The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1878-11-08
How Shall Sunday be Used.

Simply as day of rest it meets a most
imperative want. Our American life is al
best too hurried and feverish. We waste
our strength in over exertion. We burn the
candle at both ends and in the middle, and
reap our reward in such harvest of ner-
Vous disorders as perhaps was never known
elsewhere. From the too eager strain and
stress of the week Sunday offers blessed
relief. Its rest is incomplete unless the
wonted current of IDEAS as we'll as occupa-
tions, is interrupted. A first and obvious
principle therefore is to get away from the
habitual activities of the other six DAYS,
| however good they may be in themselves.
A teacher, for example, should as general
| thing not teach on Sunday, but let the mind
relax wholly from the attitude of instruc-
| ton SO, man who works his brain all
| the week can rarely afford to listen on Sun
day to sermon which keenly stimulates
thought, though service of beautiful and
hearty worship may rest and refresh him.
TO say that no general rules can be laid
| down in such matters is obvious; the hard
er and more important thing is for each
one to recognize that for linn there is good
rule attainable, dependent on his character
and circumstances, and that it is his bust.
ness first to find it out and then to be faith
full to it.
Most people are very willing to take Sun
day as a day of rest, and resent any en-
croachment on their own rest. But the day
has higher function. 1t ought to give
moral guidance and impulse to the week.
1t is the time to take a large and calm view
OF ones life; to see what its real objects
are; what are its temper and spirit. Much
of the time we are SO absorbed in the de-
tails of living that we forget to ask whittier
it is all tending. The fault of most lives
is not that they are consciously directed to
bad or low ends, but that they have no dis
tinct end in view they are merely drifting.
We do thing to-day because we did it
yesterday. We earn our bread because
otherwise we should go hungry or starve.-
We live from hand TO mouth. Now, it is
good that we should often stop little
while-once in seven days is seldom enough
and ask ourselves, "What real gain am
| making? Am growing in true worth,
in manhood, in sincerity, in sweetness of
temper? Am getting the better of SEN
suality, of Incidence. of surliness, of what
ever is the worse part of me- What am
adding to thecommunity; what other lives
uiO VI DCCuuSC VI ulluC IL is QOOu
to look at our own life in its serious and
noble aspect; to be humble before its de-
ticiencies; to set our firmest will toward
better living to take deep and thankful
and trustful sense of a higher power help
ing us in our iniirmities.
Such hours as this, if they are habitual,
will shape the course of our lives. True,
we constantly fall short of our own aspira.
ton and purpose. But to have the aspira-
ton and purpose, to hold to it, to constant
ly recur to it-this is everything. What
we really want to be, what we seek to be,
that we shall be Jesus said, not only
blessed are the pure in heart, the merci-
full, the peace-makers," but Blessed are
they that do hanger and thirst after right
eousness brightness of life" for they
shall be filled" Paul wrote: "Whatso.
ever things are true, honest, just, pure love-
ly, of good report-thjnb on these Miags."-
To think on them, to long for them, will
bring us to seek and find them.-ISpringfeM
Republican.