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" Sh/iet Resting Places”
WITH
SOME REMARKS
UPON
THE WESTFIELD DISASTER:
■p-'jSpecial pis course,
PREACHED BY .
REV. DAVID MITCHELL,
Pastor of Canal Street Presbyterian Church, New York,
ON SABBATH MORNING, 6th AUGUST, 1871,
AND NOW PUBLISHED
BY REQUEST OE HIS CONGREGATION.
(Proceeds of Sale will be given to the fund for the Westfield Sufferers.)
DE WITT C. LENT & GO.,
No, 451 Broome St., New York.
Ii.. D. ROBERTSON, PRINTER, 117 WALKER STREET, NEAR CENTRE, N. T.*
2
Now, we go in thoroughly for “ quiet-resting places” for
your clergy at this season, and we think the clergy as a body
go in for it too, considering all the editorials which the
religious papers are writing upon clerical vacations, and the
statements made by reporters in their Monday issues that all
the fashionable pastors are following the example of their
flocks, and are mingling their voices with the songs of birds
and the rippling of waters. It is better to be late than never
in everything, we are told, and we are glad our time has come
at last—not that we wish holidays merely to be in the
fashion, and have ourselves posted as amongst the fashion-
able fraternity, but that we value them for the great and pre-
cious benefits which they bring. You will, therefore, not un-
derstand me as glad to get away from my flock as from some-
thing oppressive, but as rejoicing in the thought that the
yearly interval of rest and retirement is come.
If anything were needed to prove that ministers are but
men, the necessity of taking rest at this season would suf-
fice. To those who can reflect on the subject, it must ap-
pear more than human to produce even two plain ordinary
discourses for every Sabbath in the year, and one for every
Wednesday evening, to be lecturing not seldom in the inter-
ests of a variety of church societies, to be taking the lead in
Sunday-schools, prayer-meetings, Bible classes, festivals,
benevolent societies, to be more frequently than otherwise
preaching for sick brethren and poor churches and in hos-
pitals, to have the giant’s share of raising the revenues of the
church, the incomes of our Assembly’s Boards, to be con-
stantly visiting the sick and dying, to be burying, baptising
and marrying from one year to another, to discharge your
duties as a member of the Presbytery, of which little account
is taken by our church members, and to attend to the call,3
of the poor, the destitute, and strangers. We say to do all
this, and more that shall be nameless, does not appear to be
within the compass of one man’s ability. I do not want you
to think I am painting my own portrait, though I have had
my share of extra preaching and work. Some of my breth-
ren have sat before my mind for this portrait. I have been
amazed at the work that has been done by several of
our city pastors for one year—I refer simply to the work I
know to have been done, and not the countless other engage-
ments that have been kept. We have read of the marvels
accomplished by Whitfield, Chalmers and Guthrie, but I
think that as wonderful a life as is led anywhere is that
of a beloved brother of this city, who adds to the
splendors of his pulpit services in his own church,
services in ajl our churches and mission-stations, lectures
everywhere, pastoral labors of an overwhelming kind, out-
side church work to an extent that would crush a dozen of
ordinary men, besides doing a vast deal of the genial work
of an author. We think we detect in an editorial of
this week’s “Presbyterian,” the hand of the brother
referred to, in which he lets a rejoicing heart over-
flow in expressions of gratitude and love for the benefits he
is enjoying in “ quiet resting places.” And on the principle
that what is good for great men is good also for small ones,
we too have our “ quiet resting places” in prospect.
