Title: The Sabbath - A Paper Read at the Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, - Held at Geneva, September 2. 1861
Author: Thomson, Andrew
Language: English
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  THE SABBATH.


  A PAPER

  READ AT THE

  CONFERENCE OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE,

  HELD AT GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 2. 1861.


  BY ANDREW THOMSON, D.D.,

  EDINBURGH.


  WITH PREFACE BY

  THE REV J. C. RYLE, B.A., CHRIST CH., OXFORD,

  STRADBROKE, SUFFOLK.

  430th Thousand.


  LONDON:

  JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET.

  EDINBURGH: ANDREW ELLIOT, 15 PRINCE'S STREET.

  AND ALL BOOKSELLERS.

  1863.

  EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY JOHN GREIG & SON.



PREFATORY NOTE BY REV. J. C. RYLE.


I have been requested, as an English Clergyman, to preface Dr A.
Thomson's valuable paper on the Scottish Sabbath by a few recommendatory
words. I comply with the request with much pleasure, though I feel that
the paper needs no _imprimatur_ of mine.

I am sensible, however, that there exists a certain amount of prejudice
in many English minds against Scottish views of the Sabbath question.
Too many Christians south of the Tweed are in the habit of regarding our
northern brethren as "legal," "Judaizing," and "extreme" upon this
subject. In the matter of all the leading Evangelical doctrines, they
profess to admire their statements. In the matter of the Sabbath
question, they say the Scotch "go too far."

I venture to think that this prejudice is not just. It is in fact a
thorough "prejudice," a judgment passed without examination, a prejudged
decision without any reasonable foundation. I believe that Scottish
views of the Sabbath are scriptural, reasonable, and practical. As a
proof of my assertion, I earnestly request the attention of English
Christians to the following paper. My own firm conviction is, that, in
the matter of Sabbath observance, Scotland has nothing to be ashamed of
in her principles, and England has much to learn.

I can only say that the paper which I have undertaken to preface appears
to me to deserve a wide circulation and an attentive perusal. That it is
written in a Scotch style, and is consequently not so well suited to our
uneducated classes as a more popular and less argumentative production,
are facts which I do not pretend to deny. But there are myriads of
hard-headed, thinking English readers in the middle and upper sections
of the lower classes--myriads of tradesmen in our great cities, and
assistants in our great houses of business, to whom I think this paper
is eminently calculated to be useful. It is to them that I heartily
commend it.

"My heart's desire and prayer to God" is now, and ever shall be, that He
will bless this and every kindred effort to maintain the holiness of
God's day, and to raise higher the standard of Sabbath observance. The
subject is intimately connected with the best interests of the British
churches and the British nation. From a Continental Sabbath may Great
Britain ever be delivered! There is but a gradual descent, after all,
from "No Sabbath" to "No God."

  J. C. RYLE, B.A.
  CHRIST'S CHURCH, OXFORD.

  STRADBROKE VICARAGE, SUFFOLK,
  _November 1. 1862_.

"The first creature of God in the works of the Days, was the light of
the sense; the last was the light of reason; and His Sabbath work ever
since is the illumination of His Spirit."--_Bacon._

"Men should not be idle, but busy on the Sabbath-day, about the soul as
men on the week-day about the body."--_Wycliffe._



THE SABBATH.


I have been requested to make some statements to the Alliance in
reference to the observance of the Sabbath in Scotland; and I think I
shall best accomplish the task committed to me, by presenting, in as
condensed a form as possible, a view of general Scottish opinion on this
vital subject, some details regarding our modern Scottish experience,
with notices of the principal dangers to which I believe the cause of
the Sabbath in Scotland to be at this time exposed. In doing this while
I shall have to confirm the impressions of many brethren in other
countries, there are also some misapprehensions which I am glad to be
favoured with such an opportunity of dispelling.

