The Crucifixion of Philip StrongSheldon, Charles M.
General
The Crucifixion of Philip Strong
Sheldon, Charles M.
Christian fiction
"I cannot conceive that he would say anything else than this to the
people of this town and this church: He would say it was our duty to
make this day different from all other days in the two particulars of
rest and worship. He would say that we owe it to the Father of our souls
in common gratitude for his mighty love toward us that we spend the day
in ways pleasing to him. He would say that the wonderful civilization of
our times should study how to make this day a true rest day to the
workingman of the world, and that all unnecessary carrying of passengers
or merchandise should stop, so as to give all men, if possible, every
seven days, one whole day of rest and communion with something better
than the things that perish with the using. He would say that the Church
and the church-member and the Christian everywhere should do all in his
power to make the day a glad, powerful, useful, restful, anticipated
twenty-four hours, looked forward to with pleasant longing by little
children and laboring men and railroad men and street-car men as the one
day of all the week, the happiest and best because different in its use.
And so different that when Monday's toil begins the man feels refreshed
in body and in soul because he has paused a little while in the mad
whirl of his struggle for bread or fame, and has fellow-shipped with
heavenly things, and heard something diviner than the Jangling discords
of this narrow, selfish earth.
"If this thought of Sunday is bigotry or narrowness, then I stand
convicted as a bigot living outside of the nineteenth century. But I am
not concerned about that. What I am concerned about is Christ's thought
of this day. If I understand his spirit right I believe he would say
what I have said. He would say that it is not a right use of this day
for the men and women of this generation to buy and sell merchandise, to
attend or countenance places or spectacles of amusement, to engage in
card parties at their homes, to fill their thoughts full of the ordinary
affairs of business or the events of the world. He would say that it was
the Christian's duty and privilege in this age to elevate the uses of
this day so that everything done and said should tend to lift the race
higher, and make it better acquainted with the nature of God and its own
eternal destiny. If Christ would not take that view of this great
question, then I have totally misconceived and misunderstood his
character. 'The Sabbath was made for man.' It was made for him that he
might make of it a shining jewel in the string of pearls which should
adorn all the days of the week, every day speaking of divine things to
the man, but Sunday opening up the beauty and grandeur of the eternal
life a little wider yet.
"This, dear friends all, has been my message to you this morning. May
God forgive whatever has been spoken contrary to the heart and spirit of
our dear Lord."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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