Our Sabbaths in Danger / A Sermon, deprecating the contemplated opening of the Crystal Palace on the Lord's-Day

Transcribed from the 1852 Wertheim and Macintosh edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
A SERMON,
DEPRECATING THE CONTEMPLATED OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE ON THE LORD’S-DAY,
PREACHED ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1852, IN CAMDEN CHURCH, CAMBERWELL.
BY DANIEL MOORE, M.A., INCUMBENT.
LONDON: WERTHEIM AND MACINTOSH, 24, PATERNOSTER-ROW. G. W. MEDES, CAMBERWELL.
1852.
WERTHEIM AND MACINTOSH, 24, PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON.
Mark ii. 27:—“And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”
The discriminating symptoms of hypocrisy or profaneness in a nation, it has been well said, are, that, by the one, outward ordinances are raised to an exaggerated importance; by the other, they are disparaged, depressed, and set at nought. In the words just quoted, the aim of our Lord appears to have been to put these institutions in their right place,—to enunciate a great principle, by which we could always distinguish between certain moral ends for which man was made , and certain outward appointments which were instituted and made for man . To obey God, to resist evil, to fulfil a providential designation, to strive after nearer conformity to the Divine image, to fit and capacitate the soul for a higher condition of being, these are ends,—man was made for these . But holy times, pious commemorations, solemn assemblies, the temples where we worship, and the sacraments whereof we eat, these are only subsidiary and divinely appointed means; they are not among the final objects of man’s creation. They were ordinances wade for man .
This argument, it will be perceived, would be addressed with much fitness to men, whose error, in relation to the Sabbath, leaned to the side of an over-strained and impracticable severity; and who had just been urging it as a complaint against our Lord’s disciples, that, in passing through a field on the Sabbath-day, they had relieved their hunger by plucking a few ears of corn. These cavillers are reminded, therefore, that, in the economy of salvation, all outward ordinances are to be viewed in the light of things secondary and subservient; their mode of observance to be interpreted in harmony with the ends for which they were ordained; and that, with regard to the Sabbath especially, care must be taken to avoid both the hypocrisy that would make the day to be honoured by a rigid ceremonial exactness, and the presumption that would overlook its eternal sanctity as standing in the will of God. It is in this last view that all the ordinances of religion, when clearly of Divine appointment, acquire a character of deep and momentous interest. Their foundation is in the will of God; but that will, as we know, has, as its ever-guiding and controlling rule, a sacred regard to the highest interests of man. Nothing can be more dishonouring to God, or more untrue, than to speak of outward ordinances as if they were mere arbitrary appointments, without significance and without benefit, as only so many meaningless enactments designed to test the willingness of human subjection; so far otherwise, they are means framed upon a wise and loving regard to all the aptitudes of our moral nature, and calculated, in their reverent use, to help man through all the difficulties of his course and to educate his immortal spirit for the employments of the world to come. The Sabbath was MADE FOR MAN.