Sunday, Day of the Lord. Considered in the order of the week, corresponds to the Pagans' day of the sun; considered as a fête consecrated to God, it corresponds to the Jewish Sabbath, and is even a continuation of it, with the difference that the Sabbath was celebrated on Saturday. The first Christians transferred to the following day the celebration of the Sabbath or Sunday , in order to honor the resurrection of the Lord, which was manifested on that day; the day which started the week for the Pagans and the Jews, as it continues to do for us.

The day which is called of the sun , said St. Justin the Martyr, in his apology for the Christians, all those who live in the city or in the countryside, gather together in the same place, and there they read the writings of the apostles and the prophets, for as much time as they can . Then there is a reading of the description of the liturgy, which consisted at that time in that, after the reading of the sacred texts, the pastor, in a sort of sermon or homily, explained the truths that had just been heard, and exhorted the people to put them into practice; then, the common prayers were recited, followed by the consecration of the bread and wine, which were distributed to all of the faithful. Finally the aid of the attendees – given voluntarily – were gathered, to be used by the pastor to bring relief to the poor, the orphans, widows, the sick, the prisoners, etc.

One can find in these breviaries and other liturgical books, the Sunday s of the first class and the second class; those of the first class are the Sunday s of the Passion ( Rameaux ), of Easter, of Quasimodo, of the Pentecost, the Quadragesima; those of the second are the ordinary Sunday s. All of the Sunday s of the year used to have their own name, drawn from that day's mass; but we have only retained this custom for several Sunday s of lent, which we call for this reason by the words reminiscere , oculi , loetare , judica .

The Church orders that on Sunday s people abstain from manual labor ( oeuvres serviles ), following in this the institution of the Creator: it prescribes also the obligations and practices of piety; in a word, a public and known church. The cessation of manual labor is fairly well observed on Sunday , and it is rare that one fails this part of the precept, without having been authorized to do so by their superiors, as sometimes happens for public or pressing works, or for certain operations in the fields that it is often impossible to defer without exposing oneself to considerable losses, and those which concern society. People have much less respect for the fêtes , and I have noticed for some time in Paris that many workers, masons among others, practice their trade on these days, as usual, even when working for individuals.

The abbé de Saint-Pierre, who wrote so much on the science of government, sees the prohibition on working on Sunday as only a rule of ecclesiastical discipline, which makes it false that everyone can take that day off without inconveniencing themselves considerably. On that note, he takes up the cause of the indigent, and not satisfied to transfer on their behalf all the fêtes to Sunday , he would like to accord to the poor a considerable part of this great day to spend in useful projects ( travaux ), and thus to better provide for their families' needs. One is poor, according to him, as soon as one does not have enough revenue to procure 600 livres of bread. According to this standard, there are many poor people among us.

Be this as it may, he thinks that if we give them, every Sunday , the right to work after noon, supposing the mass and the morning instruction, this will be a work of charity quite favorable for so many poor families, and consequently for hospitals; the gain which these subjects will make by this simple permission, according to his calculation, amounts to more than twenty million per year. Thus , he says, that this assistance – would it not be an annual aid of more than twenty million, with most going to the poorest – is this not an object worthy of a national council which could thus perfect an ancient ecclesiastical rule, and render it even more in conformity with the spirit of justice and decorum, that is to say more Christian at its base than it is today? As concerns those who are not poor, there is a consideration which leads one to believe that if after mass and the morning instructions, people set themselves to their work and their sales, they will not go to the tavern and spend, at great harm to their families, a portion of what they have made during the week; they will not inebriate themselves, they will not quarrel amongst themselves, and therefore they will avoid all those evils that are caused by idleness and by the cessation of an innocent labor that is useful for themselves and for the state.

If the bishops who formed the first canons had seen the cabarets and the games established, if they had predicted all of the disorders that are caused by idleness and the cessation of daily work, they would have limited themselves to [requiring] presence at mass and participation in the morning instructions, etc .

