I have thus shown, my Lord, that you cannot be a true Churchman, nor a devout worshipper according to the forms of the Liturgy, if you advocate Sabbath desecration; and hence your desire to make such an irreligious use of your power has not only been gratuitous, unwise, and impolitic, but also a most glaring contradiction of your own professed principles. James speaks of “the superfluity of naughtiness,” and you, my Lord, have given to the nation a public commentary on the words, and to do so have deeply reflected on your own consistency.
III. Truth and humanity tell us, my Lord, that your proposition is not only inconsistent with your creed, but also that it is very CRUEL to a large number of your fellow citizens. The Redeemer has said that “The Sabbath was made for man.” Now man is a compound being, consisting of a frail body and an immortal soul. His body requires periodical rest; his soul stands in need of religious instruction; and the Fourth Command contains two parts exactly corresponding with these two exigencies of our race. It demands “rest” from labour for the body; it enjoins “holiness to the Lord” for the soul. “Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy: six days shalt thou labour and do all that thou hast to do,” &c., &c., are words which embrace these two principles. Holiness is the work of the soul. You cannot make a body holy; because holiness, or religion, is an intellectual and spiritual business. It is true you may employ the body in a holy or unholy manner, but then the moral principle, which sins or obeys, is in the soul, and the bodily members are only the instruments with which the heart accomplishes its good or wicked desires. When therefore the Scriptures command us to hallow or consecrate one day in seven, they enjoin a duty which can only be performed by an intelligent and voluntary being; and consequently one with which human legislation has nothing to do, except to see that no one shall be robbed of the liberty or power of attending to it. There is no government, prince, monarch, or emperor in the world that has a right to dictate to mankind respecting the religious observance of the Lord’s-day. Here men must be left to persuasion, exhortation, and the power of conscience. And therefore, my Lord, you are not called upon to legislate on the worship of the Sabbath. You must leave to others the same right which you claim for yourself. Doubtless you, my Lord, go to church, or not, according to your inclination; the rest of the nobility act in like manner; some of them are said to be Homœopaths in Sabbath worship; and you really must permit your countrymen and countrywomen to enjoy the same freedom. The business of legislation is with man’s mortal and corporeal nature, with his property and liberties. You have to guard that he be robbed of no right, that he receive no personal injury, that his life be safe, and his property secure; and it is on these principles of physical, civil, and social legislation that we demand that one day in seven shall be the possession of every British subject.
The Fourth Commandment enjoins a day of rest for man’s body. Jehovah, who “knoweth our frame,” who made us, and fully understands the capabilities of our brain, nerves and muscles, and who may with the profoundest reverence be termed, The Great Physiologist, has set apart one day in seven for bodily rest from labour. The body of Adam was stronger than ours. It knew no infirmity, was enfeebled by no disease; the labour of Paradise was comparatively light; and yet to Adam was given the rest of the seventh day. And to enforce this duty on our first parents, our merciful Creator not only sanctified the day, or made it a holy and sanctifying day for them, but rested himself as our example. There is no doubt that antediluvian believers kept the Sabbath, and they were as strong as we. We read of the observance of the Sabbath in the wilderness before the law was given on Sinai, and Jehovah worked especial miracles on the manna to enable the children of Israel to rest on this holy day; for on the sixth he rained twice as much food from heaven as on any other morning, and on the seventh he preserved it from putrefaction, which always occurred on any other day, except the Sabbath, if the manna was kept until the morrow. God also said to these Israelites in the wilderness, before the law was given on Sinai, that the law of the Sabbath was to be observed “as a SIGN between himself” and his worshippers. We have reason to believe that these children of Abraham were quite as strong in nerve and muscle as we are, and we know that their labour was not very hard, for they had during their wanderings in the wilderness but few occupations, and yet they were commanded to rest on the seventh day.
