A Summary of Railway Spring and Summer Preparations.
1. Let our two friends apply to the company for lists of the proprietors of the railways on which it is meant to act. Having obtained these (as shareholders are entitled by law to have them),
2. Let them prepare a general circular to railway proprietors, concisely expounding the railway Sabbath question, and intimating that it is to be brought forward at the ensuing meetings, and asking support.
3. This circular being printed, may be addressed inside, in manuscript, to each individual, specifying all the railways in the lists of which his name is found. Being addressed outside to him, one postage will cover many railways.
4. This circular should be issued early, without waiting the fixing of the day of railway meetings; the parties being requested in it to advert to these as they are notified to them or advertised by the companies.
5. Let them arrange previously with the movers of the question on each railway; and, if possible, name them (with their addresses) in the circular, requesting interim communications as to each railway, to be addressed to the movers before the meetings.
6. In the circular inclose a slip (marked private) to known friends, containing an intimation that the friends of the Sabbath will meet to consult one hour before, and also immediately after the ensuing railway meetings, at places named. Let this slip also state, that the circular is issued in sufficient time to enable friends to get others to buy stock for the meetings, and let it ask a reply containing the number of shares held.
7. Let the slip farther contain lists of the directors of the different railway companies operated on, and let the friends, male and female, before the meetings, be urged to write to such of the directors or officials as they know (or whether they know them or not), pleading with them against the desecration of the Sabbath, assuring them that they, not the shareholders, are the real authors of the evil, and intreating them to desist.
8. Let this good system be systematically persevered in from half year to half year; and it will soon bear fruit in a wide array of Sabbath defenders, and a general diffusion of Sabbath principles.
In conclusion, this manual of policy, which, from its very nature, assumes a worldly aspect, cannot close without one general observation of an important character: That while there is ever much liability to forget, in the active use of means, the earnest exercise of faith, so there is a faith which underrates means, and is, in fact, a tempting of God, and a foolishness. When Æsop told his waggoner to help himself and Jove would help him, he showed the cloven foot of his heathenism, and despised God. But when Oliver Cromwell told his men at the fosse of Newark, to pray to God and keep their powder dry, he not only violated no principle, but put himself in thorough accordance with the Scripture principle. In like manner, under the deepest conviction that all which poor mortals can do is to use the means and pray, while the success of the means used rests entirely with God, it is trusted that in these pages not a sentiment is breathed, or a department of policy recommended, which is not based on this great principle. Nothing gives such boldness and confidence in a religious struggle, as an abiding sense of man’s impotence and God’s omnipotence: nothing so fortifies against reverses, and gives such light in darkness; and nothing, we will add, so disturbs the enemy as to see the insignificant little band, bolder without visible strength amidst all their littleness, than he is amidst all his Xerxes-like grandeur and profusion of numbers.