This constant brainwork requires rest, and rest of a special
kind. All brain workers suffer from weariness and lang-
uor, and they all imperatively need quiet resting places at
least once a year—times when pen, paper and books are
pitched into a corner, and the knapsack and walking-stick
become the order of the day. The cure of brain weariness
and suffering lies not in sleep or absolute rest, but in getting4
interested in things that do not pertain to your
every day life. For the city man the country should be
the doctor’s prescription. The “ quiet resting place” that is
almost perfect to my mind is a farm—a farm of one’s own
is my ideal, as I am glad to find it the Actual with one or
two of my clerical brethren, and the next thing to a farm of
one’s own is a farm of somebody else—if a friend’s, well and
good—and if not a friend’s, it is still better than not to go on
a farm at all. I know that many will not think much of my
farm, who love to go a sea-faring, and to visit cities with their
cathedrals, colleges, public buildings and picture galleries;
or who with alpenstock emulate the eagles by climbing
to the highest point of a glacier, or the summit of a snow-
capped mountain. I have done all that, and have found it
most refreshing, though involving considerable labor. The
farm to my matured mind is the beau ideal. Everything
there is fresh and new to the city man,—felling wood, mowing
the hay, cutting the corn, watching the hens and the geese,
shaking richly laden trees, partaking of simple meals at
rational hours, bathing in the lake and the stream, listening
to the merry voices of men and women as they busily labor
on the field, drinking in the pure air and feeling it distend-
ing your lungs, and pouring into your arteries and bracing
your nerves, watching wild flowers as they shed their sweet-
ness by the road-side or the river’s bank, your brain rever-
berating with the music that falls from birds, and cattle, and
the sighing of the wind, and the murmuring of the stream,
and closing your day of gladness with the simple religious
exercises of a country household. There, in all this, is the
right medicine for over strung nerves, and over driven
brains. Editors and authors, preachers and doctors and
lawyers, there is your pharmacopoeia. It all lies in one word—5
country-life. Life in God’s house, where you have the
blessed heavens for your roof, and the far extending
horizon for your walls, and the trees for pillars, and the
green grass and wild flowers for the carpeting beneath your
feet, and the light of the sun, and moon and stars for your
lamp, and the fruits of the earth for your food, and the birds
for your choir. What a beautiful home is this world when
we think of it! It was sin that drove man out of this para-
dise ; that put him out of harmony with nature, that
drove him into cities. And the more we get back to com-
munion with God, the more we shall love and admire His
works, and delight in the paradise of nature which is every-
where and all around and beneath us, if we have only eyes
to see it, and hearts to appreciate it. Some teachers speak
of this world as though it were the devil’s, and it is ours all
the time. It is God’s, and therefore ours. The earth is the
Lord’s and the fullness thereof. It is our inheritance, for the
meek shall inherit the earth. It is in the midst of nature you will
look up from nature to nature’s God. Country life takes you
away from the poisons of the city, from its carbon, and heat
and smoke and animal poisons. It brings you into the right
conditions of life, and so it frequently happens that the pro-
fessional man who goes to his work with a weary look, and
has dark clouds hanging over his brain, the instant he gets to
his quiet resting places in the country, becomes a new
man, elastic in his step, bright in his eye, glowing in his
cheek. Music steals into his soul, and charmed and refreshed
he returns to the city to engage in the work he loves. Com-
pel this man to go on from year to year, without rest, seek-
ing with poisonous stimulants to prick his jaded brain, and
it ends, often in madness, or in softening the brain, or he
becomes a mere dead machine—or a man of routine—with6
none of the flashing outbursts of rapid thought, or with the
sublime overflows of a burning enthusiasm.
One of the great advantages of retirement to quiet resting
places is that it enables us to see our work in its proper as-
pects and proportions. One of the dangers of city life
is that we have not a chance of looking at ourselves, and
see whether the work of training our souls for eternity pros-
pers or not. All professional life carries with it unseen dan-
gers for the spiritual life. A professional man has always
his thoughts engaged for behoof of his fellow men. The
client is the lawyer’s one thought and care, the patient the
object of the physician’s waking and sleeping moments, and
the pastor’s work presents many obstacles to spiritual life and
growth within him. Few persons dream of this. Mothers
wish to have their sons ministers because they imagine that
within the church they will be safe from the temptations of
the world. But if the devil got over the enclosures of Para-
dise before the fall, do you think he will not come over the
walls of the church ? A minister is day and night thinking
of other persons. He chooses his texts with reference to
his people—at one time to warn the careless, at another to
encourage the feeble, at another to comfort the afflicted.
