land, or even those of God and nature; robbing, murdering, and at country weddings, markets, burials, and on other public occasions, to be seen, both men and women, perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming, and fighting together. But how improved the times when Scotland had begun to recover from the effects of political oppression, and of anti-Sabbatic influences, and to feel the reforming power of its religious faith and institutions. The following is the testimony of an Englishman, who sojourned in Glasgow in 1703, to the good morals of that city and its neighbourhood: "All the while he was there he never saw any drunk, nor heard any swear, and in all the inns of the road to that part of Scotland, they had family worship performed."1 We add the remarkable attestation of Scottish morality in general by another Englishman, Defoe, who writes thus of the state of matters in 1717: "The people are restrained in the ordinary practice of common immoralities, such as swearing, drunkenness, slander, fornication, and the like. As to theft, murder, and other capital crimes, they come under the cognizance of the civil magistrates, as in other countries; but in those things which the Church has power to punish, the people being constantly and impartially prosecuted, they are thereby the more restrained, kept sober, and under government, and you may pass through twenty towns in Scotland without seeing any broil, or hearing one oath sworn in the streets; whereas if a blind man was to come from there into England, he shall know the first town he sets his foot in within the English border by hearing the name of God blasphemed and profanely used even by the very little children on the street.”2 The same contrasts are exhibited in our own day. We shall be told, indeed, of the drunkenness which has brought a stigma upon the best Sabbath-keeping country in the world, and on one of its most God-fearing cities. Much might be said of the exaggerations of the evil in both cases. But into this question it is not necessary for us to enter. Let us take the case of Glasgow, where, after allowing for over-statement, it is admitted that a rapidly accumulating population, including vast hordes of immigrants from various parts of the world, are in many instances re 1 Works of Matthew Henry (1853), vol. i. p. 585. gardless of the laws of sobriety. Here two instances of moral contrast are presented which are favourable to our argument. One of these is, of Glasgow in 1703, when, as we have lately seen attested, not a drunkard was to be seen in that city, with Glasgow in 1861. It will surely not be pretended that the law of the Sabbath is better observed or better enforced in the latter than it was in the former year. The reverse is the fact. What, then, has that law to do with the immorality of Glasgow? The commercial metropolis of Scotland, "flourished" once "by the preaching of the Word,” but she has deteriorated in our day because so many refuse to hear the Word. Vice has kept pace, not with the observance, but with the neglect of the Lord's day. The other contrast is between the distinguished excellence of the many who honour the day, and the moral and physical degradation of the too numerous class who despise it. Intemperance and profaneness are both cause and effect, while it is true everywhere that the men who most respect the Sabbath are the most moral in all respects in their own conduct, and almost the only persons who do anything in their localities for promoting sobriety and every virtue among their neighbours. Let those who will not receive such views on the testimony of all history, and on the evidence of the most palpable facts before their eyes, instead of indulging in vague and unfounded aspersions of the best of characters, submit the matter to the most sifting statistical inquiry. On such a trial the friends of religion might peril the whole case, having no desire to stand by any institution that is injurious to good conduct, but at the same time having no doubt that the result would be found to be, that the most exact observers of the Sabbath are generally the most temperate members of society, and that Sabbath-breakers and drunkards are usually one and the same class of men. But when we think of a higher style of virtue than mere immunity from the more flagrant enormities, we in vain look for its prevalence to any extent except among that class who devoutly regard the sacred day. It is among them that we find our philanthropists, the men, too, who brave the hazards or suffer the privations of a residence in unpropitious climates, and among savage tribes, solely for the spiritual good of their fellow-creatures, the persons, moreover, who dive into the darkest, filthiest, and most dangerous haunts of wickedness in our large cities, with the view of reclaiming the inhabitants from ignorance, wretchedness, and crime, or who, while others care not for the neglected and profligate except to scowl upon them as they cross their path, patiently labour in the self-denied and arduous work of instructing the young that they may rescue them from ruin, and guide them in the path of purity and happiness. What