lk is
impracticable, and all the sleighs were yesterday morning in
requisition, to transport the family and their visitors to their place
of worship. I was a little afraid that the merry music of the
sleigh-bells and the rapid drive through the clear air might make our
young people's blood dance too briskly--that they would be unable to
preserve that sobriety of manner becoming those who are about
professedly to engage in the worship of Him who inhabiteth Eternity. I
was gratified, however, to perceive that they all had good feeling or
good taste enough to preserve, throughout their drive and the services
which followed it, a quiet and reverent demeanor. It may seem strange to
some, that I should characterize this as a possible effect of "good
taste;" but in my opinion, he who does not pay the tribute at least of
outward respect to this holy day, is incapable not only of that high,
spiritual communion which brings man near to his Creator, but of that
tender sympathy which binds him to his fellow-creatures, or even of
that poetic taste which would place his soul in harmony with external
nature. Let it not be thought that I would have this day of blessing to
the world regarded with a cynical severity, or that the quietness and
the reverence of which I speak are at all akin to sadness. Were not
cheerfulness, in my opinion, a part of godliness, I should say of it as
some one has said of cleanliness, that it is next to godliness. Like my
favorite, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

"I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's;"

and like her, I would utter to all the exhortation,

"Let us leave the shame and sin
Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood,
The holy name of Grief!--holy herein,
That, by the grief of One, came all our good."

But cheerfulness, so far from being incompatible with, seems to me
inseparable from that true worship which is the best source of the
Sabbath seriousness I am advocating.

The remarks of the preacher were quite in unison with these thoughts,
and pleased me so much that, were it admissible, I should be delighted
to dignify my pages with them. By a few vivid touches, in language
simple, yet beautiful, he sketched for us the first Sabbath amidst the
living springs and fadeless bloom and verdant shades of Paradise, when
sinless man communed with his Maker and his Father, not through the poor
symbols of a ceremonial worship, but face to fac