The anxious enquiries of the young, or the comfort-seeking
questions of the aged, occupy his thoughts. He will often
spend much time in dealing with matters that pertain to
worldly-minded or backsliding members. Every day—
Sunday and Saturday—and all the day long, his mind is
turned to the wants of other persons. And as sometimes we
hear t)f merchants so absorbed in business as to neglect their
meals and proper attention to their bodies—thus encourag-
ing and fostering diseases that will by and by unfit them
for their work ; so it frequently occurs in a pastor’s experi-7
©nee that in teaching, comforting, admonishing others, he
forgets to minister to the necessities of his own soul, and so en-
genders many dangerous spiritual diseases within him. Now
retirement from our work opens our eyes to this danger.
We discover we are lean and haggard spiritually. We find
that our vital breath of prayer has become tainted, that our
meditation has degenerated into thinking out texts and ser-
mons, instead of living on that bread which came down
from heaven, andthat our work has become cold and common;
place. And then as to the ministerial work itself, it is well
to look at it from the point of view we get in some quiet
resting place. When we are on the mountain slope or
standing at its base, we cannot see the mountain in its mag-
nitude, loftiness and grandeur, but the further you go from it
the better becomes your view. So to get a right conception
of the river as it meanders through the valley, receiving here
and there fresh volumes of water from its tributary streams,
ascend some height, and then its extent and beauty will be
rightly seen. It is the same when pastors leave their work
for a while. We do not mean they are to think morbidly on
the imperfections of their work. That would spoil their
quiet resting places indeed! It is rather because in retire-
ment great ideas are born that we speak of it as beneficial.
A man cannot get rid of his work because he leaves his
workshop. It follows him all the time in his waking mo-
ments, and all unconsciously. And it is often in retirement
we will fall upon the right plan of our work. In my own
case I feel this to be very necessary. I have often despaired,
and doubted, in my pastorate here. I have asked myself
over and over again—“ Has my Master work for me to do in
this lower part of the city, and what work ?” When I came
here, people told me I could not succeed. We have had8
many changes in this place. This year my Sunday-school
was almost swept away by removals from this district.
Many of the congregation have removed to distances from
the church that makes it impossible or impracticable for
them to attend here. I must look for this every year. And
yet I feel a voice within me saying: “ This is your field—
this ,is your place of work.” New plans for the Sabbath-
school, for visitation, for getting all our members interested
in the work, have come into my mind. And now I would
like to look at this field of work from a distant point of
view. I would like to ask in my solitude: “ Lord, what
wouldst thou have me to do ?” With matured plans I de-
sire to begin my work in the Fall. With more definite
measures for success I desire to labor here, and I hail there-
fore the prospect of retiring for a few weeks to some quiet
resting places, to mature new desires and plans for work
that have for sometime been growing up within me.
It will be seen from the above remarks that we regard
retirement from the city into the country, and pleasant
occupation in retirement, as the best restorative to an over-
taxed mind. “ Blessed are those who have the time and
leisure for such rest!” is the sigh that escapes from some
weary one. And yet how many there are with abundant
means and time at their disposal, who seem to care not for
these things, or be able to retire into the bosom of nature
and commune with God. How many there are into whose
religious creed it largely enters that the city is the only place
worth living in, and that all this talk about green fields and
streams is moonshine. To selfish and avaricious men it is
useless to speak about the beauty of nature* You might as
well ask them to admire Shakspeare or Wordsworth, as to look
with other than common eyes upon God’s works. Like theI
9
minor notes in some lofty musical performance that stir
a world of feeling in the hearts of a few, but are lost upon
the crowd; so there are not a few who see no beauty in
nature, and can never discern her still small voice. Worldly
men are strangely out of sympathy with nature. Yet it is no
wonder, when they so love the world and the things of the
world that they can give heed to nothing else. We cannot
fancy the pleasure men have in accumulating money, and
never employing it for the higher enjoyments of life. I can-
not see anything attractive in the mere idea of being rich.
