where the public interest demands Sabbath toil the moral depression is so great that there are but very few who can stand it. For instance, the" police service, without which not one of our houses would be safe—there are very few who can stand the pressure and temptation of it. In London, where there are five thousand policemen, the statstic is given that in one year nine hundred and twenty-one of that five thousand were dismissed, five hundred and twenty-three were suspended and two thousand four hundred and ninety-two were fined. Now, if the moral depression be so great in occupations that are positively necessary for the peace and prosperity of society,, I ask yon what must be the moral depression in those cases where there is no necessity foi Sabbath work, and where a man chooses worldly business on the Lord’s day just because he likes it, or wants to add to his emoluments? During the last war, it was fonnd out that those public works which paused on the seventh day turned out more war material than those which worked all the seven. The fact is, Sabbath-made ropes will break, and shoes leak, and Sabbath-made coats will rip, and Sabbath-made muskets will miss fire, and Sabbath occupations will be blasted. I will place in two companies the men in this community who break the Sabbath and Hie men who keep it, and then I ask you who are the best friends, of society? Who are the best friends of morals? Who have the best prospects

in this world? the best for the world to come? Sabbath morning comes in the household. I suppose that the mere philosopher would say that the Sabbath l’ght comes in a wave current, just like any other light, but it does not seem bo to me. U seems as if it touched the eyelids more gently, and threw a brighter glow on the mantle ornaments, and cast a better cheerfulness on the faces of the children, and threw a supernatural glory over the old family Bible. Hail, Sabbath light! We rejoice in it.' Rest comesjn through the window, or it leaps up from the fire, or it rolls out ijn the old armchair, or it catches, up the body into ecstacy and swings open before the soui the twelve gates which are twelve pearls. The bar of the unopened warehouse, the hinges of the unfastened store window, the quiet of the commer? cial warehouse seem to say: “This is the day the Lord hath made.” Rest for the se wing-woman, with weary hands, and aching side and sick heart. Rest for the overtasked workman in the mine, or out on the wall, or in the sweltering factory. Hang up the plane, drop the adz, slip the band from the wheel, put out the fire. Rest for the body, for the mind, and for the soul. Again I remark, we ought to have in the Sabbath the joy of domestic reanion and .consideration. - There are some very good parents who have the faculty of making the Sabbath a great gloom. Their children run up against the wall of paternal lugubriousness on on that day. They are sorry when Sunday comps, and glad when it goes away. They think of everything bad on that day." It ia the worst day to them really, in "all the week. There are persons who, because they were brought up in Christian families where there were wrong notions about the Sabbath, have gone out into dissipation and will be lost. But there are houses represented here this morning where the children say through the week: “I wonder when Sunday will come!” They are anxious to have it come. I hear their hosanna in the house; I hear their hosanna in the schools. God intended the Sabbath to be especially a day for the father. The mother is home all the week. Sabbath day comes and God says to the father, who has been busy from Monday morning to Saturday night at the store or away from home: “This is'ybur day. See what you can do in this little flock in preparing them ior heaven. This day I set apart for you.” You know very well that there are many parents who are mere suttlers of the household; they provide the food and raiment; once in a while, perhaps, they hear the child read a line or two in thenew primer, or if there be a case of .especial discipline and the mother cannot manage it, the child is brought up in the court-mar-tial of the father’s discipline and punished. That is all there is of it. No scruting of that child’s immortal interests no realization of the fact that the child will soon go out into the world where there are gigantic and overwhelming temptations, that have swamped millions. Rut in some households it is not this way; the home, beautiful on ordinary davs, is more beautiful now that the Sabbath has dawned. There is more joy in the “good morning,” there is more tenderness in the morning prayer. The father looks'at the child and the child looks at the father. The little one now asks questions without fear of being answered: “Don’t bother me; I must be off to the store.” Now the father looks at the child, and he sees not merely the blue eyes, the arched brow, the long laßheß,the sweet lip. He sees in that child a long line of earthly destinies; he sees in that child an immeasurable eternity. And he feels a joy, not like that which sounds in the dance, or is wafted from the froth of the wine-cup, or that which is like the “crackling of thorns under a pot,” but the joy of domestic reunion and consecration. Have 1 been picturing something that is merely fanciful, or is it possible for me to have such a home as that? I belie ve-it is possible. I have a statistic that I would like to give you. A great many people, you know, say there is nothing in the Christian discipline of a household. In New Hampshire there were two neighborhoods—the one of six families, the other of five families. The six families disregarded the Sabbath. In time, five of these families were broken up by the father becoming a thief. Eight or nine of the parents became drunkards, one committed suicide, and all came to penury. Of some forty or fifty descendants about twenty are known to be drunkards and gamblers and dissolute. Four or five have been in State Prison. One fell in ft duel. Some are in the almshouse. Only one became a Christian, and he, after first having been outrageously dissipated. The other five families that regarded the Sabbath were all prosperous. Eight or ten of the children are consistent members ©f the church. Some of them became officers in the church; one is a minister of the Gospel; one is a missionary to China. No poverty among any of them. The-homestead is now in the hands of the third generation*. Those who have died have died in the peace of the gospel. Oh, is there nothing in a household that remembers God’s holy day? Can it be possible that those who disregard this holy commandment can be prospered for this life or have any good hope of the life that is to eome. t There are two or three ways in which we can war againSt Sabbath-breaking usages in this day; the first things is to get our children "right upon this subject and teach them that the Sabbath day is holiest of all the days, and the best and the gladdest. Unless you teach vonr children under the paternal roof to keep the Lord’© day, there are nine hundred and ninety-nine chances out of a thousand they will never learn to keep the Sabbath. You may shirk responsibility in the matter, and" send your child tq Sabbath-school and the house of God; that will not relieve the matter. I want to tell you, in the name of Christ, my Maker "and my Judge, that your example will be more potential than any instruction they get elsewhere; and if you disregard the Lord’s day yourself, or in any wise throw contempt upon it; yeu are blastingyour children with an infinite curse. It is a rough truth, I know, told in a rough way, bat it is God’s troth, nevertheless. Your child may ge on to seventy or eighty years of age, but that child will never get over the awful disadvantage of having had a Sabbath-breaking father or a Sabbathbreaking mother. There is another way in which we can yrar against the Sabbath-breaking usages of the country at this time, and that is by'making our houses of worship attractive and the religious services in- ... *v 'l > ) : *

spiriting. I plead not for a gorgeous audience chamber, I plead not tor grained rafters or magnificent fresco; hot I do plead for comfortable churches homelike churches—places where a church-go-ing population behave as they ought to. Make the church welcome to ail,however poorlv clad they may be, or whatever may have been their past history; for I think the Church of God ianot so much made for you who could have churches in your own house, but for the vast population of our great cities,' who are treading on toward death, with no voice of mercy to arrest them. Oh, blessed day! blessed day! I should like to die some Sabbath morning,when the air is full of church music, and the bells are ringing. Leaving my home group with a dying blessing, I should like to look off upon some Christian assemblage chanting the praises of God as I went up to join the one hundred and forty and four thousand and the thousands of thousands standing around the throne of Jesus. Hark! I hear the hell of the old kirk on the hillside of heaveh. It is a wedding bell, for behold the Bridegroom conieth. It is a victor’s bell, for we are more thap conquerors through Him who bath loved us. It is a nation’s beil, tor it calls th& nations of earth and heaven to everlasting repose.