Sabbatical year

“ If we assign three weeks to each festival—including the time spent on the journeys, and the delays before and after the celebration, together with the festival week, it will be a small allowance for the cessation of their regular labor. As there were three festivals in the year, the main body of the servants would be absent from their stated employments at least nine weeks annually, which would amount in forty-two years, subtracting the sabbaths, to six years and eighty-four days. ”

“ It is higher not only in actual money paid, but in privileges granted, a vacation of 30 actual working days, or 5 weeks each year, with additional time running in some departments as high as 30 days for sick leave and the generous provisions of the retirement act. No other body of public servants ever occupied such a fortunate position. ”

“ It depends upon the number of the household,—upon the occupation of the different members,—whether they all think alike on the sanctification of the Sabbath, and are disposed to unite in bringing their worldly affairs to such an issue, that they may have all the following day for holy rest. With some, Saturday evening is a time of more leisure than any other of the week; while with not a few, it is a time of more hurry and pressure of business,—collecting debts, paying bills, fulfilling promises of the shop or store, than will again be encountered until Saturday returns. ”

“ It's only holiday work, but it'll last five weeks. And if you do it all right I can get you the whole of the holiday work on the column. That comes to a good lot in the year. We're always taking odd days off. ”

“ Upon festival days, rest from labour is required all the day over, whereas, upon the days of ordinary and weekly meetings, rest is required only during the time of public worship. 2. Cessation from labour, for prayers or preaching on those appointed days of the week, at some occasions may be omitted; but the rest and commemoration appointed by the church, to be precisely observed upon the anniversary festival days, must not be omitted, in the Bishop's judgment.175 3. Men are straitly commanded and compelled to rest from labour upon holidays ”

“ The great class of procrastinators are hurrying to and fro to complete the lagging business of the week. The good mothers, like Burns’s matron, are plying their needles, making “auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new;” while the domestics, or help (we prefer the national descriptive term) , are wielding, with might and main, their brooms and mops, to make all tidy for the Sabbath.
As the day declines, the hum of labour dies away, and, after the sun is set, perfect stillness reigns in every well—ordered household, and not a foot-fall is heard in the village street. ”

“ The workingmen owe their work to the establishment which pays them; it is as much their interest as their duty. [Pg 165] The result of laziness and intemperance is misery. We cannot enough deplore the use of what is called the Mondays—a day of rest over and beyond the legitimate and necessary Sunday. It is certain that one day of rest in a week is absolutely a necessity. No man can nor ought (except in circumstances unavoidable) work without interruption the whole year through. ”

“ In every well ordered family, where industry and economy are found, there are certain duties assigned, by custom or common consent, to each member of the household. These are attended to by the persons on whom they devolve, during the week, much to the facilitating of business, and the prevention of trouble or confusion. Now if such be found a measure of expediency during days of labour, we may safely presume upon its utility when applied to the Sabbath. If it is important to save moments of six days, it cannot be less desirable to secure the remnants of one day. ”

“ The Order fixes the number of hours during which the children are to be under school instruction, and provides for a ten minutes' rest in every attendance of two hours or more, limits the number of hours which may be occupied in manual or industrial work, and provides for one whole holiday or two half-holidays in each week, in addition to allowing six weeks' holidays in the year if the guardians choose to grant it. ”

“ Is it not something extraordinary, from a purely economic point of view, that while it is widely recognized that every one should have one day in seven for rest, that while business men are expected to close up their offices on the Sabbath, and all working men and women are given this day in the stores, the factories, and mines—the cook and maids have their Sundays out, and their week-day afternoons—that nowhere on earth, so far as I know, has there ever been a systematic arrangement by which mothers, as a class, have any specially arranged hours or days for rest! ”

“ The Sabbath, as a memorial of what the Creator did during the first week of time, is now seen in its dignity and importance. It is the memorial of the living God. Man is to rest on the day of the week on which the Creator ceased to create.
But those who belittle the grand Sabbatic institution to only serve man’s physical wants of a day of rest, and to provide for him a day of public worship, and see no higher design in it, are satisfied with a change of the day of the Sabbath. They think that a day on which the Creator did not rest, will do quite as well as the day on which he did rest. ”

“ Eat, work and sleep is the ancient trinity of slavery. The modern life demands leisure; the opportunity for enjoyment and self-improvement. How it is best to be secured is a question about which there is a variety of opinions. One of the plans to give the workingman more time for himself is that of the Saturday half-holiday. We see no particular advantage in this over the eight-hour-for-a-day's-work plan.
It seems to us that if laborers worked eight hours a day and had Sunday for a holiday instead of a holy day, all their requirements would be better answered than in any other way. ”

“ Nowadays, when the working day is so short and the working year so interspersed with ample vacations, the old-fashioned holiday has ceased to serve any purpose, and would be regarded as a nuisance. We prefer to choose and use our leisure time as we please. ”

“ The gauge by which we examine the running of the human machinery entrusted to us should be read with sympathy, and we should set a pace that we can hold the entire day or the working period of a normal life. Speaking for our own institution, we adhere to the 42-hour weekly schedule with provision for a weekly half-holiday. Evening work should certainly never exceed the number three in any one week and personally I'm leaning toward the more desirable two evenings a week. Where a special evening force is employed the recommendation of course, does not apply. ”

“ The value of a Sunday is that everybody in the family is at home on the same day. What is the use of talking about a six-day working week in which six members of a family would each have his day of rest on a different day of the week?' Id., at 2198. ”

