A Few Words on the Crystal Palace Question

by C. J. Vaughan

And, besides its protective power, legislation has also a strong negative operation. There are barriers which can only be removed by its assistance. At all events, its interposition may at any moment be invoked to stop such a removal. It may impede the extension of Sunday travelling: it may refuse its licence to the multiplication of Sunday amusement: it may refrain from sanctioning the creation of those haunts and rendezvous of public attraction which make just the difference oftentimes between neglect and contempt, between disregard and defiance, between indifference and desecration. It is one thing to know that a multitude of individuals, however numerous, fail to honour the day; another, to parade before the eyes of the world the legalization of that failure.

In what manner then do these remarks bear upon the particular subject now before us; the design (as it is commonly understood) of opening to the Public during certain hours of the Sunday some portions of the Crystal Palace?

I have no sympathy with an outcry founded in whole or in part upon what appears to me to be an untenable notion of the nature of our Christian Sunday. And I confess that I could forgive a Statesman who should receive on the present occasion with deep suspicion the remonstrances of men who but three years ago fostered and aggravated the same outcry on a plea which the slightest examination would have shown to be fallacious. Those who have lent themselves in former instances to swell the chorus of an ignorant and fanatical clamour, have no claim to attention now but that with which the actual merits of their case may furnish them.

But the two occasions are, as I believe, widely different. The contrast is unimportant: I will come at once to the present.

And let me admit, once for all, that it is with things as they are that we have to do; not with things as they might exist in a totally opposite condition. We must take the state of the poor man as it is, and the state of Sunday observance as it is. We might wish indeed that both were widely different. We might form to ourselves the picture of a poor man’s Sunday, such as in rare instances we have seen it: the clean though humble dwelling, the early prayer of the household, the open Bible, the walk to Church, the one comfortable meal of the week, the holy and loving converse of the evening, the prayer and the blessing with which the day ended as it began. And we might say, and say with truth, that, for a family thus resting in holy union throughout its weekly festival of Christian devotion and thankfulness, no change could come that were not for the worse. No want is here felt of anything which God has not given: enough for that happy home is the change which Sunday has brought with it over the aspect of every familiar object; the rest from labour, enjoyed with those dearest on earth, in the remembrance of One loved above all—this is all that they ask—more would destroy it.

But this, alas! is a spectacle as rare as it is beautiful: we may wish for a theoretical good, but we must choose the practical. Next below the case just pictured, stands that of him whose piety perhaps is less fervent, his desire for relaxation less easily satisfied, and who, thirsting for one glimpse of nature, one breath of God’s air, one ray of God’s sunshine, must seek them where they can be found, must travel, in short, in quest of them. Shall we pass upon this man a sentence of harsh, of unqualified, censure? Shall we say that he who carries with him on the Sunday his wife and his children to some quiet country spot where he may shake off the distractions of business, refresh himself with the sights and sounds of freedom, and pray with his family in a Church less dark and less dank than he could find in the neighbourhood of his dwelling—shall we say that this man breaks God’s Law, and does despite to His holy day? Let others record this sentence—I dare not.

But this I would say—that a freedom which he takes ought not to be made a yoke of bondage to another; that this liberty of his, so refreshing (if it be enjoyed in a Christian spirit) to soul and body, must be purchased for him at as small a cost as possible of Sunday toil on the part of others: let not the necessity which he feels, for entire relaxation on his day of rest, entail upon the servants of the Public a burdensome load of labour on a day of which they perhaps equally need the enjoyment: let the protective hand of legislation, if it be necessary, be interposed to regulate the hours and the method of his coming and going, that others may rest as well as he.

And, further, I would urge that it is essential to the beneficial effects of this indulgence, that it should be enjoyed, as far as may be, in tranquillity and retirement; that it is one thing to travel on the Sunday to a country village, and another to be immersed in the bustle and excitement of a crowded fair; that that quietness of mind and feeling, which is one of the main blessings of a Christian Sunday, is necessarily impaired if the scene of relaxation be a focus of popular attraction, involving the visitor, without the possibility of escape, in the noise and the glare of a tumultuous assembly.

Nor, once more, could I regard as a matter of indifference the authoritative bisection of the Sunday into a morning of worship and an afternoon of pleasure. Whatever be the character of the day, it is one, not twofold. It is indeed one of the chief duties—perhaps the chief ostensible duty—of the day, to attend its public services, but we have no warrant for representing its character as changed when the first or even the second of those services is ended: whatever it be—whether a day of devotion, or a day of inaction, or a day of amusement—that it is throughout: and, however little it may be designed, the effect of the proposed distinction would assuredly be, not so much to increase the sanctity of the morning as to destroy that of the evening. Henceforth the claims of evening worship,—and still more the claims of the whole day upon a thoughtful and serious spirit,—would be materially disparaged: so far as the effects of this measure extend, they will cause the day to close at noon: and what will it be thenceforth to those countless thousands of our countrymen who are debarred by absolute necessity from attending the service of the morning?

I know it may be urged that such arguments presuppose the existence of a very different state of Sunday observance from the present; that the question really lies not between the Crystal Palace and the Church, but between the Crystal Palace and the street or the gin-shop. I believe, however, that no gallery of painting or of sculpture will have any abiding attractions for the class thus described: tastes so brutish will not be transformed by any such expedient: they will remain what they are, until a mightier engine shall bear upon them: no display of art will allure them to civilization. The class really affected by the change proposed will be that already described; neither the highest of all, nor the very lowest. Those who now travel on the Sunday in a desultory manner will then be found congregated in large numbers upon a single point: and the alteration, so far as it extends, will be for the worse.