Whit Sunday

“ Wouldn't a preacher be satisfied to have studied a week upon a sermon, if he knew that on Sunday, preaching it, he had sent it, live, into one living soul? Fifty-two souls a year, to reach and save,—would not that be enough? Well, then, every day a man might be giving the Lord's word out somewhere, in some fashion, I think. He needn't wait for the Sundays. Everybody has a congregation in the course of the week. I don't doubt the week-day service is often you preachers' best."
"I know it is," Hilary Vireo replied.
"Come down into the cabin with me," said Mr. Kirkbright. ”

“ There are stifling, sticky, sweltering. Sundays in midsummer when one prays, if he can pray at all, for the night to come. And there are blustering, rainy, sleety, dismal, Sundays in the fall when the dead hours go in funeral procession by and the world seems a gloomy tomb. But a Sunday in blossoming time! That is different! The very milk wagons, as they clattered, belated, down the street rattled a cheery note of fellowship and good will. The long drawn call of the paper boy had in it a hint of the joy of living. And the rumble of an occasional passing cab came like a deep undertone of peace. ”

“ Sundays are the big beads on the chain. They need not be all of the same color, but there must be the big beads to satisfy the eye and the finger-tip.
And a New England Sunday always is different. Whatever changes may have come or may be coming elsewhere, in New England Sunday has its own atmosphere. Over the fields and woods and rocks there is a sense of poise between reminiscence and expectancy. The stir of the morning church-going brightens but does not mar this. It adds the human note—rather not a note, but a quiet chord of many tones. ”

“ Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at least two little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbath work of strengthening and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love.
Not even Sunday nights - the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow darkened the first waking burst of light on Sunday mornings - could mar those precious Saturdays. ”

“ The Pulpit responded in anything but a pious tone: "The reason you do not hear is that your mind on Sundays is full of everything but the gospel. You work so hard during the week that you rob the Lord of his twenty-four hours. The man who works on Sunday as well as the rest of the week is no worse than you who abstain on that day, because your excessive devotion to business during the week kills your Sunday; and a dead Sunday is no Sunday at all. ”

“ On Sundays, the exercises of devotion are longer and more numerous, and yet they are never fatigued with the pious duty. They feel that the happiness of the little and of the humble is to speak with their Heavenly Father, and that no house presents so many attractions as the house of the Lord. Indeed, so religiously is the Sunday observed here, that on this day of rest, even before our coming, the most timorous deer might wander unmolested in the midst of the tribe, even though they were reduced by want of provisions to the most rigorous fast. ”

“ The phantom of the next day, with the dreary five to follow, sate as a load upon my poor Sabbath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop white? What is gone of Black Monday? All days are the same. Sunday itself—that unfortunate failure of a holyday as it too often proved, what with my sense of its fugitiveness, and over-care to get the greatest quantity of pleasure out of it—is melted down into a week day. I can spare to go to church now, without grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut out of the holyday. I have Time for everything. I can visit a sick friend. ”

“ In brief, it would not hurt Society to spend its Sundays with more thought for others than Itself. For the bulk and mass of the British people—the people who are Great Britain—still adhere to the sacred and blessed institution of a “day of rest,” even if it be not a day of sermons. To thousands upon thousands of toiling men and women, Sunday is still a veritable God’s day, and we may thank God for it! ”

“ How glad I am that we do not agree about Sunday. I think your view of ‘the Sabbath’ so entirely derogatory to all the dignity and beauty of Christianity, and I cannot understand any one not becoming an infidel, if they think God so mean as to suppose that He would consider ‘His day’ (though Sunday is only the Church’s day, all days are God’s days) dishonoured by walking with one’s intimate friends in a garden, or having tea in another garden with several persons, all infinitely better and wiser than oneself. ”

“ I would use the Sunday for religion in the wide sense of that word; use it to promote piety and goodness, for humanity, for [Pg 104] science, for letters, for society. I would not abuse it by impudent license on the one hand, nor by slavish superstition on the other. We can easily escape the evils which come of the old abuse; can make the Sunday ten times more valuable than it is even now; can employ it for all the highest interests of mankind, and fear no reaction into libertinism.
The Sunday is made for man, as are all other days; not man for the Sunday. ”

“ In order that man should rest from work at least one day out of the seven, and dedicate it to the special service of God, and to the salvation of his own soul.
Why do we Christians keep Sunday as a holy- day instead of Saturday, which was the day observed under the Old Law?
The apostles kept Sunday, the first day of the week, as a holy-day for these reasons: 1. As the Sabbath was a memorial of the consummation of the work of the creation, so the Sunday was to remind us of the consummation of the redemption. 2. On that day Our Lord arose from the dead. ”

“ The wickedness, to me, consists in making Sunday, which should be a delight, such a tedium, that, in after years, whenever the word strikes upon the ear, or the day returns, the first impulse is to shun and evade it. Oh, let Sunday be what the memory of "mother's room" is to us all—radiant with perfume of flowers and sunshine. The bright spot to look back upon, when old age sits in the chimney-corner, with the sweet psalm from voices hushed by death, or far removed, still sounding in the ears ”

“ The church-bells were ringing, and many families were conscious of Sunday sensations, chiefly referable to the fact that the daughters had come down to breakfast in their best frocks, and with their hair particularly well dressed. For it was not Sunday, but Wednesday; and though the Bishop was going to hold a Confirmation, and to decide whether or not there should be a Sunday evening lecture in Milby, the sunbeams had the usual working-day look to the haymakers already long out in the fields, and to laggard weavers just 'setting up' their week's 'piece'. ”

“ Another instance is ready at hand in the practical abandonment of the religious observance of Sunday. To Christians Sunday is the Lord's day, and is to be observed as such. It is not true that an hour in the morning is the Lord's day, and is to be given to worship, and that the rest of the day is given to us to do what we will with. ”

