^HHI 
 
 B^BIBH^BB
 
 tfEUNIVER% 
 
 ~ cp O; 
 
 T S 
 
 i i 

 
 A!\IT1 TlPflNQJ? 
 
 AJNLI LluMoli 
 
 A Discourse bEforethe^inai Congregation. 
 
 DECEMBER 16rH, 1888, 
 
 . C3-.
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 oa 
 5~<h> 
 
 Sunday Law, Liberty and License, 
 
 A Discourse before the Sinai Congregation, 
 
 December 16th, 1888, 
 
 IE. GK 
 
 Experience is the great task-master of mankind. In the merciless 
 school of sin, suffering and failure, man learns to know the eternal laws of his 
 own being. That knowledge comes to him not at once ; it flashes not upon 
 him with the full glory of the noon hour, only gradually does its splendor 
 unfold itself to him. Truth is a sun that has its hours of rising and of 
 setting, its eclipses and its clouds. Slowly as the king of day scales the 
 heaven's heights, and contends against the shadows and the mists, does 
 truth ascend the golden steps toward the zenith, and vigorously has it to 
 war against jealous obstacles. Through the mazes of error man is led to 
 the majesty of truth; and what we call experience is but the remembrance 
 of the road traveled o'er, is the record of attempts that failed, of battles 
 waged with doubtful result, of victories finally accomplished. When 
 experience hath spoken, experience well established and securely grounded, 
 theory, airy and assumed, must lay the finger of silence on the glib lips. 
 The time for speculation is o'er, when from the fields of actual life are 
 brought home the rich sheaves or the ripe fruits.
 
 Experience now gives proof that the weekly interruption of labor 
 through the day of rest, corresponds to a deeply rooted want of human 
 nature, and is thus a necessity and an invaluable blessing. Popular 
 prejudice largely believes that only the religious-minded can plead for the 
 observation of the Sabbath day. It is, according to this opinion, an insti- 
 tution of the church. Those that have weaned themselves of priest and 
 preacher need not shape their life in accordance with the old ecclesiastical 
 prescriptions. Whether the Sabbath originally was, or was not a religious 
 institution I must for the moment keep in abeyance; but there can be no 
 doubt on this point that a day of rest is indispensable to the welfare of 
 individual and of society at large. None will suspect in the writings of 
 the socialist Proudhon a religious bias, or accuse him of sectarian narrow- 
 ness and theological fanaticism. Still in his booklet on the celebration of 
 Sunday (" De la celebration du Dimanche"), he comes to the conclusion 
 just worded by me, through considerations of a purely economic and moral 
 kind. Other men, and not alone of the favored classes, but also from 
 among the working people, have expressed themselves to the same effect. 
 For many years past the Swiss societies for the promotion of public welfare 
 have been busy with this very question. They have offered premiums for 
 the best solution; they have by speech and by pen agitated for a more 
 general observation of the weekly day of rest. Nor is Germany indifferent, 
 as is generally assumed, on this subject. Government and private associa- 
 tions are gathering statistics on the extent of Sunday labor, and on its 
 effects upon the moral and material prosperity of the people. Dignitarise 
 of the state, generals, authors, professors, leaders of workingmen, con- 
 servatists, socialists, all are raising their voice to insure a more general 
 cessation from labor of any kind throughout the German empire, and 
 are pleading for a more quiet and dignified manner of spending the 
 day. In brief, Proudhon is right when he says Sunday rest is not a subject 
 of opinion, but is founded on actual knowledge. It is a well established 
 fact, that even beasts and dead machines are stronger and wear out less 
 speedily, if allowed to share in the periodical rest of the Sabbath. In the 
 books I find a practical example of this in a story about two men, carriers 
 of goods from one place in the east of Germany to another in the west, 
 before the days of our railroads. To cover the distance between the two 
 points, eight to ten weeks were consumed. One of the two was in the habit 
 of allowing his horses and his vehicle to rest over Sunday, while the other, 
 grumbling at the unnecessary delay, took the whim in one of their expedi- 
 tions to push on regardless of the day of rest. In this wise he expected to 
 outstrip his competitor by at least seven days. The companion was satis- 
 fied, and made the wager that, notwithstanding his stopping over every 
 seventh day, he would be the first to reach the end of the journey. The 
 wager was accepted, and the result showed that the observer of the Sabbath 
 was the more prudent of the two men, for actually he reached his destina- 
 tion one week ahead of the other; and besides his horses and wagon were 
 in good condition, while the other arrived with wagon ruined, and with
 