1. _It is true, then, that our ministers and Christian people in
Scotland, almost without exception, believe in the Divine authority and
perpetual obligation of the Sabbath-day._--They base their respect for
it, not upon any ecclesiastical appointment, however venerable, or upon
any time-honoured custom, however ancient, but upon the conviction that
it is a benignant and unrevoked gift of Heaven to the human race. Ask
any intelligent Christian throughout Scotland, no matter to which of our
evangelical denominations he belongs, on what ground he keeps holy the
weekly Sabbath, and he will tell you that he does this because he
believes that it was given to man in Eden--an institution not for a
nation or for a limited period, but for the world and for all
time,--that it was republished to the Jews from Mount Sinai, not in the
midst of transient ceremonial appointments, but "enshrined amid the
eternal verities of the moral law,"--and that at the resurrection of
Christ, while the mere day of its observance was changed by apostolic
sanction, it entered on a new course, and became linked with new
associations--the memorial, from that hour, of completed redemption as
well as of completed creation. And in this fact, more than in any other,
we find the secret strength of our Sabbath observance. From the peculiar
constitution of the Scottish mind, as well as from the social condition
of Scotland, the Sabbath would not stand its ground for many years were
it based upon a foundation less stable, or surrounded by a sanction less
sacred than a Divine command; and I affirm with confidence, that one
effect of the re-discussion of the whole question of the Sabbath, which
has been forced upon its friends in Scotland during recent years, has
been to make the convictions of our Christian people regarding its
Divine authority more deep, more intelligent, and therefore more
immovable.

2. _A second distinguishing feature in the Sabbath-keeping of Scotland
consists in the fact, that we consider the entire Sabbath to be
specially and equally consecrated to religion._--The length of the
sacred day we believe to be just the same as the length of common days.
We know nothing of the distinction of "canonical hours," as if one part
of the day were in any degree more hallowed than another; and all such
distinctions we are accustomed to regard as a pernicious and
presumptuous tampering with Divine rule, a narrowing of our charter, not
indeed of inglorious idleness, but of holy rest. But while we look upon
every part of the Sabbath as a dedicated thing, in the sense of our
abstaining from all such secular employments and recreations as would be
lawful on other days, its religious exercises are wisely and happily
diversified; and in this allotment of the Sabbath's holy work, very much
is left to the discretion of individuals and of churches. This
statement, I believe, may do something to remove one injurious and
prevalent mistake regarding our Scottish manner of keeping the Lord's
day. Were I to describe a well-spent Sabbath-day, such as is spent by
thousands of men in Scotland who are the salt of our land, and the life
and glory of our churches--such as was spent by the best of the English
Puritans two hundred years since, often leading them to confess, at the
close of such a day, "Surely if this be not heaven, it must be the way
to it;"--I should paint it in some such manner as the following:--The
good man rises from his slumbers to realise the fact that it is God's
day of sacred rest, and to open his mind to its devout associations.
There is an unwonted stillness in the streets, and in the fields all
around him, which that day only brings. The care of the body is not
unheeded, and there is even a double attention to cleanliness and to
taste in his attire; secret devotion is more prolonged than on other
days, as it is more undisturbed; the family is in due time summoned
around the frugal meal, it being perhaps the only day in the week in
which they all meet at the same board; kind words and of affectionate
counsels are interchanged; events in the family history are alluded to,
and made the theme of edifying reflection; family-worship follows, and
on this occasion the little family choir is unbroken, and sends up its
full-voiced praise to heaven. The time has come for joining the
companies that are already crowding to the houses of prayer. A brief
interval, and a second frugal meal follows, and there is another ascent
to the temple to worship God. Then comes the happy Sabbath evening, in
which the Christian parents gather their children around them for
religious instruction, and for recalling and reviewing the lessons of
the sanctuary. Domestic affection has time to expatiate and grow in that
Sabbath atmosphere; the Bible and other religious books are read; psalms
and hymns are joyfully sung. Mercy joins her work with that of piety;
the sick and the sorrowful are visited and comforted; neglected children
are taught in the Sabbath-school; unreclaimed masses are evangelised in
the mission district. The family once more re-assembles at the evening
meal, and the Sabbath is closed with family worship, meditation, and
secret devotion; and as the members of the household pass away to their
nightly rest, it is felt that its hours have not been wearisome or
unprofitable, but that they have in truth been all too short for the
blessed work that was to be done in them.

