Title: Our Sabbaths in Danger - A Sermon, deprecating the comtemplated opening of the Crystal Palace on the Lord's-Day
Author: Moore, Daniel
Language: English
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Transcribed from the 1852 Wertheim and Macintosh edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org

                        [Picture: Pamphlet cover]



OUR SABBATHS IN DANGER:


                                A SERMON,

               DEPRECATING THE CONTEMPLATED OPENING OF THE
                    CRYSTAL PALACE ON THE LORD’S-DAY,

             PREACHED ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1852, IN CAMDEN
                           CHURCH, CAMBERWELL.

                          BY DANIEL MOORE, M.A.,
                                INCUMBENT.

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
                         WERTHEIM AND MACINTOSH,
                           24, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
                         G. W. MEDES, CAMBERWELL.

                                  1852.

                                * * * * *

                         WERTHEIM AND MACINTOSH,
                       24, PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON.

                                * * * * *



A SERMON.


    MARK II. 27:—“And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man,
    and not man for the Sabbath.”

THE discriminating symptoms of hypocrisy or profaneness in a nation, it
has been well said, are, that, by the one, outward ordinances are raised
to an exaggerated importance; by the other, they are disparaged,
depressed, and set at nought.  In the words just quoted, the aim of our
Lord appears to have been to put these institutions in their right
place,—to enunciate a great principle, by which we could always
distinguish between certain moral ends for which _man was made_, and
certain outward appointments which were instituted and _made for man_.
To obey God, to resist evil, to fulfil a providential designation, to
strive after nearer conformity to the Divine image, to fit and capacitate
the soul for a higher condition of being, these are ends,—man was _made
for these_.  But holy times, pious commemorations, solemn assemblies, the
temples where we worship, and the sacraments whereof we eat, these are
only subsidiary and divinely appointed means; they are not among the
final objects of man’s creation.  They were ordinances _wade for man_.

This argument, it will be perceived, would be addressed with much fitness
to men, whose error, in relation to the Sabbath, leaned to the side of an
over-strained and impracticable severity; and who had just been urging it
as a complaint against our Lord’s disciples, that, in passing through a
field on the Sabbath-day, they had relieved their hunger by plucking a
few ears of corn.  These cavillers are reminded, therefore, that, in the
economy of salvation, all outward ordinances are to be viewed in the
light of things secondary and subservient; their mode of observance to be
interpreted in harmony with the ends for which they were ordained; and
that, with regard to the Sabbath especially, care must be taken to avoid
both the hypocrisy that would make the day to be honoured by a rigid
ceremonial exactness, and the presumption that would overlook its eternal
sanctity as standing in the will of God.  It is in this last view that
all the ordinances of religion, when clearly of Divine appointment,
acquire a character of deep and momentous interest.  Their foundation is
in the will of God; but that will, as we know, has, as its ever-guiding
and controlling rule, a sacred regard to the highest interests of man.
Nothing can be more dishonouring to God, or more untrue, than to speak of
outward ordinances as if they were mere arbitrary appointments, without
significance and without benefit, as only so many meaningless enactments
designed to test the willingness of human subjection; so far otherwise,
they are means framed upon a wise and loving regard to all the aptitudes
of our moral nature, and calculated, in their reverent use, to help man
through all the difficulties of his course and to educate his immortal
spirit for the employments of the world to come.  _The Sabbath was_ MADE
FOR MAN.

Brethren, you are aware of the reasons which induce me, at the hazard of
going over much of familiar argument, formally to review the grounds on
which we hold that a PROPER MORAL SANCTITY does attach to the CHRISTIAN
SABBATH:—that the institution itself has an origin, an object, a typical
significance and value, which are independent of all economies, and will
endure to all time; and, therefore, that any nation which shall presume
to tamper with its unalterable sacredness, is drawing down upon itself
those awful maledictions which, by an undesigned coincidence, have been
so often recited in our ears this morning as the just retribution of
POLLUTED SABBATHS. {5}

I.  In trying to arrive at correct notions upon what may be due to the
sacred day, and how far it may be lawful that churches and places of
amusement should share its hours between them, our first thoughts are
naturally directed to the Old Testament accounts of the Sabbath
institution itself.  Was its origin paradisaical, or patriarchal, or
Levitical?  And if it were either of these, were the reasons given for
commencing it such as would pass away, when the dispensation under which
it was given passed away?  This question is important, because there is a
current way of speaking of the Sabbath as if it were a mere festival of
the Jewish Church, deriving its whole sanctity from the Levitical law,
and only taken up by the Christian Church at second hand,—as among the
_useful_ things of the old economy which it would be as well to
perpetuate, though not one of the _binding_ things we were under any
obligation to observe.

