We naturally personify it , and conceive its massy walls and its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and somewhat melancholy spirit . But the steeple stands foremost in our thoughts , as well as locally . It impresses us as a giant with a mind comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small concerns of all the town . Hourly , while it speaks a moral to the few that think , it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their separate and most secret affairs . It is the steeple , too , that flings abroad the hurried and irregular accents of general alarm ; neither have gladness and festivity found a better utterance than by its tongue ; and when the dead are slowly passing to their home , the steeple has a melancholy voice to bid them welcome . Yet , in spite of this connection with human interests , what a moral loneliness on week-days broods round about its stately height ! It has no kindred with the houses above which it towers ; it looks down into the narrow thoroughfare -- the lonelier because the crowd are elbowing their passage at its base . A glance at the body of the church deepens this impression . Within , by the light of distant windows , amid refracted shadows we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries , the silent organ , the voiceless pulpit and the clock which tells to solitude how time is passing . Time -- where man lives not -- what is it but eternity ? And in the church , we might suppose , are garnered up throughout the week all thoughts and feelings that have reference to eternity , until the holy day comes round again to let them forth . Might not , then , its more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town , with space for old trees to wave around it and throw their solemn shadows over a quiet green ? We will say more of this hereafter . But on the Sabbath I watch the earliest sunshine and fancy that a holier brightness marks the day when there shall be no buzz of voices on the Exchange nor traffic in the shops , nor crowd nor business anywhere but at church . Many have fancied so . For my own part , whether I see it scattered down among tangled woods , or beaming broad across the fields , or hemmed in between brick buildings , or tracing out the figure of the casement on my chamber floor , still I recognize the Sabbath sunshine . And ever let me recognize it ! Some illusions -- and this among them -- are the shadows of great truths . Doubts may flit around me or seem to close their evil wings and settle down , but so long as I imagine that the earth is hallowed and the light of heaven retains its sanctity on the Sabbath -- while that blessed sunshine lives within me -- never can my soul have lost the instinct of its faith . If it have gone astray , it will return again .
I love XXXXX spend such pleasant Sabbaths from morning till night behind the curtain of my open window .
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