and never mind the other parts of the frame; rest
the tired part, and use the means best calculated
to rest that particular part. Thus: If one’s
duties have kept him in the house all the week, it
will rest him to be out on Sunday; if his duties have
required him to read weighty and serious matter all
the week, it will rest him to read light matter on
Sunday; if his occupation has busied him with death
and funerals all the week, it will rest him to go
to the theater Sunday night and put in two or three
hours laughing at a comedy; if he is tired with digging
ditches or felling trees all the week, it will rest
him to lie quiet in the house on Sunday; if the hand,
the arm, the brain, the tongue, or any other member,
is fatigued with inanition, it is not to be rested
by added a day’s inanition; but if a member
is fatigued with exertion, inanition is the right
rest for it. Such is the way in which the Germans
seem to define the word “rest”; that is
to say, they rest a member by recreating, recuperating,
restore its forces. But our definition is less
broad. We all rest alike on Sunday—by
secluding ourselves and keeping still, whether that
is the surest way to rest the most of us or not.
The Germans make the actors, the preachers,
etc.,
work on Sunday. We encourage the preachers,
the editors, the printers,
etc., to work on Sunday,
and imagine that none of the sin of it falls upon us;
but I do not know how we are going to get around the
fact that if it is wrong for the printer to work at
his trade on Sunday it must be equally wrong for the
preacher to work at his, since the commandment has
made no exception in his favor. We buy Monday
morning’s paper and read it, and thus encourage
Sunday printing. But I shall never do it again.
The Germans remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy,
by abstaining from work, as commanded; we keep it
holy by abstaining from work, as commanded, and by
also abstaining from play, which is not commanded.
Perhaps we constructively break the command to
rest, because the resting we do is in most cases only
a name, and not a fact.
These reasonings have sufficed, in a measure, to mend
the rent in my conscience which I made by traveling
to Baden-Baden that Sunday. We arrived in time
to furbish up and get to the English church before
services began. We arrived in considerable style,
too, for the landlord had ordered the first carriage
that could be found, since there was no time to lose,
and our coachman was so splendidly liveried that we
were probably mistaken for a brace of stray dukes;
why else were we honored with a pew all to ourselves,
away up among the very elect at the left of the chancel?
That was my first thought. In the pew directly
in front of us sat an elderly lady, plainly and cheaply
dressed; at her side sat a young lady with a very
sweet face, and she also was quite simply dressed;
but around us and about us were clothes and jewels
which it would do anybody’s heart good to worship
in.