66

here, and the forfeiture of the better life hereafter? "Masters and men are wholly employed during the day, and more so on the Sunday, because many noblemen and gentlemen who are members of Parliament, have more company on Saturday and Sunday, these being the only leisure their parliamentary duties afford them, consequently there is more done on these days than on others." "Amongst the nobility and gentry there is most business done on Saturday and Sunday."2 "From the nature of your business, do you see any means of diminishing your occupation, as long as the upper classes continue to give dinners on that day [Sunday]?” 'I do not see that there is." . . . "Then, speaking as a conscientious man, it would be agreeable to you if the upper classes of society did fix on other days rather than Sunday for their great dinners ?" "I should most decidedly say so, as far as regards myself individually, and the comfort and happiness of my servants; for I consider it to be a duty that I owe them to relieve them as much as possible from their duties on Sunday; whether they employ it in religious subjects, or in any other manner, it gives them the opportunity, if they think proper, to improve it; and if they do not, it still affords them the same advantages which most other people enjoy, that is, a day of repose after a week of hard work."3

To masters and employers of workmen another large share of Sabbath desecration must be ascribed. While many tradesmen, forty-nine out of fifty in London, desire to be relieved from Sunday trading, there are many others who are influenced by the cupidity and speculation so prevalent in our time voluntarily to bind fetters on working-men in place of the holy and merciful restraints of the Sabbath law. Let us hear the following statements on this latter point: "Does the journeyman get additional wages for working on Sunday?" "None at all." "Then it is only the desire of gain on the part of the master that induces them to go on ?" "That circumstance is the whole of it."4 "Is there a general desire on the part of the tradesmen in Richmond to see 1 Report, Evidence of Mr. J. B., Fishmonger, p. 96.

2 Report, Evidence of W. D., Fishmonger, p. 104.

3 Report, Evidence of Mr. J. Chaplain, proprietor of Clarendon Hotel, Bond Street, pp. 127-8.

4 Report, Evidence of Mr. J. C., Jr., Baker, Richmond, p. 189.

the Sunday better observed than it is at present?" "I think there is with one part, but the other part are more anxious to get money.

"1

In defence of this reckless spirit, which, for the sake of money, disregards the law of God and the rights of man, it is pleaded that it is impossible to avoid it, and that in the general race and rush they must do like others if they would not be distanced in the course, or run over in the crowd. But what is in opposition to those Divine statutes which forbid and condemn the too eager pursuit of gain, the hastening to be rich, and the "adding of house to house, and laying field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the earth," admits of no apology. The spirit is not only ungodly, but selfish and unfeeling as regards the interests of those whom it employs to be the instruments of its gratification, turning them into beasts of burden or mere machines, and caring not, if they serve such a turn, what becomes of their mental improvement, their souls, their everlasting interests. Mammon is indeed a cruel god, who has no regard for the flesh and blood, the noble faculties and feelings, the precious souls which his votaries sacrifice in his honour. Many examples there are to be found indeed in the commercial world of men who really feel for their workmen, and provide for them the means of promoting their health, comfort, and instruction. There are our Buxtons and other kindred spirits. Where, however, human beings are persuaded that the great object of life is to be rich, how can we suppose that they will allow their dependants time and opportunity for that mental and moral culture, of the value of which to themselves, and especially to working men, they have no just conception.

There is one way in which employers promote the desecration of the Sabbath that has not even the plea of the smallest contribution to their advantage or pleasure. We refer to the payment of their men at a time that exposes the latter to various temptations and injuries, and in some cases necessitates the infraction of the Divine law. There have been instances in which wages were actually paid on the Lord's day. It is not long since this was done in some parts of England, cases few, we trust, and

1 Report, Evidence of Mr. J. C., Jr., Baker, Richmond, p. 190.

now discontinued. It was proved in the evidence from which we have been quoting, that masters, by not paying their men till Saturday night, obliged them to make Sunday marketings, which occasioned crowds on Sabbath, subjected the workman to increased expense, and made him abstain from going to church; and that there was no necessity for Sunday marketing.1

There are influences from without which do much to lower the general tone of religion and morals, and to foster Sabbath desecration. One kind of influence affects chiefly the upper and middle ranks of the community, that originating in their intercourse with foreigners. It is not to be supposed that the visits of our countrymen to the Continent, so multiplied of late by the facilities of communication, can have been without considerable injury to our national customs and manners. Familiarity with a secular Sabbath tends to abate a sense of the evil. A partial attendance in the house of God, and occasional absences, cease to be considered as anything wrong. And the frivolity and demoralizing amusements of other lands fascinate the mind and corrupt the heart.