Just think for a moment of the difference between ministers
as a rule, and the large majority of business men. Minis-
ters as a rule are not careful about money. They are lavish
with the means they have—little as it is in so many instances.
One will spend his savings on a rare old book, or a bust of
some poet, and carry home his book or bust with about as
much of the miserly as the miser will reveal in hugging his
bags of gold. Professional men as a rule are fond of travel,
and think nothing of spending a considerable part of their
income to transport themselves to new scenes, and minister
delight to their imagination; while there are men who could
buy out their whole stock in trade—that is, the old books and
. busts and MSS.—and add a few millions to the bargain, who
would grudge a dollar for a book or the money that would carry
themselves and family to the country for a day. We have
no sympathy with men of this class, and we have certainly
as little with those who represent the other extreme, and
who despising quiet resting places—repair to mammoth
hotels by the sea-side or on the mountain, or by the medicinal
fonts of Saratoga, where city life is re-enacted in all its folly
and misery. We sincerely pity those “butterflies” who live for
the sake of fashion, who when they go to the country must10
have a long retinue of huge trunks, containing everything fresh
and novel in style, and every kind of apparatus that is manu-
factured to hide and distort our humanity, and carry with
them fluttering in their breast the vain ambition of being
the reigning belle of the season. Think of the folly of it.
Here the ball with its feverish dances and intoxicating
drinks goes on as in the city. It is a life of strife and vain
emulation. Who shall be first in beauty and fashion—who
will be talked most about—whose name will be most em-
blazoned in the papers—who shall have the largest number
of flattering followers! That is the grand purpose. Not
who shall drink in most of God’s fresh air—not whose cheeks
shall most glow with returning health—not who shall be fit-
ted by rest for. the noblest service at home! And then
what is worse, these poor votaries of fashion, after having
spent as much upon themselves as would almost build a hos-
pital, return to the city worse than when they left it.
When the paint, and the ribbons, and false hair, and all the
vanities are gone, there .is almost nothing of flesh and blood
left to do battle with the cold and tempests of winter.
This transporting of city life to the country is a miserable
thing, and leads to many evils. In a place like Saratoga,
that is famed for its healing waters and invigorating climate,
you have the dark shadows of the gambler, and turfmen, and
city thieves, and profligates. Of course, you have side by
side with this the hard workers and the good who seek in
quiet resting places the rest they need, or who in the mam-
moth hotel can be as though all this did not exist—keeping
themselves separate from city rowdies as oil does from
water. But we are looking at the system. We are
thinking of this hotel system—of this system of congre-
gating masses of men for country enjoyments — of this11
ideal of transporting the heat and fever of the city into the
very heart of the temple of nature, where they ought never
to be heard of or known. I am sure many a parent will feel
at the end of the season that it would have been good for
him had he not taken his family to such places—to places
where they are exposed to the worst intrigues and passions.
Better for them far never to have left th eir own home. It
is a false idea in which to train our children that everywhere
life is nothing but a painted show, that there is nothing
worth living for but worldly ideals. We are certain that
many departures from virtue have had their beginnings in
such places, and dark and black would be the pages of their
history but for one single season.