 horses over-tired, over-worked and jaded. This story is not taken from a 
 Sunday-school tract, but I found it in a little book written by a physician, 
 named Niemeyer, who, leaving religious considerations out of the scope of 
 his inquiry, pleads strongly for the observation of the weekly day of rest 
 from the standpoint of hygiene. Experience further seems to have taught 
 that the interruption of labor should follow regularly on the seventh 
 pay after six days of work. The French revolution, in its desire to turn every- 
 thing topsy-turvy, abolished, as you well know, the weekly Sabbath, and 
 substituted for it the decade; that is, a day of festivities occurring every 
 ten days three in one month. We have the testimony of a working man, 
 who during this time lived in Paris, that the new arrangement by no means 
 conferred the benefits of the old. Whether or not the number seven 
 corresponds to a physiological law as Cabanis, philosopher and physician 
 both, claims, who maintains that the fluctuations of our body's temperature 
 run in cycles of seven days, is not for me to say, but I may be allowed to 
 quote again the words of Proudhon: " Shorten the week by one day and 
 the want of rest is not yet pressing, but lengthen the week by one day and 
 you have over-fatigue. Set aside every three days half a day for rest, and 
 you have want of symmetry and plan. Assign after twelve days of work two 
 days of rest, and you will ruin the working man with leisure, after having 
 first exhausted him with labor." In truth, the best lovers of the people 
 are agreed that one day in seven is the best arrangement, and experience 
 bolsters this agreement. 
 
 But how should this day of rest be celebrated? It may not be super- 
 fluous in this connection to cast a glance, hasty and sketchy at the history 
 of the Sabbath, as far as we can trace it. I quarrel not with those simple 
 believers for whom questions of this kind are answered in the biblical 
 record. I do not desire to disturb their assurance that the Sabbath was 
 instituted by God himself. The opening chapter of Genesis is indeed a 
 stirring poem. The thought that after the completion of the world, God 
 affixed to it his seal of approval by the sign of the Sabbath is strong and 
 uplifting. That thought remains true, whether we read the signs of the 
 heavens according to a new key, or still decipher the inscriptions of the 
 vault above according to the dialect of the fathers. The critical school is 
 deeply conscious of the moral truths crystallized in the old legends. It 
 can spare the husk, but in breaking it, sets free what is fundamental. The 
 Sabbath in a seal of perfection, a witness to self approval of work done; 
 and it remains so whether we locate its source in the lands of earth or lift 
 it up into the regions of the heavens. To my mind there is no doubt that 
 the Sabbath was originally linked to the worship of the moon, and was an 
 institution of the Shemites in those removed times even before the Hebrew 
 had differentiated himself from his kinsmen. A number of competent 
 scholars have found proof of the observation of a day somewhat like to 
 the Sabbath among the Assyrians. Other scholars are disinclined to 
 allow this construction of the tablets bearing on the point. No matter 
 whether we follow one party or the other in this controversy, it is plain
 
 that the biblical record gives sufficient hint to suggest that the Sabbath was 
 in some form or other among the institutions of the Hebrews before the 
 Sinaitic period. In Amos, in Isaiah, and in other passages of the prophets, 
 Sabbath and new moon are quoted in one breath. But little observation 
 was necessary to teach that the moon consumed twenty-eight solar days in 
 her fickle passage across the nightly sky, and that every seventh day 
 apparently she came to a point of rest. Hence the sacred character of 
 the number seven; hence, also, the original institution of the Sabbath- 
 day. What its character was in an earlier period, chapter 4 of I Kings 
 indicates. There the woman who asks of her husband to send her one of the 
 young men and one of the asses, in order to visit Elisha, is reproved for 
 her desire to go to the man of God, because " it is neither new moon nor 
 Sabbath." The Sabbath-day at that time seems to have been a day for 
 making excursions of the kind here described. In Deuteronomy the Sabbath 
 is ordained as a social institution; "that thy man-servant and thy maid- 
 servant may rest as well as thou"- is the object of its proclamation. Slaves 
 had been the Israelites in Egypt. The slave has no rest. Israel, mindful 
 of its own past, should afford laboring people a life worthy of men, free 
 from the disgrace and the outrage of thraldom. The theological reas< in 
 adduced in the decalogue of Exodus is the production of a much later age. 
 There the Sabbath is ordained because God rested after His creation. Xo 
 want of the human soul, no necessity of man is its root. Its object is to be 
 a sign between God and Israel, as a later passage amplifies the fourth 
 commandment, Exodus 31, 12-18. In the controversies on the Sabbath 
 question in the Jewish camps, a caricature of this assumption on the part 
 of the biblical author has often been hurled against us. It has in all 
 seriousness been argued that man needed not the Sabbath; and unless 
 God instituted it and we observed it for religious motives, the Sabbath-day 
 had no function and brought no blessings to man. The example of the 
 Greeks and Romans with disingenuous scholarship was cited in proof of the 
 proposition. Had they not been as strong as all other races, had they not 
 been as cultured as all others, had they not been successful in the arts, 
 victorious in the wars, had they not speculated on the deepest themes of 
 philosophy, and all this without having a Sabbath? The men who thus 
 reason forget that Rome and Greece were founded on slavery. The men 
 of leisure need indeed no Sabbath, and have no right to it. Work is one 
 term of the Sabbath equation, rest is the other. Both terms are essential. 
 Both are B'rith, (Aboth, R. Nathan). The avidity with which the lower 
 classes of Rome in the centuries of her despair and decline, embraced the 
 Sabbath institution, so that Josephus could say that there was no 
 city, either Greek or barbarian, whither the custom of the seventh day of 
 rest had not come (contra Apion. II, 39). and that Seneca uttered 
 bitter complaint bewailing the imitation of the Jewish custom of the 
 Sabbath, that Horace and Juvenal hurled the sharpest arrows of their 
 sarcastic contempt against the Sabbath-observing Jew and Roman, plainly 
 shows how weak the argument is, how sore its need among the working 
 Romans.
 
