festivity found a better utterance, than by its tongue; and when the dead
are slowly passing to their home, the steeple has a melancholy voice to
bid them welcome. Yet, in spite of this connection with human interests,
what a moral loneliness, on week-days, broods round about its stately
height! It has no kindred with the houses above which it towers; it
looks down into the narrow thoroughfare, the lonelier, because the crowd
are elbowing their passage at its base. A glance at the body of the
church deepens this impression. Within, by the light of distant windows,
amid refracted shadows, we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries,
the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit, and the clock, which tells to
solitude how time is passing. Time,--where man lives not,--what is it
but eternity? And in the church, we might suppose, are garnered up,
throughout the week, all thoughts and feelings that have reference to
eternity, until the holy day comes round again, to let them forth. Might
not, then, its more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town,
with space for old trees to wave around it, and throw their solemn
shadows over a quiet green? We will say more of this, hereafter.

But, on the Sabbath, I watch the earliest sunshine, and fancy that a
holier brightness marks the day, when there shall be no buzz of voices on
the exchange, nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd, nor business, anywhere
but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether I see it
scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across the fields,
or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the figure of the
casement on my chamber-floor, still I recognize the Sabbath sunshine.
And ever let me recognize it! Some illusions, and this among them, are
the shadows of great truths. Doubts may flit around me, or seem to close
their evil wings, and settle down; but so long as I imagine that the
earth is hallowed, and the light of heaven retains its sanctity, on the
Sabbath,--while that blessed sunshine lives within me,--never can my