III. Thus, as far as our limits would permit, I think it has been shown that, irrespective of dispensations, or Churches, or particular covenants, God did appoint it as an ordinance for the whole human family, that every recurring seventh day of their life should be separated to religious uses. He first “blessed” the day, that is, pledged himself to be propitious to the service which, in spirit and in truth, men should offer Him on that day; and then “hallowed” it, or, as the word is, “set it apart,” intimating that anything opposed or foreign to such religious service, was to be strictly forbidden. If this ground have been made good, I shall be less careful to adduce all that could be said in favour of the next question which might be raised; namely, on the supposition that God has made this claim upon all men of a seventh portion of their time, is that seventh which has been set apart by the Christian Church the right seventh; in other words, have we sufficient reason for believing that the change of day, from the last day of the week to the first, is agreeable to the will of God? Now the only reasons, it would seem, which could justify such change, must be found either in an express revelation, or in the ascertained practice of those, who having for three years had the Lord of the Sabbath to guide them, must have known on what day He designed it should thenceforth be kept. A change of the actual day, it has been conjectured, from some expressions in the history, was made by Moses, at the time of the Exodus, transferring the holy day to that which first saw Israel’s redemption from bonds,—what should hinder that, with sufficient authority, a change should not be made, again transferring our Sabbath to the day which, in the resurrection of the Son of God, saw the redemption of the spiritual Israel from the grave? Besides, an avowed end of the Jewish Sabbath was as a protest against false religions. The pious Israelite was distinguished from the idolaters among whom he dwelt, by his close observance of the sacred day:—why may not our Lord have ordained a change in the Sabbath of the Christian, as a protest against the continuing obstinacy of the Jew? Of course, these are no more than conjectures, and though sustained by names of great weight, they leave the fact to be judged of only as we should judge of all other facts; namely, by a reasonable and sufficient amount of historic evidence. And this we are thought to have, even in the scattered notices found in the sacred narrative itself,—in the frequent allusions to religious meetings on the first day of the week, in the choice of this day by our Lord for two successive manifestations to his disciples, in the selection of it for the first miraculous effusion of the Holy Spirit, in the special mention of it by Paul as that on which he preached the Word and administered the sacraments, in the directions given to the Churches of Galatia and Corinth to lay by their alms that they might make an offering of them to God on the first day of the week,—all passages proving, as clearly as anything can, that, among the New Testament Christians, a character of separation and sacredness was attached to the first day, which was not accorded to any other.
To these revealed notices is to be added the testimony of other authorities, which, however lightly we might esteem them on any question of doctrine, are quite competent to give their witness on a matter of fact. Such, for example, are the well-known letters of the younger Pliny, the universal consent of our Ecclesiastical historians, and the constantly recurring allusions to the day by all the Apostolic Fathers, under the familiar and apparently well-understood designation of the Lord’s-day. These proofs seem to bear out the conclusion that, from the very morning of the Lord’s resurrection, the first day of the week came to be held of the Christian world in all sanctity and reverence as the ordained Gospel Sabbath. And as we may be quite sure that the apostles would never have made such a change on their own responsibility, we naturally refer it to some express though unpreserved direction from Him, who, repudiating all unnatural and constrained austerity on the one hand, and yet having regard to the unchanging sanctity of moral ordinances on the other, declared, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.
IV. And now, brethren, I come to the practical application of our subject, in the apprehended overthrow of all that is dear to a Christian mind by the opening of a great public exhibition on the Lord’s-day. It is a topic which I approach with much pain, not a little heightened by a fear lest strong feeling should betray me into any infirmity—into any word or sentiment inconsistent with the meekness and gentleness of Christ. But I have prayed to be kept from this—have asked of God that I might nothing exaggerate, nothing represent unfairly, nothing set down in the spirit of an ill-tempered and scolding partisan—but rather that, speaking in sorrow more than in anger, I might win you to pray against this threatened evil—to pray against it as you would against the pestilence, or other feared providential scourge. This will not in any degree lead to a slackened diligence in the use of outward means, as you perceive from the first step I have invited you to take, in memorializing Her Majesty’s responsible advisers against this first step to a new “Book of Sports.” But still, remember, the thing to be done is to open eyes that are as yet blind, and to alarm consciences that now slumber; and this is a work to be done, not by might and not by power, not by wrangling and not by wrath, but by the Lord of Hosts pouring out upon our people a praying spirit, and enduing our beloved Queen with a wise and understanding heart.