All of this doctrine seems plausible enough; the evil is that it seems absolutely contrary to divine precepts: septimo die cessabis [on the seventh day thou shalt rest] (Exod. 23.12); a difficulty which presents itself naturally enough, but which our author did not set out to resolve. We must work ourselves take on this difficult task, in showing the destination, the goal, and the motives of the Sabbath rest.

The scriptures say: sex diebus operaberis, & facies omnia opera tua . [Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work.] Deut. 5.13. Sex diebus operaberis, septimo die cessabis, ut requiescat bos & asinus tuus, & refrigeretur filius ancilloe tuoe & advena . [Six days thou shalt do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed.] Exod. 23. 12. During six days you will look after your various projects; but you will stop on the seventh, so that your cow and your donkey can rest, and the son of your slave and the foreigner who is among you can relax, and even enjoy themselves; for that is what the refrigeretur of the Vulgate means. Thus what God says in favor of the animals, in favor of foreigners and slaves, must include even more so free citizens; thus an honest relaxation, and which must be common to all, becomes the essential destination of the Sabbath. It seems even that the cessation of projects demanded on the seventh day, is less in its institution a religious observance than a political regulation to assure to men and livestock a rest which is necessary for them to continue their work.

This proposition is even better established in the following passage, in which Moses reminds the Israelites the true destination of the Sabbath. à septimus dies , he says, sabbati est, id est requies Domini Dei tui; non facies in eo quidquam operis tu & filius tuus & ftlia, servus & ancilla, & bos & asinus, & omne jumentum tuum, & peregrinus qui est inter portas tuas, ut requiescat servus tuus & ancilla tua sicut & tu. Memento quod & ipse servieris in Aegypto, & eduxerit te inde Dominus Deus tuus in manu forti & brachio extento; idcirco pracepit tibi ut observares diem sabbati . [But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.] Deut. 5. 14. The seventh day is the rest of the Lord your God; neither you nor your children, your slaves or livestock, nor the foreigner living in your cities, will undertake on that day any sort of project, so that the slaves of both sexes who are under you, can rest as well as you.  In effect (he adds, still pleading thecause of the unfortunate), remember that you have yourselves been in servitude; that God by his favors and his power brought you forth from that miserable state: it is in this view of commiseration and rest necessary that all, that God has commanded you the observation of the Sabbath.

In this formal and precise passage, which conforms so well to what the Savior said (Mark 2.27) that the Sabbath is made for men, and not men for the Sabbath, I conclude that the intention of the creator, in instituting a required rest ( repos de précepte ), was not only to set aside a day for his church, but also to procure some relaxation to workers, slaves or mercenaries, out of fear that barbarous and pitiless masters would make them perish under the weight of an overly continuous labor.

I further conclude that the Sabbath, once it is established for man, must not become for him detrimental; that therefore one can fall short of the precept of Sabbath rest, when the necessity or the great utility demands it for the good of man; that one can consequently on the day of the Sabbath face the enemy, quicumque venerit ad nos in bello die sabbatorum, pugnemus adversus eum. 1. Macc. 2. 41 . [Whosoever shall come to make battle with us on the Sabbath day, we will fight against him.] take care of their livestock unusquisque vestrum sabbato non solvit bovem suum ... & ducit ad aquare . Lk. 13. 15. [The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering?] save their own lamb, si ceciderit hoec sabbatis in foveam, nonne tenebit & levabit eam (ovem.) Mt. 12. 11. [And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?] prepare food to eat, &c. And I further conclude, by virtue of the same reasoning, that the artisan, the worker who in working usually only scrapes by, can employ a part of Sunday in useful operations, as much in order to avoid the disorder and the outrageous spending, as to be in a better state to meet the needs of a languishing family, and to distance from himself, if he can, famine and poverty; sicknesses too well known, especially among us.

