Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXIX., October, 1852

In Austria the most marked event of the month was the Emperor's return to Vienna, after his tour through Hungary, where he is represented to have been received with the general enthusiasm of the people. The liberal papers allege that much of the cordiality with which he was greeted in the Hungarian portion of his dominions, was prearranged. and that the real sentiments of the people were in no wise indicated by it. He reached Vienna on the 14th of August, and had a magnificent reception. He was to leave on the 16th for Ischl. – The budget for the year shows a deficit of over fifty-five millions of florins.

In Switzerland nothing of special interest has occurred. The National Council, after three days' debate, has rejected a petition presented by conservatives of the Canton of Fribourg, praying for an alteration of the Cantonal Constitution, by a vote of 79 to 18. It was regarded as an attempt to renew the troubles of the Sonderbund, under the guise of reforming the Constitution. At the same sitting, on the 5th of August, the Council decided upon remitting to the Cantons the remainder of the debt created by the troubles of 1847. The money is to be applied to the completion of certain scholastic institutions, or to the extinction of pauperism, or to the construction of railways, common roads and canals, subject to the approbation of the Federal Executive. It is stated that the Prussian Minister at the Helvetic confederation, has formally demanded the re-establishment of the ancient political relations with Prussia in the Canton of Neufchatel. The Grand Council of that Canton, on the 30th of July, decreed the suppression of a society of the partisans of Prussia by 69 votes to 11.

From Belgium intelligence has been received that a convention has been concluded between the Belgian and Dutch governments for the amalgamation of the railways of the two countries. The great trunk line beginning at Antwerp will be continued to Rotterdam, and so be put into communication with the whole of the Netherlands. It is stated, upon good authority, that the Bavarian government has engaged to pay 1,400,000 florins to the administration of the Palatinate Railway, on condition that the latter shall undertake to execute the works on the line from Ludwigshafen to Wissemburg speedily. This is the point to which the Strasburg Railway is to be continued beyond the French frontier. – A change has occurred in the Belgian Ministry. The commercial regulations between France and Belgium are placed under the régime of the common law, the treaty of 1845 not having been renewed.

From Turkey we learn that Mr. Marsh, the American Minister, left Constantinople on the 30th of July for Athens, whither he goes to investigate the circumstances attending the arrest and imprisonment of the American missionary, Dr. King. Previous to leaving he had an audience with the Sultan. – Numerous and very destructive fires have recently occurred in Constantinople – two or three thousand houses having been burned. – Fresh and interesting discoveries are said to have been made at Nineveh by M. Place, the French Consul at Mosul; he is said to have found a series of paintings upon marble in vermillion and marine blue. – Steam navigation has lately increased greatly at Constantinople. More than twenty steamers now ply daily in the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmora. It is said that a Russian company is about to be formed, which will have twenty vessels to run in opposition to these now established.

Editor's Table

The Sabbath presents the most purely religious, and, at the same time, the least sectarian of all moral questions. It has, however, been generally regarded under two aspects, and defended on two distinct if not opposing grounds. One of these may be called the Scriptural or theological, the other the physical or secular. One class of advocates would lay the greatest stress on its divine appointment, the other upon its worldly advantages. One would magnify its ecclesiastical, the other its political and social importance. Without entering at length upon either of these arguments, in our present editorial musings, it is enough for us to state that those who would defend it as a permanent divine institution, rely mainly on the remarkable passage in Genesis announcing the divine rest from creation, and the sanctification of the seventh period of time, the Fourth Commandment as confirmatory of the same, and the early and continued example of the primitive Christian church, as evidence of a divinely-authorized change from the seventh day of the Jewish calendar to that on which Christ rose from the dead.

