Remember the Weekday
Did it ever strike you that it is a most absurd and semi-barbaric thing to set one day apart as holy? If you are a writer and a beautiful thought comes to you, you never hesitate to write it down because it is Sunday ❦ If you are a painter, and the picture appears before you, vivid and clear, you make haste to materialize it before the vision fades. If you are a musician, you sing a song or play it on the piano, that it may be etched upon your memory—and for the joy of it. ¶ But if you are a cabinetmaker you may make a design, but you will have to halt before you make the table, if the day happens to be the “Lord’sDay”; and if you are a blacksmith, you will not dare to lift a hammer for fear of conscience or the police. All of which is an admission that we regard manual labor as a sort of necessary evil, which must be done only at certain times and places. ¶ The orthodox reason for abstinence from all manual labor on Sunday is that “God made the heavens and the earth in six days and rested the seventh day”; therefore, man, created in the image of his Maker, should hold this day sacred. How it can be possible for a supreme, omnipotent and all-powerful being, without “body, parts or passions,” to become wearied through physical exertion, is a question that is yet unanswered. ¶ The idea of serving God on Sunday and then forgetting Him all the rest of the week is a fallacy. Sunday with its immunity from work was devised for slaves who got out of all the work they could during the week. No man can violate the Sabbath; he can, however, violate his own nature,and this he is more apt to do through enforced idleness than through either work or play. Only running water is pure; stagnant nature of any sort is dangerous, and a breeding-place for disease. ¶ Change of occupation is necessary to mental and physical health. As it is, most people get too much of one kind of work. All the week they are chained to one task, a repugnant task because the dose is too big. They have to do this particular job or starve. This is slavery, quite as much as when man was bought and sold as a chattel. ¶ Will there not come a time when all men and women will work because it is a blessed gift—a privilege? Then, if all worked, wasteful consuming as a business would cease ❦ As it is, there are many people who do not work at all, and these pride themselves upon it and uphold the Sunday laws. If the idler would work, no one would be over-worked. If this time ever comes, shall we not cease to regard it as wicked towork at certain times, just as much as we should count it absurd to pass a law making it illegal for us to be happy on Wednesday? Isn’t good work an effort to produce a useful, necessary or beautiful thing? If so, good work is a prayer, prompted by a loving heart—a prayer to benefit and bless. If prayer is not a desire, backed up by a right human effort to bring about its efficacy, then what is it? ¶ Work is a service performed for ourselves and others. If I love you I will surely work for you—in this way I reveal my love. And to manifest my love in this manner is a joy and a gratification to me. Thus, work is for the worker alone, and labor is its own reward. These things being so, if it is wrong to work on Sunday, then it is wrong to love on Sunday; every smile is a sin, every caress is a curse, and all tenderness a crime. ¶ Must there not come a time when we shall cease to differentiate and quit calling some work secular and some sacred? Isn’t it as necessary forme to hoe corn and feed my loved ones (and also the priest) as for the priest to preach and pray? ¶ Would any priest ever preach and pray if somebody did not hoe? If life is from God, then all useful effort is divine; and to work is the highest form of religion ❦ If God made us, surely He is pleased to see that His work is a success. If we are miserable, willing to liberate life with a bare bodkin, we certainly do not compliment our Maker in thus proclaiming His work a failure. But if our lives are full of gladness and we are grateful for feeling that we are one with Deity—helping God do His work—then, and only then, do we truly serve Him. ¶ Isn’t it strange that men should have made laws declaring that it is wicked for us to work?