With a jealousy, therefore, that respects as well the charitable temper required of a Gospel teacher, as the demands of an unbending and unfearing faithfulness, I may not speak of the contemplated opening of the new Exhibition on the Lord’s-day in any other terms than as an impious affront to the honour of Almighty God—as a wanton outrage upon the religious feelings of the surrounding neighbourhoods—as a cruel encroachment upon the poor man’s Sabbath rights—and as a legalized incentive to the most debasing forms of viciousness and crime.
i. Look first, I say, at the awful impiety of this project. The terms of the charter to which a Protestant Queen is expected to set her hand and seal, set forth that all entrance to this great pleasure-house is to be strictly forbidden UNTIL ONE O’CLOCK; but that, after that hour, unrestrained admission will be afforded to that vast living tide, which, fed from tributary streams in every direction, from the river, and from the land, from monster steam-boats and monster trains, will have formed itself into a huge heaving mass of riot and profaneness at the so-called Palace doors. Well, here the first thought which must occur to any reflecting mind is, wherefore this strange bisection of the day into two such antagonistic parts? Whence comes it that this stroke of a time-piece is to transfer us, all at once, from a region of calm godliness, spiritual worship, noiseless acts of beneficence and love, to one of turbid, distracting, and tumultuous revelry? We look, I say, for some revealed warrant for giving to any ordinance of God this two-faced and self-contradicting character. Did the Almighty sanctify half a Sabbath, or did He sanctify a whole one? And if a whole one, where is our authority for allowing His claim to one part of the day, but devoting to the world the other? Brethren, these questions can be answered but in one way. The entire scheme is dictated by that wretched spirit of compromise and double-dealing—that impious endeavour to unite Christ and Belial on the same throne, which has ever been the abominable thing that God hateth. For the Infidel who ignores the obligation of the Sabbath altogether, we have hope. He is a consistent, and he may be an honest man; and if so, who shall say how soon Christ may give him light? But for the man who has light, and who only uses it to serve God by halves—mingling loyalty with his rebellion, professed homage with his insult, in the morning crying, Hosanna to the Son of David; and in the afternoon, exclaiming, Let him be crucified—for him we have not this hope. His is the lukewarmness of Laodicea outdone. And should England lend her countenance, to this dark impiety, what can she expect but to hear from Him who walketh in the midst of the Churches and holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, those awful words, “Because thou hast not kept my Sabbath from POLLUTING it, but hast FOLLOWED THY PLEASURE on my holy day, I will pour out my fury upon thee, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
ii. Look, in the second place, at the outrage which this desecration threatens to the religious feelings of the adjacent neighbourhoods. It may be said that, in all localities, religious people are the minority; and that if a clear case can be made out of social convenience or benefit to the many, the feelings of the few ought to give way. This principle is one which I think it would be very dangerous to admit. A pious parent may have nine lovers of pleasure in his household, for one that is a lover of God; yet he frames his domestic arrangements in harmony with the right choice of the one, and not with the mistaken wishes of the nine. And a Government which would vindicate its parental character must do the same. Besides, it is clear, that with this question of numbers, how many good people we have to legislate for, and how many bad, the powers that rule have nothing to do. If they are the sworn conservators of the Protestant faith, and if that faith regards the Lord’s-day as an institution of perpetual sanctity, the very listening to the plea of expediency is the betrayal of a trust; and the acting upon it a practical confession that they look for a social benefit to the community, by a direct infringement of the law of God!
To what end, then, I ask, (and it is a question in which we, as a neighbourhood, are deeply interested,) to what end are we to have every road, and walk, and thoroughfare, for many miles round this projected focus of ungodliness, deprived of the peace, the order, the quiet Sabbath respectability they have hitherto enjoyed? Why are we to exchange the holy stillness, under cover of which we now meditate, and read, and pray, for the hoarse harsh din of Sabbath vehicles, of rabble throngs exchanging their loud vulgarities on their way to the fair, and shouting out their intoxicated and blaspheming songs as they are returning home? Already, I am informed on the authority of residents in our own parish, living in the line of road, that paths, hitherto sought and loved for their holy Sabbath quiet, are now closed hopelessly against all who like Isaac would fain go out to “meditate at eventide,” owing to the throngs of impatient Sabbath-breakers going to see their boasted temple rise. Brethren, I trust you will not think,—especially I hope my poorer friends will not think,—that I charge it upon the recreations of our humble classes that they are always thus vociferous and coarse; I charge it upon the recreation of those only who go out to pollute God’s holy day; and in regard to such persons there is no exaggeration in the picture. Two or three times in the year we have these Sabbath Saturnalia now; when the thoroughfare in front of this church presents scenes which we are grieved to have our children witness; but which, so soon as this new Babel of profanation shall be reared,—this Greenwich fair under a glass roof—we must expect to have enacted before their eyes every Sabbath day.
