self, is true to nature, when he begins his Rake's Progress, which ends at the gallows, with the apprentice playing at marbles upon a tomb-stone during Divine service. The downward movement in religious creed and character has substantially the same commencement. This is the acknowledgment of almost all criminals. It is the experience of many others not yet criminals in the eye of human law-the victims of a state of society which they cannot control, and which, unnecessarily and wickedly excluding them from places of worship, soon extinguishes the impressions of an early religious education. And good men confirm these testimonies to the danger of tampering with a benignant yet holy institute. "I have long found it a most important and beneficial rule," says Bickersteth, "to give the Sabbath to God as entirely as possible, and especially to spend at least an hour or two alone. I am sure, humanly speaking, all religion would soon be gone from me, if I did not adopt this plan."1 The corruption of churches begins and proceeds in the same way. It might be shown that nothing has had more influence in debasing the Church of Rome than the holidays, feasts, and ceremonies, by which one after another of the associated observances, and simple benevolent provisions of the Lord's day have been supplanted and neutralized. If that one institution had been preserved in its integrity, and unique authority as a sacred day, and maintained in its proper accessories of a pure worship, a preached gospel, and a free Bible, it would have been impossible to uphold, if not to introduce, the domination of the priesthood, the idolatrous worship of the Virgin and of the mass, the abominations of celibacy and the confessional, the manifold enormities, in short, by which that Church has made religion an object of contempt and disgust, and filled the greater part of Europe with ignorance, poverty, and crime. The infidelity and other evils, which have so laid waste the Protestant churches on the Continent, have a close connexion with wrong views and practices in reference to the Sabbath. The Reformed and Lutheran Churches, particularly the former, were at first careful to maintain the celebration of the day, but the example of Romanists and infidels around led to a gradual departure from this practice, which was abetted by certain unguarded expressions of the 1 Memoir of Rev. E. Bickersteth, vol. i. p. 224. Reformers tending to lower the claims of the institution. 66 1 "The evil once begun," says Fairbairn, "proceeded rapidly from bad to worse, till it scarcely left in many places so much as the form of religion." The history of religion in England is rife with examples of similar unhappy effects of a disregarded or maltreated Sabbath. From the Reformation downwards to the present time there have been two ecclesiastical parties, which have been distinguished by their different views and treatment of the Lord's day, and which have in consequence displayed an equal diversity in religious character and influence. They might be compared to two rivers-one foul, fierce, and desolating as the Aar; the other, a pure river of water of life, having on either side the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations." For a time the one or the other may almost disappear, or their waters partially intermingle, but in general they flow on in separate and parallel currents. The Puritans within and without the Church of England have been at once the warm friends of the Sabbath, the most decided Christians, and the best members of society. In Scotland, too, the periods distinguished by the profanation of the Lord's day have been precisely the periods in which the interests of religion and morality have sustained the greatest damage, and the abettors of the profanation have ever been identical with the ungodly and immoral. Let it be observed, once more, that where no Sabbath is known, there is no religion or virtue at all. The following facts are sufficient to confirm the statement. The great majority of 100,000 men employed on the inland navigation of England are deprived of the blessings of the Lord's day, and are consequently, with their wives and children, generally speaking, in a state of deplorable ignorance of the gospel and of the power of religion.2 Baron Gurney, when passing sentence of death on two boatmen at the Stafford assizes, said, "There is no body of men so destitute of all moral culture as boatmen ; they know no Sabbath, and are possessed of no means of religious instruction." It has been said that no class of men are more frequently before the magistrates than the London cab and omnibus drivers, who are employed 1 Typology, vol. ii. p. 475. 2 Baylee's Facts and Statistics, p. 65. "3 3 Ibid. p. 64. 