sanctities to the demon of gain, look at the same time with stern
disapprobation upon everything partaking of the character of amusement,
however innocent and healthful, on this day. But for myself, looking
down through the light of a golden evening upon these quietly passing
groups, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them for seeking on this
their sole day of leisure the needful influences of social enjoyment,
unrestrained exercise, and fresh air. I cannot think any essential
service to religion or humanity would result from the conversion of
their day of rest into a Jewish Sabbath, and their consequent
confinement, like so many pining prisoners, in close and crowded
boarding-houses. Is not cheerfulness a duty, a better expression of our
gratitude for God's blessings than mere words? And even under the old
law of rituals, what answer had the Pharisees to the question, "Is it
not lawful to do good on the Sabbath day?"

I am naturally of a sober temperament, and am, besides, a member of that
sect which Dr. More has called, mistakenly indeed, "the most melancholy
of all;" but I confess a special dislike of disfigured faces,
ostentatious displays of piety, pride aping humility. Asceticism,
moroseness, self-torture, ingratitude in view of down-showering
blessings, and painful restraint of the better feelings of our nature
may befit a Hindoo fakir, or a Mandan medicine man with buffalo skulls
strung to his lacerated muscles; but they look to me sadly out of place
in a believer of the glad evangel of the New Testament. The life of the
divine Teacher affords no countenance to this sullen and gloomy
saintliness, shutting up the heart against the sweet influences of human
sympathy and the blessed ministrations of Nature. To the horror and
clothes-rending astonishment of blind Pharisees He uttered the
significant truth, that "the Sabhath was made for man, and not man for
the Sabhath." From the close air of crowded cities, from thronged