It would be futile to object on the basis the article of the Decalogue which orders the sanctification of the day of the Sabbath – memento ut diem sabbati sanctifices (Exod. 20.8) [Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy] given that what we have said here about this matter does not prohibit the worship established by the church for the sanctification of Sunday s. Besides the fact that the true signification of the terms saint and sanctification , in their original language, may never have been well developed. But without entering into this discussion, about which interesting things could be said, I believe that I have solidly proved that one of the principal goals of the Sabbath was the relaxation, the rest and the well-being of workers; consequently that the cessation of manual labor, far from producing these advantages, becomes in certain cases the exact opposite, something that happens entirely too often for the poor, and that therefore it is worthwhile to penetrate into the meaning of the law, and to abandon the letter which only expresses rest and inaction, and to attach ourselves constantly to the spirit [of the law] which always subordinates this rest to the true good of the worker, and which even recommends drudge work ( travaux pénibles ), if they are necessary to prevent damage, as it is demonstrated in the passages already cited.

Let us return to the abbé de Saint-Pierre, and let us consider as certain (as he does) that if we permit the poor to work on Sunday afternoon, an arrangement which would be very profitable to them, we will return to the veritable spirit of the legislator, because in the end the Sabbath is made for them, and they are not made for the Sabbath.

We have already said it: we can estimate at more than 20 millions per year the gain that these poor people will make by this freedom to work. Such an economy is worth, it seems to me, the attention of the minister, because often for the smallest reasons people are permitted to work on holidays and Sunday s, as we pointed out earlier. But while waiting for him to make a regulation on the subject which is advantageous for poor families, can we not propose, in the same spirit, to employ certain hours of this holy day to procure for all villages and hamlets certain conveniences which they often lack; a well, for example, a fountain, a watering hole, a washing place, etc., and especially to make the roads more passable then they usually are in the distant countrysides. In effect, although the major roads are in good shape in almost all of the kingdom, there are many smaller roads ( chemins de traverse ) where there is much to be redone, and whose reparation would be very useful to the people.

There are hardly any parishes in the countryside where there are no difficult passages; here there are swamps ( marres ) and waters which do not drain; over there a deep and dangerous bog; elsewhere a hill too steep and unstable; this is enough to make certain areas unusable, and to cause the death of some unfortunate soul from time to time. Yet all of this could be corrected, without much spending, and without needing anything but the work and the industry of interested people.

I say the same thing about the work that would be needed in order to have fountains, watering holes, and other conveniences in the places where they are lacking. It is certain that most of these things can be done for little cost; it would only require the unanimous participation of the inhabitants; and with a bit of time and perseverance, the result would be noticeable advantages ( utilités ) for everyone.

Thus, because Jesus Christ made clear that it is permitted to save an animal fallen in a ditch, and to do any other good works on the day of the Sabbath, licet sabbatis bene facere (Matth. ch. 12.) [it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days ], can these sorts of projects not be seen as works of charity, and therefore licit works? And after the instructions and the parish mass, what could be more Christian than to consecrate several hours to such useful and laudable enterprises? Are not such occupations as worthwhile as the honest relaxation that we are accorded without difficulty, to say nothing of the excesses and abuses that the idleness of the fêtes invariably brings?

May I be permitted to place here a bit of prophane erudition? Virgil, one of the great masters of pagan theology, approved highly of certain rural work common during his era on feast days; he even insisted that religion and laws also authorized them:

and he insisted also that the work that he approved of on those days, entered into the spirit of relaxation which is, as we have seen, one of the principles of the Sabbath.

I believe, then, that an intelligent curate, a gentleman, and every other person of weight and merit in each village could, without straying from religious views, put himself in some way at the head of these small projects, to advise and lead them, and that one could thus engage all the inhabitants of the countryside to procure for themselves by collective and honest labor, convenient travel and carts, and so many other public conveniences which they generally lack.

Note

1. [James Rhoades, trans., The Poems of Virgil , 3rd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 325.]