A Goodly Heritage

Religion is not a far-off, but a pressing and everyday affair. The very humblest of mankind may be the greatest saint of God. It is only small and ignorant natures which shrink from lowly tasks. Nothing can be ignoble which a noble purpose glorifies. In this Psalm you have the things necessary for the man who may claim the high blessing of God. What are they. Strange to say, they are precisely those things that we should demand of the ordinary English gentleman, of the ordinary English tradesman, of the ordinary English working man. Mere morality, you may say, and for the most part, negative morality. David does not say he was to be brave, magnanimous, self-sacrificing. He only says that he must not be a liar or a slanderer, or one who wrongs others, or takes rewards against the innocent. You may be tempted to say, surely David puts the scale too low! Had, then, David a less overwhelming sense than we have of the High and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity? If you think in that way to g...

Now you will observe that the Fourth Commandment is a two-fold commandment of labour and of rest. There is nothing Judaic about it; it is a command for the whole race of man. “Six days shalt thou labour,” but that thy labour may not be degradingly and exhaustively wearisome; that the man may not become a mere machine, worn by the dust of its own grinding; that the thread of sorrow, which runs through all labour, may never wholly blacken into despair; that the thread of joy entwined with it may be brightened into spiritual intensity and permanence--therefore, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt do no manner of work.” I need scarcely touch on the change from the seventh to the first day of the week; but whether we keep the Sabbath or Sunday, the Fourth Commandment, in its eternal and moral aspect, bids us to keep one day in the seven holy. And how are we to keep it holy? Let us look, first, at the Old Testament. Search it through, and you will find two ...