old
churches, made of it a thing straiter and stricter than ever the old
Jews dreamed of.

"The old Jewish Sabbath entered only into the physical region, merely
enjoining cessation from physical toil. 'Thou shalt not _labor_ nor do
any _work_,' covered the whole ground. In other respects than this it
was a joyful festival, resembling, in the mode of keeping it, the
Christmas of the modern church. It was a day of social hilarity,--the
Jewish law strictly forbidding mourning and gloom during festivals.
The people were commanded on feast days to rejoice before the Lord
their God with all their might. We fancy there were no houses where
children were afraid to laugh, where the voice of social cheerfulness
quavered away in terror lest it should awake a wrathful God. The
Jewish Sabbath was instituted, in the absence of printing, of books,
and of all the advantages of literature, to be the great means of
preserving sacred history,--a day cleared from all possibility of
other employment than social and family communion, when the heads of
families and the elders of tribes might instruct the young in those
religious traditions which have thus come down to us.

"The Christian Sabbath is meant to supply the same moral need in that
improved and higher state of society which Christianity introduced.
Thus it was changed from the day representing the creation of the
world to the resurrection day of Him who came to make all things new.
The Jewish Sabbath was buried with Christ in the sepulchre, and arose
with Him, not a Jewish, but a Christian festival, still holding in
itself that provision for man's needs which the old institution
possessed, but with a wider and more generous freedom of application.
It was given to the Christian world as a day of rest, of refreshment,
of hope and joy, and of worship. The manner of making it such a day
was left open and free to the needs and convenience of the varying
circumstances and characters of those for whose benefit it was
instituted."

"Well," said Bob, "don't you think there is a deal of nonsense about
Sabbath-keeping?"

"There is a deal of nonsense about everything human beings have to
deal with," I said.

"And," said Marianne, "how to find out what is nonsense?"--

"By clear conceptions," said I, "of what the day is for. I should
define the Sabbath as a divine and fatherly gift to man,--a day
expressly set apart for the cultivation of his moral nature. Its
object is not merely phys