Some persons ask, Why did they rest on the seventh day, and not on the sixth, the eighth, or the tenth? Our only answer to this question is, that God, “who knoweth our frame,” judged it to be best and ordained that it should be so. A man may ask me why the earth moves on her axis from the west to the east, and I confess that I cannot give any better answer than that it is the will of the all-wise Creator. I cannot give a reason why the centipede has so many feet. If any person asked whether eighty, or one hundred and one would not have been as well, I must leave the matter in the hands of God. I say, “it is the will of God,” and “God is merciful.” Ten thousand questions in physics might be put to me which I could only answer by saying, “God is wise,” “God is powerful,” “God is love,” “God is merciful, and has made the world and our corporeal frame what they are.”
But I may add one word respecting the rest of the seventh day. The most distinguished physiologists assure us that both men and cattle require to be relieved from toil at the end of every six days. Gentlemen who have had much to do with horses have assured me that it was always a dead loss to rob those animals of the physical rest of the Sabbath, and that horses which are so worked invariably become diseased and die before their time. Before observation and physiology brought out these facts, the great and merciful Creator gave the command to Moses that “the ox and the ass should rest” on the seventh day. In the evidence on “Sabbath Observance” which was given before the “Parliamentary Committee,” and which, as a Government document, your Lordship has doubtless read, it is stated by several eminent physiologists, that man’s corporeal frame requires the rest of the Sabbath, and that to rob him of this is to injure his health and shorten his days. Yea, they show that tea gardens and other places of excitement produce baneful effects upon the brain and nerves, and eventually lead to premature decay and dissolution. Hence, my Lord, physiology teaches that our merciful Father, the maker of our frame, was right and kind and compassionate in ordaining one day in seven as a rest from toil. The refreshment of sleep teaches us that the body needs repose from continuous labour, and the Sabbath was intended to be still more invigorating.
I must here remind your Lordship that rest is the meaning of the word Sabbath. A sage reviewer in one of our “Quarterlies,” who has been pompously quoted by a literary brother of the “DAILY” press, has told us with much learned naïveté, that the word “Sabbath” means “seven”!! Doubtless we shall soon hear from the same philosophical philologer that the moon is made out of gossamer. The one will be as true and as scientific as the other. But we may leave these critics to the lexicons. You, my Lord, are distinguished as a scholar, and therefore know full well that our term “Sabbath” is the very identical Hebrew word for “Rest,” and that a literal translation of the first words of the Fourth Commandment would be, “Remember the Day of Rest to keep it holy.” “Rest” from labour, then, is the exact meaning of the word “Sabbath.” History and physiology show that man’s corporeal frame requires rest from toil every seventh day; and the Bible teaches that our heavenly Father, who made us thus frail, has, in pure love and mercy, commanded that one day in seven for the repose and consequent reinvigoration of the body shall be reserved from worldly occupations. Physical laws, as well as revealed laws, are the laws of God; and in the law of the Sabbath we have both combined to preserve the health and life of man. We have here a sacred bulwark of philanthropy, proving that the Sabbath, or Rest-day, was made for man. The labourer, therefore, has a Divine right to one day in seven as his own property. The charter or title deeds which give him a claim to the full enjoyment of the Sabbath for twenty-four hours, were signed by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The great seal of heaven is upon them. They are inscribed on the bones, muscles, nerves, brain, heart, lungs, and digestive organs of the human constitution, and were solemnly proclaimed by Jehovah himself amidst the thunders of Sinai. No work, except what can be shown to be absolutely necessary, must be done on the seventh day: and he who deprives the servant, operative, or labourer of this sacred claim to rest from toil, is both a robber and murderer, and will be treated as such at the great day.
You, my Lord, must enter eternity as a child of Adam, and not as a nobleman; and you will be acquitted or condemned accordingly as you observed or violated the ten commandments. As a sinner you may trust in the merits of Christ, but at the bar of God your faith will be tested by your observance of the decalogue. “Faith without works is dead,” and cannot justify the soul. You will there have no ancestry to plead, no titles to wear, and no wealth or influence to bribe. Death, as to all these advantages or disadvantages of your earthly existence, will leave you as bare and naked as Lazarus. Nor will forms and ceremonies be admitted as a substitute for the “weightier matters of the law.” Baptismal regeneration, sacramental grace, the repetition of forms of prayer, going to church once a day, the half observance of the Sabbath, and zeal for tithes and offerings, will not stand in the place of obedience to the law uttered on Mount Sinai. You must obey, or be excluded from Paradise. Your obedience also must proceed from faith and love; not a deed must be done to merit the kingdom of heaven, but every act of piety and devotion must proceed from pure gratitude to Him who died to procure eternal life for all who believe with a practical faith.