 5 
 
 I cannot suppress my surprise at the fact that the men, (and great 
 Theologians are they) who conjured from the ruins Grece, the slave house 
 of outward beauty, and Rome, whose legions carried selfishness raised to a 
 political principle, from the laughing Adriatic to the mist-curtained German 
 Ocean, and tyranny from the banks of the Tiber to the sands of the Lybian 
 desert, to prove the superfluity of the Sabbath unless it be for God, should 
 l)e blinded by their zeal to the blasphemy their position breathes. Accord- 
 ing to them, not the love for his children, but mere whim and caprice 
 prompted the deity when hallowing the seventh day. The God that Juda- 
 ism teaches, is not such. If He instituted the day of rest, it was not for 
 Himself that He enacted its observance; He desired to benefit His children 
 - -the sons of man, and whatever blessings are wrapt in the institiition, they 
 may be found whatever the day of the week on which its welcome visit is 
 expected. In Talmudical times the Sabbath became burdened with many 
 legal restrictions. But nevertheless it remained a day of joy. Joy is the 
 Leitmotif in its varied songs for the Jew. The day for him never, even 
 under the Atlas of prohibitions superimposed by the Rabbis, was a prison- 
 house. It was the day of human freedom. For the saying of the New 
 Testament, "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" 
 is an echo of a well-known Rabbinical phrase. As such a day for man, the 
 Jewish Sabbath was equally far removed from the gloom of the Puritan 
 caricature of the Biblical day of rest, as it was from the boisterous day of 
 revelry and debauchery that some of the fanatics of what is falsely called 
 " Personal Freedom," would have tolerated as the very cornerstone of human 
 rights. Opposed as these two extremes are, they meet in this one point : 
 they both would on Sabbath unman, man. The Puritan sets the day aside 
 to ponder and brood over the fall of man and its consequences: he kindles 
 the fires of hell, but not the beaming Sabbath lamp. The besotted 
 extremist, in the other camp, would brutalise on the day man; he lights 
 the ungodly fire of lust. The Jew has read the intention of the day. 
 Who knows but that to its faithful observance he owes his unparalelled 
 power of resistance to persecution, hatred, hunger, sword and pestilence? 
 
 The Sabbath, as a joyful day of rest, should first benefit the body. 
 Life is a great usurer. It watches most scrupulously the accounts of its 
 depositors. It will allow no overdrafts, unless repaid most amply by 
 compounded interests on the advances. Woe to him who has fallen into 
 the hands of this most grasping of all creditors ! Life stands upon the 
 bond, it is inexorable. Now every stroke of the hammer on the anvil, 
 every line of the pen, every thought flowering in the mind is paid for in 
 the currency of blood. Blood nurtures the muscles, feeds the brain and 
 builds the nerves. It is the balance that must always be to our credit on 
 the ledger of life; for every outlay not replaced by a fresh deposit will visit 
 dire consequences on him that is neglectful. And life now is still more 
 grasping and exhausting than ever it was before. 
 
 The praises of modern culture and its great accomplishments have been 
 sung in every key. The story of the decisive victory over nature's minions
 
