* * * * *
THE NEW CRYSTAL PALACE
AND THE
CHRISTIAN SABBATH.
ISAIAH V. 24.—“Therefore, as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the
flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and
their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have cast away the
law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of
Israel.”
LUKE XVI. 13.—“Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.”
2 TIMOTHY III. 4.—“Lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God: from
such turn away.”
A SIMULTANEOUS effort is this day being made in this parish, by ministers
of various sections of the one Church of Christ, to direct public
attention to a question of no ordinary magnitude, with which the cause of
national righteousness is identified; and to stir up the community to
unite in vigorous, yet peaceful opposition to a project, which involves
the perpetration of a great national sin.
Most of those now present have gazed with admiration on the marvels of
the memorable and magnificent Crystal Palace of 1851, the design of which
originated with the same Prince who, in his homage to the Supreme Ruler
of nations, had previously suggested as an appropriate motto for our
Royal Exchange the words now graven on its pediment: “The earth is the
Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.” It was in beautiful harmony with this
recognition of the sovereignty of Heaven, and it formed one of its most
gratifying features, that the doors of the Crystal Palace were closed on
the Lord’s day. England thus solemnly proclaimed to assembled nations
that she exalted the spiritual above the material—the eternal above the
temporal—the immortal above the perishable—in a word, by this public
acknowledgment of the Divine law, the Royal Commissioners, in the
nation’s name, put honour on the Sabbath of God.
The gorgeous fabric, whose wonders had attracted myriads of spectators,
having fulfilled its design, by exhibiting in peaceful rivalry the
products of genius, and science, and industrial skill, collected from all
nations, was ordered to be taken down. Many were anxious for its
preservation; meetings were held and petitions presented to the
Legislature on the subject; but it was finally decided, by a vote of the
House of Commons, that, in accordance with the terms of the original
agreement, the structure should be removed. The directors of a railway
company then resolved to purchase the materials, and reconstruct the
edifice on a new site, in an improved and more enduring form, and on a
scale of unprecedented magnificence and splendour. In connection with
this movement, a crisis most grave and momentous has come upon us,
fraught with the elements of danger to our national Sabbath, and to that
morality and social order which largely depend on its due observance. It
is stated, with an air of authority, by the press, that an application
has been made to the Prime Minister of the country for a charter of
incorporation, enabling the company to open the Crystal Palace, under
Royal sanction, on the afternoon of the Lord’s day; that he has signified
his acquiescence, and that the responsible advisers of the Crown are
prepared to recommend the granting of the charter, with the required
licence. It, therefore, becomes the duty of every Christian in the land,
who rejoices in the blessed privileges of the Sabbath, to plead for its
full and faithful observance. True it is that some concessions are made,
in apparent deference to the religious feelings of the community. It is
proposed that no train shall run before one o’clock on the Lord’s day;
that after that hour the public shall be admitted only to the park and to
that portion of the palace called the Winter Garden; whilst the
compartments devoted exclusively to productions of manufacturing and
commercial industry shall be closed; and further, the directors undertake
that on the Sabbath day no spirituous liquors shall be sold in the
grounds. But notwithstanding these plausible concessions, nay all the
more because of the false principles which I am persuaded they involve, I
still regard the proposition with abhorrence, as opposed to an express
command of Heaven, and I stand here to-night, resolved in the strength of
God to lift up a solemn protest against it, and to urge on all who hear
me the necessity of endeavouring, by dutiful remonstrance, to prevent the
systematic violation of God’s law under the sanction of the executive
authority of the realm.
There are certain leading ideas suggested by the passages I have read,
which bear upon the subject now before us. It is clearly indicated that
the law of God cannot be despised or violated by any nation without
bringing down upon it the righteous judgments of Heaven (this being
especially true with regard to the transgression of the law of the
Sabbath), and it is also taught that the service which God demands is
such as will admit of no compromise, either with the claims of
covetousness on the one hand, or with the pursuit of sinful pleasure on
the other.
I. _The Law of God cannot be violated by any nation_, _without exposing
it to the righteous judgments of Heaven_. This is a great principle
repeatedly laid down in Scripture, and fully authenticated by the facts
of history. It holds true with regard to individuals as well as nations,
and is abundantly illustrated by the course of events in the natural as
well as in the spiritual world. There are fixed laws which regulate the
phenomena of the sun and the solar system, by which the planets move in
their orbits, and all derive light and heat from the king of day; and if
it were possible to disturb this harmony by any dislocating force, then
all things in the universe would be out of place, and “chaos” would “come
again.” There are fixed laws, also, by which health and life are
regulated, protected, and preserved, any violation of which brings its
own punishment. You cannot take up fire without being burned, for it is
the property of fire to burn; you cannot handle the venomous serpent, and
expect that it will not pierce you with its deadly fangs; for it is the
nature of the serpent—the very law of its life—to poison and destroy.