The other argument, which may be denominated the physical or secular, is a great favorite with writers and speakers of a certain class, who would be thought to be friends of the observance of the Sabbath, and all moral institutions connected with it, and yet would prefer to advocate them on grounds less strictly religious. These dwell much on the physical advantages of a day of rest. They enter into calculations respecting the maximum time of human and animal exertion, and the minimum period of relaxation required to counterbalance its effects upon the physical system. It is with them mainly a problem of political economy, – a question of production, – of prices, – of the increase or diminution of individual or national wealth. In these respects the value of the Sabbath is carefully measured by statistical tables. Figures "which can not lie" prove it to be a very useful institution, and the divine wisdom is greatly lauded in the contrivance of such an admirable means for preserving a healthful equilibrium in the industrial and business world.

We would, however, by no means speak slightingly of such supposed ends, or of such an argument in support of them. "Does God take care for oxen?" The language of the Apostle is not an ironical negative, as some might suppose, but an a fortiori argument to show his higher care for man, and above all, for man's spiritual well-being. We may rationally suppose that higher purposes are harmoniously conjoined with lower in the divine mind. It is not unworthy of the author of the universe to have established such a harmony between the physical and the spiritual worlds. The Bible plainly speaks of things which "have the promise both of this life and of that which is to come," and among these the right observance of the Sabbath would doubtless hold a distinguished place. It is the great connecting bond between the political and the religious, between social virtue and the individual devoutness, between the kingdom of nature and the kingdom of grace, – in short, between all secular and all spiritual moralities. We can not well conceive of either squalid poverty or debasing vice in a community distinguished for its intelligent reverence of the Sabbath. Such reverence, however, could not well exist or long be maintained, where the secular utilities, true and valuable as they may be, are the only or even the chief motives appealed to. The temporal loses not only its moral excellence, but its power even for temporal good, when wholly severed from the spiritual.

Neither is there sufficient support for sabbatical institutions in the merely merciful idea of bodily relaxation. We are still in the region of secular benevolence, and without some influence from a higher world of motive and feeling, the sacred idea of rest will inevitably degenerate, and give place to its demoralizing counterfeits – idleness – dissipation – and vice. Thus could it be shown, that even for the best secular ends, a Sabbath divested of the religious element would be far worse that unintermitted labor.

But we would hasten to another and a third view, which may be characterized as being more catholic, or rather less sectarian, than the first, and, at the same time, more spiritual, or less secular, than the second. To firm believers in the positive divine institution of the Sabbath (among whom we have no hesitation in avowing ourselves) the merely worldly argument would appear, sometimes, to betray, rather than support, the very cause it professes to advocate. On the other hand, there are, doubtless, many inquiring minds to whom the Scriptural argument seems more or less defective, but who would, nevertheless, accept a more elevated and more religious view than the one we have denominated the physical or the secular. There are good men, very good men, and honest believers, too, in the written revelation, who have a prejudice against any thing positively outward and ritual in religion, on the ground of its savoring too much of what they deem the obsolete Jewish economy. There are others who do not so accept the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, that they would regard as conclusive any merely exegetical or traditionary argument. There are those, again, who wholly reject the authority of the commonly-received revelation. There are men who go farther than this – pantheists, – scientific theists, who recognize only an impersonal Power and Wisdom – men on the very verge of atheism, and some beyond all limits that the most tender charity can regard as separating us from that doleful region. And yet among them all – may we not say it without giving just offense to the strictest believer – among them all there may be sober men, thinking men, deeply serious men, for whom it is possible, and, if possible, most desirable, to frame an argument for a Sabbath that may steer clear of the apparent difficulties in the one view, and the really lowering and unspiritualizing tendency of the other.

Let those, then, who feel strong in that position, ground their reverence for the Sabbath in a positively revealed divine appointment. Among them would we class ourselves, even while endeavoring so to widen the platform as to embrace as many others as possible. Let those, again, who can take no higher view than that derived from its physical benefits, hold fast to such a faith. Frail as the plank may seem, it may deliver them from the shipwreck of total unbelief. The view indeed is a low one, and yet, if honestly held, may conduct the mind to a higher estimate. It is something, – it is much, – to believe truly that in the physical arrangements of the world, God has shown this kind care for our material well-being. If the soul is not utterly buried in earthliness, the thought of such a concern for the body must tend, at least, to the higher idea of a still higher concern for the blessedness of our spiritual nature.