There is another class of persons of whom we should like
to speak in reference to this subject of retirement from the
city to quiet resting places, and that is the working classes
and the poor who can scarcely call an hour their own. There
are thousands of decent men, who might be an ornament to
our churches, who are compelled to lead a life worse than
the most degraded slaves. They rise before the light sets in
and begin their toil with the dawn of morning. During the
brief interval of noon they dine on bread and tea or water
which they have carried with them, or has been brought by
loving hands. Hot and dusty and worn out they return
home, having in many cases first to travel miles standing in
a car. To such a man I would rather rise and give my seat
than the gaily dressed lady who by expression or words
haughtily demands it from me. When they return home
their wife is sick unto death with the heat, and the children
are crying piteously, or are huddled in a corner with a rag
half covering them, and the flies sticking to their sweating
skin. Nature’s sweet and balmy restorer does not come to12
those weary eyelids. The night is spent in tossing to and
fro in agony, and then comes the day with its sorrows and
hard work and wretched pay. The minister goes to this
man and says: “ Sir, you should come to church.” What
can the poor man say ? What can Ginx do with his baby and
sick wife and his host of other children, if Ginx goes to
church ? Lady reformers, who regard a man like this as a
heinous transgressor, because he does not go to church, just
put it to your conscience for one moment. On Sunday the
poor man hears the whistle of a steamboat that will carry
him out from the hot tenement house, that will give him and
his a breath of the fresh air, that will allow them an hour or
two to sit by the shore, where in some quiet resting place they
can watch the white sail gliding past, the sea-maw gracefully
skipping along the water’s surface or gather a few wild flowers
to plant at home on the window sill. What will you say to
that poor man and his family if they make haste to catch
the boat? What will you say to them as they take their seats
on the upper deck, with eyes glancing towards each other
with happy and satisfied looks ? Will you tell them they are
breaking the Lord’s day, and that God is angry with them,
and that He will punish them ?
For this class of men we have great sympathy, and can-
not find it in our hearts to condemn them. They need our
sympathy, and when they are overtaken with an accident
like that which occurred so soon after last Sabbath morning
service, I would not like to be near any one who would say,
“The Lord’s judgment has fallen upon them.” If I did not
resort to carnal weapons, I would at least resort to spiritual
ones, and say to them in the words of our loving master, “Let
him that is without sin cast the first stone.” I would read
to them our Saviour’s awful warning, “Suppose ye that13
these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because
they suffered such things ?” During the week I visited
Bellevue—visited, I think, nearly all the scarred and
wounded who lie there as the result of last Sunday’s acci-
dent ; and let me put it strongly to you, “ What would you
have thought of me if I had gone from bed to bed, telling
them they had got what their sin of Sabbath-breaking
deserved?” You would call me a monster in human shape.
This accident, (or rather we should call it this horror, for
it much fears me that a terrible blame is attachable some-
where, and let me say, I trust in the name of Heaven’s
justice and the rights of man, that this matter will be sifted
to the bottom, and if criminal neglect and ignorance be the
cause, that these will be meted with a punishment that
will satisfy the public conscience,) this accident is certainly
the very worst of the numerous calamities that have followed
one another in recent times. Think of a wealthy company
inviting people to trust their persons in their hands, to enjoy
their half hour’s sail to a neighboring isle. The day is
balmy and beautiful. Everything is full of promise. As
the hour approaches passengers begin to throng the steam-
er’s decks. The gay and young, the beautiful and manly
sit side by side, whispering love’s secrets into each other’s
ears. There is the honest mechanic, proud as he looks upon
his pale-faced wife, who as in the days of their first love
reclines on his arm. Their children cluster around them,
bright and happy in the thought of having for once a good
time with father. Here are the fashionable and gay on a
visit to some friends. Here we find a group, perhaps
returning home from church. Little do these people think
that in another minute they will be tossed like play-balls
into the air, or scalded to death by the hissing steam, or14
straggling with death in the surging water. Another mo-
ment, and the steam tearing through what appears to have
been a worn-out boiler, sweeps into the air, lifting decks
and the miserable freight of human life into the air, and in
a moment more the gay and the young, the husband and
father, the wife and children, all are a horrible mass of
charred and blackened ruins ! Soon afterwards the long
procession of the wounded and dead begins, and men are
looking with strange horror upon the frightful scene of so
unexpected a catastrophe.
