A Few Words on the Crystal Palace Question

by C. J. Vaughan

The question now is, not, What is it lawful, what is it wrong, to do on the Sunday? how can I so employ it as to avoid breaking God’s Law and incurring God’s displeasure? but rather, How can I derive from it all possible good? how can I turn to the best account, for myself and others, in soul and body, the blessing which God has thus conferred upon me?

And shall those who look back through long years upon their frequent failures to improve this blessing, see no reason for the confession which bewails their past neglect of it, and the prayer which asks help to honour it hereafter?

Whatever tends to refresh the mind and body without the stimulus of an undue excitement, will be, in itself, a desirable occupation for the Christian Sunday.

But, if this relaxation of the body and mind be attended with no corresponding benefit to the soul; still more, if it involve an excitement unfavourable to the remembrance of God, so that, at the end of the day, Heaven shall be more distant than at its beginning; then that relaxation has been of a mistaken and injurious kind; the purposes of the institution have been this day rather defeated than answered; it is not so much that we have broken a law, as that we have missed a blessing; we have been unthankful for a great privilege, we have thrown away a great opportunity of good.

All this is plain enough as respects an individual: few will gainsay its truth.

But we are now concerned rather with the national observance of the Sunday. How are we to apply these principles to the case of others? more especially, if the question be one of government, of legislation?

Let us, in the first place, take clearly into view what can, and what cannot, be done by legislation on such a subject.

It is quite idle to suppose that a Christian use of the Sunday can ever be secured by authoritative enactment. We cannot, by all the legislation in the world, augment by one the number of the worshippers in our Churches; we cannot open one Bible, we cannot elicit one prayer, we cannot awaken in one heart the feelings of faith or hope or love. The observance of the Sunday, as it rests not on law as its basis, so neither can it rest on legislation for its enforcement.

What then can be done?

Legislation can protect the observance of the day. It cannot prevent him who will from desecrating it, in his heart, in his house, in thought, word, or act. But it can limit the operation of this desecration upon others. It can refuse to him the absolute command of the services of others in effecting this desecration. It can coerce within somewhat narrow bounds his power to keep others waiting upon his amusements to the loss of the privileges of the day for themselves. It can say, Such and such places shall be inaccessible on that day; such and such means of conveyance withdrawn; such and such servants of the Public excused from their attendance.