iii. And then again, brethren, look at this project as it must encroach cruelly upon the poor man’s Sabbath rest. It is a principle I fear but too little understood by our labouring classes, that every step taken in the direction of Sabbath desecration, for purposes of voluntary pleasure, is a step in the same direction for purposes of compulsory work. The principle of sanctity once given up, the day brought down to the level of a respectable church usage, a master may consistently say to his working men, ‘If your conscience is lax enough to take pleasure for your own sake, it surely cannot task it much to do a little work for mine.’ And this principle once recognised, that an employer may get out of his workmen a whole or half a day’s more labour than he used to do, competition or cupidity will soon make a corresponding reduction in the rate of wages, until the labouring man finds he gains no more for working seven days, than he formerly did for working six. I have the fullest persuasion that many a poor man is spared from compulsory Sabbath labour now, because employers dare not, in the face of an almost universal verdict of society in favour of the sacredness of the day, force a workman’s conscience. But let society once cancel that verdict, let the workman show, by his presence at the Sydenham fair, that he has no conscience to force,—and the master’s shame will soon depart from him, and the labourer who refused to keep his Sabbath rest holy, will find, as he deserves to find, that he will have no Sabbath rest at all. Judge ye for yourselves, my humbler brethren, who has most right to be called the POOR MAN’S FRIEND.
But to come to more obvious and immediate mischief. Judging from the former Exhibition it is not unlikely that, on a fine Sunday, this huge daylight theatre will be visited by not less than 100,000 people. These will require, for the most part, carriages to convey them, meat and drink to refresh them, officials to take their money, policemen to keep them in order. Now, only think what a fearful aggregate of Sabbath labour this will compel. Make as rough a computation as you may, of the time during which each visitor will be using the services of some other person—at a railway office, on the line, in the gardens, at places of refreshment; and remembering that those persons whom the visitor sees, are obliged to be assisted by many others whom he does not see, and a result will be arrived at, showing that for this large number to take their Sabbath pleasure, many thousands must be deprived of their Sabbath rest. Nay, as if this work of ruining souls could not be begun soon enough,—as if the promoters of this unchristian scheme had a very appetite for desecration,—the works are going on, there is reason to believe, while I speak. Only last Sunday these British slaves were seen at work by one known to me, who, going up to the house of God to worship, had to hear the noise of axe and hammer making discordant music with the church-inviting bell. [21] Now, brethren, to enable you to appreciate the magnitude of this evil of depriving men of the means of Sabbath instruction, I could wish for you nothing so awfully convincing, as that you should witness what I have witnessed often, both in this and a former incumbency,—the latter end of those who, from their connexion with public conveyances, were uniformly shut out from the sanctuary, because they had to minister to the pleasure-seeker, on God’s holy day. The recreation to him, was spiritual and eternal death to them. He found his mirth, but they lost a soul. Such death-beds, I own, present a great mystery. When we see the vacant wonderment with which the dying man listens to the most elementary religious truths, or the judicial hardness which seems proof against the most tender appeals, or the awakened emotion which only lasts long enough to people the chamber of death with the mocking spectres of despair, and then feel how much the blame of all this belonged to others rather than to him,—we are, for the moment, amazed. But the answer comes speedily. ‘Be still. The moral law is eternal. My Sabbaths are for a SIGN. He who dishonours them in his life, shall be himself dishonoured in his end; and, grievous as may be the portion of him who has thus offended, to him by whom the offence cometh there is a woe more grievous still.’ Oh! brethren, pray we for these thoughtless speculators that God curse them not in a granted desire; that He lay not at their door the fearful responsibility of having destroyed thousands of undying souls,—yea, that rather than give them a Royal charter to make Christ’s little ones offend and fall, He would bestow upon them, what we have the highest authority for declaring would be a less terrible boon; even “that a millstone were hanged about their neck and they be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
iv. Once more, brethren, I ask you to look at the demoralizing influence of this contemplated impiety. It was the great Burke, I believe, who once put forth the false and mischievous sentiment, that “vice lost half its danger by losing all its grossness.” On a like principle, some appear to be contending now, that Sabbath immoralities will lose much of their evil, if we can only qualify their coarseness by the externals of cultivation and refinement. But sin is sin, hide it under what mask we will. Whilst, as to moral danger to the community, it is surely better that men should even see the dead men’s bones and all the uncleanness, than that their eyes should be ensnared by the beauty of the whited sepulchre. The Sabbath-breaker now is a marked man; he steals away to his low tavern indulgences; he there herds with his like; and, as a conscious offender against the laws of God and man, waits till, under the protection of nightfall, he may steal to his home again. But if the proposed arrangement be brought about, he will commit the same offence,—under authority, with Royal countenance, on the plea that he wishes to enlarge the powers which God hath given him; nay, it is much if he parrot not, at Infidel bidding, the audacious pretence that he would offer a tribute of admiration “to nature and to nature’s God.” Oh! brethren, when will the race be extinct who seek to betray the Son of man with a kiss?