The event is another lesson as to the awful uncertainty
of life. Think how that lesson has been read to us within
the past few weeks! The railway accidents, the murders by
assassins and poisoners, the cold-blooded slaughter of Mr.
Putnam on a street car, the repetition of this offence in
the case of two citizens, who last Sabbath evening were
traveling on one of our street railroads. Life we know is un-
certain in itself. In the morning we are as grass which grow-
ethup,fresh and beautiful; in the evening we wither and fade.
Life is also made uncertain by accidents, pure and simple,
such as ever must take place in our crowded thoroughfares.
But think how much more uncertain it becomes by reason
of the assassin, by reason of the cruelties of neglect and
ignorance that are practised upon the confiding public, or
by rioters who are organized for revolt against law and
order by clever and designing leaders. It is well for every
man to have done at this moment everything he would not
like to be undone at the hour of his death, for none of us
know the moment the quick destroyer may come upon us.
We have also a lesson as to seeking quiet resting places
on the. Sabbath-day. I have said that in my heart I cannot
condemn the poor laboring man, who is compelled to a life15
of privation and toil, and whose family are dying for want
of pure air and exercise and food, and who takes Sunday
for his quiet resting places by the sea-side. While I say
this, I think there is a better and nobler experience they
might enjoy on the Lord’s day. To my mind there is no
quiet resting place like the Church; the Sunday School for
the children, and the Church, with her services of praise
and prayer, for the family. Here, indeed, the weary are at
rest and the wicked cease from troubling. Let a working-
man and his wife share the labors of the household, and if
they cannot come to church at the same time, let them take
time about. Let them go home after service to their humble
meal, praising the Lord for his goodness. Is there any thing
wrong in them retiring to the shades and quiet resting places
of the Central Park, or taking the air in some of the other
parks, which are now being so beautifully laid out for the
purpose? I think not. A little exercise is a necessity of
man’s nature. The law of the Sabbath day’s journey was a
most beneficent one. When such exercise follows the attempt
to praise the Lord in the sanctuary, it has a sweetness with
it, that does not belong to the exercise of him who robs
God of his day and spends it selfishly. Let this family of
which we are speaking have their home as a bethel, and
then in the evening let interesting and profitable instruction
go on, to be followed by family worship, of which I spoke
last Sabbath, and then let them retire early to rest. I should
like to see on Monday the two families side by side—my
model family, and the family of the man who cares not for
church, but spends the Lord’s day as he lists. I am sure
my model family would have the advantage.
“ One day amidst the place
Where my dear God hath been,
Is sweeter than ten thousand days
Of pleasurable sin.”16
But, my brethren, this subject of making the Sunday a
holiday—a day for excursions, is brought home to us by the
accident of last Lord’s day. I was struck with this at
Bellevue, that nearly every sufferer I addressed seemed to
feel deeply that this calamity had overtaken him on the
Sabbath. It seemed to me they would have thought less of
it had it occurred on Monday. This shows that there is a
protest in the human heart against lawless observances of
the Sabbath. Yery many of those who go on these excursions
would be heartily ashamed of themselves were their conduct
unexpectedly brought to light. There is, after all, a public
conscience on the question of Sabbath observance. Now,
what troubles me so much is not that the poor laborer, with
his sick wife and children, goes to drink in the fresh air;
for I have told you that my heart bleeds for them, and that
my sympathies are with them; but I am troubled at this,
that many persons—well-to-do and comfortable in life, regard
the Sabbath as a holiday, and are ready to excuse them-
selves on the ground that they have no time but Sabbath
for relaxation. I feel greatly depressed when I think of so
many of my own countrymen who have been brought up in
our good Scottish and Irish ways—to go to church regularly
twice a day, to read their bibles and learn their catechisms
at home, and who are the first to boast that Scotland’s great-
ness is owing to her Sabbath observance ; I say I am grieved
to think when they leave their native shores and cast in
their lot here, that church attendance, love of ordinances,
the reading of scripture, the instruction of their children,
are thrown to the winds, and that they give themselves over