Now, to expose the absurdity of this notion, we have only to take the
earliest Scripture notices of the institution which come to hand.  In the
second chapter of the book of Genesis, at the close of the account of the
creation, we read,—_And on the seventh day God ended his work which He
had made_; _and He rested on the seventh day from all his work which He
had made_.  _And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it_: BECAUSE
_that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made_.
If this passage stood alone, one conclusion only could be drawn from it;
namely, that the institution of the Sabbath succeeded the creation
immediately in order of time, and that it was sanctified for reasons
which must be binding on all mankind alike.  But other notices in the
writings of Moses follow, which might seem to militate against this view,
and even to favour the erroneous notion I have adverted to, of the
Sabbath having only a temporary or dispensational sanctity.  Thus, in the
thirty-first chapter of Exodus, we read,—_Wherefore the children of
Israel shall keep the Sabbath throughout their generations for a
perpetual covenant_: _it is a_ SIGN _between me and the children of
Israel for ever_.  Whilst, further, in the book of Deuteronomy, at the
fifth chapter, we find Moses exhorting the people to the observance of
the holy day, with this added reason: _Remember that thou wast a servant
in the land of Egypt_, _and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence
through a mighty hand and stretched-out arm_; THEREFORE _the Lord thy God
commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day_.  Now, whether we are able to
give any satisfactory account of these additional reasons for the
institution or not, the revealed fact will remain the same,—namely, that
the Sabbath was _not_ Levitical in its origin, and was not even _first_
made known to the Jews, at the giving of the law.  Nothing can be plainer
than that the Sabbath was both known and observed before the Jewish
Church had any existence.  For, besides the incidental notices both
before and after the deluge,—such as Noah sending out the dove again
“after other seven days,”—we find the Jews actually keeping a Sabbath in
the wilderness of Sin, before the covenant of Sinai had been entered
into.  Thus, at the giving of the manna, we have Moses saying unto the
people, _To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord_: _on
that day ye shall not find it in the field_: _for the Lord hath given you
the Sabbath_: _therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two
days_:—language plainly implying that, at that time, the Sabbath was an
established observance of the religious life.  What shall we say, then,
of those _subsequent_ reasons for the institution which connect it with a
peculiar national covenant? or with the deliverance of the Israelites
from bondage?  Why, not that they are meant to be reasons for the
institution _itself_, but reasons for a particular time and form of its
_re-promulgation_.  The children of Israel, it is to be remembered, had
been for several hundred years under captivity in Egypt.  Many of their
ordinances, it is likely they would have forgotten; and their Sabbaths,
it is all but certain, their task-masters would not permit them to
observe.  On their Exodus, therefore, it became necessary that there
should be a formal _re-enactment_ of the holy day; not only by a
repetition of those moral considerations, on account of which the
Almighty had originally set it apart, but also with a recital of such
other arguments as should make the sanctity of the day especially binding
upon _them_ as a nation; namely, that in their revived and perpetuated
Sabbath, they were to keep up a grateful commemoration of their
deliverance from Egypt, as well as behold a standing pledge or seal of
the covenant into which God was then entering with his people.  To infer
that mankind had never observed a day of sanctified rest until the
Sabbath was made a sign of the covenant with Moses, would be as
unreasonable as the inference that the sun’s light had never been
refracted in the rain-drops, until God set his “bow in the clouds,” to be
a sign of his covenant with Noah.  It pleased God to take an existing
moral fact in the one case, as He had taken an existing physical fact in
the other, to be a perpetual and visible memorial of his own gracious
purposes.  And, surely, to the Israelites, in all ages, it must have been
a great encouragement to see the promise made unto their fathers
guaranteed by a seal, which was honoured as the first token ever made to
human kind, and hallowed by considerations which could never change, and
never lose their force.