Now it is in this thought we find that third view of the Sabbath which must have an interest, we would charitably hope, for all the classes that have been mentioned. Many believe that we need a day for special religious worship; others hold to the necessity of a day of bodily rest. But do we not all – whatever may be our creed, our belief or our unbelief – need a day, an oft-recurring day, of serious thought? Whatever may be our faith, or want of faith, every man who has not wholly sunk down into the mere animal nature, needs periods, oft-recurring and stated periods, in which he shall yield his whole soul to the questions – What am I? Where am I? Whence came I? Why am I here? What have I to do? How am I doing it? Whither am I going? The tremendous interest of these questions is not to be measured by the excess or deficiency of our creeds, unless it be that the very lack of belief invests them with a more immeasurable importance, or that each presents a more serious problem for serious minds, until we come down to that "horror of great darkness," the death of all faith in a supernatural or truly spiritual world.

Take the man who calls himself the liberal or free-thinking Christian. We have no objection to the title, or want of charity toward him who assumes it. He needs a Sabbath for intense thought, not so much on the argumentative evidence of particular dogmas, as on the great yet simple questions, whether the liberality of his opinions, and the few difficulties they present to his own mind, may not be evidence of their having no foundation in any wide system of eternal truth, – whether a religious creed that has no profound awe for the soul, no fearful apprehensions, no deep moral anxieties, no absorbing interest in a life to come, does not, from the very fact of such deficiency, prove itself a contradiction and a lie. So too the man who is but beginning to doubt the full inspiration of the Scriptures needs a period of most earnest meditation on the risk he may be running of giving up an only guide, whose place can never be made good by any thing in nature, philosophy, or science. The professed infidel needs a Sabbath, an oft-recurring Sabbath, of serious thought on that question of questions – Has God indeed ever spoken to man, or spoken at all, except through physical laws? – Has the awful stillness of nature been ever broken by a true voice from a true supernatural world? – And the atheist, too, – has he no need of a Sabbath, a frequent day of thought and thoughtfulness, in which he may call up and spread before his mind, in all their fearful importance, the sombre articles of his own dark creed? For creed indeed he has, unsurpassed in solemnity by that of any religionist. It has been quite common to deny the possibility of atheism, but the history of the world and of the church is showing that it is the only legitimate antagonism to a true belief in positive revelation. The shallow sciolist may not perceive it, and yet this is the dark conclusion in which some of his favorite speculations must inevitably terminate. There is no man, therefore, who has a stronger demand upon our most tender charity than the atheist. No belief presents greater difficulties, and yet there is no one to which the thinking mind is more strongly impelled, when it has once learned to distrust the lamp of revelation, and to see only shadows and spectres in that "light shining in a dark place, and to which we do well to take heed, until the day dawn and the eternal day star arise in our souls."

No man, then, we repeat it, stands more in want of a Sabbath than the atheist. No man has greater need of some such seasons in which he may perhaps find a cure for his dreadful spiritual blindness by giving himself up to all the terrific consequences of his gloomy creed. Let him devote one day in seven to the sober contemplation of a universe without a God, without a providence, without prayer, without a moral government, – religion, reverence, and worship forever dead and gone, – buried with them in their graves all that was most touching in poetry, beautiful in art, elevating in science, or sublime in philosophy, – all moral distinctions perished, of course, except those base counterfeits which resolve themselves into the pursuit of physical pleasure, or the avoidance of physical pain. Let him think of worlds on worlds teeming with life, yet all surrendered to the wheels of a blind and inexorable nature crushing on eternally with her mindless laws, – revolving in her slow but endlessly-recurring cycles, – making every seeming advance but the forerunner of the direst catastrophes of ruin, – or else in an apparent endless progression ever sacrificing individual parts and individual personalities to soulless wholes, yet furnishing to our philosophy no satisfactory ground on which to decide the question, whether the eternal drama in its most universal estimate is any more likely to be one of happiness than of intense and hopeless misery. Let the atheist, and the unbeliever who is on the road to atheism, fix his mind on thoughts like these until he begins to have some conception of what it is to be "without God and without hope in the world." Let him dwell on this sad orphanage, until in the intolerable loneliness of his spirit he is driven for shelter to the idea of a personal law-making, law-executing Deity, and is forced to admit that no doctrine of moral retribution, however stern, no creed, even of the most gloomy and fanatical religionist, ever presented so many difficulties as a rejection of those ideas on which all religion is founded.