You cannot eat or drink to excess, without deranging that beautiful
concord of the bodily organs which constitutes health, and bringing on
yourself disease and premature death. And if we turn to the spiritual
world, we shall find similar results. Sin is the spiritual serpent which
poisons and destroys the life of the soul. Extend its baneful influence
from the individual to a family, all are brought under its blight and
curse. And so it is of communities and nations, which are aggregates of
individuals, and subject, in their collective capacity, to the same law.
The kingdoms of the earth are placed under the eye and control of Him who
is Governor among the nations, and to whom they are under solemn
responsibilities. “Righteousness exalteth a nation, whilst sin is the
reproach (as well as the ruin) of any people.” Let it not be forgotten
that the Lord Jesus Christ is “King of nations,” as well as “King of
saints;” and oftentimes, in the history of the world, have his judgments
been made manifest. Seated on his mediatorial throne, “all power is
given unto him in heaven and in earth.” The nation or kingdom that will
not serve him “shall be utterly wasted;” and history, we repeat, has
fearfully attested the exercise of his dread authority, and the
vindication of his prerogative to “root out, to pull down, and to
destroy” the despisers of his law.
Thus it was that God dealt with the heathen nations of Canaan. The
“iniquity of the Amorites” was “not yet full” when He made a covenant
with Abraham, subsequently renewed to Jacob at the foot of the mystic
ladder; but the cup was filled up to overflowing when Joshua crossed the
Jordan as Heaven’s own avenger.
It was so with Egypt. She held in iron bondage the people of God, and
clung to her abominable idolatry in the worship of birds and beasts and
creeping things. Even while by the colony of shepherds, who had migrated
from Palestine to Goshen, the light of Divine truth was kindled in her
midst, she remained an impenitent rebel; and when ten plagues had wasted
her borders, and sent the wail of sore bereavement in one night into
every family, the last act in the drama of Divine judgment was
consummated in that anger which whelmed the chariots and horsemen and all
the hosts of Pharaoh in the surging billows of the Red Sea.
Look, again, at proud Nineveh. Why did she perish? The answer is found
in the Divine declaration, “I will make thy grave, for thou art vile.”
Yes, so deep did Jehovah dig the dishonoured grave of Nineveh, that only
now, at the end of 2500 years, are her obelisks and winged lions—her idol
gods of stone, and the engraved memorials of her battles, her sieges, and
her victories, disentombed and brought to the light of day, to the
confusion of the sceptic, and the confirmation of the “sure word of
prophecy.”
And was it not so with Babylon—the beauty of the Chaldees’
excellency—which God in his anger made as Sodom and Gomorrah—a solitary
waste for owls to dwell therein, and dragons to cry in her pleasant
palaces? And if Tyre, once the emporium of commerce, whose “merchants
were princes,” and whose “traffickers were the honourable of the
earth”—if she has now become a rock on which the fisherman dries his
nets;—if the desolate caves and dwellings of Petra, like the eagle’s
eyrie “in the sides of the rock,” tell of what Edom once was in the day
of her glory and pride;—if the republics of Greece have long since
perished under the fierce barbarism of their Moslem invaders;—if
Carthage, despite the valour of her sons and the consummate skill of her
accomplished chief, fell, trodden to the dust beneath the iron hoof of
her victorious rival, Rome;—and if the colossal empire of Rome itself,
then the mistress of the world, has crumbled into fragments, bequeathing
to the genius of history such ample materials for the wondrous story of
her “Decline and Fall;”—if Attila and Alaric were the scourges of God to
hasten her downfall;—if, later still, France and Spain and the republics
of Italy have been the scene of frightful convulsions and bloody wars,
surely these impressive lessons were written on the page of the world’s
annals to teach us the solemn truth, that God punishes guilty _nations as
such_ for the violation of his laws—that “verily there is a God who
judgeth in the earth.”
