The Sabbath by ARTHUR W. SPAULDING

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 28, 1912

The Sabbath

By ARTHUR W. SPAULDING

Come, Let Us Live With Our Children — No. 9

The Sabbath

ARTHUR W. SPAULDING

“The value of the Sabbath as a means of education is beyond estimate.”—Education, page 250. It is not merely as a day of physical rest that it is to be prized, but as a day when our spirits may be refreshed through communion, in our relation as children to God and as parents to children. Thus the Sabbath, in this double association, becomes an educating power in our lives.

We must come to the Sabbath prepared for this experience. Physical preparation must be made on Friday. “See that all the clothing is in readiness, and that all the cooking is done. Let the boots be blacked and the baths be taken.”—Testimonies for the Church, Vol. VI, page 355.

“We should jealously guard the edges of the Sabbath.”—Id., page 356. As the sun goes toward its setting, every one, children and parents, should have themselves in readiness to greet the Lord’s day. “Before the setting of the sun, let the members of the family assemble to read God’s Word, to sing and pray.”—Ib. There is no hour so holy, so entrancing, as that twilight worship hour at the beginning of the Sabbath. Then with special power come to the mind Montgomery’s words:—

“Twilight, I love thee! As thy shadows roll, The calm of evening steals upon my soul, Sublimely tender, solemnly serene, Still as the hour, enchanting as the scene. Deeper, O twilight, then thy shadows roll: A glorious vision opens on my soul.”

Then follows the story hour that we and the children love, when God’s heroes of old troop before our memories and hover in our thoughts. Then most powerfully comes the resolution that, “seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.”

“On Sabbath morning the family should be astir early.” This does not mean that if we have been accustomed to rise at five o’clock on week-days, we should rise at four o’clock on Sabbath. But plenty of time should be given for the worship hour, for preparation of breakfast and doing of the chores, and then for leisure time for study and for getting to Sabbath-school.

Of the Sabbath-school and the church service I have nothing to say here, for we are dealing with the family. Only let us observe this, that the whole family, unless unusual circumstances forbid, should be attendants at the Sabbath-school and at church. And in church the family should sit together. Every well-regulated family will do this. That we do not see much evidence of this spirit of unity in our churches is a sad commentary on the home, an evidence that the parents are not living with their children. The order and decorum of the home will be evidenced by the family in the church.

Sermons sometimes are uninteresting and trying to children, if not to older ones, and they can not be blamed for being unable to fix their attention upon what is being said. But even with the youngest child the parent can maintain quiet. It may sometimes be necessary to take a child outside more than once for correction, but insistence upon quiet and order will make itself felt finally.

There are little ways of keeping children quiet in church. They must vary with the age and the temperament. Very little children may be put to sleep; five-year-olds may have legitimate diversion in the quiet study of pictures. But let no papers rustle. Older children may be attracted by some method to notice the sermon. Suppose you give one a piece of paper, and ask him to listen to what the minister says, and every time he hears the name of God or Jesus, or any other word you may select, to put down a mark. Or if many texts are used throughout the sermon, the child who knows the books of the Bible may be asked to find the text whenever he hears one. Let no device, however, outlast the child’s interest.

The father’s and the mother’s own attitude of attention and reverence will chiefly affect the child. If the parent’s head is turned at every entrance or disturbance, no wonder that the child’s feet and hands and lips are added to the action.

The Sabbath should not be filled up with meetings. Ordinarily the Sabbath-school and the church service are enough, though circumstances may modify this rule. In the city it may be better to have a young people’s meeting in the afternoon than to leave the young people to the entertainment of the city. But in the country God’s plan can be more closely followed. The afternoon is the special time for the association of parents and children. To walk out across the fields or along the country roads is the delight of children, and should be of parents. Here is the father’s and mother’s great opportunity. “Often the father hardly sees the faces of his children throughout the week. He is almost wholly deprived of opportunity for companionship or instructing. But God’s love has set a limit to the demands of toil. Over the Sabbath he places his merciful hand. In his own day he preserves for the family opportunity for communion with him, with nature, and with one another.”—Education, page 251.