3. It will not be wondered at, after these details, that in Scotland we
claim the entire Sabbath for religion, not only because it forms part of
our most sacred convictions that it has been so conferred upon us by the
unrepealed act of Heaven, but also because _we are of opinion that,
within narrower limits than this, the Sabbath must ever fail to work
out, to its proper extent, all its beneficent designs_. Anything less
than this would be something like placing the sun under a partial
eclipse, which you yet expected to ripen the fruits of the world.
Suppose the period of the Sabbath to be restricted, as some would wish,
to the hours of public worship, and men suddenly to pass from business
or pleasure to the sanctuary, and then to pass with equal suddenness
from the sanctuary to business or pleasure again, even the benefit of
the season of public worship would be more than half lost. Nature in
most men is incapable of violent transitions; it must have its dawn and
its twilight; and were our Sabbath to consist only of the time that we
spent in the temple, the world would be far more likely to introduce its
corrupting and debasing influence into the Church, than the Church to
send out its healing streams upon the world. It is no mere theory or
conjecture this; for the experiment was actually tried in England in the
reign of our Sixth James, in the publication of "The Book of Sports,"
when it was sought to make games and morris-dances alternate on Sabbaths
with public religious worship; and the effect was to neutralise the
power of the pulpit, and to deluge the land with frivolity, irreligion,
and vice. There must be the preparation and attuning of the mind for
public devotion and instruction, by secret prayer and meditation; there
must be the recollection and the holy repose of the soul afterwards;
there must be the hallowed intermingling of deeds of charity with
exercises of piety, and room for the revival and the play of home
affections, if the Sabbath is to shed all the good which the beneficence
of Heaven has put into it, upon churches and nations.

And if there is need for such a Sabbath in any country, and among any
people, even were they as pastoral and contemplative in their daily
habits as Abraham in Canaan, or as Moses when tending the flocks of
Jethro, it is immeasurably more indispensable to the intellectual and
religious wellbeing of men living in old countries such as Scotland or
England, where over-population has unduly crowded the market of labour,
and given rise to an unhealthy competition, in which men often need to
strain their wits and their energies to the utmost in order simply to
live. Nothing will save a people in such a community from an undue
mental strain unfavourable alike to intellectual and moral health, and
even from being wrought in great numbers to death, but the weekly
recurrence of a day which is fenced off and guarded by Divine
prescription, and attachment to which is deeply rooted in the religious
convictions and the gratitude of the people. There are tens of thousands
of our industrial classes, and even multitudes among our men of
business, who seldom see the younger members of their families, except
on Sabbath-day. And to what a debasing monotony of toil would the lives
of these men speedily be reduced, were it not for the anticipation of
the coming day of hallowed rest, in which the artisan should know no
master, and the master himself should be disturbed by no postman's rap
or din of business, and should exchange his ledger for his Bible, and
the hardening influences of commercial competition and rivalry for the
softening and purifying influences of home and of the house of God. On
this day, our sons of toil stand erect in the full consciousness of
their manhood and of their heavenly birthright; and shall the day which
brings such privilege and blessing to man be described as a restraint?
It is such a restraint as the shutting of the door of the ark was to
Noah, which kept the deluge out, and the patriarch safe. It is like the
fence of flowers which we may imagine to have been drawn around Paradise
when Adam dwelt in it; and to many a wearied and wasted labourer, when
this day has returned with healing in its wings, it has seemed as if the
primeval curse was suspended, and Eden threw open its closed gates for a
season to receive the wanderer back.

4. It is true, then, speaking of the people of Scotland generally, that
we rest our Sabbath observance on Divine appointment, and that we cling
tenaciously to a whole Sabbath. This is our crown, which I trust no one
will ever take from us, and which, indeed, can only be lost in a
community of free men, by being voluntarily and guiltily abdicated. But
in what I have hitherto said, I have spoken more of our Scottish
principles than of our Scottish practice; and when I come to speak of
this, _I find myself constrained to protest against two opposite
representations that have been given of our Sabbath-keeping_, the one in
the form of injurious caricature, and the other in a style of
over-colouring that very greatly exceeds the sober reality. Of all the
bold pictures in which certain of our modern novelists have indulged,
there is none in which they have allowed their imaginations a more wild
and unwarranted licence, than in the pictures with which they have
entertained their readers of a Sabbath in a Scottish family. These
pictures have been creations rather than caricatures. And there have
been travellers who have become writers of fiction when they have
touched on this subject, and who have quite equalled the novel-writers
in the liberties they have taken with the simple truth. One writer,
presuming, we suppose, on the safe distance of his readers from the
scene which he describes, gravely informs them that in the city of
Edinburgh all the window-blinds are kept carefully closed during the
whole of the Sabbath, as if to attemper the gloom of the house to the
gloomy state of mind of its inmates, and describes the little children
as cowering under a vague sense of awe, and dreading to indulge even an
innocent smile. Men who write thus may safely be affirmed never to have
spent a single Sabbath-day in a religious family in Scotland. That the
Sabbath is in no instance presented in a repulsive form before the
young, by their rather being told what they are not to do, than of the
blessed work to which the Sabbath summons them, it would be too much to
affirm; for what institution of heaven does not occasionally suffer from
human handling? But our danger, even in Scotland, in these days, does
not arise from over-restraint or scrupulosity; and we speak from long
and happy experience, when we assert that our Sabbath-keeping in
Scotland is usually marked by a calm cheerfulness without frivolity, and
that on that day, above all others, streams of gladness flow through
myriads of hearts which have their secret and their fountain-head not in
the exclusion of religion, but in the more complete turning of the mind
to religious thoughts and associations.