II. If it be true, in a general sense, that the violation of the laws of
God brings wrath upon a people, we have abundant evidence to show that
the _violation of the law of the Sabbath_, _in an especial and emphatic
manner_, _provokes the Divine judgments_. It was one of the crowning
acts of Israel’s wickedness and apostasy that she had ceased to honour
the day of God; and one of the causes of the Babylonish captivity was
indicated in the awful charge, “My Sabbaths have they greatly polluted.”
And so you find that when God assigns the period of Israel’s bondage in a
strange land, by a strong figure He represents the very soil of Canaan as
outraged by their past profanation of his holy day, and declares that the
land should have her Sabbaths—(that was when the people should be carried
away captive to Babylon)—“as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your
enemies’ land, then shall the land rest and enjoy her Sabbaths, because
ye did not rest in your Sabbaths when ye dwelt upon it.” And how awful
was the warning addressed to rebellious Israel by the mouth of Jeremiah:
“But if ye will not hearken unto me to hallow the Sabbath day, and not to
bear a burden, even entering in at the gates of Jerusalem on the
Sabbath-day, then will I kindle a fire in the gates thereof, and it shall
devour the palaces of Jerusalem, and it shall not be quenched!” Is all
this, I ask, an inexplicable mystery? Has it no instruction for us?—no
application to the times in which we live—no voice of warning for our
guidance? On the contrary, is it not clear that the fourth commandment
in the moral law is what the keystone is to the arch—what the heart is to
the bodily frame—what the foundation is to the building, that the
observance of this commandment lies at the very basis of national
morality and national greatness? And if it be wickedly violated,
systematically, deliberately violated under the sanction of human
authority, in direct defiance of Divine law, by any people, utter and
irretrievable ruin must fall on that guilty nation; the Lord of Hosts
will “break the pride of its power,” and bring a sword that shall “avenge
the quarrel of his covenant!”
III. Closely connected with the profanation of this day by Israel was
_apostasy in religion_. They departed from the cardinal truth of God’s
unity to the worship of the “gods many and lords many” of the heathen
nations around them. Thus, the sanctuary being forsaken and the Sabbath
violated, they gave heed to the instruction of lying and wicked prophets,
and a flood of ungodliness was poured all over the land. And even after
their return from bondage, the leaven of their wickedness
remained—idolatrous alliances, intermarriages with heathen nations, and
other crimes, are connected in the sacred history with Sabbath
profanation. Hence, Nehemiah, the bold Reformer, records how he
contended with the people and even with the nobles of Judah, and how,
testifying against their sin, he said unto them, “What evil thing is this
ye do and profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers thus, and did
not our God bring all this evil upon us and upon this city? Yet ye bring
more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath.”
Now, it is precisely so with regard to the Christian Sabbath. A system
of spurious Christianity has mutilated it by the sanction of secular
occupations and sinful pleasures on that holy day. Romanism, in its
ritual and service, is, in itself, a blasphemous worship—its mass
idolatry—its priests usurpers of the prerogative of Christ, “the Great
High Priest of our profession,” and teachers not of the Gospel of Christ,
but of “another gospel”—the devotions of her people are not simple,
spiritual, and Bible-taught, but the offspring of fear marked by
superstition and self-righteousness, and by the vain repetition of
prayers to those who are no more gods than were the dumb idols of ancient
Paganism. But, in addition to this, Popery has made void the law of God,
the law of the Sabbath, by her traditions, and that in two ways.—1st, She
has dragged down this blessed day of God from that place of peculiar
glory and grandeur, where Jehovah himself has enthroned it above every
other day, and has degraded it to a level with the feasts and fasts of
the Romish calendar, making her own numerous holidays of equal authority
with the Holy Day of God’s appointment. The consequence is, that, in all
Popish countries, the holidays are better observed than the Sabbath, just
because superstition and will-worship are dear to the carnal heart.
2nd, She has robbed the law of God of its complete and permanent
authority. She has contracted the Scriptural limits of the Sabbath, and
made it a _half_ instead of a _whole_ Sabbath. Hence, when the Popish
mass is over at noon, the remaining portion of the day is regarded as a
holiday. I speak not here of countries like our own, where she
accommodates herself to the religious feelings and habits of the
community, but of countries where she holds paramount sway. There
one-half of the Sabbath is devoted to amusement and sensuous, if not
sensual enjoyment. Before famine and pestilence swept the neighbouring
island as with “the besom of destruction,” crowds of the population might
be found on the Sabbath playing at the game of football, wrestling in the
meadow, or drinking and dancing in the public-house, whilst many of the
priests were wont, as I have reason to know, to spend the evening of the
Sabbath in gay society, and shared in card-playing and carousal. And
when we look to France—the military review, the brilliant fête, the
opening of a railway, take place on the Sabbath, while the population of
Paris is divided between the attractions of Versailles, the Luxembourg,
and the Louvre, and the numerous theatres which are thrown open by
authority for those who are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.”
