Sidereal day

“ The noonday sun to hide;
But through the night there stir and thrill
[256] The sleeping strengths of life and will.
For souls there comes a winter-tide,
For souls there blooms a spring;
Though winter days may linger long,
And snows be deep and frosts be strong,
And faith be sorely tried,
When Christ shall shine, who is the Sun,
Spring-time shall be for every one.
Oh, mighty Lord of winter-tide!
Oh, loving Lord of spring!
Come to our hearts this Easter Day,
Melt all the prisoning ice away,
And evermore abide,
Making both good and ill to be
Thy blessed opportunity. ”

“ She is not, like Spring, a vagrant, wand'ring, care-free, here and there. Easter has a field for sowing, Easter has her goal in sight, Lenten lilies all ablowing, glorify her day and night. 'Tis the heart that Easter's seeking. There she'll sow her precious seed. Hark! 'tis Easter sweetly speaking, "I have come for your great need." Heart that is bowed down with sorrow, tree that is now bare of leaf, wait with patience; for the morrow brings an end to winter's grief. Easter's such a gentle maiden, trees for her will bud again. Hearts with sorrow, heavy laden, are, by Easter, healed of pain. ”

“ Truly, many waters cannot quench love.
Sunday—that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, that seemed like the climax of the girl's shame, when to her horror she had found the Spawer in his pew beneath her; bless Heaven for the timely storm that kept them apart—Sunday came and went.
Monday replaced it; a promiseful, rainless day. All the sky was heaped up with great broken masses of cloud from yesterday's storm, that a persistent warm breeze swept over the cliff edge and across the sea, in ceaseless waves of sunlight and shadow. ”

“ You felt that, so far as they were concerned, Sunday began at seven o'clock Saturday evening, in front of the cashier's little lamp.
One must have lived among workingmen to realize the full charm of that one day's rest and its solemnity. Many of these poor creatures, bound fast to unhealthful trades, await the coming of the blessed Sunday like a puff of refreshing air, essential to their health and their life. ”

“ But when he stepped quietly up beside her only his eyes spoke, and brought the color deeper into her cheeks; and so they stood for some minutes, looking together and drawing in the wonder of God's sea.
"This is the first time I've ever seen it, you know," spoke Shirley at last, "and I'm so glad it was on Sunday morning. It will always make the day seem more holy and the sea more wonderful to think about. I like best things to happen on Sunday, don't you, because that is the best day of all?" ”

“ The memory of my youthful Sundays is fragrant with wintergreens, black birch, and crinkle-root, to say nothing of the harvest apples that grew in our neighbor's orchard; and the memory of my Sundays in later years is fragrant with arbutus, and the showy orchid, and wild strawberries, and touched with the sanctity of woodland walks and hilltops. What day can compare with a Sunday to go to the waterfalls, or to "Piney Ridge," or to "Columbine Ledge," or to stroll along "Snake Lane"? What sweet peace and repose is over all! ”

“ Would they have the courage to call Tuesday or Thursday the Sabbath of the Lord, sanctified and set apart from all eternity? If not, the inference is inevitable that what they are principally interested in is the day—the taboo—and not the rest and profit which may be derived from quitting work on a given day of the week. ”

“ It showed that men have confused the order of time, so as to profane with secular work the day originally set apart for rest; that Thursday is the seventh day, the true Sabbath, to be kept forever holy in the name of God. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Rainy Days came in, dripping; and sun-shiny Days helped them to change their stockings.
[Pg 11] Wedding Day was there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear.
[Pg 12] Pay Day came late, as he always does; and Doomsday sent word—he might be expected.
[Pg 13] April Fool (as my young lord’s jester) took upon himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any given Day in the year, to erect a scheme upon
[Pg 14] good Days, bad Days were so shuffled together, to the confounding of all sober horoscopy. ”

“ Hush, Enola, you must not ask me. The secret of the day is never divulged, or even spoken of among those who know its secrets. But once seen, the secret is then yours, and you will then know the meaning of the Day of Resis. It is a glorious day, a day of great rejoicing and happiness. Not one on that great day but feels a wonderful happiness, even those who are not direct participants in its great ceremonies. It falls to the lot of all, though, to be principal participants in the proceedings of the day, one day of his life, and this is the greatest day of all his or her days. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In those far-off days, Saturday was the wild romance of the week.
I remember being told by my first schoolmaster that Saturday was named after Saturn, and that Saturn was the planet that had rings all round it. From that hour, by a singular confusion of ideas, I always thought of Saturday as the day that had the rings round it. I somehow associated the day with the lady of the nursery rhyme who has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, and who, therefore, has music wherever she goes. ”

“ The sole use of Saturday and Sunday, as far as I can see, is to make one glad of Monday. It seems an expensive way of forcing one to recognize the blessings of employment.”
She rose listlessly from her little narrow bed.
“I must begin the day some time, I suppose,” she said, half aloud, as she twisted up her loosened hair before the glass, “though why, I don’t know. There’s absolutely no point in it.”
All the time she was dressing the monotonous drip, drip, drip of the rain made a tearful accompaniment to her gray thoughts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the forms for the days of the week, Sunday almost always occupies a conspicuous position. “When the plane changes, this day is higher than the rest, so that in passing from Saturday to Sunday, a step up is made.” ”