          "Then wisdom's self
  Oft seeks to sweet, retired solitude,
  Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,
  She plumes her feathers, and lets go her wings,
  That in the various bustle of resort
  Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impaired."

How is it but on this account, that Scotsmen who have emigrated to our
colonies have in so many instances written of their Sabbath evenings at
home as among the most "sunny memories" of their youth? And it is a fact
of much significance that an old ecclesiastical law of Scotland
expressly provides that a religious fast shall never be held on the
Lord's day, for this special reason, that the Sabbath was intended to be
a day of joy.

5. _On the other hand, we are bound to acknowledge that there have been
foreign brethren who have visited our island-shores, that have traced
the picture of our Scottish Sabbath in colours greatly brighter than the
reality._--They have only seen half the truth, and therefore they have
only told the half. As they have beheld the streams of our church-going
people crowding along the streets of our cities to our numerous temples,
they have failed to reflect how even the best gifts of heaven, the
Sabbath and the sunlight, are the most ready to be abused, and that, at
that very moment, there were thousands loitering at home in indolence,
and even not a few, perhaps, rioting in intemperance. At the same time,
with all these sombre exceptions, that are necessary to be introduced as
shadows into any truthful picture of a Scottish Sabbath, we do not
wonder that good and intelligent visitors from continental countries
have been impressed and delighted by the spectacle of such a day in
Scotland. These are but exceptions after all. And there is surely
something of high moral sublimity in the sight of a whole people, once
in every week, ceasing from their business and their toil to celebrate
the great facts of Creation and Redemption--"the plough left to sleep in
the furrow," the loom motionless, the anvil silent, the mine and the
factory tenantless, and the whole monotony of common life turned and
elevated into a kind of sacred praise. This solemn pause over the wide
extent of Scotland, seen still more perfectly in her rural districts
than in her great cities, strikes us as the nearest approach we have
ever known to national worship. And we do not wonder that all the great
poets of our land,--our uninspired prophets, whose work it is to reflect
and to idealise our purest national feelings,--should so often have
"sung the Sabbath," and that the Sabbath pictures of our national poet
Burns in his "Cottar's Saturday Night," though, alas, he seldom
consecrated his great gifts to religion, shine as the most beautiful
passages in a poem that seems marked for immortality.

