1. Rest.

For the working-man Sunday must still be, as now, a day of Rest, a pause in the busy week. The command seems written in our flesh and blood, confirmed by centuries of history, attested under many climates, races, civilizations,—the command, "Six clays shalt thou labor, but the seventh shall be Sabbath," that is, rest. So ancient is it that it seems to date from the creation; so imperious that it seems to have come from God; so sure that it seems to have been revealed. Strip off these symbols by which man thinks the thought, and the thought is true. No accidental choice, no chieftain's word, is old and strong and wide of spread like this. It is from Nature,—the Nature that lies in man announces her strong law through his deep need. No beliefs in Sinairevalation or resurrection-miracle can add to its real weight, however much those beliefs have served to make men feel its weight and yield obedience. The tired muscles claim Sabbath, if the week's work has been with muscles. The tired nerves claim Sabbath, if the week's work falls on nerves. What is more, the need of the seventh day's pause increases, not diminishes, with time; for the tendency of modern industry to divide and subdivide labor is a tendency to pull but one string in the individual, and the tendency of modern civilization towards a man-to page 70 man competition in every trade and occupation is a tendency to keep that one string at steadier, tighter stretch. And if this be true of modern work in general, it is truth come truer in the rush and crush of our American life. Were a congress of physicians or of sanitary scientists to be asked the question, they would doubtless answer with one voice, that, without a periodic pause as often as one good fair day in seven to supplement the night-repairs that come in sleep, the vital forces of a modern nation would be perceptibly lowered before a single generation had run by. And not the race-vitality alone would suffer. The family life would suffer, which that great home-day cherishes. The individual's self-respect would suffer, which that recurring resurrection from the bent back and the work-stained suit, and the sense of drudgery for masters, now revives. And because the general welfare would thus be lowered, the general morality also would suffer, through and through, and show the difference between the year with Sunday pauses in it and the year without.

The Sabbath-law is growing plainer, then, than ever; the Sabbath-command is growing more imperious. Rest is still the greatest gift the Sunday can bring, it is the great gift the Sunday must bring, the working-man. Any change that would seriously endanger that, whatever good it otherwise might do, would do more harm than good.