“ Now send the reapers forth the next morning after the Sabbath, what day is that? why, it is Sunday in the morning; so we see in the anti-type the morning of the resurrection instead of being a holy day (and as the world will have it the Sabbath) it was the day for the laborers to go out into the fields to reap the spring harvest. ”

“ All, all the dead, the near, the far, take part in Easter day!
They share the life we hope to share, as once they shared in this;
They hold in fast possession our heritage of bliss.
Theirs is the sure, near Presence toward which we reach and strain;
On Easter day, on Easter day, we all are one again.
Oh, fairest of the fair, high thoughts that light the Easter dawn!
Oh, sweet and true companionship which cannot be withdrawn!
“The Lord is risen!” sealed lips repeat out of the shadows dim;
“The Lord is risen,” we answer back, “and all shall rise in him!” ”

“ Sunday is a canker that must be cut ruthlessly out of the social organism. At present the whole community gets 'slack' on Saturday because of the paralysis that is about to fall on it. And then 'Black Monday'!—that day when the human brain tries to readjust itself—tries to realise that the shutters are down, and the streets are swept, and the stove-pipe hats are back in their band-boxes.... ”

“ But many superstitions have clustered round the latter plant, it having in years gone by been a popular notion that it will only flower at the time of day on which it was originally sown. To spin on Saturday is said in Germany to bring ill fortune, and as a warning the following legend is among the household tales of the peasantry:—"Two old women, good friends, were the most industrious spinners in their village, Saturday finding them as engrossed in their work as on the other days of the week. ”

“ There are frequently mornings in March, when a lover of nature may enjoy, in a stroll, sensations not to be exceeded, or, perhaps, equalled by any thing which the full glory of summer can awaken:—mornings, which tempt us to cast the memory of winter, or the fear of its recurrence out of our thoughts. ”

“ Who can [398] read this long list of Sunday laws, not from the “one Law-giver who is able to save and to destroy,” but from popes, emperors, and councils, without adopting the sentiment of Neander: “The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance?” ”

“ For with the seventh day, he ceased to count, and, by the divine appointment of that day to a holy use in memory of his rest thereon, he causes man to begin the count of a new week so soon as the first seventh day had ceased. And as God has been pleased to give man, in all, but seven different days, and has given to each one of these days a name which indicates its exact place in the week, his act of setting apart one of these by name, which act created weeks and gave man the Sabbath, can never—except by sophistry—be made to relate to an indefinite or uncertain day. ”

“ In all other countries, even the most rigorously severe in their practices, it is kept as a day of recreation and rest, as well as of public devotion. Even in the American towns, the old observances are giving way before the longings or weaknesses of human nature; and Sunday is no longer what it was. I have witnessed scenes of brawling, blasphemy and rude tumult, in the suburbs of New York, on Sundays, within the last few years, that I have never seen in any other part of the world on similar occasions ”

“ These men will spend their evenings in taverns and public houses, and the night in their corners and dens. Sunday is the best day in the week for them. On Monday, in their infected dens, they will again set to the work that they are heartily sick of. ”

“ When the snows began to melt, the children and young people heralded the approach of Spring with song. Joining hands, they wandered singing in the twilight, a lovely, living chain of Youth in its Spring-time. They repeated these songs at Easter, that wonderful festival of Resurrection and the rebirth of Nature. On Holy Thursday the Gospels were read in the churches until midnight, and everyone carried a taper. My mother’s estates were situated in the mountains, and it was a picturesque sight when the peasants wended their way churchwards at Easter. ”

“ Another Sunday. Strange that the time, which should seem so endless, flies so rapidly! Miriam complains that Sunday comes every day; but though that seems a little too much, I insist that it comes twice a week. Let time fly, though; for each day brings us so much nearer our destiny, which I long to know.
Thursday, we heard from a lady just from town that our house was standing the day before, which somewhat consoled us for the loss of our silver and clothing; but yesterday came the tidings of new afflictions. ”

“ And for common and ordinary dayes, wherein as there is no harme, so not any notable good, we rather say, they are gone forth from God in the course of nature (as it were) with a fiat, then made by Him; specially, with a faciamus. So, evill dayes no dayes, or dayes marr'd: and common dayes, dayes; but no made dayes: Onely those made, that crowned with some extraordinary great Favour, and thereby get a dignity, and exaltation above the rest: exempted out of the ordinary course of the Calendar with an Hic est. Such, in the Law, was the Day in the Passe-over, made by God, the head of the yeare. ”

“ Our uncivilized Sundays are responsible for our Monday morning headaches and for the gloom which, in many a household, does not wear off until Tuesday morning. If Sunday were a day of fasting instead of a day of feasting, Monday might be radiant occasionally instead of riotous or revolutionary. ”

“ The days sped so fast with these happy people, children and “grown-ups,” as Sunny calls them, that soon it was already Sunday, the first of the only two Sundays they had to spend at the glen. Shall I tell about them both?
These parents considered Sunday the best day in all the week, and tried to make it so; especially to the children, whom, in order to give the servants rest, they then took principally into their own hands. They wished that, when the little folks grew up, Sunday should always be remembered as a bright day, a cheerful day, a day spent with papa and mamma ”