6. It is not, however, as a mere sublime picture that we value at so
high a rate the Sabbath-honouring habits of the Scottish people, but
because _we are convinced that the practice nourishes and sustains the
very roots of our national life, and keeps pure and deep the streams of
our national morality and religion_.--It is not the least valuable
result of the recent discussion of the Sabbath question in Scotland,
that it has served to elicit and accumulate a mass of statistics
demonstrating the close connection between the Sabbath observance and
the religious prosperity of our people, as well as illustrating in a
most interesting manner what has aptly enough been termed _the
physiology of the Sabbath-day_. Thus, if we look through three centuries
of the religious history of either portion of our island, it will be
found that our Sabbath-keeping periods have uniformly been those in
which the Church has been "as a well-watered garden." The two things
have risen or fallen with each other, and have exerted mutual influence,
as may be seen by comparing the age of Cromwell with that of either
Charles. Inquiries on a very large scale, embracing all our principal
professions and trades, were recently made in reference to the moral
condition of those connected with each; and it was found that, from the
costermonger and the bargeman upwards, the most Sabbath-breaking were
also the most morally sunken and degraded. And our superintendents of
police will tell you, that persons who are in the habit of honouring the
Sabbath, and frequenting a place of worship, are more careful in their
pecuniary transactions, "more careful also in their language, more
economical in their arrangements at home, more affectionate and humane,
and in every respect superior persons by far to those of contrary
habits." Some who do not look with favour upon our Sabbatic rest, are
accustomed to point to the drunkenness which exists among a certain
class of our Scottish population; but it is not our Sabbath-keepers who
are our drunkards. Some few years since, the moral statistics of certain
congregations in Scotland, including a membership of thirty thousand,
were collected, and it was found that an average of only two out of
every thousand of those members had in the course of a year been charged
with the sin of intemperance. And what is thus found to hold in the
instance of large communities, is equally true in the case of
individuals. So long as a Scottish youth respects the Sabbath and
frequents the church, there is good hope regarding him, for he is coming
under weekly influences that keep him right; but when these practices
cease or become fitful, it is sure that virtue has begun to decay at the
roots, if it be not indeed already dead; and Hogarth, one of our
greatest painters, was therefore true to nature and experience, when, in
his "Rake's Progress," he represented him in his first downward step to
ruin as gambling on a tombstone in a churchyard while public worship was
proceeding in the church near at hand. One of the sages of modern
infidelity, Voltaire, who at one time dwelt on the shores of your
beautiful lake, declared that he despaired of extinguishing Christianity
so long as men assembled on a particular day of each week for Christian
worship and instruction. And his remark shewed that he had discovered
the value of the Sabbath to the Church; for public worship will never be
common among a people where there is not the recognised sanctity of a
Sabbath to preserve it. And let it never be forgotten, that it is far
more easily preserved than recovered, for when any portion of its time
is invaded, the habits of a people soon shape themselves to the new
order of things. A spadeful of earth may prevent the inundation in
Holland, but when once the sea has broken in, the strength of a million
of men may fail to roll back its destructive waters.

7. _And if possible, the facts that have been supplied by the testimony
of medical and other scientific men have been still more valuable and
triumphant._--Recent physiological inquiries have placed it beyond doubt
that man needs for repairing the waste of his body not only the nightly
repose which night brings him, but, in addition, the weekly rest of a
seventh day; and it has been noticed that in many of the industrial
departments, especially in the more skilled and delicate forms of
industry, there was a perceptible deterioration in what was produced in
the last days of the week. Travellers on long journeys who have "rested
the first day of the week according to the commandment," have
outstripped travellers who pursued their journey on the seventh day, and
have reached the end of their journey in far better health and spirits.
The railway system itself, which, with all its other high advantages,
has done not a little to disturb the integrity of our Sabbath rest, has
strangely supplied us with valuable corroboration on this matter; for
during the period in which our principal railways were in course of
construction in Scotland and England, it was found that the work which
those who laboured on Sabbath executed in seven days was generally less
in amount and worse in execution than that done by sober, orderly,
Sabbath-keeping men in six days.

And the same remark is applicable to labourers with the head as with the
hand; for in these days we must extend the phrase, "working men," far
beyond the comparatively narrow region of the industrial arts. The
statesman or the barrister who does not allow himself the weekly pause
in his round of mental labour which the Sabbath of God offers him, soon
finds nature punishing him for his disregard of its great laws; and
instances are not rare, and some of them stand out as beacons in our
modern biography, in which such a course has carried him that followed
it, in the very noon-tide of his life, to the maniac's cell or the
suicide's grave; while many a noble mind has retained its spring and
freshness, and has been able to "serve its generation" to the last, by
allowing the Sabbath to interpose its hallowed associations and
exercises in the midst of its common and absorbing studies. Our great
Coleridge strongly and beautifully said, "I feel as if God, by giving
the Sabbath, had given fifty-two springs in the year;" and Isaac Taylor,
a very voluminous author, and one of the most popular and philosophical
of our theological writers, gives the following as the testimony of his
long experience: "I am prepared to affirm that to the studious
especially, and whether younger or older, a Sabbath well spent--spent in
happy exercises of the heart, devotional and domestic--a Sabbath given
to the soul, is the best of all means of refreshment to the mere
intellect."