I say never lose their force;—for what could a sanctified commemoration
of the rest of the Great Creator, a commanded acknowledgment, from the
creatures He had made, of their subjection and dependence, a periodical
pause in their other employments that they might hallow and bless his
name,—what, I say, could such reasons for an institution have to do with
one age more than another, or with one economy more than another?
Plainly, the obligation presses equally on the first man Adam, and the
last born of his degenerate sons.  In this respect, the Sabbath was not
made for Noah and the patriarchs specially, to commemorate the world’s
second birth; nor for Moses and the Israelites specially, to celebrate
the triumphs of the wilderness and the sea.  It was made neither for Jew,
nor Christian, nor Church, nor age;—_The Sabbath was made_ FOR MAN.

II.  Other reasons for the original and indelible sanctity of this
institution, I must note more briefly.  Thus, what other inference can be
drawn from its place in the law of the ten commandments,—that great
summary of human duty,—that searching code which, in its Gospel
spirituality and breadth, becomes the rule of all outward and inward
holiness; that eternal transcript of all creature obedience, which, when
heaven and earth shall have passed away, shall stand out as the reflected
will of God?  _Think not_, said the Great Teacher, _I am come to destroy
the law or the prophets_, _I am not come to destroy but to fulfil_.  Will
any raise a question as to the law here intended being the moral law
given to Moses? or conceding that, will they say that when our Lord
declared neither _jot nor tittle_ should pass from this law, He meant to
say, _men shall keep all the commandments except the fourth_?

Again, in contending for the universal obligation to separate a seventh
portion of our time to the service of God, we cannot overlook the plain
intimations contained in the earliest records of all nations, that,
either with religious sanctions or without them, men have observed this
_weekly_ division of time.  Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, all
seem to have known of it;—and the question is how, except as the relic of
some universal tradition, those nations should have thought of such a
measurement of time at all?  For other divisions of time we can find
reasons,—obvious, necessary, and natural.  The daily rotation of the
earth on its axis; the completed cycle of lunar phases; the sun imparting
to the revolving worlds the blessings of cold and heat, summer and
winter, seed-time and harvest, are phenomena quite adequate to explain
why we should break up our life into _days_, and _months_, and _years_;
but for WEEKS we have _no_ such reason, nor, indeed, _any_ reason to
give, except that it is one of the original appointments and laws of God.
It is an arbitrary period, the recurrence of which neither nature nor
reason seems, in any way, to have marked out for us, but which, on the
all-commanding authority of revelation, men have been taught to set apart
to sacred remembrances.  _The Sabbath was_ MADE _for man_.

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?

But will not the project under consideration be a gain to public morals,
in regard of the lower vices of sensuality and intoxication?  I answer
unhesitatingly, No.  Unhappily, we are not without our precedent of these
Sunday gardens now—gardens which, in their disposition and decorations,
appeal, and in their degree successfully, to the very tastes which it is
among the purposes of the new speculation to cultivate.  And these
pleasure-grounds are found to be the heart and centre of the most
debasing vices.  Returns have been put into my hands from one of these
haunts of Sabbath festivity in a country town,—described as being, in
themselves, most attractive and beautiful.  Into these gardens 3,000
people have gone on a Sunday evening, consuming among them nearly 600
gallons of malt liquor alone;—a quantity which, if a reasonable deduction
be made for the number of children, would suppose _one quart_ to have
been consumed by _every grown-up person_, _whether male or female_, upon
the ground.  Let us, for the honour of the female sex, make a still
further deduction, and what a humiliating reflection is forced upon us as
to the state of a large majority of the men!  Brethren, these are painful
details to have to bring into a pulpit.  But when we have beaten the
adversary from every other ground—the ground of right, of truth, of
religious decency, of national piety and honour—it may be well to see if
he has any standing-place on the ground which he thinks unassailably his
own.  And this argument, that he will draw men off from the brutal
indulgences of their own locality, is one which the champions of
desecration make much of.  Whereas I know, on the authority of those
through whose hands the negotiations pass, that premiums of almost
incredible amount are being offered for the liberty of erecting places in
the neighbourhood, where the same low appetites may be ministered to,
which the Sabbath-breaker finds gratified now in his own low tavern at
home. {25}  And then judge for yourselves whether he will be much less
disposed to gratify them.  Think of the excitement of the journey, the
sensuous fascinations of the scene, the stimulating influence of a large
living mass, all bent on unrestrained enjoyment, and then consider
whether any other change will be wrought, in the habits of those whom it
is sought to reclaim, than that they will do under some decorated and
emblazoned booth, what they now do in an alehouse, and waste far more
than they do already of those precious earnings which should go to buy
their children bread.  And where the carcase is, there will the eagles
be.  The cunning pickpocket will be there.  The man of dissolute
pleasures will be there.  The shame of womanhood will be there;—all
coming from far to keep each the Sabbath of their vocation—to worship at
this great metropolis of immorality and sin.

