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 face, as a man talketh with
his friend.
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