Another species of influence has had its sphere of action among the remaining class of society. The immigration of so many natives of the sister island has been felt in an immense addition to the poor-rates, in defeating attempts to repress crime and disease, and in bringing down our comparatively instructed and moral population to their own level, and in some cases below it, as the impetus in consequence of the greater height fallen from must be greater. All this must be unfavourable to a regard for sacred institutions. But as the persons imported bring with them a religion which recognises only a fraction of a Sabbath, their practices on that day come to be regarded with decreasing aversion and fear, and in course of time to be imitated.

The defective, erroneous, and worthless opinions propagated through the press form the only other cause of the evil in question which we have to name. Among these opinions are deficient and incorrect views with regard to the institution itself. sent a specimen or two. The first concerns the Continent. know," observes the Rev. T. Plitt of Bonn, "that an opinion pre

1 Report, Evidence, pp. 29, 30.

We pre"You

vails in our country that there is no real connexion between the
Christian Sunday and the command of God, Remember the
Sabbath-day to keep it holy;' but that the Sunday celebration
is a human institution which must be left to Christian liberty,
because it is good, and because it is enjoined by the Church. This
view, in different gradations, you find too general in Germany;
and I am quite convinced you agree with me in believing that a
truly Christian Sabbath observance is only possible if we hold
that the law given to Adam, and repeated on Mount Sinai, Re-
member the Sabbath-day to keep it holy,' has an eternal obliga-
tion."1
We give another specimen, one relating to our own
country: "The thought of writing at all was suggested to me by
a few words only, which I heard interchanged in the street of a
country town, but which were sufficient to convince me that Dr.
Whately's pamphlet, Thoughts on the Sabbath, was doing extreme
mischief; and that through it an opinion was gaining ground
that the Episcopacy of our Church was opposed to the principle
of keeping holy the Sabbath-day. Under such circumstances, I
was induced to write these pages, to vindicate the Divine institu-
tion of the Christian Sabbath."2 We find in the pamphlet itself,
on which Mr. Barter animadverts, evidence that its views are not
fitted to produce the most elevated morality. In an address to
the inhabitants of Dublin and its vicinity, the Archbishop says,
"If, for instance, after devoutly attending Divine worship with
your family, you just turn into a shop to buy some trifling article,
you indeed may not feel that you are doing anything that inter-
feres with your own devout observance of the day; but you should
remember that the expectation of some such chance-customers
may induce the tradesman to remain all day in his shop, occupied
in his ordinary worldly affairs, and deprived of his best, and per-
haps only opportunity, of attending to the concerns of his soul."
From a sentence in the Thoughts on the Sabbath, to which the
Address is appended, we learn the following fact relative to per-
sons known to the writer as entertaining his opinions on the ques-
tion : "I have formerly hinted my suspicions, in an essay already
before the public [On the Love of Truth], that some persons who

1 Religious Condition of Christendom, pp. 479, 480.
2 Barter's Answer to Whately, p. 35.

3 Pp. 43, 44.

"3

do not really believe the Mosaic law relative to the Sabbath to be binding on Christians, yet think it right to encourage or tacitly connive at that belief from views of expediency, for fear of unsettling the minds of the common people. Indeed, I know, as a fact, respecting several persons, what is probably the case with many others, that they fully coincide with my views on the present question, though they judge it not advisable, at present at least, to come forward and avow their opinion.'

"1

The influence of the unguarded expressions of Luther and others on the subject before us was very extensively, and has been also permanently, injurious to the interests of religion and morality. We have only to look to the Protestant countries of the Continent for the proof. "Their view about the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment as a Jewish ordinance," observes Fairbairn, “told most unfavourably upon the interests of religion on the Continent. There can be little doubt that this was the evil root from which chiefly sprung so soon afterwards such a mass of Sabbath desecration, and which has rendered it so difficult ever since to restore the day of God to its proper place in the feelings and observances of the people. . . . The evil, once begun, proceeded rapidly from bad to worse, till it scarcely left in many places so much as the form of religion. No doubt many other causes were at work in bringing about so disastrous a result, but much was certainly owing to the error under consideration. And it reads a solemn and impressive warning to both ministers and people, not only to resist to the utmost all encroachments upon the sanctity of the Lord's day, but also to beware of weakening any of the foundations on which the obligation to keep that day is made to rest; and here, as well as in other things, to seek, with Leighton, that they may be saved from the errors of wise men, yea, and of good

men.

There is another class of opinions which, without referring to our institution at all, operate against it, by fostering the supposition that religion is not the principal concern of man. The mere absence of religion from a publication which is constantly read, and the treatment of every topic as if there were nothing of importance beyond the present scene, have a most secularizing effect Typology, vol. ii. pp. 475, 476.

1 Thoughts on the Sabbath, p. 1.