Many other considerations there are, tending to make us view the present
movement with deep dismay.  We fear it cannot bode good to the cause of
God and his truth, when Herod and Pilate are made friends; when the
Romanist and the Neologian are urging the same forms of Sabbath
observance; when “Gebal and Ammon and Amalek,”—the man of science, the
man of pleasure, and the man of scrip and shares,—are all intent on the
same scheme of social amelioration.  The fear is not unnatural with us
that the junction-point of this strange confederacy will be found, not in
any result which they wish to _achieve_, so much as in some existing
influence which it is their common desire to _destroy_,—namely, the
influence of that pure and undefiled religion which teaches that science
must bow to Scripture, that covetousness is only another name for
idolatry, and that the man who allows himself in vicious or forbidden
pleasures shall not have any “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of
God.”  We can only regard such united attempt as the first instalment of
a yet more extended plan, by which we are to become assimilated to the
profane usages of the Continent, until every place of public amusement or
resort, from the national Museum to the itinerant puppet-show, shall
throw open their doors to any Sabbath wanderer, who may desire, under
cover of law, to do despite to God’s holy day.  The constant plea put
forth for these Sabbath recreations, that something must be done towards
elevating the moral and intellectual tastes of our people, is not tenable
for an instant.  For, admitting the necessity, why should not the time
required for it be taken from one of the _six_ days now appropriated to
the world, rather than from the one only day which we now set apart for
God?  But the whole is in true keeping with Infidel patriotism.  It looks
only on its own things.  It spares itself.  And then, when affecting a
desire to redeem time for the improvement of the poor, like him who in
the parable spared to take of his own flock and his own herd, it will
not, by an hour, anticipate the closing of the factory, but demands that
half the time be taken away from the few hours that are now given to the
church. {27}

One word more, and I have done.  The former Exhibition was opened with
prayer.  The act was a declared recognition of God’s right to control our
recreations, and of the necessity of his blessing to make them either
innocent or happy.  Will the projectors of the new undertaking DARE to
open their building thus?  Will they, holding in their hands the
outspread charter of desecration, DARE, with the breath of invocation, to
blaspheme the God of heaven?  I hazard no reputation for prophecy when I
say they will NOT.  For, though I have no right to infer that they would
hesitate at mocking GOD by such an act, if they thought it would raise
their shares, I am persuaded they would fear so to mock the ENGLISH
PEOPLE.  There is an element of veneration in our national character,
which will not suffer itself to be outraged beyond a certain limit.  Our
people, even the worst of them, have no love for gratuitous profanations.
If they _do_ consent to sit down at Belshazzar’s feast, yet they will not
drink wine out of the sacred vessels.  Hence, whoever may be present at
the coming inauguration of the god of this world in his palace, he will
with difficulty repress the feeling, ‘I know this place is to be opened
in utter defiance of the laws of God, and therefore for me to ask his
blessing upon it would be as if a robber should first kneel down and ask
God that he might be successful in his plunder, or as if the traducer of
his neighbour’s fame should pray that he might have the benediction of
heaven upon his ill report.’  No, brethren, if this Charter be granted,
the building will be opened, as it has been commenced, without God,
without a blessing, without a recognition of any power in the universe
save that of Belial, who is to direct the pleasures of its votaries, and
that of Mammon to fill the coffers of its founders with the fruit of
unhallowed gains.