2 Habits The city every day from thirteen to sixteen hours in their calling. of intoxication and profane swearing prevail to a great extent amongst both classes; and the same characteristic attaches to them as to others who are deprived of the privileges of the Lord's day, namely, demoralization and degradation. Mr. Edge, of Manchester, observes, respecting the London bakers, that "the low mental and moral condition of the trade generally in London at the present time is notorious." Mr. Henry Ellis, a master baker, says of them, "Those good and moral impressions which they first received in their early days are entirely lost, from the continual practice of working on the Sabbath day."3 and metropolitan police, numbering 5000, although guardians of the public peace, as a body live almost without regard to religion, or thought of another world. In four years, 1849-1852, 54 of that body were convicted of offences, 970 were dismissed, and 524 were suspended; 2495 were fined, 64 were reduced in rank, 3151 resigned. The value of the property stolen during that period was £153,942, of which £34,032 was recovered.5 The want of a day of rest and moral training is found to corrupt a class, who from their circumstances in life might be expected to rise superior to deeds of villany. We refer to servants in our post offices, who number 14,000, and labour in many instances from six to ten or even twelve hours on the Sabbath. It is stated in a Report of 1843 by a Committee of the House of Commons, that, from January 5, 1837, to January 5, 1842, the immense sum of £322,033, contained in letters, was lost in passing through the post-office. Whatsoever, therefore, impairs the authority of a sacred resting day tends to quench virtuous feeling, and to obliterate from the world the truths, laws, and blessings of religion. In referring to the public teaching of Christianity on the Sabbath, Dean Prideaux remarks, that "It is not to be doubted but that if this method were once dropped among us, the generality of the people, whatever else might be done to obviate it, would in seven years relapse into as bad a 1 Baylee's Facts and Statistics, p. 84. 2 Quoted in Address on the Evils of Sabbath Labour, p. 11. 3 Evidence before the House of Common's Committee in 1832, p. 159. 5 Christian Times (185), p. 379. state of barbarity as was ever in practice among the worst of our Saxon or Danish ancestors." ."1 If along with the pulpit the Sabbath itself were set aside, we should require to take a worse state of society than that to represent the woful result. The weekly day of rest and worship may in some imperfect form survive the extinction of Christianity, but Christianity has never existed without its Sabbath. Let this be lost to our country or to any land, and the religion which employs it for its own preservation and advancement must, with all the blessings of the highest civilisation, disappear along with it. And it is lamentable to reflect that so many of the inhabitants of Great Britain are employed in strenuous endeavours to pull down that fabric of religion, morality, and social happiness, which by means of the Sabbath has been reared and consolidated in these lands, and which has for centuries been no less the envy and admiration of the world than the blessing and glory of our people. 1 Old and New Testament Connected, &c. (1720), Part i. p. 391. CHAPTER IV. ECONOMY OF A WEEKLY HOLY DAY. "If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest, but the axe, the spade, the anvil, and the loom had been at work every day, during the last three centuries, I have not the smallest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people, and a less civilized people than we are."-LORD MACAULAY. IT is a remarkable fact, that, while the multiplication of holidays impoverishes individuals and communities, the opposite effect is produced by a weekly day of sacred rest. The labourer receives the same amount of wages for his six days' work that he would receive for seven.1 The institution, therefore, brings to the working classes once in the week a clear gain of a resting day, which they can apply to the husbanding of their strength, to the cultivation of their minds, and to the instruction of their families. By means of the wise and merciful appointment of a Sabbath, they are enabled to spend fifty-two days of the year most profitably to their own interests, physical, mental, and moral, and beneficially in various ways to their kindred and neighbours, not only without lessening the amount, but with the effect of enhancing the value of their marketable time. That the Sabbath is a financial benefit is manifest from its sanitary power. The natural result of the more uninterrupted health, and greater physical strength which it secures, combined with the pleasure and hope suffused by its rest over the engagements of the week, is an increased amount of human labour in every grade of society. Dr. Farre has told us that men of whatever class who must necessarily be occupied six days in the course of the week would, in the course of life, gain by abstinence on the seventh, and would by the increased vigour 1 "The workmen are aware, and the masters in many trades admit the fact, that were Sunday labour to cease, it would occasion no diminution of the weekly wages."-Report on the Sabbath (1832), p. 8. |