There is a point, moreover, at which the physiology of this great
subject touches closely on its moral and religious bearings, for it has
been found that physical weariness leads to mental lassitude, and that
mental lassitude indisposes the soul to moral considerations. Nor would
it be easy to calculate to what an extent the recurrence of the Sabbath,
where its hours have been turned to their proper and appointed uses, has
been of moral advantage to our commercial men and our merchant princes,
checking the fever of reckless speculation, restoring the moral balance
of the mind, and "winding up the soul, which the body had poised down,
to a higher degree of heavenliness." "A Sunday in solitude," said one of
the greatest English statesmen of the last age, "never failed to restore
me to myself." Facts like these, which might be almost indefinitely
multiplied, do more than demonstrate the inestimable value of the
Sabbath: they appear to me to suggest, on their own independent grounds,
that an institution possessing such wise and benignant adaptations to
our complex nature, must have been appointed by Him that made us and who
"knows our frame;" and that "while the Sabbath was made _for_ man, it
was not made _by_ him." A great writer on natural religion has founded a
beautiful argument for the existence and unity of God, on the adaptation
of day and night to the physical nature of man: might not an argument of
equal soundness and force for the Divine origin of the Sabbath, be
founded on its adaptation to our physical, intellectual, and spiritual
nature?

8. But while it is unquestionable that the Sabbath argument has gained a
large and permanent addition to its force from the experience and
discussions of the last twenty years in Scotland, I have already said
enough to apprise you that _this divine and truly beneficent institution
is not without its enemies and its dangers_. I shall be forgiven when I
express my fear that the increased influx of persons from other
countries in which "the day of the Lord" is less honoured and hallowed,
has had some effect in lowering the standard of its observance among
ourselves.--I do not think that the arguments of ultra-spiritualists,
who tell us that every day should be a Sabbath, has had much effect in
misleading any who were not already willing to be misled. The device
was too transparently shallow to do much harm where it had the
characteristic shrewdness of the Scottish mind to deal with it. For why,
it was answered, on the same principle, might it not be said that men
should be always praying; and that therefore it was unnecessary to have
fixed times and places for our secret devotions, and that we ought to
dispense with the use of words. It was noticed, moreover, that if things
were not sometimes solemnly done, they were likely to be never done, and
that "every day a Sabbath" came practically to mean "no Sabbath at
all."--At one period the railway system, which attempted to introduce
with it railway travelling and traffic on the Lord's day, threatened to
do violence to our religions convictions and national habits, and to
introduce among us a wide-spread and constantly-growing mischief. But
this plague was speedily stayed. The religious traditions of our
community proved in most instances too strong for the cupidity of men
who seemed prepared to sacrifice the highest interests, and to trample
on the most sacred feelings of a whole community, for the sake of a
larger annual dividend. The majority of our railways in Scotland do not
run trains on Sabbath at all; and this is found to operate with immense
gain to the public morals, with no inconvenience to trade or commerce,
or even pecuniary loss to the proprietors of those stupendous
undertakings.

