It has since been the general opinion, that the “declaration” rested thus far on an erroneous principle, that, instead of addressing the consciences of the violating directors, it assailed their selfishness, and for the good of the Sabbath did the evil of interfering with the business of the six days in which there is a command to work. But it was a noble, self-denying ordinance, and was so regarded by the honourable baronet to whom reference has been made, by whom it was scrupulously observed, though before its adoption, and in the face of opposition and of some obloquy, he opposed it as not being within the legitimate line of Sabbath operations.
The railway company addressed was deaf to remonstrance. The evil was established on one important line, and was likely to spread as new lines were opened. The efforts of the pulpit and of the press also were redoubled; but while these served gradually to indoctrinate the land, and, through the blessing of God, might stay the evil in the lapse of time, still, on the other hand, the iniquity was in the mean time being firmly established, the country was being familiarized with it, and no reflecting person could fail to fear the effect of familiar habit in undermining even the most rooted principle. It became of importance thus not only to meet it by the general pressure of religious principle, but to encounter it within the walls of the offending companies, by arguments addressed in their presence to the consciences and interests of directors and shareholders, in the hope of prevailing on them, through moral suasion, to abandon the obnoxious policy, and return to right dealing. For this end, the writer of these pages submitted to his honourable friend and leader—who, in his letters at this time, was constantly grieving over his inability to work in the wake of the “declaration,” and exclaiming every now and them, “False position! false position!”—the scheme of purchasing as much railway stock as would give a voice in the half-yearly meetings of companies, and there maintaining the cause of truth and godliness. A prompt and animated reply was the immediate result, and a commission to purchase the requisite stock.
Was this not a proof of what the world did not know, the practical business-like tact, no less than the deep-founded principle, of this lamented man? When the Lord’s day railway traffic was first sanctioned in England, good men, it has been seen, ran away from the field, and left it in the hands, and delivered it over to the tender mercies of speculators, who sought with greed, and talked with complacency, of the gains in prospect when “Sunday traffic should be fully developed.” The churches also, and the religious press, complimented the pietistic self-denial of those estimable persons who sold out their stock, that the enemy might retain an uncontroverted possession of the field; and to this hour the Lord’s-day Society remains paralysed, [10] and the English Sabbath railway cause prostrated, through the melancholy panic which actuated this flight. Not so the stout judgment of him who, strong in his piety, gentle in his affections, and earnest in his zeal, but clear in discernment and practised in business, at once saw that so long as the constitution of the railway companies remained sound, and only their voluntary actings were vicious, it was not merely lawful, but praiseworthy, to join them for the purpose of bringing their impure actings into accordance with their pure principle; and it was felt that the proposed stockholding afforded a legitimate and excellent opportunity, as well as a right and privilege, to bring before all stockholders the highest principles of moral and religious law, in their bearing on a question of traffic which affects, more or less, all trading, and is as much forced on a company of coblers or coal-heavers as on a company of railway coach-owners; viz. that of determining whether they shall pursue or abstain from traffic on the Lord’s-day—a question and a discussion affording direct opportunity and lawful right, by moral suasion, to influence the hitherto unreflecting or hostile to adopt the course of truth and soberness. And if, in so doing, honourable gentlemen did convert the half-yearly railway meetings into capitally reported Sabbath meetings, with the immense superiority of having a practical question to discuss, and to discuss most religiously, which interests even worldly men, instead of being limited, as in the others, to the grave exposition of things general, abstract, and clerical, though certainly most savoury, doctrinal, and eternally interesting—this was not only not the fault of the Sabbatarians, but it was a mighty benefit impressed on their policy by the nature and necessity of things, or rather by the very will of God himself. [11]
The struggle began under the auspices of Sir Andrew Agnew in the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway Company. It was continued—it was successful. It spread, as new Scottish lines opened, into the North British under the charge of Mr Blackadder—the Caledonian (alas!), of Sir Andrew Agnew—the Northern, of Mr Maitland Heriot of Ramornie—and the Central, of Mr Campbell of Monzie. It crossed the border, and it is now maintained as an English question in the Newcastle and Carlisle line by Mr Graham of Edmond Castle—in the North-Western by Mr Thomas Greig of Manchester, the associate of Mr Cheetham of Staleybridge in the deliverance of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway from its Sabbath bondage—and in the Eastern Union by Mr Andrew Johnston of Halesworth, who was long Sir Andrew Agnew’s devoted coadjutor in Parliament. These may be little-looking things in contrast with the gigantic railway interest which broods over the land, nestling within the palace of the prince as well as in the cabin of the peasant, and in all that is between. But they are a beginning. They have an existence. They have secured a standing for themselves in the country and in the companies. They possess an indestructible principle of life in their magic symbol, “Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy”—words which render the little band as unconquerable as if they were cheered on by thousands and had the command of millions, and as confident of success—unless the country be under judgment—as the word and promise of the living God can make men to be.
