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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Sabbath

On Sunday heaven’s gates stand open.

George Herbert.

Perpetual memory of the Maker’s rest.

Bishop Mant.

Peaceful sleep out the Sabbath of the tomb.

Pope.

The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.

Bible.

The poor man’s day.

Grahame.

Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.

Longfellow.

He who ordained the Sabbath loved the poor.

O. W. Holmes.

Let it ever be the most joyful and praiseful day of the seven.

Beecher.

I feel as if God had, by giving the Sabbath, given fifty-two springs in every year.

Coleridge.

The Sabbath is not a day to feast our bodies, but to feed our souls.

Empress Josephine.

The Sabbath-day is the savings-bank of humanity.

Frederic Saunders.

  • The Sabbaths of Eternity,
  • One Sabbath deep and wide.
  • Tennyson.

    The longer I live the more highly do I estimate the Christian Sabbath, and the more grateful do I feel towards those who impress its importance on the community.

    Daniel Webster.

    O day most calm, most bright, the fruit of this, the next world’s bud.

    George Herbert.

  • Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
  • The bridal of the earth and sky.
  • George Herbert.

    There are many persons who think Sunday is a sponge with which to wipe out the sins of the week.

    H. W. Beecher.

  • Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven
  • What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.
  • Robert Browning.

  • So sang they, and the empyrean rung
  • With Hallelujahs. Thus was Sabbath kept.
  • Milton.

    Students of every age and kind, beware of secular study on the Lord’s day.

    Professor Miller.

  • See Christians, Jews, one heavy Sabbath keep,
  • And all the western world believe and sleep.
  • Pope.

  • How still the morning of the hallow’d day!
  • Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush’d
  • The ploughboy’s whistle, and the milkmaid’s song.
  • Grahame.

    Sunday observe; think, when the bells do chime, ’tis angels’ music; therefore come not late.

    George Herbert.

    There is a Sunday conscience as well as a Sunday coat; and those who make religion a secondary concern put the coat and conscience carefully by to put on only once a week.

    Charles Dickens.

  • Now, really, this appears the common case
  • Of putting too much Sabbath into Sunday—
  • But what is your opinion, Mrs. Grundy?
  • Hood.

    Sunday, that day so tedious to the triflers of earth, so full of beautiful reposes of calmness and strength for the earnest and heavenly minded.

    Maria J. McIntosh.

    He that remembers not to keep the Christian Sabbath at the beginning of the week will be in danger to forget before the end of the week that he is a Christian.

    Sir Edmund Turner.

    O day of rest! how beautiful, how fair, how welcome to the weary and the old! day of the Lord! and truce of earthly care! day of the Lord, as all our days should be.

    Longfellow.

    A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week.

    Beecher.

    The Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence. It invites to the noblest solitude and to the noblest society.

    Emerson.

  • Let us escape! This is our holiday—
  • God’s day, devote to rest; and through the wood
  • We’ll wander, and perchance find heavenly food,
  • So, profitless it shall not pass away.
  • W. G. Simms.

    The green oasis, the little grassy meadow in the wilderness, where, after the week-days’ journey, the pilgrim halts for refreshment and repose.

    Dr. Reade.

    We believe that the first day of the week is the Lord’s day, or Christian Sabbath; and is to be kept sacred to religious purposes, by abstaining from all secular labor and sinful recreations; by the devout observance of all the means of grace, both private and public; and by preparation for that rest that remaineth for the people of God.

    Baptist Church Manual.

    The happiness of heaven is the constant keeping of the Sabbath. Heaven is called a Sabbath, to make those who have Sabbaths long for heaven, and those who long for heaven love Sabbaths.

    Philip Henry.

    If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.

    Macaulay.

  • The Sundaies of man’s life,
  • Thredded together on time’s string,
  • Make bracelets to adorn the wife
  • Of the eternal, glorious King.
  • On Sunday heaven’s gates stand ope;
  • Blessings are plentiful and rife,
  • More plentiful than hope.
  • Herbert.

  • Fresh glides the brook and blows the gale,
  • Yet yonder halts the quiet mill;
  • The whirring wheel, the rushing sail
  • How motionless and still!
  • Six days stern Labour shut the poor
  • From nature’s careless banquet-hall;
  • The seventh, an Angel opes the door,
  • And, smiling, welcomes all!
  • Bulwer.

