Is human life best solaced and sustained by amusement, a "witches stew" into which everybody must drop something after his own kind? Things good and delightful should sometimes have the floor without evil at their elbow, and because the puritan made Sunday a penance, the modern man need not dramatize it, make it a play; nor the land of the Pilgrims throw off her sacerdotal robes to don the fashions of flimsy France. Must things new and olden lose the bright hue of consistency?
I venture to say it is neither well for a man's morals nor his religion to rise from his morning prayer with the law on his lip "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy," and say to his children whose minds he moulds "Let's go to the Foreign Exposition," where people can throw off the shackles of Sunday, are free to smoke, spit tobacco juice, and see all things new and novel. Well, I suppose even this would be a delight to some, but not to all. Others may say, we have served our employers, worked hard all the week, and it's nothing more than just for God to give us a rest: and there is neither rest nor recreation in a dress parade at church (I agree with you); the sermon too is a fossil, and we would rather see fossilized remains of another sort. But dear friends, there are glorious sermons from the pulpits in Boston, and "sermons in stones," that on Sunday, would recreate me more than foreign exhibitions of art and industry, most interesting in their proper place.
Our theories from first to last are at fault for every wrong practice, they graft evil into good on every occasion and then say the fruit is good. If we are willing to listen one day in seven to Truth, it entertains, elevates and invigorates mind and body, and there is no need of amusement to make us forget it or get rid of its effects. But giving a tithe of our time to the Lord, then escaping from such service and possibly after reflecting having to beg pardon for it, do we improve mind or body? I believe in the poor having proper time for amusement; but let this opportunity be on a week-day evening, or one afternoon in the week, not on the Sabbath. "All work and no play" makes dull boys; and all days are alike in a moral sense, for it is lawful to do good on all, ennobling and rejuvenating.