Again, we need seasons of thought and thoughtfulness, not only on the ground that they are rational and demanded by the dignity of our rational nature, but because, moreover, they constitute the true rest of the soul. It is a gross and pernicious error that would make the idea of rest, especially spiritual rest, the same with that of indolence and passivity. It is as false as it would be in physics to confound rest with inertia. The former is the opposite of motion simply, the latter the negation of strength and force. Rest is equilibrium, a duality of forces; – indolence the loss of the soul's balance, and the consequent prostration of its power. Rest is refreshing; renewing, strengthening, recuperative; – indolence the generator of a greater and still greater lassitude. Rest is a positive, – indolence a negative state. Rest is resistance (re-sto), recovery, internal energy, – indolence a base and effeminate yielding, ever followed by a loss of spiritual vitality.

It is in the light of such a contrast we see how very different a thing is this true rest of the soul from that dissipation, or vacancy of all thought, with which some would confound it. Else it would not be held out to us, in the Scriptures, as the peculiar bliss, or blessedness, of the heavenly world. The idea this sweet and holy word presents to the contemplative mind is, indeed, the opposite of a busy, bustling, restless progress, the highest conception of which is an ever lasting movement of the intellect adding fact to fact, each as unsatisfactory as the preceding, and never bringing the soul nearer to any perfect quietude; but then, on the other hand, it is not the vacant passivity of which the transcendental Buddhist dreams, any more than the indolent lassitude of the Epicurean paradise. It is a contemplative energy, finding repose in itself, and deriving sustaining strength from its calm upward gaze upon the highest and most invigorating truth. In such an upward rather than onward movement is found the proper end and highest value of the Christian Sabbath.

Suave tempus consecratum

Spiritus ad requiem.

It is the nature of this elevated communion to strengthen instead of wearying the soul, and hence to impart to it a new energy for the performance of the duties of life.

We would confidently test the truth of these positions by an appeal to practical experience. There is exhibited now and then, a vast deal of sentimental philanthropy in decrying what are called the religious abuses of the Sabbath. It proceeds generally from those who would confine themselves to the physical or purely secular view. Great stress is laid on mere bodily relaxation. Utter vacancy, too, of mind, or what is worse, mere pleasure-seeking is held forth as the source of refreshment from past labors, and of recovered strength for those to come. The toil-worn mechanic is invited to the place of popular amusement, or to convey himself and his family to some scene of rural enchantment and festivity. We are pointed for appropriate examples to the parks of London, and the boulevards of Paris. The Sabbath, they say, is a noble institution; but then there should be great care to guard against the perversions of Pharisaic or Puritanical bigotry. It may be well to give a part of the day to the services of religion; but then, the purest religion consists in admiring God's works in the natural world; and the poor laborer who can take his wife and children on a ride to Bloomingdale, or indulges them with a walk in the Elysian Fields, is performing a more acceptable service than he who makes the Sabbath a weariness by confining himself to his own dwelling, or spending any considerable part of it within the still more gloomy walls of some religious conventicle.

