I Am
Far From Judging Harshly Of The Piety Of Those Who Have Been Educated
In These Views And Practices.
But, viewing the subject merely in
relation to things of this life, I am met by one very striking
Fact:
there is not a single nation, possessed of a popular form of
government, which has not our Puritan theory of the Sabbath.
Protestant Switzerland, England, Scotland, and America cover the whole
ground of popular freedom; and in all these this idea of the Sabbath
prevails with a distinctness about equal to the degree of liberty. Nor
do I think this result an accidental one. If we notice that the
Lutheran branch of the reformation did not have this element, and the
Calvinistic branch, which spread over England and America, did have
it, and compare the influence of these two in sustaining popular
rights, we shall be struck with the obvious inference.
Now, there are things in our mode of keeping the Sabbath which have a
direct tendency to sustain popular government; for the very element of
a popular government must be self-control in the individual. There
must be enough intensity of individual self-control to make up for the
lack of an extraneous pressure from government. The idea of the
Sabbath, as observed by the Puritans, is the voluntary dissevering of
the thoughts and associations from the things of earth for one day in
seen, and the concentrating of the mind on purely spiritual subjects.
In all this there is a weekly recurring necessity for the greatest
self-control.
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