 6 
 
 is on every canvas. The very pigments on the painter's palette are alive 
 with power and pride, when his brush would reproduce the rush and the 
 roar, the glow and glare, the whir and whirl of the gigantic modern work- 
 shop. The fires beam upon us; the anvils clink; the molten iron hisses 
 and heaves as it plunges through the rills of sand, in quest of a new 
 guise. In the lurid light, the half shaded figures of the workers come and 
 go, their brawny arms bared, their soot-begrimed faces eager, their eye 
 steadily set on the task before them. Vulcan risen from the bowels of the 
 earth but not he with lamed foot as the ancient's fancy fashioned him. 
 To-day his heels are spurred with Mercury's wings; the heavy pincers he 
 carries impede not his flight. But is this glorious idealisation of the 
 modern spirit of mechanical inventiveness and skill, and boldness, a true 
 mirror of the realities of every-day life? Candor compels the answer: it is 
 not. No such joy is mingled with the rattle and jingle of the real foundry. 
 Over it hangs a cloud. The price of progress is always human blood. Not 
 only to him who ventures first of human souls, to learn a new secret, into 
 the hidden chambers of nature's storehouse, comes death at the threshold; 
 not only he who hitches to the chariot of advancing humanity a new force 
 often expires e'er the turbulent steed submits to the taming hand; but 
 many that follow pay dearly for their curiosity or their daring. Nature 
 brooks unwillingly the yoke; she is a treacherous slave, hating the masters' 
 hand ever on the look-out to do him harm. She thirsteth for revenge. 
 One moment of relaxed watchfulness commits to her pleasure life and limb 
 of her jailer. A sudden crash, to splinters are shattered the stoutest bars, 
 the strongest bolts of her prison house. But such moments are not many; 
 therefore, with greater malice, with more insidious weapons, she wages the 
 war of destruction under the mask of assumed resignation and submission. 
 She hampers and hinders, harrasses and harms the captor wherever and 
 whenever she may. Visit the vast halls of our industrial establishments! 
 The air teems with small invisible particles; every inhalation deposits into 
 the lungs vegetable or animal fibres, or metallic dust. Poisonous vapors 
 impregnate the atmosphere, boding no good to him who is called to tarry 
 long in these surroundings. Even where law and humanity join hands to 
 provide the amplest and best devises to assure a new supply of air, the 
 danger is not altogether robbed of its sharp arrow. Nature built in every 
 human body five delicate gateways for the communication of the mind with 
 the outer world. Up to them flows constantly the tide of impressions; and 
 when not well shielded irreparable injury is done. Not with impunity did 
 we steal the lightning's flash. The glare wearies the eye and dulls it. The 
 cataract of noise that engine and hammer, wheel and needle, vie with each 
 other to produce, soon destroys the finer sensitiveness of the ear. And 
 furthermore the work imposed demands a certain position unrelieved for 
 hours and hours. In consequence certain muscles are abnormally developed, 
 while others shrivel and shrink. The spine curves, the chest narrows; the 
 symmetry of the body is broken; the natural current of the blood impeded. 
 Modern medicine catalogues a number of degenerations, deformities and
 
 abnormal enlargements which are directly due to the necessities of our 
 industrial system. Almost every profession and every occupation brings in 
 its wake certain ailments peculiar to it. The well-wisher of humanity is 
 thus confronted with a most serious problem. 
 
 These deliterious influences must be counteracted; the avenues to 
 health must be reopened. But how? The spells of sleep between the 
 stretches of waking and wasting work are not sufficient for complete 
 restoration. The blood burned is not refreshed enough, and not as large 
 a stock of new fuel as is needed, is laid in by the nightly visit to the land 
 of dreams. Too soon the jar and the jostle, the din and the tumult of 
 street and factory resume their deafening rivalry. The nerves half re- 
 built, the brain half replenished by the night's silence and sleep, are 
 too soon restrung to a high pitch and strain. Every recurrent day 
 weakens the power of the senses to transmit correct impressions from 
 without and of the central organ to receive them, and to act upon them by 
 directing and adjusting the execution of volition from within. A pause of 
 longer duration is needed, and of periodic regularity, to refill the treasure- 
 house of life energy. Physicians are of one opinion on this score. The 
 lungs irritated during the whole week, the tubes clogged with the soot and 
 the fibres of the shop, the blood tainted with poisons and thinned, the body 
 twisted out of shape over the desk or at the bench: they all cry out for a 
 whole day of freedom from exposure and outrage. A whole day to expel 
 the injurious accumulations of the week, or to stretch again into position 
 the spine, to give the cramped chest the liberty to expand, and the pressed 
 liver to act normally. The day of rest is the only prophylactic against the 
 deterioration of the race through unchecked progression of the abnormities 
 or the deformities that to-day lurk under every boiler, and threaten not 
 only the wage-worker, but also the merchant and the scholar. 
 
 But with a freer movement of lung and a fuller flow of rewarmed blood, 
 comes to man the desire for activity. For the animal, rest is cessation from 
 exercise. Man not being an animal, cannot rest inactively. Rest for man 
 must become recreation. It means change of activity and change of surround- 
 ings. The Sabbath cannot be spent in idleness. Idleness is as great a 
 weight upon man as is over-exertion. From idleness comes ennui, the 
 source of all mischief, the root of all sin. Even on the day of rest, man 
 needs an occupation, craves one, but that occupation must be different from 
 the attention and activity of the week. For this reason the day of rest is 
 intended, by nature and by God, for the cultivation of the higher things 
 and the higher possessions of man. Man has not merely a body, he has a 
 mind. The whir and whirl of the week days' work gives to but the chosen 
 few the time to even catch a faint glimpse through the cracks of the door 
 of the splendor of the palace chamber of thought. The burdens of the 
 daily work are so great that, when with the nightfall it is lifted, the mind 
 has not the elasticity to seek admission to the audience hall of knowledge. 
 But with a full freedom of the day of rest the mind demands its rights. 
 To spend a large portion of the weekly day of freedom in the cultivation of
 