We would not impeach the motives or the philanthropy of those who talk in this style. Doubtless they are sincere; for there is certainly an extreme plausibility in such a view of the matter, especially as respects that class who have no other day of relaxation. There are parts of the picture, too, to which the sternest Sabbatarian would take no objection, if in any way they could be practically separated from the rest. Pure air is certainly favorable, not only to the physical, but to the moral health. The observation of nature, to say the least, is not opposed to devotion, although it requires some previous devotion to make that observation what it ought to be, or to prevent its being consistent with the most profane and godless state of the mind and heart. Where these can be enjoyed without danger of perverted example, or other evils, which, in respect to our crowded city population are almost inseparable from such indulgence, he must be a bigot indeed who would deny them to the poor, or regard them as a desecration of the Sabbath.

But there is another side to this picture, and other truths having a bearing upon the argument, in support of which we might let go all a priori reasoning, and appeal directly to facts of observation. We will not take an extreme case, or rather, what is well known to be a common case with the Sabbath haunters of Hoboken and other rural purlieus. We will not take the intemperate, the gambling, or the debauched. Let two sober and industrious families be selected from the ranks of the laboring poor. One man devotes the day to pleasant rural excursions with his wife and children. We would not pass upon him a sanctimonious censure, although we might doubt the philosophy as well as the piety of his course. He has abstained from intoxicating drinks, from the lower sensual indulgences, from profane and vicious company. But he has sought simply relaxation for the body, and the negative pleasure of vacancy or of passive musing for the mind. The other pater-familias would, indeed, desire pure air for himself and little ones, purer air than can be obtained in the confined and populous street, and under other circumstances he would, doubtless, freely indulge in such a luxury; but then he knows there is a higher atmosphere still – a spiritual atmosphere – and that this, above all others, is the day in which he is to breathe its purity, and inhale a new inspiration from its invigorating life. He kneels with his children around the morning household altar – he goes with them to the Sabbath-school and to church – the remainder of the day is spent in devotion or meditation – and the evening, perhaps, is given to the social prayer-meeting. Oh, the gloomy drudgery! some would be ready to exclaim. We would not deny that there might be excess even here; but can we hesitate in deciding which of these two families will proceed to their weekly toil on Monday morning with more invigoration of spirit – ay, and of body, too, derived from the soul's refreshment? To which has the day been the truest Sabbath, the most real test? In deciding this question, we need only advert to our former analysis. There has been, in the one case, an utter mistaking of the true idea of rest. Experience has shown, and ever will show, that all mere pleasure-seeking, for its own sake, all vacancy or passivity of soul, ever exhausts, ever dissipates, and, in the end, renders both mind and body less fitted for the rugged duties of life than continued labor itself. In the train of these evils come also satiety, disappointment, a sense of personal degradation that no philosophy can wholly separate from idle enjoyment; and all these combined produce that aversion to regular labor, which is so often to be observed as the result of an ill-spent Sabbath. The body, it is true, belonging as it does wholly to the world of material nature, needs the repose of passivity; but the spirit can never indulge itself long in conscious indolence without risking the loss of spiritual power as well as moral dignity. Its true rest – we can not too often repeat it – is not the rest of inertia, but that which comes from an intercommuning with a higher world of thought and a higher sphere of spiritual life. This it finds in those great truths Christianity has brought down to us, and by the weekly exhibition of which, more than any thing else, our modern world is distinguished from the ancient.

The picture we have presented of the Sabbath-keeping laborer is no rare or fancy sketch. The socialist, indeed, ignores his existence. Such writers as Fourier, and Prudhom, and Louis Blanc, and Victor Hugo, and Martineau, know nothing about him. They see, and are determined to see, in the condition of the poor only a physical degradation, from which their own earthy and earthly-minded philosophy can alone relieve him. Nothing is more wholly inconceivable to a philanthropist of this class than what Chalmers styles "the charm of intercourse" with the lowly pious, or the moral sublime of that character —the Christian poor man. And yet it is neither rare nor strange. We make bold to affirm that it may be realized in almost every church in our city.