to careless and profane habits, when every instinct of their na-
ture, and every solemn association of the past, not to speak of
the law of God, are rising up in protest against them. ButIT
what shall we say of these Sunday excursions, when two
barges are strung to either side of a steamboat, and crowds
of men and women, lads and lasses, headed by brass bands,
are found embarking to spend the holy hours of the Sab-
bath in dancing and drinking? Had it been one of these
boats that exploded last Sunday, and the revelry and dancing
been brought to a sudden end, death and destruction appear-
ing, I think I could not have refrained from crying out, “ It
is the judgment of Heaven. It is God’s judgment upon
profanity. It is the Lord’s anger against a people that are
wholly given over to spiritual whoredom.” But the punish-
ment will come, as it has come upon poor France, where
the law of the Sabbath was trodden under foot, and proud
and boastful man set himself up in the place of God. A
Sabbath-breaking nation is rotten to the core—a nation
that will collapse whenever trials come. And why is it
that our German fellow citizens are given over to worse
than idolatry, who in such numbers devote their Sundays to
drinking lager beer, profanity and dancing? Is not their
native land the land of the conqueror ? Is not their country
great in historic interest? Is not Germany a land of
churches, and bibles, and reformations ? Are our German
people so neglectful of their own hallowed traditions, of
their literature, of their religion, that on this noble and free
platform of America they will emulate the worst nations on
record for their insidious spiritual vices ?
My brethren, we should not forget that the law of the Sab-
bath is not a mere enactment on a book. It is a law written
in man. It is stamped on his body. It is written in his
heart. His spiritual nature demands it. It is a law too
written oh iron, and wood, and stone, and everything man
employs to advance his comfort and civilization. The steam18
engine and the steam boiler come under this law as well as
man and animals. Best for one day in seven is a necessity
in our present conditions. The Sabbath-day is a necessity
arising from the laws of expansion and contraction. Man
is kept in health and strength by the alternations of activity
and rest. Night is not sufficient for rest, and so one day in
seven is appointed. Let man be at his utmost expansion
all the week long, and the time must soon come when his
strength will fail. But let his period of expansion or of
activity be followed by one of contraction or rest—by the
holy Sabbath, if you will—and the beginning of the week
sees him like a giant rofreshed. All matter that is made'
active for human devices is under the same law. The fur-
nace should be cleaned out every week, and the fires be
extinguished. Let the steam engine go on night and day—
ever at the highest expansive power—ever hot and burning
—moving the huge boat or heavy machinery, and it will
give way, often suddenly and long before it should. Let
the boiler be kept on the same stretch, steaming all the
day long, and every day without intermission, ever at its
highest degree of expansiveness, and you are violating a law
that will.lead inevitably to ruin. The boiler needs its Sun-
day as well as man, and here arises the danger of those
Sunday excursions; that your steamboats and railways,
above all their engines and boilers, are kept constantly on
the stretch, and ruin will oftener than otherwise befall, as it
will the majority of men, if they work Sunday and Saturday,
and violate Nature’s grand law of rest. And if engines
won’t drive that are over-driven, how do you think the stok-
ers and engine-drivers, and all the persons that are obliged,.
because of these Sunday excursions, to work nearly every
day alike—I ask, how do you expect these men can work19
thus constantly without being overtaken with exhaustion
and fatigue, that will prove as destructive to human life in
the end, even as worn out boilers and rusty engines ? Let
us have the grand law of the Sabbath proclaimed from this
accident of last week; and just as we are rejoicing in the
good that has sprung out of the evil of the Orange riot, if
the Sabbath be now better observed by man for himself,
and for his fellow creature, and for his cattle, and for his
engine and boiler, a great blessing will have been wrought
for the community at large.
But here let us observe, that in order to bring about a
rightful and universal observance of the Sabbath-day, we
must not only bring Christian sentiment to bear upon the
people, but we ought to have a system of holidays and half-
holidays, that would allow to the working man retirement
to some quiet resting place. In Scotland, I am glad to say
that this has been introduced with marked beneficial results.