9. But there is an influence at work which has already in some degree
invaded our Sabbath-keeping in Scotland, and which I fear is working far
more extensive and serious moral havoc in England. _I refer to the
attempt which is made in so many places, and by so many parties, to use
the day which has been given for sacred rest and religious worship, as a
day of entertainment and amusement._--Picture galleries, Crystal
palaces, museums of nature and art, or romantic scenes to which men can
be carried in crowds by Sunday excursion-trains, are sought to be
substituted for visits to the house of prayer, and for Christian
instruction and worship. The argument for this insidious and perilous
exchange is sometimes put in a kind of religious phraseology, as if
these visits to beautiful scenes in nature were only the introduction to
another kind of worship, and as if gazing upon the master-pieces of
human art in painting, or sculpture, or architecture, exercised a
purifying and elevating influence on the mind; and sometimes again it is
dressed in the form of a spurious philanthropy, though it is found that
those who are the most earnest advocates for the Crystal Palace or the
Sabbath excursion-train, generally expect to derive pecuniary advantage
from the practice. There never was an argument more triumphantly met by
sound philosophy, or more completely refuted by experience. There is no
denying, indeed, that visits to high works of art, to objects of
curiosity, or to beautiful scenes in the natural world, may at their
own time, and in their own place, be beneficial to the busiest and the
poorest. But those who imagine that any of these things are capable, in
any degree, of being a substitute for the weekly-recurring exercises of
Christian worship, and instruction in the great truths of divine
revelation, are strangely ignorant of the greatest wants and necessities
of man. Who ever heard of looking upon pictures and images, however much
they might breathe with genius, transforming the vile to pure, the
earthly to divine! It is not by such appliances as these that the heart
of any man has ever been made anew. The fact is, it is rather the
æsthetic than the moral part of our nature that is influenced by them
at all. They refine, but they cannot transform. They may "form the
capital of the column, but not its base." The city of Munich contains
one of the grandest picture-galleries in Europe, and it is also one of
the most demoralized and debased of our European communities. The
brigands around Rome were accustomed at the Carnival to visit the
picture-galleries in that city, and many shewed high appreciation and
discrimination in judging of the works both of ancient and of modern
painters, but these influences never succeeded in wooing one of them
from his life of violence and crime. And if the history of ancient
Greece in its decay reads one lesson to the world more loudly than
another, it is this, that refinement of taste may be associated in the
same individual and people with the greatest debasement and corruption
of morals.

And experience in our own island confirms us in the assertion, that
these things are impotent for the regeneration of a people; and that
when they are engrafted on the Sabbath, and made the substitute for its
religious and proper services, they tend in the reverse direction. The
gin-palace soon plants itself around these places of public
entertainment and amusement, and finds in them a smooth and fascinating
pathway to its snares; and few spectacles in our land are more riotous,
more debased, more miserable, or more alarming as regards the future of
our country, than a Sunday excursion-train, when it comes back and
empties upon a city its pleasure-seekers and worshippers of nature. It
is well known to masters, that such men, depressed by the reaction of
riot and excitement, seldom return to their labours on Monday along with
the tradesman who has turned his Sabbath to its proper and sacred uses.
Nor is it difficult to foresee that if once the Sabbaths in Scotland and
England were generally given to pleasure-seeking, they would ere long be
bought up by commercial cupidity and enterprise, and the career of the
working-man would resemble that of Samson, first sitting on the lap of
pleasure, then bound and groaning in intellectual darkness and moral
night, and ending his retributive course by drawing down upon himself
and upon those who had enslaved him the pillars of our social edifice.
"The mere animal," says the late Hugh Miller, "that has to pass six days
of the week in hard labour, benefits greatly by a seventh day of mere
animal rest and enjoyment: the repose, according to its nature, proves
of signal use to it, just because _it is_ repose according to its
nature. But man is not a mere animal: what is best for the ox and the
ass is not best for him; and in order to degrade him into a poor
unintellectual slave, over whom tyranny, in its caprice, may trample
roughshod, it is but necessary to tie him down, animal-like, during his
six working-days, to hard, engrossing labour, and to convert the seventh
into a day of frivolous unthinking relaxation."

But we believe that the heart of Scotland generally is sound and
enlightened on the Divine authority and the inestimable value of the
Sabbath-day. To our minds it stands sacredly associated with the
greatest events in human history, and in the intercourse of God with
man--the completed handiwork of Almighty power, when God looked around
Him upon the young and unfallen world, and pronounced all to be
good--the giving of the Divine law from the sacred mount amid the signs
of the present Deity--and the rising of our Redeemer from the grave, and
the rising with Him of the hope of our world. We are a free and happy
people, we have conquered the ruggedness of our soil, and coped
successfully with our ungenial climate; but it is to our religion that
we owe our freedom, for who can enslave a people that fear God? and we
regard our Sabbath as the bulwark of our godliness. It is our Tabor, on
which we ascend weekly and meet with celestial visitants; our Jacob's
ladder on which we climb to heaven's gate; the shield and nutriment of
our domestic affections, it keeps the heart of our households warm and
pure. It is not to be abolished, but extended; and even when it passes
away at the end of time, it will not go out in whirlwind or tempest, but

      "As sets the morning-star, which goes
Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides
Obscured among the tempests of the sky,
But melts away into the light of heaven."





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Sabbath - A Paper Read at the Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, - Held at Geneva, September 2. 1861" ***

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