But in truth this plea is the subterfuge of eager covetousness. While we honour the character and labours of many Christian philanthropists among our merchants and men of business, it cannot be denied that this is a mammon-getting age, and that it is culpably careless of the poor. We desire and plead for fresh air and relaxation for the poor. But it is not by this new plan they can be rightfully secured. Let us see the poor man’s home made comfortable and cleanly; let us cheer on the philanthropic labours of Sabbath-schools, Ragged-schools, and City missions; let us have our workmen’s wages paid on Friday, and not at public-houses; and (as was once the case in Scotland, under the sanction alike of custom and of law) let labour cease early on Saturday afternoon. The poor man will thus have ample leisure furnished him to survey the works of nature, or the wonders of art, and breathe the fresh air. Let this be as the preparation for the Sabbath, on whose enclosure neither labour nor pleasure may intrude, because it is “holy ground.”
Another plea remains to be considered. “The tendency of this exhibition (it is said) will be to elevate and purify the mind. Art, and science, and taste, will educate and reform; they will empty the public-houses, and wean the people from gross indulgence.” Still, we say, the day is God’s, and we are not to do evil that good may come. Shut up the public houses, and they cannot be filled. Close those railways, and stop those steam-boats from plying the river, which now allure multitudes from the house of God on the Sabbath. Let us abolish unscriptural laws, instead of filling up the measure of our iniquity by a crowning act of guilt. “The sights of the Crystal Palace will educate and purify!” Why, when vice loses its grossness, has it necessarily lost its power? Is it true that statuary and painting, and works of art and genius, can refine and regenerate men? In their own place we despise them not. They bring honour to the great Creator, who is the source of all excellence in genius and skill. But they cannot change the heart, or quicken the conscience, or prepare for eternity. And be assured, that if the Crystal Palace be opened on the Lord’s day, and fifty or sixty thousand spectators be admitted, the nation’s morality will be undermined more surely and more rapidly than ever it was before. What though the use of spirituous liquors be strictly prohibited within the grounds, facilities for obtaining drink without will increase on every hand. Sunday trading will receive a fresh impetus, and the afternoon spent by tens of thousands in these excursions of pleasure, our churches will be emptied and our domestic circles broken up; while, in the train of these evils, personal demoralization will inevitably follow. In this downward career we may, ere long, descend to the position of France. There public galleries are thrown open on the Sabbath, and the multitude stands entranced in admiration before the sculptures and the paintings of the great masters of art. But this people, so polished, and so joyous, are strangers to that deep-toned earnestness and gravity which makes a nation great through the inspiring hopes of a life immortal and divine;—they are “filled with all unrighteousness,” and, in times of political excitement, amid scenes of cruelty and savage violence, they give awful proof that “they have no fear of God before their eyes.”
The new Crystal Palace, now in progress in the neighbourhood of this metropolis, is to be a spacious temple, dedicated to science and art, in which all that is ingenious and beautiful and rare may be exhibited for the improvement and intellectual gratification of the people. This is an object which assuredly every enlightened Christian would applaud and approve, if confined within the limits which Scripture prescribes. We consider it most desirable that facilities should be afforded to our population devoutly to contemplate the works of God, as in glory and beauty they have sprung from his plastic hand, and to survey the marvellous productions of that genius and skill of which He is the Divine original. We believe, science and learning and art, even now, are so many pioneers preparing the way of the Lord; and that at the period when the religion of the cross shall triumph, they will bring all their trophies and lay them down at Emmanuel’s feet. But, my brethren, before that day can come, science, genius, learning, and art, must be “baptized and sanctified:” they must be subordinated to the progress of the Redeemer’s kingdom. And sure I am, that if they are put in the place of religion—if they are brought into collision with, and antagonism to a law that is alike immutable and divine—if they arrogate to themselves half the day which belongs exclusively and entirely to Him who is Lord of the Sabbath—if, in the language of impious presumption, they say, “we have a fane as holy as the Christian temple—our claims to impart instruction are equal to those who preach the gospel to the poor, and who speak of death and judgment, of heaven and hell”—then, I say, science however profound, genius however soaring, art however exquisitely skilful, put forward blasphemous claims; and if we, as a nation, from deference to their pretensions, sanction the public profanation of any portion of the Sabbath, “our root shall be as rottenness, and our blossom shall go up as dust, because we shall have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”
But it may be further said, “that the working classes should not be debarred from bodily rest and relaxation on the Lord’s day.” We cheerfully grant it; but we deny that the opponents of the opening of the Crystal Palace on the Sabbath seek to deprive the working man of his Sabbath’s bodily rest from toil. How great the difference between the two classes of working men—those who “rest according to the commandment,” who repair in clean and decent garb to the house of God morning and evening, and spend the intervals of public worship in reading and meditation, or in the instruction of the young. We ask you by personal examination to contrast the refreshment both of mind and body with which this class return to their work on Monday morning, with the jaded spirits, the shattered nerves of the frequenters of steam-boats, the occupants of excursion-trains, the patrons of the tea-garden and the public-house, who go back to labour unrefreshed and unblessed, and too often the victims of surfeiting, drunkenness, and riotous excess. And are we to be told that such an argument is invalid in the present case, because no spirituous liquors are to be sold within the park or the palace on the Lord’s day; when (as present preparations without the walls clearly indicate) we know that the gin-palace and the public-house will thrive and prosper on the traffic of multitudes who will enter them first and visit them last, and without whose unhallowed stimulants the sculpture, the flowers, and the fountains would lose half their charms?
And, moreover, instead of Sabbath rest, will not the opening of this building on the Lord’s day lead to a vast increase of Sabbath labour? Must there not be a large addition to the staff of railway officials, as well as of police, required, not only on the main line of traffic, but also to attend to, to accommodate, or to keep in order the multitudes who, by excursion-trains on other lines, will fill our streets and crowd our public vehicles on their way to this scene of profanation?
And now, let me conclude by calling on all Christians to come forward without delay, and to raise a loud, united, and solemn protest against this iniquitous project.
If this Protestant nation speak out boldly and decidedly, we do not see that any Minister of the Crown will despise the remonstrance and the warning. And, most of all, we are strong in the confidence, that if the real tendency of this measure is fully explained to our gracious Queen, and if she find that it is disapproved of and abjured by the great religious bodies of the empire, she will not rashly imperil our safety, or be the instrument of establishing a Popish and a divided Sabbath.
Can we, I ask, afford to despise the authority of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe? If He has visited us already with famine and pestilence, two of His “sore judgments,” why may He not, if we persist in rebelling with a high hand, permit us to know, also, the horrors of “war,” and that from the presence of an invading foe? There may be some who trust with confidence to our wooden walls and to our disciplined armies; but we, even while remembering their past achievements and undying renown, dare not do so. If the present ruler of France has boldly resolved to imitate, step by step, the policy of his great and ambitious uncle; and if, as is confidently said, he cherishes with bitter hate the memory of the bloody field where the star of Napoleon’s destiny set for ever; who can tell (if we provoke God to desert us) whether he may not be permitted to make an assault on our island home, which for a time would paralyse our commerce, outrage our liberties, and stain the pride of our boasting confidence in the sight of the whole world?
May that God, before whom our fathers did walk, save us from the guilt which would draw down His vengeance. May He increase among us the number of those whose patriotism is animated and directed by Christian principle. May He give “peace in our borders, and fill us with the finest of the wheat.” May He be “a wall of fire around us, and the glory in the midst!” May he give us grace as a nation so to keep His own Day, that we may reap the blessing with which he has promised to crown its faithful observance:
“If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and i will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob, thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”—Isa. LVIII. 13, 14.