Parents must make themselves familiar with the things of nature. If they have an education in the natural sciences, they have a great advantage, through knowing the nature and habits and uses of plants and animals. But for the simplest and the least scientific there is a wealth of information to be gained and given. Oftentimes the observant farmer has more practical, useful, adaptable, inspiring instruction to give than the great student of botany and zoology.

With the children on Sabbath we should study the shapes, the colors, and the perfumes of the flowers and plants, that they and we may know them. We are to recognize birds and wild animals, their songs and calls. Even if this has no direct and evident relation to our religion, let us reflect that it is a part of God’s religion, and that we ourselves need to be transformed. Stories of the Bible or other times may be mingled with these talks and investigations. Let the children weave their wreaths and garlands from the violets of spring and the goldenrod of autumn. The transition is easy, from such suggestive chaplets, to the crowns of gold in heaven. The sparkling brooks we pass, with the shining pebbles in them, of which the children may make collections, have an evident reference to the river of life and the garnished walls of the New Jerusalem. The hiding rabbits and the scampering little lizards are contrasts to the perfect trust of the animals in the new earth. If at first you can not tell stories, read some. Many parts of “Early Writings” are delightful to the child.

The winter days, in snow-bound regions, are not so easily provided for. More indoor work must be done; though, when walks are possible, there are still lessons to be learned out-of-doors. “As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, . . . so”—what a wealth of study is suggested in these words: where does the snow come from? what shapes has it? what makes them? in what ways does the snow water the earth? how does it help the buds and the flowers? in what ways is the Word of God like this? Children should, in summer and winter, be encouraged to search out texts that relate to natural objects. It was thus that Christ gained his marvelous power of interpreting nature.

Shut up in the house on a Sabbath afternoon, story-telling and reading often suffice the little ones. But music is a good alternative, and various devices may be made to interest and instruct the children. I myself believe in Sabbath games for children, carefully planned and guarded. I have found effective paper angels and paper missionary ships, and personation of Bible characters. But let no common games nor toys be brought out. The secular papers and books should also be put away on Friday.

The Sabbath is the great test of the father and the mother. If on that day they are willing to devote themselves to the entertainment and instruction of their children (with a proper time granted them by the children, however, to study for themselves), they show an aptitude that may be developed more fully as the weeks go by, in the daily teaching of their children. If, however, the day is prized largely for the afternoon nap, while the children are sent off by themselves,—God pity those parents! Life abundant and full must be used on the Sabbath for the education of our children and ourselves.

His use of the Sabbath is a test of the believer’s loyalty. Only as we gain here on this earth the power to teach and lead shall we gain the privilege of living and teaching on the new earth. There, as here, the Sabbath is the great day of education. The families of the new earth during the week are studying, under their fathers’ instruction, the great science of salvation as revealed in the works, the organic words, of God. The knotty problems that even the wisest of them can not solve are kept to the day of the Sabbath. And on that day the families, the clans, the tribes of Eden, go up to the New Jerusalem, that they may have opened before them the glories and the joys of the knowledge that they seek.

Entering the city through their several gates, the various tribes find themselves the guests of the thousands of their own number who are the attendants of Jesus, and by them they are led deeper into the mysteries of life. At last they appear on the crystal sea before the greatest Master, and there their minds and hearts are opened wider to the gracious instruction he has to give. Hosannas ring forth from the enraptured throng, thanksgivings not only for the gift of eternal life, but for all of knowledge and power and joy that life is continually unfolding to them.

This is the life of which the Sabbath to-day is the earnest, the type, and the embryo. Let the Sabbath be this to us and our children with us.

I close this series with the hope that, incomplete as it is, it has yet served to emphasize and illustrate the basic principle of child-training: “Come, let us live with our children.”