Sot

“ I am writing a history of yesterday not because yesterday was extraordinary in any way, for it might rather be called ordinary, but because I have long wished to trace the intimate side of life through an entire day. Only God knows how many diverse and diverting impressions, together with the thoughts awakened by them, occur in a single day. ”

“ One Sunday an ancient man came by and chid them for their profanity. ‘Go along with your old wives’ stories!’ said a rich proprietor who was directing the labourers; ‘Sunday and working-day is all alike to us. ”

“ In the morning, when the sun is golden, the clang of the day-bell brings the hurry and laughter of three hundred young hearts from hall and street, and from the busy city below,—children all dark and heavy-haired,—to join their clear young voices in the music of the morning sacrifice. ”

“ But the next morning other lessons have to be learned, and other things to be thought about, and your faults and bad habits are strong; and so every day the echo of the Sunday’s teaching grows fainter, and at last the end of the week comes, and finds you no nearer God or the fulfilment of your good resolutions than the beginning. The thorns have sprung up—the cares and pleasures of this world—and choked the good seed that was beginning to grow. ”

“ For a wonder, it was a pleasant day, and this is a thing always to be thankfully acknowledged in England. The calm stillness of the afternoon, the seclusion of the whole place, the silence only broken by the cawing of the rooks, the ancient church, the mossy graves with their flowers and green grass, the sunshine and the tree shadows, all seemed to mingle together in a kind of hazy dream of peacefulness and rest. How natural it is to say of some place sheltered, simple, cool, and retired, here one might find peace, as if peace came from without, and not from within. ”

“ The morning star slid down towards the east, paling by degrees in the young day's increasing light, and the earth lay silent like a slumbering, unpeopled world, as if it were still the morning hour of paradise, before the time of Adam and Eve, and their restless children! ”

“ A Sunday so passed, is a liquefaction of the entire nature—a dispersive process, dispelling mental cramps and stagnations, and enabling every single faculty again to get its due in the general diffusion of the intellectual power. ”

“ Was it therefore to be wondered that with subdued and chastened feelings we all met the next day, the elder ones steeling their hearts, and recovering their minds to enter into a regular discussion and investigation of the fate destined for them; the younger ones meek and sorrowful but most loving and engaging in their simple reliance on our words, and their quiet, but watchful anticipations of our looks and wishes, and this day happened to be a Sunday. ”

“ The old generation melts into the new, as the night melts into the day. None the less, just as the night differs from the day, although it is impossible to say when the dawn begins, and when the day, so does the Modern differ from that which has been termed the Middle age. ”

“ This morning picture may give a good specimen of the whole livelong Sunday, which presented only an alternation of similar scenes until sunset, when a universal unchaining of tongues and a general scamper proclaimed that the "sun was down."
But, it may be asked, what was the result of all this strictness? Did it not disgust you with the Sabbath and with religion? No, it did not. It did not, because it was the result of no unkindly feeling, but of consistent principle; and consistency of principle is what even children learn to appreciate and revere. ”

“ To-morrow is Sunday—“day of rest” I believe they call it. Humph!—more cooking to be done—more company—more confusion than on any other day in the week. If I own a soul I have not heard how to take care of it for many a long day. Wonder if my master and mistress calculate to pay me for that, if I lose it? ”

“ All that I can say on the subject is to declare with the utmost sincerity that not a single morning has arisen without my forming the resolution to write before the evening, and that not a single evening post-bell has rang without sounding the alarm to my conscience. In the mean time, days, hours and weeks have imperceptibly rolled away: a perpetual hurry and long days of Parliamentary business, the whole world coming to town at once, and a great deal of occupation at home relative to my History, which will come out some time after Christmas. ”

“ But in truth, after the rush and hurry of city life, in the country it seems always Sunday. There is a leisure, a calm, a restfulness, and, away by the fields, a quiet sanctity which pervades its every part and unconsciously influences its every inhabitant. ”

“ On the eve of the great event he retires to rest early, and on the morning of the most momentous day in his life he rises with the first streak of dawn in the east, and paces to and fro on Constitution Hill, to collect his thoughts and prepare his speech. ”

“ Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshipping the heavenly bodies, likewise, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have even admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day, in preference to the preceding day, as the most suitable in the week, for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest, and for banqueting. ”

“ Is it possible to paint more supremely four such different hours and moods of life—dawn, radiant morning,{205} dull twilight, and cold night,—to unite in a higher degree the skill and power of a master? ”

“ Let us be diligent during the week, and lengthen our days by beginning them earlier, so as to do most of our work in the morning; then with a clear conscience we may leave off our play as early as we please and go to rest: we shall enjoy the Sunday repose which we have earned, and find ourselves refreshed instead of wearied by it. ”

“ They surprise me day after day, like some new and brilliant phenomenon, though the thoughts which they bring, as it were by a habit contracted of the hour, are almost always the same. The day, in these countries where life flows so thickly, is engrossed, and pretty busily too, by the present. ”

“ There are the lesser beats at intervals through the long day, when the early laborer’s bell, and the gong at nine o’clock, and one o’clock, and seven o’clock, sound the call to prayers and to meals. And there are the weekly beats, when Sunday makes the beautiful refrain of the psalm of life. ”

“ Here, Sunday after Sunday, at the most impressionable moment of their lives, come five hundred boys—solemn, silent, and reverent, and precisely in the mood to be impressed and influenced—who, a few years hence, will be taking part in that struggle for which the strongest and best cannot be too well equipped. ”

