But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a holier brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices on the Exchange nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd nor business anywhere but at church.  Many have fancied so.  For my own part, whether I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the figure of the casement on my chamber floor, still I recognize the Sabbath sunshine.  And ever let me recognize it!  Some illusions—­and this among them—­are the shadows of great truths.  Doubts may flit around me or seem to close their evil wings and settle down, but so long as I imagine that the earth is hallowed and the light of heaven retains its sanctity on the Sabbath—­while that blessed sunshine lives within me—­never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith.  If it have gone astray, it will return again.

I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths from morning till night behind the curtain of my open window.  Are they spent amiss?  Every spot so near the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple should be deemed consecrated ground to-day.  With stronger truth be it said that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil one may convert a temple to the same.  My heart, perhaps, has no such holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious, potency.  It must suffice that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church, while many whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats have left their souls at home.  But I am there even before my friend the sexton.  At length he comes—­a man of kindly but sombre aspect, in dark gray clothes, and hair of the same mixture.  He comes and applies his key to the wide portal.  Now my thoughts may go in among the dusty pews or ascend the pulpit without sacrilege, but soon come forth again to enjoy the music of the bell.  How glad, yet solemn too!  All the steeples in town are talking together aloft in the sunny air and rejoicing among themselves while their spires point heavenward.  Meantime, here are the children assembling to the Sabbath-school, which is kept somewhere within the church.  Often, while looking at the arched portal, I have been gladdened by the sight of a score of these little girls and boys in pink, blue, yellow and crimson frocks bursting suddenly forth into the sunshine like a swarm of gay butterflies that had been shut up in the solemn gloom.  Or I might compare them to cherubs haunting that holy place.

About a quarter of an hour before the second ringing of the bell individuals of the congregation begin to appear.  The earliest is invariably an old woman in black whose bent frame and rounded shoulders are evidently laden with some heavy affliction which she is eager to rest upon the altar.  Would that the Sabbath came twice as often, for the sake of that sorrowful old soul!  There is an elderly man, also, who arrives in good season and leans against