    Life and blessing will attend the man who observes the Sabbath. The Sabbath of rest is a continual lesson to him to turn his eye from all created objects, and look to that heavenly rest into which God is entered, and which is promised to man.

    J. Milner.

  • Gently on tiptoe Sunday creeps,
  • Cheerfully from the stars he peeps,
  • Mortals are all asleep below,
  • None in the village hears him go;
  • E’en chanticleer keeps very still,
  • For Sunday whispered, ’twas his will.
  • John Peter Hebel.

    O what a blessing is Sunday, interposed between the waves of worldly business like the divine path of the Israelites through Jordan! There is nothing in which I would advise you to be more strictly conscientious than in keeping the Sabbath day holy. I can truly declare that to me the Sabbath has been invaluable.

    Wilberforce.

  • Hail, Holy Day! the blessing from above
  • Brightens thy presence like a smile of love,
  • Smoothing, like oil upon a stormy sea,
  • The roughest waves of human destiny—
  • Cheering the good, and to the poor oppress’d
  • Bearing the promise of their heavenly rest.
  • Mrs. Hale.

  • O day most calm, most bright,
  • The fruit of this, the next world’s bud,
  • Th’ indorsement of supreme delight,
  • Writ by a friend, and with his blood;
  • The couch of time, care’s balm and bay;
  • The week were dark, but for thy light;
  • Thy torch doth show the way.
  • George Herbert.

  • Bright shadows of true rest! some shoots of bliss;
  • Heaven once a week;
  • The next world’s gladness prepossest in this;
  • A day to seek;
  • Eternity in time; the steps by which
  • We climb above all ages: lamps that light
  • Man through his heap of dark days; and the rich
  • And full redemption of the whole week’s flight.
  • Henry Vaughan.

  • For, bless the gude mon, gin he had his ain way,
  • He’d na let a cat on the Sabbath say “mew;”
  • Nae birdie maun whistle, nae lambie maun play,
  • An’ Phœbus himsel’ could na travel that day,
  • As he’d find a new Joshua in Andie Agnew.
  • Moore.

  • The seventh day this; the jubilee of man:
  • London! right well thou know’st the day of prayer:
  • Then thy spruce citizen, wash’d artisan,
  • And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air:
  • The coach of hackney, whiskey, one-horse chair,
  • And humblest gig, through sundry suburbs whirl;
  • To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow, make repair;
  • Till the tired jade the wheel forgets to hurl,
  • Provoking envious gibe from each pedestrian churl.
  • Byron.

    Nothing draws along with it such a glory as the Sabbath. Never has it unfolded without some witness and welcome, some song and salutation. It has been the coronation day of martyrs—the first day of saints. It has been from the first day till now the sublime day of the church of God; still the outgoings of its morning and evening rejoice. Let us then remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

    James Hamilton.

  • Oh! welcome to the wearied Earth
  • The Sabbath resting comes,
  • Gathering the sons of toil and care
  • Back to their peaceful homes;
  • And, like a portal to the skies,
  • Opens the House of God,
  • Where all who seek may come and learn
  • The way the Saviour trod.
  • But holier to the wanderer seems
  • The Sabbath on the deep,
  • When on, and on, in ceaseless course,
  • The toiling bark must keep,
  • And not a trace of man appears
  • Amid the wilderness
  • Of waters—then it comes like dove
  • Direct from heaven to bless.
  • Mrs. Hale.

  • But, chiefly, man the day of rest enjoys,
  • Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man’s day:
  • On other days, the man of toil is doom’d
  • To eat his joyless bread, lonely, the ground
  • Both seat and board—screen’d from the winter’s cold
  • And summer’s heat, by neighbouring hedge or tree;
  • But on this day, embosom’d in his home,
  • He shares the frugal meal with those he loves;
  • With those he loves he shares the heartfelt joy
  • Of giving thanks to God,—not thanks of form,
  • A word and a grimace, but reverently,
  • With cover’d face and upward earnest eye.
  • Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man’s day.
  • The pale mechanic now has leave to breathe
  • The morning air pure from the city’s smoke,
  • As wandering slowly up the river’s bank.
  • He meditates on Him whose powers he marks
  • In each green tree that proudly spreads the bough,
  • And in the tiny dew-bent flowers that bloom
  • Around the roots; and while he thus surveys
  • With elevated joy each rural charm,
  • He hopes, (yet fears presumption in the hope,)
  • That heaven may be one Sabbath without end.
  • Grahame.