It is impossible, and it would be most ungrateful, to overlook the eminent services of “The Sabbath Alliance,” itself a fruit of the agitation of the question of the Lord’s day, and a powerful agent in its cause. Its basis is thoroughly orthodox, recognising, as it expressly does, the whole truth of God in regard to the Sabbath, its divine institution, and the perpetual obligation of the Fourth Commandment of the Moral Law. While thus it excludes from its membership all who deny any portion of the truth, it includes in the matter of its actings all who differ on the point of the civil magistrate’s authority to interfere in regard to the observance of the day. It thus so far restricts its actings as an Alliance as to avoid all application to the law or the legislature, save only to the effect of rescinding existing laws whose purpose is to compel disobedience to the divine law. Nothing can be more pure or more catholic in constitution than this. It has enabled Sir Andrew Agnew, the advocate of legislation, to embrace excellent Mr Henderson of Park on its platform, the originator and munificent endower of the Workmen’s Sabbath Essay Scheme, and of every purely “voluntary” effort, though the foe of judicial or state interference. And that the Alliance has been practically most efficient, is proved both by the progress of the principle all over the land, and by the stir of hatred excited among the enemies, as against all its actings, so especially against that most sagacious, effective, and self-remunerating arrangement whereby the whole services of two men have been secured for the working of its work—the one resting at the centre and the other revolving round the provinces, to concentrate at once and to scatter the light of the principle, and bring the darkened masses to its enjoyment. Let our friends be assured, that the bitter derision and invective of the infidel press directed against the “two secretaries and their salaries,” are the transparent exhibition of the sense entertained in these quarters of the power and efficacy of the labours of these two Christian gentlemen. The country ought to support this institution more effectually than it does, and to make more true than the state of its funds and the generosity of Dr Greville and Mr Lyon admit, their gibes at the “large and lavish (!) allowances” voted to them. The English localities likewise should, no less than the Scotch, have their “Sabbath Alliances;” and it would be honourable to the Church of England if it did not leave the work of originating them to the unestablished communions.
And so these “little people” will go vigorously on, undismayed, even though, in the inscrutable providence of Almighty God, their beloved leader be taken away from their eyes with a stroke; or though an ungodly Parliament decree, like him of old, that at what time the sound of its Act shall be heard, all people who are firemen, and stokers, and pointsmen, and railway directors, guards, or clerks, shall forsake the service of God on his holy day, and fall down and worship their golden image, and shall seduce all vagrant men and foolish maids to scorn the Word of God and do the like; certifying whoso falleth not down and worshippeth, that he shall, the same hour, be “fined the sum of £200 to our Sovereign Lady the Queen!” No, no; none of these things shall influence the struggle. Be it known, that the Sabbath observers will not regard thee, O Joseph Locke, and thy bill! Let your bill pass to-morrow; still, not merely in our modern Babylon and over our whole land, shall the God-fearing people rise up against you for the vindication of his honour, but (be under no mistake) we will continue at our stock-holding posts, and raise our voices in your companies as of old: we will in no respect alter our tactics; we will only enlarge our position. We will continue to move in your companies—for no human legislature can abrogate the divine law or compel conscience—‘that no systematic railway work be done on the Lord’s day;’ and we shall, in addition, there also move, ‘that the companies do petition both Houses of Parliament to rescind’ your iniquitous law. You thus will just duplicate our motions; you will just enlarge the field of discussion. Do your worst; “to this complexion must you come at last.”
