Pious Anglicans after the Restoration loved the first day of the week with all the fervour of George Herbert;--and what some of them said with reference to recreations, shocking as it appeared to Puritans, proceeded not from a desire of self-indulgence, but from a consideration of weakness in other people,--still, the Sabbath remained the Puritans’ peculiar treasure. They put on it the highest price. To them it seemed the jewel and crown, the bloom and flower of the week, the torch which lighted up its dark days, the sunshine which from eternity streamed down on the waters of time. Unwisdom, sinking into superstition, betrayed itself in the strictness of their conduct, provoking ridicule, and producing reaction; but it should not be overlooked that it was from their great love to the festival, that they were so careful to frame rules for its preservation. Some treated Puritan habits as pitiable, and regarded the men as insanely melancholy, but the latter esteemed themselves objects for envy rather than commiseration, since in their own hearts they made the Sabbath “a delight, the holy of the Lord, and honourable.” XI. The idea of “a Christian year,” a sanctification of the seasons of nature by Gospel memories, is undeniably beautiful. This theory of time, adopted by the Church of England, reappeared at the Revolution, and days which mark the progress of the old earth’s journeys round the sun were stamped anew with sacred names, and entwined with the history of the Redeemer and His Apostles. Christmas celebrated the Incarnation, and Epiphany the infant appearance of Jesus to the Magi at Bethlehem, with subsequent manifestations of His glory; Lent was the spring period, set apart for fasting and prayer, preparatory to the commemoration of Divine mercy in the atonement of Christ. Palm Sunday is not recognized in the English Prayer Book. On the Sunday before Easter no reference occurs to our Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem in the proper Lessons, the Epistle, or the Gospel. But Easter itself, after the sorrows of Good Friday, is a high and holy festival, when the Church breaks out into songs of joy because of the Resurrection of her Lord. At the close of the forty days following, come Rogation Week, with Holy Thursday, and then Whitsuntide--a season associated with Christ’s Ascension, and culminating in the celebration of Pentecost. Trinity Sunday crowns the whole, and invites the faithful to contemplate the comprehensive, the fundamental, the mysterious doctrine of a distinction in the Godhead. The character and history of St. John the Baptist, and of the Apostles, St. Matthias, St. Peter, St. James, St. Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Simon and St. Jude, St. Andrew, St. Thomas, are in succession bound up with certain days, the series terminating in the festival of All Saints.[352] [Sidenote: RECREATIONS.]