When Samuel Johnson, on his death bed, made Joshua Reynolds promise he
would do no more work on Sunday, he of course had no conception of the
truth that Reynolds reached through work the same condition of mind that
he, Johnson, had reached by going to church. Johnson despised work and
Reynolds loved it; Johnson considered one day in the week holy; to
Reynolds all days were sacred--sacred to work; that is, to the
expression of his best. Why should you cease to express your holiest and
highest on Sunday? Ah, I know why you don't work on Sunday! It is
because you think that work is degrading, and because your sale and
barter is founded on fraud, and your goods are shoddy. Your week-day
dealings lie like a pall upon your conscience, and you need a day in
which to throw off the weariness of that slavery under which you live.
You are not free yourself, and you insist that others shall not be free.

You have ceased to make work gladsome, and you toil and make others
toil with you, and you all well nigh faint from weariness and disgust.
You are slave and slave-owner, for to own slaves is to be one.

But the artist is free and he works in joy, and to him all things are
good and all days are holy. The great inventors, thinkers, poets,
musicians and artists have all been men of deep religious natures; but
their religion has never been a formalized, restricted, ossified
religion. They did not worship at set times and places. Their religion
has been a natural and spontaneous blossoming of the intellect and
emotions--they have worked in love, not only one day in the week, but
all days, and to them the groves have always and ever been God's
first temples.

Let us work to make men free! Am I bad because I want to give you
freedom, and have you work in gladness instead of fear?