 8 
 
 our mind is not sinful. On the contrary, it is but following the hints worked 
 into the very fibre of our nature. Change of occupation includes change 
 of interests. When the eye has been riveted on a bright surface for a long 
 time, the glare becomes intolerable and painful. The organ hungers for 
 relief. It is not advisable to drop the lids and shut out all rays; this 
 involves an effort, and the pressure is moreover not relaxed. Before the 
 closed eye will flit and dance sparks due to the continued nerve action. 
 But turn in such moments of fatigue away from the flaming lines, and fix 
 your gaze on darker grounds, the sensation of pain will immediately be 
 soothed into that of grateful pleasure. In the same manner the mind that 
 during the week was intensely active or concentrated on one thing, cannot 
 at once, without injury, pass from one pole of cerebral excitement to the 
 other pole of total torpidity. Were the attempt made the chain of ideas 
 would roll on as if wound on a self -uncoiling bobin. Change of activity 
 diversion of attention to a new field is the proper relief to apply. The 
 bookish man had better hitch his thoughts to the donkey cart of the 
 practical things of life, while the man of the desk and the cobbler at the 
 bench turn to regions whither, neither the figures of Ledger nor the 
 measures of the foot can follow. The Sunday newspaper is now this 
 cannot be gainsaid- the sole means of mental diversion for the preponder- 
 ating majority of our people. Against this beneficial agent a crusade is 
 preached in our midst. I, for one, fail to understand the zeal of the aggres- 
 sive party. The work on the Sunday issue is done almost entirely before 
 the Sabbath begins. The movement can thus not be prompted by a desire 
 to insure a day of rest to the staff of the paper; this would lead to the 
 suspension of Monday's issue. The old distinction between sacred things 
 and the things secular is the moving spirit of the protest. It is an after- 
 glow of the old Calvinistic theology. This world is under the curse of sin; 
 its affairs are secondary to the eternalities of God's kingdom. From that 
 kingdom man is excluded; his thought should be wrapt in the scheme of 
 salvation. But life is stronger than dogma. The realities of hunger of 
 ambition and their retinue knock at the gate; they must be admitted. The 
 week is turned over to their sway: but with heavy heart should this con- 
 cession to the sinful flesh jbe made! Xo smile must illumine this vale of 
 tears: no pleasure, however innocent, be indulged in. The gloom of sin 
 must not be forgotten. And especially on the Lord's day must no thought 
 of worldliness be given audience. Six days' slavery to the devil : one 
 day exclusively for God ! The drudgery of work must be replaced by 
 the dreariness of worship. The Puritanical Sabbath is the outgrowth 
 of Calvinic theology not a copy of the Sabbath of the Talmud. If visits 
 to the circus, the theatre, are discountenanced by OUT good doctors of the 
 Greek age, their motive was the desire to keep from moral contamination 
 their people's heart. The shadow of the destruction of Jerusalem hovers 
 over the horizon and tempers the joy of the Rabbis who lived during and 
 right after the catastrophe. But the Sabbath was directly exempt from 
 whatever restrictions the sad recollections may have placed upon the
 
 9 
 
 ebulition of gladness on other days. Work was indeed prohibited, but 
 never art (CHOKMAH). They would never have dreamt of suppressing 
 the reading of a newspaper. Of course, the Sunday paper is busy with the 
 affairs of this world. But this alone does not enlist it into the army of cor- 
 ruption. For thousands and thousands it is the only messenger of the 
 higher intellectuality that is within their reach. It brings to them not 
 merely the news of the day, circling for them the globe; but it opens to 
 them the life of other climes, countries and classes, and thus awakens 
 the slumbering consciousness of the fundamental unity of all hidden 
 under the galling differences on the surface. It discourses in a 
 popular style on the problems of the sciences, and photographs the advance 
 of discovery and invention. It discusses the questions of morality, both 
 applied and pure; it is a library in itself, an epitome of current knowledge; 
 it is an educator. If now it be said that the paper of the day is not true to 
 its mission, the objection weighs, if true, as heavily against the week day 
 issue. Bad is bad on Sunday as on Monday. The sensational gossiper is 
 as intolerable on Wednesday as he is on the " Lord's day." The shortcoming 
 of the press have been exaggerated, the good it works steadily minimised. 
 Take our Sunday issues all in all; they are a powerful instrument wielded 
 for the raising of the mental level of the masses. 
 