Mechanics, laborers, clerks, for the most part, do not work
after 2 o’clock on Saturday, and with the long twilight of a
Scotch summer day that gives them nearly a day for walking
or going to the country, and many have thus the opportunity
of retiring from the city over the Sabbath. Those establish-
ments that depend to a large extent for their profits upon
Saturday evening, take some other day of the week on which
the least business is done. Thus the different trades do not
all go holidaying at the same time, and thereby overcrowd-
ing all the means of travel. It is also common for the work-
ingman to take his week or ten days by the sea shore. Some
system of this kind is greatly needed in New York. A few
stores close early on Saturday, but miany keep open to a late
hour, even when the profits of selling do not pay for the gas.
But the great majority of the stores, especially retail, keep20
open to a late hour of the evening. Tradesmen do not leave
their work till the usual hour, and so by the time they get home
darkness has fallen, and they cannot even take advantage
of the music in the Central Park. Then by reason of the
costliness of living, it is impossible for such men to go to the
country, thereby incurring the loss of their wages, and an in-
creased expenditure. Now, surely something might be done
to relieve this strain, and wear and tear upon men’s bodies
and souls. Employers are no losers by it. Their men come
fresh to work. They are also cheerful at their work under
the influence of such a system. But the reason upon which
we place the greatest stress is that it puts away for ever the
excuse, “ We have so much to do during the week, that we
have no time for recreation but on Sunday.” Now, we
argue for this on the ground of its being a right sanitary
condition. We argue for holidays and half-holidays on the
ground that it establishes a better relation between capital
and labor. We argue for them on the ground of the neces-
sities of man’s moral and spiritual natures. We argue for
them on the ground, that this would enable men better to
fulfill the law of the Decalogue—“ Bemember tho Sabbath-
day to keep it holy.”
In conclusion, I trust that the call which is now made in
behalf of the poor sufferers by the Westfield disaster will be
met with a hearty response from our community. In the
exercise of a true benevolence, we have only to do with the
fact that our fellow beings are enduring pain and privation.
Let us trust that not a cruel, hard-hearted word will be
spoken as to Sabbath-breaking, or any such thing, but like
our blessed Saviour, who, without respect of persons., listened
to the cry of distress, we will hasten to the relief of those
who have been made widows and orphans and destitute by21
this calamitous event. When our city has her sympathies
stirred, she can rise to a sublime munificence in her gifts
and deeds of love. We know what she has done in the
past. We remember how much she gave—and freely—
during the war for our suffering soldiers and their destitute
families; We recollect how she poured out her wealth to
save the victims of the Avondale horror, and now, with a
calamity like the Westfield, occurring at one of her ferries,
and involving poverty and suffering to many of her citizens,
she will surely be quick and impulsive in stretching forth a
timely helping hand.DISCOURSE
“QUIET RESTING PLACES;”
Isaiah xxxii, 18.
To those dwelling in the city, and engaged in the exciting
activities of its manifold work, the prospect of retiring to the
still waters and the green pastures of the country is most re-
freshing and delightful. There is something in this season
of the year that creates the desire for change and relaxation.
With most men business falls away at this period. There is
a lull in the markets. The fruits of the earth are just being
gathered in. When the city is dull, country-life is active.
The husbandman goes forth to reap what he has sown. And
while the fruits are reaching maturity, the city’s enterprise,
its buying and selling and speculating are all at a stand-
still. Hence it is that our qongregations are thinned out on
these hot Sundays. The fever heat of the city’s summer life
has reached its climax. Ecclesiastical seasons keep pace
with our business seasons. In town it is the clergyrhan’s
dull season—dull we mean in point of church attendance—
we do not refer to sermons. The city now is dull, hot and
dusty. Every one feels it. And none feel it more than
the few clergy who are still at their posts of duty.