My Father objected very strongly to the expression Sabbath-day, as it is commonly used by Presbyterians and others.  He said, quite justly, that it was an inaccurate modern innovation, that Sabbath was Saturday, the Seventh day of the week, not the first, a Jewish festival and not a Christian commemoration.  Yet his exaggerated view with regard to the observance of the First Day, namely, that it must be exclusively occupied with public and private exercises of divine worship, was based much more upon a Jewish than upon a Christian law.  In fact, I do not remember that my Father ever produced a definite argument from the New Testament in support of his excessive passivity on the Lord’s Day.  He followed the early Puritan practice, except that he did not extend his observance, as I believe the old Puritans did, from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday.

The observance of the Lord’s Day has already become universally so lax that I think there may be some value in preserving an accurate record of how our Sundays were spent five and forty years ago.  We came down to breakfast at the usual time.  My Father prayed briefly before we began the meal; after it, the bell was rung, and, before the breakfast was cleared away, we had a lengthy service of exposition and prayer with the servants.  If the weather was fine, we then walked about the garden, doing nothing, for about half an hour.  We then sat, each in a separate room, with our Bibles open and some commentary on the text beside us, and prepared our minds for the morning service.  A little before 11 a.m. we sallied forth, carrying our Bibles and hymn-books, and went through the morning-service of two hours at the Room; this was the central event of Sunday.

We then came back to dinner,—­curiously enough to a hot dinner, always, with a joint, vegetables and puddings, so that the cook at least must have been busily at work,—­and after it my Father and my stepmother took a nap, each in a different room, while I slipped out into the garden for a little while, but never venturing farther afield.  In the middle of the afternoon, my stepmother and I proceeded up the village to Sunday School, where I was early promoted to the tuition of a few very little boys.  We returned in time for tea, immediately after which we all marched forth, again armed as in the morning, with Bibles and hymn-books, and we went though the evening-service, at which my Father preached.  The hour was now already past my weekday bedtime, but we had another service to attend, the Believers’ Prayer Meeting, which commonly occupied forty minutes more.  Then we used to creep home, I often so tired that the weariness was like physical pain, and I was permitted, without further ‘worship’, to slip upstairs to bed.