A Pause for the Sabbath, in History

Today is Sunday, the day we in our family rest from our regular labors and remember the Lord, in accordance with the requirement in the Ten Commandments - 

"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy..." (Exodus 20:8, KJV)

Every faith does this differently, and I can say from personal experience there are definite benefits to doing so. I thought I would share an interesting excerpt, I found in An Artileryman's Diary, by Jenkin Lloyd Jones. I've been reading it since I first discovered it.

Sabbath rest was hard to come by as a soldier in the Civil War...

 

It depicts his life as full of monotony - finding food, running drills, illness, boredom. Living through the Civil War seemed very boring overall. For months and months every day was the same for him, and then he stops and writes this (parentheses are my guesses):

"Buntyn Station, (probably near Memphis, Tennessee), Sunday, Feb. 1

It is Sunday, but hard to realize it. The same routine is gone through as upon the other days, the cards shuffled with equal liveliness, the game of ball with the same noise. And I lay in my tent never realizing this is the Sunday that I used to spend at home with such stillness, when the horses stayed in the stable unhitched, all work laid aside.

Ah, well I remember the first Sunday spent in the army, how I used to recoil as I heard the boisterous oaths and reckless sport of the soldiers as they were returning to their comrades on that clear Sunday morning from Columbus (IL?) to Corinth (MS?). 

It was just five months ago today, and am I really so much changed? Can it be that I am so much more vicious and wicked than then, that I heed not the Sabbath? God forbid.

But what does company have to do? Almost everything. I flatter myself that it is not so very wicked. It cannot be.

In the evening I went to Griffith's 'shebang' and listened to sacred music. It sounded as of old. "I'm a Pilgrim", "There is a Happy Land" etc. But a soldier is a soldier, and the "Dixie" and "Gay and Happy" were promiscuously mixed. 

 

In honor of the Sabbath, I'm sharing the two hymns he referenced in this entry - similar, at least. Probably not exactly like what he heard that day. "I'm a Pilgrim" and "There is a Happy Land".

If you want to hear "Dixie" (two versions - his would have been the Union version), and "Gay and Happy", you'll have to Google them on Monday. :-) 

 

 

 

 

Back to to more quotes from Elder Sterling W. Sill tomorrow!