Abram Herbert Lewis - Spiritual Sabbathism

90 SPIRITUAL SABBATHISM
—but in the sense that It can be consecrated.
As the years go by, the pressure of work
will increase, until men are strained and worn by
even their consecrated labors. Increasingly then
there will be the need of the Sabbath.
Yet what will not partisan spirit cry out? It
will ask, How do you know that one day in seven
is the necessary ratio—much less any particular day?
If the appeal is to scientific rather than revealed
knowledge, we do not know. Attempts
have been made to establish the weekly restday
on a scientific basis. There are needs
that science can not establish, for science follows
upon life, not precedes it. The notion that
science can establish spiritual institutions is precisely
one of those "perversities of the day," of which
Goethe speaks. To it we can oppose only the larger
masses of universal history, seen in the light of
universal need.
People will never understand Sal>
bathism until they try it, and try it on a high spiritual
plane.
The last man who will attempt to understand the
ideal of spiritual sabbathism is the scientific man.
Yet of all men he needs the Sabbath most. The
constant practice of weighing and measuring facts
is work of the most exhausting sort. Unquestionably
it produces a habit of mind which is unspir-