scheme, indeed, for enlightening the ignorant, reforming the immoral, relieving poverty, abating disease, and comforting sorrow, has not among its principal patrons, and most active auxiliaries, the very men whom the thoughtless revile as hypocrites, because they are faithful to what they hold to be a Divine and benignant law, the law of the Sabbath? Is it possible that a law which produces such fruits of mercy and kindness can be a bad law? The imputation of hypocrisy to men who are the friends of such a law, and bright illustrations of its moral excellence, is itself a confirmation of our views, for certainly, if those who prefer such a charge had enjoyed the mental discipline of the Sabbath, or had imbibed its spirit, they could not have been so ignorant of language and character, so wanting in courtesy and candour, or so destitute of prudence and self-respect, as to apply to the objects of their abuse a term so notoriously, wickedly, and stupidly inapposite. CHAPTER V. DESECRATION OF THE SABBATH AT HOME AND ABROAD. IT has been too indiscriminately and confidently affirmed that the Jews were required to keep the Sabbath with a strictness which is not demanded of Christians. It is true that the institution as belonging to the Mosaic economy involved more physical labour, than is now necessary, and that its judicial penalty imparted to it a severity which is not congenial to the free spirit of Christianity. But with the exception of such circumstances, which belonged to a temporary economy, to the accidents not the substance of the Sabbatic law, we are under that law as much as the Jews were. It has not modified to Christians the other precepts of the Decalogue that they too have been detached from the Levitical ceremonies and the political law of Judaism. No one will affirm that a Christian is not to be as strictly obedient to parents, or as rigidly truthful and honest in his dealings, as was the Jew. The prohibition to the latter of going out of his place on the seventh day, refers to the unnecessary work of gathering manna, on that day. The law forbidding the kindling of a fire on the Sabbath must, from its connexion with the account of the rearing of the tabernacle, and from our Lord's exposition of the Fourth Commandment, in which he vindicates the performance of works of necessity and mercy on the day of rest, be understood of such an action as had respect to secular work, or as was not indispensable. The Jews, no doubt, made the law of the Sabbath rigorous by their additions to its requirements, but we are to take our views of Sabbatical duties from the Bible, and not from the opinions or practices of its corrupters. The privileges of Christians are greater than those of the ancients; but as it would be no privilege to be less truthful and honest than they were re quired to be, so it would be no blessing, whether for body or soul, to have the day of sacred rest abridged. The addition which Christianity makes to our privileges is designed and fitted to raise us to closer conformity to the demands of the law. It is never the exactness of compliance with the letter of any law that the Scriptures condemn, but attention to the mere letter the form without the power of godliness. Having set forth so fully the duties of the Sabbath, it is not necessary that we should enlarge on those omissions and acts by which the institution is profaned. We will do little more than name them as they are admirably presented in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The Sabbath is profaned by the omission of its duties. If the house of God be forsaken, if the preaching of the Gospel, the public celebration of Divine praise, and the offering of prayer, collecting for the poor, observing the Lord's Supper, and the cultivation of domestic and personal piety be neglected, not only are these ordinances and claims of our religion set at nought, but the day of the Lord is not devoted to some of its most sacred and important objects. The day is profaned by idleness. To take advantage of its leisure for doing nothing, is to pervert the day of Him who rose early on the first day of the week, and, both before and after His resurrection, redeemed in holy and beneficent works the season sacred to the immediate service of God. The Lord's day is profaned by the careless performance of its duties. All these should be performed with the vigour and ardour which love and delight inspire, and not in the spirit and manner thus described: "Behold, what a weariness is it" (Mal. i. 12, et seq.) "When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat?" (Am. viii. 4, 5). The Lord's day is profaned by the doing on it of anything which is in itself sinful. Whatever the sin intemperance or theft, for example-it is made double by being perpetrated on that day. "Moreover, this they have done unto me; they have defiled my sanctuary in the same day, and have profaned my Sabbaths. For when they had slain their children to their idols, then they came the same day into my sanctuary to profane it; and, lo, thus have they done in the midst of mine house (Ezek. xxiii. 38, 39). The Lord's day is profaned by unnecessary thoughts about secular mat |