 The opening of the reading-room of the Public Libray shocked at first 
 the sensibilities of some and roused a storm of objections. Yet I doubt 
 whether there be those to-day among us wlio would undo the measure. To 
 visit under Tyndal's guidance the Alps, and learn from his lips the history 
 of their birth and growth; to read the rocks with Lyell, and to watch the 
 .worm with Darwin; to study the republic of the ants with Lubbock, 
 and with Proctor the sun: to cross with Stanley the dark continent; to 
 sound the depth of the ocean with the crew of the "Challenger"; is a 
 pleasure that few can seek in the brief hours after the daily task is done. 
 Is this sinful? Is Longfellow or Whittier not an unmitred priest at the 
 altar of truth? Is it wrong to laugh at the follies of men in this vanity 
 fair-life, and be warned by the pointed pen of Thackeray? Is Ruth 
 alone typical of womanly loVe? Are not Enid, and Maud, the miller's 
 daughter, Lady Clare, worthy sisters of hers in the gallery and gallaxy 
 of true and pure womanhood? Are Lowell and Browning less inspiring 
 than are the books of Kings or the Revelation of St. John? Emerson and 
 Elliot, and Robert Elsmere not good Sunday reading? The answer is 
 easily found; it cannot but be in the affirmative. 
 
 How 7 many have the time to worship at the shrine of Art, or care for its 
 message while the wheels are spinning round and the belts are tightened? 
 The truly beautiful is always a reflection of the truly good. The picture 
 gallery is a church to-day, as formerly the church was a picture gallery. 
 None who feels for and with the people can but congratulate the manage- 
 ment of our promising Art-Institute upon the step, resolved upon by them, 
 to open on Sunday afternoon the doors of their collection. Reggio and 
 Rembrandt, Angelo and Murillo, Raphael and Titian, Cornelius and Kaul-
 
 10 
 
 bach, cannot preach a low view of duty. Fanaticism which would hush the 
 sermon breathed upon the canvas overshoots the mark. The twin-sisters of 
 painting and sculpture. Music and Drama, will also find a hearing on the day 
 of rest. Music of a debased and debasing kind, is always baneful. It derides 
 its own parentage. But a symphony by Beethoven and Brahms, a sonata by 
 Mozart, an oratorio by Mendelssohn and Hay den, or Hsendl; a chorus from 
 Parcival. a powerful overture by Meyerbeer, and even the lighter children 
 of melody if pure and chaste, chime as harmoniously in with the spirit of 
 the day as does a Te Deum by Palestra or a Mass by Verdi. The stage, 
 decried as the arch-enemy of the church, is a potent ally. The piece that 
 panders to the sensual and the brutal in man is objectionable on any day. 
 So is also on Sunday the pulpit that caters to sensationalism. As the 
 Germans call it, the stage are the boards that signify the world. That is 
 its mission. Shakspeare, Schiller, Goethe, and all that portray the eternal 
 conflicts of the human heart and the contrasts of the human life, are the 
 most efficient aids to the preacher in his endeavors to lift man above him- 
 self. It has been said that the stage pictures vice. Perhaps it does, but it 
 does not glorify it. Where even the fallen are conjured from their glitter- 
 ing palace of shame, through them quivers the appeal of a humanity that 
 recognises the sister, even when burdened with sin, and warns not to judge 
 lest we be judged. Goodness, from an aesthetic point of view, may be 
 lacking in interest. " Faust is not good, Mephistopheles is candidly exe- 
 crable," Macbeth is a murderer. But what of that? Do we not read in 
 these characters the enigma of our own life? Through the true drama 
 runs the sentiment: 
 
 " There's a divinity that shapes our ends. 
 Rough-hew them how we will." 
 
 Such conviction cannot bring harm to a people, though it be taught on 
 Sunday. If, of course, beauty and recreation are in themselves sinful, if man 
 is depraved, if nature is under the curse of sin, if the Sunday have no other 
 object than to be a constant memento of man's sinf ulness, all these agencies 
 which correspond to a natural want of man, #re out of harmony with the 
 purposes of the day of rest. But human nature cannot be artificially 
 outraged, it will assert its rights, and unless these rights are legitimately 
 conceded, their satisfaction is sought in illegitimate direction. Close your 
 libraries, close your art rooms, hush the music of the concert hall, lock the 
 doors that lead to the temples where the world's show and the world's 
 substance is acted out in types created by master minds, and you will drive 
 the masses into the den of vice, and instead of worshipping at the shrine of 
 beauty, they will bend the knee to gods of wine. Action and reaction are 
 always equal, and it is sometimes difficult to decide which of the two is cause 
 and which is effect. Our ideas have changed. It is not the foreigner that 
 has weakened the foundations of Puritanism. There is much in Puritanism 
 that demands unstinted approval and admiration. Our state and union 
 we much to the sturdy character, the streak of Puritanism which runs
 
 11 
 
 through our people, a heritage of the fathers of Plymouth rock. But the 
 new age has come with new ideas. Character to-day is built on the same 
 lines as of old, but by new means, new methods. The spirit of scientific 
 investigation opening up nature's secret to us, has given the death 
 blow to the dogma that nature is sinful and that man is degraded. 
 Man by birth is neither degraded, nor is he divine; but he may become 
 divine, and he may be degraded; and those that have the best interests of 
 man at heart, must be careful of their words and cautious in their methods. 
 In the conflicts of modern times, everything must be used that tends "to 
 lift man above himself." The mind needs culture, and the day of rest is 
 for the thousands the only day to satisfy the want. Beauty and melody are 
 potent factors in the upbuilding of human character: therefore the day of rest 
 is not violated by allowing these factors to play upon men, women and 
 children. 
 