“ His family took their religion like business—as a part of life only. My family took religion like a disease—as [Pg 27] a matter of life and death—as the whole of life. Perhaps we were not as strenuous in our devotions as the Canon, but sufficiently so to make Sunday uncomfortable for a boy. Consequently I highly appreciated Sundays at John’s home, where Church once was considered full Sunday duty, the balance of the day being given over to music, books, walks or whatever one felt like doing. ”

“ Then, about their Sundays, I think that church can’t do us much good if we don’t give the servants an opportunity to go, too, if they want to, or if we make it a hard day for them. Though it requires special arrangement, their Sundays should be made a day to look forward to with pleasure when each one can be sure of getting out, at some part of the day, to church, or to see her friends. The Sunday morning that the cook goes out, the lunch should be one that can be quickly cooked or her outing would be too short. ”

“ On the Sabbath we preached twice; had as many as could hear us; it appeared that everyone believed our testimony. We were called to pray for the sick. One young man lay sick with the fever, and a Methodist preacher received a blessing, and one woman. They were healed, and began to proclaim it aloud to be the power of God. Sunday was the 1st day of November; on the 2nd we started back to Manchester by the way of Lynn; there were some baptized the day we left. I heard there were about thirty others ready to go forward the first opportunity. ”

“ And this not one Sunday, but every Sunday. It was the most positive proof of the interest of the human heart in—in divine things. It was grand.”
“Well, well,” says I, following her.
“Now,” she says, “the sermon wasn’t much. Good, but not much. And the singing—well, Lavvy Whitmore can do just as good when she sets about it. Then what made folks go? The Reverend and I talked it over. And we’ve decided it isn’t because they’re any better than the village folks. No, they’ve simply got in the habit of it, they see everybody else going, and they go. And it give us an idea.” ”

“ Even at its stormiest, Sunday was a blessed day. Ursula woke to it with a feeling of immense relief. She wondered why her heart was so light. Then she remembered it was Sunday. A gladness seemed to burst out around her, a feeling of great freedom. The whole world was for twenty-four hours revoked, put back. Only the Sunday world existed. ”

“ Saturday, moreover, is the day between Friday, the day of mourning, and Sunday, the day of joy—and the Holy Virgin is the mediatrix between God, Who is Eternal Beatitude, and man, who is subject to endless evils and miseries. Mary is the way to arrive at Jesus, and Saturday is a prelude to the solemnity of Sunday. Saturday is as a magnificent portal consecrated to the Mother of God, by which we enter the Sanctuary of God Himself. The Saints held this day in great esteem—on it they redoubled their pious exercises—and many begged, as a signal favour, that they might die on a Saturday. ”

“ The following is Justin's account of their worship on the Lord's day: "In all our oblations we bless the Creator of all things, through his Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Spirit. And upon the day called Sunday, there is an assembly of all who dwell in the several cities or in the country, in one place where the records of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets are read, as time allows. ”

“ For we are no way bound to time, but time ought so to serve us, that it is lawful, and permitted to each church, when necessity urges (as is usual to be done in harvest time) , to transfer the solemnity and rest of the Lord’s day, or Sabbath, to some other day.” [955]
Zwingle could not, therefore, have considered Sunday as a divinely appointed memorial of the resurrection, or, indeed, as anything but a church festival. ”

“ Parents often make Sunday a day of gloom: to this I much object. Of all the days in the week, Sunday should be the most cheerful and pleasant. It is considered by our Church a festival; and a glorious festival it ought to be made, and one on which our Heavenly Father wishes to see all His children happy and full of innocent joy! Let Sunday, then, be made a cheerful, joyous, innocently happy day, and not, as it frequently is, the most miserable and dismal in the week. ”

“ At all events, there is not a word in Scripture to support the reasons adduced by Justin for Sunday observance.
It is important that the reader note carefully what sort of Sunday observance Justin describes. Laying aside all “suppositions,” and “inferences,” and ex-post-facto conclusions, we learn from him [180] that at the middle of the second century a form of religious service was held on Sunday. ”

“ It is not easy to see where Christians got the right to disregard the direct command of God, to labor on the day he sanctified, and keep as sacred, a day upon which he commanded men to labor. The Sabbath of God is Saturday, and if any day is to be kept holy, that is the one, and not the Sunday of the Christian. ”

“ Then, as I say, the week shall illustrate the Sunday, and the Sunday shall glorify the week; and what men do and build shall stand true types, again, for the inner growth and the invisible building; so that if this outer tabernacle were dissolved, there should be seen glorious behind it, the house not made with hands,—eternal. ”

“ If it be asked, How could the title of Lord’s day be given to Sunday except by tradition derived from the apostles? the answer will be properly returned, What was the origin of offerings for the dead? And how did the sign of the cross come into use among Christians? The title of Lord’s day as a name for Sunday is no nearer apostolic than is the sign of the cross, and offerings for the dead; for it can be traced no nearer to apostolic times than can these most palpable errors of the great apostasy. ”

“ The observance of Sunday is, like everything else in Christianism, borrowed from the heathens; and is merely a continuation of the Pagan festival that was held in the temples of the Sun, in adoration of that luminary, as the name attests beyond all contradiction; with this difference alone, that the Fathers, as if it were to make the thing more expensive and intolerable in their Scripture traffic, changed it into a weekly festival, substituting the triune machinery of the church for that of the temple. ”

“ Sunday was distinguished as a day of joy, by the circumstance that men did not fast upon it, and that they prayed standing up, and not kneeling, as Christ had raised up fallen man to heaven again through his resurrection. The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance; and it was far from the intention of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect—far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. ”