“ The morning star stood, with its solemn, holy eye of light, looking down on the man of sin, from out the brightening sky. O, with what freshness, what solemnity and beauty, is each new day born; as if to say to insensate man, "Behold! ”

“ Our diarist makes, however, only a faint allusion in the phrase ‘till night,’ to what the same travellers remark, that there was always a hearty supper in the evenings, amply making up for the half-fast of the day, and at which human nature found vent occasionally in a little good-humour and merriment. ”

“ Before the quarrel begins, and our eyes are blinded by the dust of controversy; before our blood is fired, and we become wholly incapable of judgment—let us look coolly at the matter, and ask, Do we need any change in respect to the observance of the Sunday? Are the present opinions respecting the origin, nature, and original design of that institution just and true? ”

“ In hot climates, the early morning hours, before noon, and late evening hours, after sunset, are, according to the fashion of the place, the chosen hours for calling; but in more temperate climes—resembling our own—the afternoon hours are, as with us, the hours for calling. ”

“ In looking back at the incidents of the day, which the language of custom has, with reference to our repasts, denominated THE MORNING, I could not avoid feeling the strong analogy which exists between such an excursion as that which I have here described and THE LIFE of MAN. Like that, and all things measured by TIME and SPACE, it had had its BEGINNING—its eventful COURSE—and its END determined by physical causes. ”

“ You can sit still on a Sunday morning, in the cold, on a very narrow bench, with no comfort appertaining, and listen for half an hour to a rapid outflow of words, which, for any purpose of instruction or edification, are absolutely useless to you. ”

“ And the fact is, that a mind stupefied and animalized by every bad influence from the hour of birth, spending the whole of every week-day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done much with by a few hours on Sunday. ”

“ Here it clings, there bulges; and the human body, with its agreeable and lively lines, is turned into a mockery and laughing-stock. Another piece of Sunday business with the peasants is to take their ailments to the chemist for advice. It is as much a matter for Sunday as church-going. ”

“ I am prepared to affirm that, to the studious especially, and whether younger or older, a Sunday well spent—spent in happy exercises of the heart, devotional and domestic—a Sunday given to the soul, is the best of all means of refreshment for the mere intellect. ”

“ And so the time lapses without epoch or era, and we know some half-score of mornings and evenings by tradition only. Almost the night is grieved and leaves her tears on the forelock of day, that men will not rush to her embrace, and fulfil at length the pledge so forwardly given in the youth of time. ”

“ Sunday, again, is most valuable to working men as a day of rest. During the great French Revolution, those who were at the head of affairs determined that they would neither fear God nor regard man; and so they passed a law to the effect that none should pay any heed to Sunday, to its services, its lessons, or its rest. ”

“ But it strikes the stranger that in those places where the people are to be seen in large numbers, as on their Sunday promenades in the principal streets, they never have the contented and well-to-do Sunday look common in other large cities, but a melancholy or brooding expression. ”

“ Isn’t it perfectly possible? I’ve got a suit of your civies in the car; we can go outside and exchange clothes; you take Esky and go home, and I’ll come in here and make myself at home until you get back. What’s wrong with that? You said yourself that there’s never anything to do on Saturday and Sunday, and you can be back here to-morrow afternoon. ”

“ When it is calm, as it was that morning, the silence, uninterrupted by any movement or sound, is peculiarly striking. That morning in the steppe it was quiet and dull, though the sun had already risen. ”

“ Morning and noon and evening,
If I have but eyes to see.
And the daily load grows lighter,
The daily cares grow sweet,
For the Master is near, the Master is here,
I have only to sit at his feet.
—Margaret Elizabeth Sangster. ———
The day is long and the day is hard ”

“ Two o'clock, the morning of October 12th, 1915.
TO her accustomed eyes
The midnight-morning brought not such a dread
As thrills the chance-awakened head that lies
In trivial sleep on the habitual bed. ”

“ The cold autumn morning—the young bronzed faces emerging from the darkness—the humbled and astonished foe: surely Old and New, Europe and America, were never brought together in a moment more attractive to the story-teller. ”

“ The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. ”

“ On Sunday, when the bells chime their invitation, all sorts and conditions of men meet in the dim romantic precincts of the ancient church, and there is much pleasant gossiping when morning and evening worship are ended. ”

“ The soft air of the morning has a voice only to be heard when crowds are far away. The leaves of the green trees have tongues, drowned in the idle gabble of a foolish multitude, but heard in the calm quiet of the early morning. ”

“ I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. ”

“ We go on working with gradually increasing excitement until Saturday night, when some sensible friend hints that it is too late to make a bad week's work good; precious Sunday comes to ease the strain, and the human machine is oiled and cooled. ”

“ They awake before us; and ere the earliest labourer has said his prayers, have not the woods and valleys been ringing with their hymns? Why, therefore, may not they, who know, each week-day, the hour of our lying down and our rising up, know also the day of our general rest? ”

“ There is also the prospect of evening service, followed by cold supper: the earlier hours of the day stretch now behind one at so vast and unwieldy a length that it seems impossible that one will ever reach the end of the day alive. ”

“ As you see, a Saturday makes one talkative, because we have to be silent all the rest of the week and are accustomed to regulate the capacities of our souls according to our superior officer's word of command. ”

“ On Sunday next, when you come back from mass, to which you will be taken at my request—forget not to prepare your soul for death; you may lose your life in your difficult undertaking—when you come back from mass, I say, do all you can to delay the moment when you re-enter your room. ”