A Reply to Dr. Vaughan's "Letter on the Late Post-Office Agitation"

BY JAMES ROBERT PEARS, M.A.,
MASTER OF THE BATH GRAMMAR SCHOOL, AND LATE FELLOW OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD.
LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO. BATH: BINNS AND GOODWIN.
Price Sixpence .
BATH: PRINTED BY BINNS AND GOODWIN.
Rev. Sir,
Three years ago the Hon. Grantley F. Berkeley published a letter to the Postmaster-General in opposition “to the attempt (as he wrote) which was making in Bath and its vicinity to prevent the delivery of letters on a Sunday.” And we were taught by this publication that there were men, and perhaps many men, among our legislators, who were uninformed as to the origin, nature, and moral effects of that precious ordinance of a day of rest. Such men needed to be instructed with kindness, and patience, and compassion.
We must, indeed, be fearfully devoid of the best gift of God to man, if we do not feel compassion for men who, in a land of open bibles, and professed obedience to the Gospel, have been deprived, by a vicious education, a life of excitement, and the cold indifference of those about them, of the vast enjoyment realized by the spirit of man when it rests in communion with the Almighty.
But when I undertook the easy and pleasant task of replying to that opponent, I certainly thought that the sentiments of that gentleman were confined to men whose education had been so unhappily restricted.
It would have been to me utterly incredible, if I had been told that his views would find sympathy and support in a man educated in the most liberal course, and trained to the full exercise of intellectual energy, accepted as a popular instructor of the rising Aristocracy, and even accounted an able preacher of the Gospel of Him, who gave the day of rest and blessed it. And here you must accept the assurance of my unfeigned regret if the following remarks necessarily assume somewhat of a personal character. My own feelings would lead me to limit myself entirely to the discussion of facts, principles, causes, and results: but that period in the discussion is past. The nature, obligation, privilege, and blessing of the Lord’s day has been the subject of deep interest and enquiry to every temper of mind, with an infinite variety of views, among all classes of men from the palace to the workshop.