Seriously, it is earnestly to be hoped that religious shareholders will take warning from the miserable experience of the past, and hold on, should Mr Locke’s bill pass—not giving way to a second panic, and betaking themselves to foolish flight, intimidated by the bugbear of an anti-Deity act of Parliament. And again, while we say this in reference to the event of the bill becoming law, neither, we entreat, let the friends indulge now in any false security that it never will pass. If it ultimately fail, it will fail only through the blessing of God on an energetic pull from the religious world at large. Who can doubt that, if the country be quiet and seem acquiescent, the formidable minority of 122 to 131—one of the most successful openings of a new agitation ever witnessed in Parliament—will soon become a majority? O let our friends be firmly persuaded, that no man will more please the adversary than he who counsels to withdraw from the railway companies when the bill shall pass into a law! The great drift of the engineering interest, and secret of their bill, is to drive strife and controversy (which tell awkwardly on the share-market) out of the railway companies. If the enemy once believe that the good men will fly, their efforts will be redoubled for its passing. If they be given to understand that the good men will continue, after it passes, to meet them at the railway Philippis as of old, and will there treat them to two motions (and perhaps two movers—fresh Richards in the field) in place of one as before, their courage will cool, and the righteous indignation of the country against their selfishness will have time to arise for the hiding of their diminished heads, so that the truth may prevail. Up then, we say, and be doing. The measure may be yet discomfited. But let it pass; let it become the law of the land—no matter; it will share the fate of Judge Jefferies’ law and James’s proclamations. It is contrary to God’s law; it cannot stand. It will be overthrown through the force of the Evangelical principle, which shall yet, steam-power-like, burst the bonds asunder that may have been imposed on it by engineering artifice, and stream forth on the right hand and on the left to hallow the day of sacred rest, and to refresh the land with showers of blessing.
The fact itself of the bringing in of this bill ought to be regarded by the friends of the Sabbath as a favourable indication of the state of the question in the country. Parliament is not troubled with bills about trifles. The Sabbath controversy was long regarded by the country, and of course by Parliament, with indifference or contempt; and had its advocates limited their efforts to the abstract question and to Exeter Hall, and mere tractism and preaching, this would have remained the prevalent mind of the country for a generation. But so soon as the spiritual principle came to embody itself in a practical measure—so soon as the world met the Sabbath as an active agent in what is regarded as its own department, its railway coaching—indifference became abhorrence, and contempt fright; and feeling itself to be worsted from half-year to half-year in argument, and seeing its proxy-power to be sliding from under its feet, the evangelical monster came so to bulk, that it became conquerable only through the brute force of parliamentary law. What better sign can there be than this of the stringent force of the internal railway controversy? what higher premium on its prolongation! And if the House of Commons, on the first appearance of the hateful thing within its walls, has been a bear-garden rather than a deliberative assembly, reducing the Cowans and M‘Gregors, the Scottish representatives of the Scottish religion, pretty much to dumb-show in their moving and seconding—what is this but the Queen Street chambers of the old Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway over again, where, amidst the din of strife, was to be seen stout Macgill Crichton stretched to tiptoe height, that he might elude the circle of infuriated anti-Sabbatarian fists which compassed him about like bees, and straining his trumpet-like tones to the very crack of eardrums that he might drown their variegated vociferations?—futile attempt to ordinary-voiced mortals! But let honourable members take courage. This was in the railway affair, the mere surf of the near shore on the first launching of the Sabbath boat, which, once battled through, conducted to the deep-founded calm beyond. Such, no doubt, will be the comfortable experience of the good men in Parliament, if they will but hold on and persevere. The railway lions after a time became lambs when they were confronted in a lion-lamb like spirit; and now as they have become sober and well-behaved, so will also the worldlings of Parliament, whether titled or trading, when they shall once have made their little bully-like play. They will soon condescend to be silent, if not to listen. Speeches, besides, made in Parliament, should they discontent the honourable House, have the quality of telling on the country at large through the pleasant echoes of the reporters’ gallery, and the cause stuck to, will, like every other based on the rock of Bible truth, in the wisely appointed time prevail.
Quitting preliminaries and generalities, it is now time to present to the Sabbatarian soldier the manual of his exercise and tactics, to which all that goes before is introductory. The manual shall be narrowed within the closest practicable compass. “Be practical, be practical!” then—the frequent exclamation of our departed leader—shall be our steady aim—in medias res, our watchword.