VI
THE SABBATH

When I was a little boy—younger even than I am now—my father had strict ideas upon Sabbath behaviour. We might read nothing, I remember, but what was true. Now, if you come to think of it, that limits your range of literary entertainment in a terrible way. It drove me to such books as “Little Willie’s Promise—a True Story” or “What Alice Found—Taken from Life.”

One Sunday afternoon, perched high in the mulberry-tree, I was found with a copy of the Saturday’s daily paper. It was smeared with the bloodstains of many mulberries, whose glorious last moments had been with me.

“What have you got there?” asked my father from below.

I told him. It was Sunday. My story at least was true.

“Come down at once!” said he.

I descended, finding many more difficulties to overcome than I had discovered in my ascent.

My father waxed impatient.

“Can’t you get down any quicker than that?” he asked. He had a book on rose-growing in his hand, which, being quite true, he was taking out on that glorious afternoon to read and enjoy in the garden.

With all respect, I told him that I did not want to break my neck and I continued slowly with my laborious descent. When I reached the ground, he eyed me suspiciously.

“How dare you read the paper on Sunday?” he asked.

“I was only reading the police reports,” said I, humbly; “I thought they were true.”

He held out his hand expressively. I timidly put forth mine, thinking he wanted to congratulate me on my taste.

“The paper!” said he, emphatically.

I yielded, without a word.

“Now, if you want to read on Sunday,” said he, “go into the house and learn the Collect for the third Sunday after Trinity. And never let me see a boy of your age reading the paper again.”

“Not on week-days?” said I.

“No, never!” he replied, and, as he walked away, he scanned the Stock Exchange quotations with a stern and unrelenting face.

I do not want to argue about the justice of this, for now that I am a little older, the after effect, though not what my father expected, has proved quite admirable. If the newspaper was not true enough to read on week-days, let alone Sundays, I came to the conclusion that it must be very full of lies indeed. And all this has been very helpful to me ever since. I think of it now as I open my daily paper in the morning, and I thank my father for it from the bottom of my heart. It has saved me a deal of unnecessary credulity.

I remember, too, that all games—all games but chess—were strictly forbidden. That also has left an impression on my mind—an ineffaceable impression about the game of chess. It seems a very stern game to me—a game rigid in its expression of the truth. The King and Queen are always real people, moving—far be it from me to allude to Royalty—in straightened paths; the Queen impulsively, the King in staid dignity, one step at a time. I always behold the Knight as one, erratic and Quixotic in all he does; the Bishop swift and to the point, thereby connecting himself in my mind with the days when the Bishops went out to war and brought the Grace of God with them on to the battlefield, rather than with the Bishops of to-day, who keep the Grace of God at home.

So I think of the game of Chess—the only game we were ever allowed to play on Sunday—the game my father loved so well above all others.

I don’t know what it is about the observance of the Sabbath, but to me it seems a beautiful idea, like a beautiful bell; yet a bell that has been cracked and rings with a strange, false, unmeaning note. No one seems to be able to get the true tone of it. Heaven knows they ring it enough. The Church and such followers of the Church as my father are always pealing its message for the world to hear; yet I wonder how many people detect in it the sound of that discordant note of hypocrisy.

Nevertheless, there is something grand in that conception of One creating a vast universe in six days or six ages—whichever you will—and resting at His ease upon the seventh. Nor is it less grand to work throughout a common week, making a home, and on the Sabbath to cease from labour. The whole world is agreed that that day of rest is needed; but are they to lay down a law that what is rest for one man is rest for another?

If that is the only way they can think of doing it; if that is the only interpretation of the word—rest—which they can find, then, so far as the Sabbath is concerned, we shall be a nation of hypocrites or lawbreakers for the rest of our days. And of the two, may I be one who breaks the law. For, do what you will with it, human nature has reached that development when it insists upon thinking for itself and, one man, thinking it all out most carefully, will declare that a game of chess is not an abomination of the Sabbath, while another will read the police reports in the daily papers because they are true.

Fifty years ago, Charles Kingsley, that strenuous apostle of health, urged that it was better to play cricket on the Green at Eversley than stay at home and be a hypocrite—or a gambler, which is much the same thing. But his was only one honest voice amongst the thousands of others who have preached a very different gospel to that.

Only a short while ago, at a little tennis club in the suburbs of London, there came up before the committee the question as to whether play should not be allowed on Sunday. The club was composed of city clerks, of members of the Stock Exchange, of men labouring the daily round to keep together those homes of which both the Church and the nation are so justly proud.

Every one seemed in favour of it, until the Vicar of the parish rose and said that seeing there was a high fence all round the ground, and that the players would be hidden from the sight of the public at large, he saw no reason why play should not be allowed out of Church hours—that was to say, from two till six.

“But,” said he, “I must most vehemently protest against any playing of the game of croquet.”

A member of the committee, one with a lame leg, who was debarred from tennis, but was known to make his ten hoop break at croquet, asked immediately for the reason of this protest.

“I work all the week in the city,” said he; “I have no other chance for playing except late on Saturday and on Sunday. Why should you prevent croquet?”

“Because,” said the Vicar, “the sound of the croquet balls would reach the ears of people passing by. And what do you imagine they’d think if they heard people playing croquet? I make no objection to tennis because, if played in a gentlemanly way, no one outside need know that a game was going on—but croquet! You must remember we have to consider others as well as ourselves.”

“You think it would make them feel envious?” asked the lame man.

“I mean nothing of the kind,” said the Vicar.

“Then what do you imagine they would think?”

“They would realise that the Sabbath—the day of rest—was being broken.”

“Then we have your consent to break it with tennis,” said the Chairman.

“It seems to me,” said the Vicar, “that this discussion is being carried into the region of absurdity.”

“I quite agree with the Vicar,” said the lame man.