“ Some things we can't do; we can't stop the creakin' sounds of the world's work; the big roar of the wheel of business that rolls through the week days, can't be oiled into stillness; but Sundays they might get a little rest Sunday is the only day of rest for thousands of men and wimmen, nervous, pale, worn by their week's hard toil. ”

“ The secret of it is, that they leave the six working days outside the Sabbath as far possible; but they take as much as they can of the Sabbath lessons into the week days' work to cheer them onward.
Leaning against the door-post of the next shop is the too industrious master of it. He cannot spare himself the Sunday, and, though he puts up part of the shutters during morning hours, as a sort of compliment to the day of rest, you can see all the goods in tempting array within. ”

“ We grown people, reasonable as we are, could not stand the abominable school-confinement of our offspring a week; and yet we expect it of them, with their brains and veins busy as swarming ant-hills. In brief: Is childhood, then, only the painful preparation-day for the Sunday enjoyment of later age, or is it not rather itself a Sabbath eve, which brings its own joys? ”

“ Ye shall do no servile work: and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord."
By a very natural association of thought, in ver. 22 the direction to leave the gleaning of the harvest for [462] the poor and the stranger is repeated verbally from chap. xix. 9, 10. Thereupon we pass from the feast of the seventh week to the solemnities of the seventh month, in which the series of annual sabbatic seasons ended. It was thus, by eminence, the sabbatic season of the year. ”

“ Do we find it difficult to rise as early on that day as during the week, that with the morning we may commence our duties? Let conscience speak, and we shall wake early. Let our love to God, and his service, only be as strong as our attachment to the things of the world, and no more of the Sabbath will be wasted in slumber, than of Monday morning. Men who labour through the week, contend for this indulgence ”

“ Weekly Rest in Commerce and Offices, Report VII (1) , International Labour Conference, 39th Sess., Geneva, 1956 (1955) , passim, especially at 18, 24-26. 'This tendency to ensure that the weekly rest is taken at the same time by all workers on the day established by tradition or custom has an obvious social purpose, namely to enable the workers to take part in the life of the community and in the special forms of recreation which are available on certain days.' Id., at 24. ”

“ Even on ordinary holidays the American workman, bitten as he is with the eager habitude of labor, more often than not some time during the day finds himself close to the place where at other times he is employed. There his thoughts are: thither his steps all unconsciously bend themselves. So now, in this melancholy, indefinite holiday which November had brought to Thessaly, the idlers instinctively hung about the deserted works. ”

“ The working classes at present are simply humbugged by the Churches. The day of rest is secure enough without lies or fictions. What the masses want is an opportunity to make use of it. Now this cannot be done if all rest on the same day. A minority must work on Sunday, and take their rest on some other day of the week. And really, when the nonsensical solemnity of Sunday is gone, any other day would be equally eligible. ”

“ If I had my own choice, and could have my own dictation with regard to physical and mental labour, I would set apart, for the express benefit of man, at least one-seventh part of the time for rest. There are but very few Sabbaths that I have ever kept in strictly resting from my labours—permitting both body and mind to rest. Perhaps assembling here on the Sabbath is a rest to many, though it is not very much of a rest. To those who have been labouring all the week to the utmost extent of their strength, it may be somewhat of a rest to sit on these hard benches ”

“ I almost feel as if I ought to come every day; but then I should do so little good—arriving at 4 o'clock; and the children going to bed at six or seven; and the expense is so considerable. If thou canst hold out till Friday, I shall endeavor to come in the afternoon and stay till Monday. But this must depend on arrangements hereafter to be made; so do not absolutely expect me before Saturday. Oh that Providence would bring all of you home, before then! This is a miserable time for me; more so than for thee, with all thy toil, and watchfulness and weariness. ”

“ Servants and laborers must take that season which their business will best afford: either while at work, or in travelling, or when they lie awake in the night. Such as can choose what time of the day they will, should observe, when they find their spirits most active and fit for contemplation, and fix upon that as the stated time. ”

“ Meetings for public worship, taking up of collections, and even breaking of bread, do not constitute a Sabbath, though they are proper exercises for such a day. To sabbatize is to rest from our own secular labors, and keep a season holy to God. These proofs for a change of the Sabbath, therefore, which are unquestionably the best that can be produced, are utterly deficient, and the argument therefrom, as generally presented, is deceptive, and unworthy of confidence. ”

“ It is probable that, in a country where business pursuits and keen competition are carried to such an unheard-of extent, all classes feel the need of rest on the seventh day, and regard the Sabbath as a physical necessity. ”

“ The reckoning of time by weeks is derived from nothing in nature, but owes its existence to the divine appointment of the seventh day to a [31] holy use in memory of the Lord’s rest from the six days’ work of creation. [43] This period of time is marked only by the recurrence of the sanctified rest-day of the Creator. That the patriarchs reckoned time by weeks and by sevens of days, is evident from several texts. [44] That they should retain the week and forget the Sabbath by which alone the week is marked, is not a probable conclusion. ”

“ Six days shalt thou [111] labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son.'"
"WE WORK ON SUNDAY TILL DINNER-TIME."
Vol. i. page 110.
"Why, yes, Sir; that's plain enough to be understood; but such poor folks as us can't afford to rest from labour on a Sunday."
"Do you think that God would command poor people to rest from their labour on the Sabbath, unless He knew that it would be for their good? And, besides, do you think that poverty will be admitted as an excuse for a neglect of duty? ”