1.H 13. Badly Regulated Work
Badly Regulated Work.
It is especially bad for a preacher to prepare his sermons on Saturday night. It is bad for a man to keep his brain at the top of its power from early on Saturday to late at night, so that he sleeps in a fiery dream of sermon. For then, he preaches on Sunday; and there are two days in which the brain is unintermittingly imr^letcd and stimulated. It is hot and feverish. Then, worse than all, comes what is called " Black Monday," a day upon which the minister throws oft" everything, and thus completely unstrings the bow.
You must give yourselves intervals of rest and playtime. But never let an excitement have such a rest that you run clear down. The way to cure an excitement is to meet it with another one. If you have preached all the week, and are keyed up very high, and you say to yourself, " Now I must rest," and you rest a day, hut still the nervous excitement continues; and Sunday you call again upon your brain, which gives the response, you will, perhaps be carried over Monday; but by Tuesday you begin to come down, and you think the earth is not so bright as it formerly seemed. You begin to think that you have mistaken your vocation, and that you will turn farmer. Then you have gone down as far as you ought. Some begin to see the blue devils at that point. You must meet tire with fire. A new excitement, brought in from another quarter, however, and of a different nature, will meet the old one, and on the ashes of the past you will build up a new flame.
I have sometimes had a whole month of undertone, because I let go and ran clear down, not knowing then how to meet one excitement with another, and thus carry myself along healthily. For the Sabbath-day, it seems to me that while it is important that you should train for thought and matter, it is only second in importance that you should train also for condition. Now, no man who studies during the last part of the week so that he comes to Sunday with only the refuse of what he has in him, making it his weakest day, can come up to the requirements of his duty. He is kept in a continual state of excitement, passing from one strain to another without interval. No man is wise who does it. Saturday should be a play-day. I make it a day, not of laziness, but of genial, social, pleasurable exhilaration. I go up street and see pleasant people. I go and look at pictures. I have a great many sources of enjoyment that many of you could not enjoy. I love to sec horses. I like to go on the street and see the different teams go by. I like to stand on the ferry-boat and see the splendid horses come on witli their great loads. I like a Dexter.
I like all fine horses, but I like the dray-horses, too.
There is such a sense of might and power with them.
They are almost as interesting as a locomotive engine the finest thing man ever created, unless it be a watch. I like to go to Tiffany s. I ask, " What are your men doing to-day? " " Well," says Tiffany, " we will go down and see." We go down to the afoliers, watch the workmen silver-plating and engraving, and talk with them. It is a good thing for you to live close to common people, plain folks and working-men. It keeps you near to humanity as distinguished from artificiality and conventionalism. After I get home I enjoy myself quietly in the evening, and when Sunday comes I am impieted.
I have fresh blood; and without training for condition, I have it. I feel like a race-horse. Some times I cannot wait for the time to come for me to go into the pulpit. I long to speak. But this result cannot be attained by studying yourselves up, and coining into church on Sunday quite dry and desiccated.