My mother had given me formally to understand that it spoke of matters too
deep for me; that "till converted, the natural man could not understand the
things of God": and I obtained little more explanation of it from the two
unintelligible, dreary sermons to which I listened every dreary Sunday, in
terror lest a chance shuffle of my feet, or a hint of drowsiness,--natural
result of the stifling gallery and glaring windows and gas lights,--should
bring down a lecture and a punishment when I returned home. Oh, those
"sabbaths!"--days, not of rest, but utter weariness, when the beetles and
the flowers were put by, and there was nothing to fill up the long vacuity
but books of which I could not understand a word: when play, laughter,
or even a stare out of window at the sinful, merry, sabbath-breaking
promenaders, were all forbidden, as if the commandment had run, "In it thou
shalt take no manner of amusement, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter." By
what strange ascetic perversion has _that_ got to mean "keeping holy the
sabbath-day"?
Yet there was an hour's relief in the evening, when either my mother told
us Old Testament stories, or some preacher or two came in to supper after
meeting; and I used to sit in the corner and listen to their talk; not that
I understood a word, but the mere struggle to understand--the mere watching
my mother's earnest face--my pride in the reverent flattery with which the
worthy men addressed her as "a mother in Israel," were enough to fill up
the blank for me till bed-time.
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