 Of course, intellectual and aesthetic culture are but stepping 
 stones to moral culture, and the day of rest should also be sacred to the 
 cultivation of the moral element in man. That is the special function of 
 the church and the temple. Life distracts and life narrows. Man becomes 
 a something in consequence of this distraction and this concentration. 
 Division of labor has in every walk of life progressed so far that no one in 
 his work attains completeness. Day in, day out, making the same thing 
 over and over again, we are in danger of being reduced to a mere automaton. 
 Under this specialization, we lose consciousness of our " man-ness." Reli- 
 gion comes as the preacher of the truth that man is not something, but 
 some one, and that he as some one belongs to a larger life, is associated 
 with others that are some one, and is kin to that life which is the all in all, 
 and which in an attempt to describe it and bring it near unto us, we call 
 " our God, our Father who is in heaven." For this reason religious culture, 
 religious exercises, service and sermon are an integral part of the proper 
 celebration of the Sabbath. The hours of the morning of the Sabbath-day 
 should undoubtedly be devoted to religious aspirations, the afternoon may 
 be consecrated to the other agencies of culture. It is argued that the 
 Sunday newspaper and the qther things conflict with the attendance in 
 churches. The causes lie deeper. Let the church search, and the temple 
 as well, her own conduct and her own methods, and all of us will perhaps 
 discover that the evil of religious indifference is largely 'due to our own 
 shortcomings. The church has become not the home of the lame and the 
 burdened, the weak and the lowly. It is the luxury of the rich, of the 
 chosen favored sons in the family of mankind. The jargon of church and 
 temple alike is the dry-rot of dogmatism, not the full-blown rose of duty. 
 What attraction lies in hearing over and over again the ancient controver- 
 sies or the old disputes of scholastic dogmatists? Man to-day has outgrown 
 the fears of childhood, and the fires of hell will not strike terror to his heart, 
 so that driven by anguish and anxiety he should flee to the altar of God 
 und seek there an asylum from the pursuer. Or the pulpit rivals the 
 circus-clown ! Mountebanks with shallow verbiage usurp the places where
 
 12 
 
 men of sound scholarship should teach. They attract, indeed, many, but 
 disgust countless thousands more, and do more harm than short -sighted 
 admirers will admit! 
 
 The light of religion must be thrown on the issues of the day. The 
 whole world is God's creation. There is in the scale of Godliness nothing 
 great and nothing small. The contrasts of modern life, the burdens of modern 
 problems must be eased: and if this were the ambition of the preachers, no 
 doubt is in my mind but the Sunday would again become for the thousands 
 a welcome opportunity to visit the shrine of God. To the field of moral cul- 
 ture belongs also the cultivation of friendship. The day of rest is sacred to 
 the family, is sacred to the intercourse of soul with soul. On that day father 
 should meet son and mother meet daughter, each one looking into the eye 
 and into the heart of the other, read of the week's accomplishments and 
 remember the week's anxieties; and thus giving and drawing strength from 
 the sweet covenant of love, become stronger again for the week's w r aiting 
 work, and better for the week's demanding duty. Moral culture may come 
 through the whispered fragrance of the rose and the soft waving of the 
 foliage of the trees. In proper season to visit the parks, to recline at the 
 breast of nature in spring time, is a profitable way of spending the day of 
 rest. There we find " tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 sermons in stones and good in everything." How many of the children of 
 the city, even in the faintest manner, know aught of the hidden beauties 
 of the fields, of the music of the brooks, and of the murmuring of the 
 lakes':' Pent up in their pens and crowded and huddled together in their 
 tenement lodgings, whither scarce ever the full ray of the sun penetrates, 
 breathing hour after hour the heavily laden atmosphere of the workshop 
 and the mingled vapors of their own restricted quarters, their lungs and 
 their body need the rejuvenating elixir of hours spent in the open air in 
 the sunshine, under the trees. If in company of their own family they 
 will be safe from the temptations that beset him who seeks pleasure 
 selfishly. Intercourse with nature on the Sabbath-day is not sinful, it is 
 saintly. Remove the sting of the forbidden fruit and its charm from these 
 innocent joys, and you need not fear that injurious pleasures will be sought. 
 The revelry deplorable on any day and which is most noticeable on Sunday, 
 is not a characteristic of the German. Have they who of late have wa.sted 
 much eloquence in their attack on the German Sabbath-breaker, ever 
 stopped to think why it is that in Europe and in Germany, while the Sab- 
 bath is not observed in the Puritan fashion, yet scarce ever one meets in 
 the streets the reeling figure of a man intoxicated or hears the furious cries 
 of one frenzied by alcoholic drink? It is because nature is open, because the 
 family is together on that day, because what joys are sought remain joys. 
 that is to say, innocent and not selfish; it is because public opinion has not 
 affixed the stigma of sin to certain things that may be in their excess de- 
 plorable, but which partaken of as the true man will partake of them, are 
 absolutely harmless. It is because love throws her armor around husband 
 or son and keeps him from besotting himself, knowing that wife or sister
 
