Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-24
THE woRKINGMAN's COLLEGE.
Unfamiliar Reasons for the Rest Day by Wilbur
f. Crafts.

UNFAMILIAR Reasons 10r the hesL LAY Dy n1lDul
F. Crafts.
Four times seven is twenty-eight, that is, one
seventh of the days in twenty eight years in fou,
yeaIs-a college course. He who has missed g
''liberal education in the schools. may make
up for it, by well-spent sabbaths, in one-third
of well rounded life, and still have left in his
remaining years enough Sabbath time for
thought and self-improvement for two post
graduate courses as long as the first.
The British-American Sabbath may therefore
be called the workingman's college, witho ut
which the toiler would not have time enough for
the culture of ntelligence and Of conscientious
ness to participate in government, but would re-
main, like the perpetual infants of continental
despotisms, content to take childish Sunday
amusements as substitutes for civil liberty.
II the Sabbath were not so valuable for the
body and heart and soul, its educational value
alone would vindicate its high place in society.
As an educator it is only second to the public
schools, if second at all. Certainly 1t IS their
who have spent eight full years in school, but
every man of that age has had eight years of
Sabbaths, which have afforded opportunity for
manifold culture.
MANY of our u1ost influential men had little
schooling, but have found unconscious educa-
ton in regular attendance at church and in quiet
spends the Sabbath in pleasure exertions''
spends it in the worst of company. with igno-
rance and vice, from which he can learn moth
ing good. He who gives the day to the church
and the library has noblest companions, and
learns without effort the rarest wisdom.
Even from an intellectual standpoint, the
Bible contains the oldest history, the sublimest
poetry, the noblest ethics, and no man can be
said 20 have good education who is not familiar
with that book, which came into such lives as
Shakespeare's and Webster's and Ruskin's and
Goethe's as the mightiest Of intellectual infiu-
ences. In = score OF ways the Sabbath brings
the influence Of this book to bear on the lives of
all men who spend the Sabbath as the Maker Of
both the Sabbath and man directed when he
made one for the other.
Where are the great men who attribute what
ever is admired in their literary style to their
reading the gossip Of Sunday newspaper, as 3
substitute for the gospel? The gossip of Sunday
visitors is also discord in this family day. The
father, IN many instances has scant opportunity
outside Of this day to fulfill one Of his highest
functions, that Of teacher to his household in
highest things. There is sweetest music in that
sentences: Come ye children, hearken unto
me; viii teach you the fear OF the Lord
But even to those who neither give nor receiR4'
direct religious instruction, a Sabbath protsEtsd
against both toll and dissipation is an edu1ator
both in knowledge and in conscientiousness that
help to protect the citizens against both the
sophistries and brides Of the demagogue, and so
Sunday law Is consistent with liberty on the
same grounds as more direct laws of compulsory
education WuRua r. czA7Ts.