You know, my Lord, who has said, “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, the same shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whosoever shall do and teach them, shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” I need not say that the precepts here referred to are the ten commandments; because Christ came to abolish the ceremonial law; but to fulfil and establish the laws of the decalogue. Of these “one jot or tittle was not to be abolished”; for “on them hang all the law and the prophets.” The period also in which they were to be observed and kept is the Gospel dispensation, here emphatically called “the kingdom of Heaven.” The kingdom of Victoria is the kingdom where her laws are to be observed, and “the kingdom of Heaven,” or “kingdom of God,” is the Gospel kingdom in which the laws of God are to be carefully taught and devoutly obeyed. Your Lordship will hardly assert that the divine law of the Sabbath is one of “the least of the commandments”; because an injunction which is intended to preserve human life, and give the soul leisure to prepare for a better world, can scarcely be called little, and certainly not the “least”; but if it was “the least,” yet even then the Earl of Derby, if he broke it, or taught men to break it, or gave them a royal charter to do so, would incur the wrath of “The Lord of the Sabbath.”
It would be easy to show that the Fourth Commandment, far from being the “least” is one of the very “greatest” of the laws of the decalogue; for without it the other precepts would be to a great extent unheeded; man’s life would be shortened, and his soul lost. Many have separated the ten commandments into two classes—the first four referring to Jehovah, and the remaining six to our fellow man. The Lord Jesus evidently sums up the whole under the two ideas of “Love to God,” and “Love to our neighbour.” We have therefore the authority of the Divine Lawgiver himself for this twofold division; and a very little reflection will show us that the Fourth Command is the bond or vinculum which unites the two tables of the law together. “Remember the day of rest to keep it holy,” refers to the worship of God, and consequently to the first table. “In it thou shalt do no manner of work, thou, nor thy son, thy daughter, thy man servant, thy maid servant, thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates, or jurisdiction,” embraces our neighbour or universal man as far as our influence or legislative power may extend; for your Lordship knows very well that the words, “within thy gates,” include political and magisterial dominion. The Fourth Commandment, then, is a Janus—it has two faces and looks both ways: it regards what is due to our heavenly Father, and what is due to our brethren and sisters. It teaches the worship which must be paid to the former, and the rest from labour which is needed by the latter. Abolish this command, and you do away with the public worship of Jehovah; and at the same time rob the physical frame of your brother of that repose, and his mind of that edification, which are absolutely necessary to his corporeal, moral, and eternal well being.
Instead, then, of saying that the precept concerning the Sabbath is a ritual, ceremonial, or positive law which is abolished, we are fully warranted in asserting that it is one of the very “greatest” of the MORAL commandments. For if the worship of Jehovah is a moral duty of all ages, times, and dispensations—if to regard the health, life, rights, and universal welfare of our neighbour is also a moral obligation founded in nature, and therefore immutable as eternal justice—then the observance of the Sabbath, like the prohibition of idolatry, murder, and theft, is based in the natural and everlasting laws of rectitude, which remain unchanged from age to age. If we “love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength,” we shall hail the opportunity of ceasing from worldly pursuits one day in seven, that we may meditate upon him, worship him, and study his word “without distraction”; and if we “love our neighbour as we love ourselves,” we shall neither rob him of his day of rest, nor hurry him to the grave by continuous labour. You might, my Lord, as well strive to stay the planets in their flight, as endeavour to be a Christian while you encourage Sabbath labour. The sum and substance of all law, all justice, all mercy, all worship, is love. The Apostle says, “Love is the fulfilling (πλήρωμα, the fulfilment, the completion) of law,”—of law, καr’ ἐξοχῆν—the fulfilling of all good, sound, healthy, equitable law. In connection with the words just quoted from Rom. xiii., the inspired writer, after mentioning the prohibition of “adultery, murder, theft, false witness, and avarice,” adds, “and if there be any other law, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’” Now the Fourth Commandment is especially comprehended in this love to our fellow man.