ur histories; the
effect upon character has been less considered, but the elevation of one
day out of the tyranny of work, the resolute facing of eternal
mysteries, and the withdrawal into a half-brooding, half-active state of
mind must have had a powerful effect upon the imagination and
conscience. The meeting-house was no holy building, but the Sabbath day
was a holy day, and was the most comprehensive symbol of the Puritan
faith. It was what the altar is in the Catholic Church, the holy of
holies, about which the whole movement of religious worship gathered.
Whatever disturbed the profound stillness of the day was seized upon by
the law as sacrilegious; and never, perhaps, has there been a religion
which succeeded so completely in investing time with the sacredness
which elsewhere had been appropriated by place. Even the approach to the
Sabbath was guarded, and the custom of the observance of Saturday
evening appears to have been derived from the backward influence of the
day, as the release upon Sunday evening appears to have been a
concession to the flesh, which would otherwise have rebelled. Dr.
Bushnell, in his "Age of Homespun," tells of his own experience in
boyhood, when he was refused a load of apples, which he had gone to buy
on Saturday afternoon, because the farmer, on consulting the sun,
decided that he could not measure out the fruit before the strict
Sabbath began.

The minister again represented to the young New Englander the highest
expression of human attainment. He was righteous and he was learned.
Learning he had in a severe and lofty form, and though there was little
in his outward dress to mark him as a priest of God, he was isolated
from the community by his authority and profession, so that he answered
rather to one's conception of a prophet. Before him were brought
offenders against Sabbath decorum, and the minister's study was to the
boy the most awful room into which he could enter. This association of
learning with piety served to heighten still further the respect with
which learning was regarded, and to separate the young student almost by
a special laying on of hands. The minister also usually had his glebe,
and held a common interest with the farmers of the neighborhood,--a
humanizing relation which had much to do in preserving the real respect
in which he was held. The positive influence of religion upon life, by
being identified with the highest intellectualism and the most eminent
p