THE SABBATH. 21 



curse, to others. It is right that your most spiritually- 

 minded men men who, to use a devotional phrase, en- 

 joy the closest walk with God should be your pastors. 

 But they ought also to be practical men, able to look 

 not only on their personal feelings, but on the capacities 

 of humanity at large, and willing to make their rules 

 and teaching square with these capacities. There is in 

 some minds a natural bias towards religion, as there 

 is in others towards poetry, art, or mathematics; but the 

 poet, artist, or mathematician who would seek to im- 

 pose upon others, not possessing his tastes, the studies 

 which give him delight, would be deemed an intolerable 

 despot. The philosopher Fichte was wont to contrast 

 his mode of rising into the atmosphere of faith with 

 the experience of others. In his case the process, he 

 said, was purely intellectual. Through reason he 

 reached religion; while in the case of many whom he 

 knew this process was both unnecessary and unused, the 

 bias of their minds sufficing to render faith, without 

 logic, clear and strong. In making rules for the Com- 

 munity these natural differences must be taken into 

 account. The yoke which is easy to the few may be 

 intolerable to the many, not only defeating its own im- 

 mediate purpose, but frequently introducing reckless- 

 ness or hypocrisy into minds which a franker and more 

 liberal treatment would have kept free from both.* 

 The moods of the times the " climates of opinion." 

 * " When our Puritan friends," says Mr. Frederick Robertson, 

 " talk of the blessings of the Sabbath, we may ask them to remem- 

 ber some of its curses." Other and more serious evils than those 

 recounted by Mr. Robertson may, I fear, be traced to the system 

 of Sabbath observance pursued in many of our schools. At the 

 risk of shocking some worthy persons, I would say that the in- 

 vention of an invigorating game for fine Sunday afternoons, and 

 healthy indoor amusements for wet ones, would prove infinitely 

 more effectual as an aid to moral purity than most of our plans 

 of religious meditation. 