 13 
 
 would spurn him from her company were he to court the passionate 
 embrace of fiery drinks. 
 
 What now should the state do? This let me in conclusion inquire into 
 in regard to the observation of the Sabbath! Religion and state are hap- 
 pily divorced. Their marriage was always illegitimate, and if the Sabbath 
 is observed merely on religious ground, the state ought to have no concern 
 with it. But the state has the function to be the guardian of the com- 
 munity's interest, to be the protector of the weaker in the community. 
 Selfishness is as yet, even according to the open profession of the writers on 
 economic subjects, the sole motive of action in industrial mercantile life. 
 The selfishness of an individual in the vast chain of mercantile exchanges, 
 produces almost of necessity the selfishness of all others. As competition is 
 the highest law of trade, every advantage gained by one must be striven 
 after by all others. As things are, man as considered a factor in industrial 
 life, lias become a mere hand, a tool, a thing. Competition allows not to 
 measure him by another standard and to treat him according to other 
 precepts of morality. Therefore, it is the state's duty to watch that not the 
 .selfishness of the worst demand, as a consequence, the succession of the 
 selfishness of the less bad, or even of the best. Every man should, by 
 law. be guaranteed the enjoyment of the day of rest. Remove the Sunday 
 laws, as far as they apply to this guarantee from our statute books, and 
 competition will soon have effected that for six days' hire seven days work 
 will be exacted from all. The misery of the masses under our present 
 system will always be great enough to supply, under the higher sceptre of 
 starvation threatened, the demand for men to work seven days at pay of 
 six. Of course, in the long-run, better work is turned out by. the hands 
 that rest one day in seven. But what cares grasping selfishness for ulterior 
 advantages? It is the present, immediate profit, that it craves for. Unless 
 hindered, it will disregard humanity and future benefits for the gratification 
 of its greed. To prevent this patent danger is the duty of the state. Fur- 
 ther than this, and of course the maintenance and the guardianship of public 
 peace and the prevention of interference by the one with the rights of the 
 other, the state has no concern with the observation of the Sabbath. Educa- 
 -iion will, in the course of time, tend to give the American people a Sabbath 
 day of uniform character. It will be what the day of rest is intended for, a 
 day for man and by man, for the higher life of man, cultivation of the higher 
 things of life, and the study of the higher themes of life, a day which will 
 be free from the riot, the revelry, the boisterousness, the drunkenness of 
 the fanatics, of what they call falsely the personal freedom to intoxicate 
 themselves whenever they choose, and equally free from the narrowness or 
 fanaticism of Puritan dogmatism. It will be a day whereon the church will 
 have a wider circle of friends than now% and a deeper influence, but a day 
 whereon art and music, authors and students will also dispense blessings. 
 
 On the morn of the day of nature's resurrection to new life, in Goathe's 
 Faust, the student from his dingy study and the narrow streets of the 
 town, hurries through the gates, crosses the ditch and seeks the open air of
 
 14 
 
 the country. With him many wend their way in search after the breezes of 
 early spring. 
 
 Hier ist des Volkes wahrer Himmel, 
 Zufrieden jauchzet Gross und Klein, 
 Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf zcfe's sein. 
 
 Hier bin ich Mensch. So comes it to him with the full tide of a new 
 life, a new life around about him. The day of rest is in the Christian 
 church the day of the resurrection, but as our Goethe says, 
 
 Sie feiern die Auferstehung des Hernn, 
 Denn sie sind selber auferstanden. 
 
 The day of rest, this is the truth of the Christian dogma, is the day 
 whereon each man rises to the higher life. Hier bin ich Mensch. A day 
 whereon comes to us the thought, the inspiration, the knowledge that, 
 regardless of the contrasts of the week, free from the cares and the concerns 
 of the week day, free and larger than its concentrations, and broader than 
 its limitations, is the life of man. The day of rest proclaims to each one. 
 Hier bist Du Mensch; now " Thou art a man, the son, the image of God." 
 
 OF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
 
 
 
 B