For the honour of our religion, then, for the moral happiness of our
people, for the lengthening of our tranquillity, for the salvation of our
land,—let me entreat you, while there is yet time, to protest against
this uncalled-for impiety.  Our voice made itself heard a short time ago,
when a crafty Socinian influence, at the Post-Office, threatened our
cherished sanctities:—we deserve to lose our Sabbaths for ever, if that
voice be silent now.  Wherefore, brethren, “Watch ye; stand fast in the
faith; quit you like men; be strong.”  Slacken not in your exertions,
till all the weapons both of heaven and earth are spent; until you have
vindicated your character as citizens, your rights as subjects, your
religious consistency as Protestants, your faith, and love, and zeal, and
piety, as Christians and as men of God.  So shall “the Lord be entreated
for our land,” and the on-coming “plague be stayed.”  Amen.



NOTE A.


The statement that men are employed on the ground on the Lord’s-day, has
been impugned, but in support of it I have permission to cite the
authority of that respected upholder of our Sabbath sanctities, Joseph
Wilson, Esq., of Clapham Park; who _saw a large body of men at full
work_, _with spades and pickaxes_, _on his way to church_, _on Sunday
last_.  The excuse set up for this is that these men were engaged in
_firing the clay_, and that the nature of this work was such as not to
allow of the fires going out without serious loss.  Without quoting some
opinions given by the men themselves, denying this alleged necessity, I
may mention that inquiries made in the neighbourhood by myself, convinced
me that work _is_ done on the Sabbath—over and above attending to the
fires—though carried on in a way which tall boards and the sealed lips of
interested parties make it difficult to detect.



NOTE B.


The challenge to those who profess such anxiety for elevating the
condition of the poor, to give up some of their _own_ time for the
purpose, and not to “rob God,” is not put forth merely as a fair
argumentative point.  It is a grave suggestion which has been thrown out
more than once, whether there should not be _one half-day in the week_
agreed upon, through the length and breadth of the land, as the labouring
man’s time for recreation and self-improvement.  In manufacturing
districts, where labour is paid for by the _quantity_ done, leaving the
workman master of his own time, this half-day is very generally _taken_,
and long usage has appropriated Monday afternoon for the purpose.  Why
should not the convention be extended to those who have to work by
_time_?  The proposal seems to me to be worthy of all consideration.  Let
every wharf, and mill, and factory, close on Monday, at two o’clock.  Let
the national Museum, and other places of intellectual improvement, be
thrown open.  Let the paid Exhibitions, the Crystal Palace among them,
lower their terms of admission to some merely nominal price.  Let
Societies be organized for providing lectures in the evening, on subjects
of popular interest.  Let district reading-rooms be opened, supplied with
well-conducted newspapers, and other periodical literature.  Let the
national school-room be available on that evening for different adult
classes, under the guidance of the clergy, or other friends of social
improvement.  That there is a desire among our poor to avail themselves
of such facilities as those here referred to, I have, for the most part,
_proved_ in my own district; and should greater opportunities be afforded
by employers, not only, I believe, would a change for good be effected in
the social tastes and habits of our people, but the way would be
gradually prepared for their realizing their Sabbaths as a “DELIGHT,”
and, in the refined exercises of sacredness and mercy, keeping them “HOLY
UNTO THE LORD.”



ERRATA.


Page 30, line 1 of Note B.  For “_of_” read “to.”

Page 31, line 5.  For “_mart_” read “_wharf_.”

                                * * * * *

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FOOTNOTES.


{5}  Lesson for the day, Ezek. xx., comp. verses 12, 13, 16, 20, 21, and
24.

{21}  See Note A at the end.

{25}  The following statement, supplied to me from a private source which
may be implicitly relied on, will sufficiently justify several of the
foregoing remarks:—

    “There are no less than seven public-houses now in course of
    erection, or about to be erected, near the Crystal Palace, one of
    which is to cost £30,000, and to contain stabling for 500 horses,
    tea-gardens, &c.  The road leading from Anerly is literally thronged
    from ten to six o’clock every Sunday, and persons of all grades are
    to be seen there, some selling by the wayside, others gambling; and
    in the roads on either sides of the way scenes of the most revolting
    nature are taking place in open daylight.

    “A labouring man, some two or three months since, took a small
    cottage and large garden in the Anerly road, and opened it as a
    beer-house and tea-gardens, and he now has from _four to five hundred
    persons_ in his ground on the Sabbath day.  Many more particulars of
    a like kind might be added, but with great difficulty, owing to the
    _secrecy observed by all parties_.”

{27}  See Note B at the end.





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