If we go to Rome, the centre and source of that gigantic superstition
which flings its dark shadows over the continent of Europe, we find
public “lotteries” in active operation on the Sabbath, over which
cardinals themselves preside. And in Madrid, after mass is over, the
Queen of Spain, surrounded by multitudes of her people, is present at the
cruel and revolting bull-fight.
And thus it is everywhere the spirit of Popery to mutilate the Sabbath.
If it be said this laxity prevails also in Protestant countries of the
continent, for this a twofold reason may be assigned:—first, because the
German Reformers, not excepting Luther himself, gave an uncertain sound
on the obligations of the Sabbath, and retained so much of the system
they had abandoned as to leave to their countrymen a low and imperfect
standard of Sabbath observance; and, above all, because the spirit of the
Reformation is dead in Germany, Rationalism has taken the place of
Evangelism, and “the salt has lost its savour.” It is encouraging to
know that, wherever evangelical truth has been revived on the continent,
there also is waking up a corresponding zeal for the sanctification of
the Lord’s day.
Popery, then, has always robbed God of half his own day; and wherever
this sacrilege is perpetrated, His judgments have been poured forth. As
is attested by the history of Israel in the days of old, as well as by
that of France, and Italy, and Spain, and of our own country in the days
of the Stuarts, when semi-Popery tyrannised over its victims in the
oppression and murder of the Covenanters of Scotland and of the Puritans
of England, when the first Charles perished on the scaffold after long
and bloody civil wars, and the second Charles, (whose personal profligacy
almost corrupted a whole nation, and who, as Pepys so graphically
records,) was smitten by the hand of death as he sat, surrounded by his
paramours, at the gambling-table, on the Sabbath eve, in “that glorious
gallery” of Whitehall Palace; in the judgments that came upon dynasties
and nations, as such, at these and other periods in connexion with
Sabbath desecration—we are forcibly reminded that the “Lord of the
Sabbath day,” seated at the Father’s right hand, can, as the divine word
so awfully expresses it, “strike through kings in the day of His wrath,”
and “dash” His enemies “in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
The whole Sabbath, then, belongs to God; we claim the whole of it for the
concerns of the soul and of eternity, and any secular infringement of it
must be an act of rebellion against the sovereignty of the Most High.
IV. _The Sabbath law admits of no compromise either with the claims of
covetousness on the one hand_, _or of sinful pleasure on the other_. Not
with covetousness, for it is written, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.”
Often have such compromises been attempted by individuals and by
communities, but upon them the God of heaven has ever frowned. Ye
railway directors, who overwhelm with a storm of ridicule the faithful
few who oppose the running of trains on the Sabbath day, what “fruit have
ye had” even as to success in your speculations? Ye “looked for much,
and lo! it came to little;” and “why?” saith the Lord of Hosts; “because
I did blow upon it.” And are there now men who, while they call their
palace “the people’s palace,” and themselves “the poor man’s friends,”
yet depend mainly on _the poor man’s shillings_ to swell their dividends?
“O! my soul; come not thou into their secret, unto their assembly, mine
honour, be not thou united!”
Neither, again, will this law of the Sabbath “shake hands” with those who
“are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” “From such” an
inspired apostle commands us to “_turn away_.” If you consider a whole
Sabbath spent devoutly “a weariness,” and say, “When will it be over?”—if
you prove by your practice that your attendance on the sanctuary during
one part of the Sabbath is regarded by you as a kind of licence to spend
the rest of the day in “doing your own pleasure,” then be assured that
you furnish a fearful evidence that you are destitute of the spiritual
tastes of “the new creature,” and that you are still “in the gall of
bitterness and the bond of iniquity!” And let none say that we desire to
make the Sabbath a day of gloom and not of gladness. We desire that it
should be consecrated to that God whose “ways are pleasantness,” and
because it is “the day which the Lord hath made” to exult in its
refreshing remembrances, in its blessed privileges, and in its hallowed
anticipations. And thus counting the Sabbath “A DELIGHT,” the Christian
can exclaim,
“O day most calm and bright,
The fruit of this, the next world’s bud;
The endorsement of supreme delight
Writ by a Friend, and with his blood;
The couch of time; care’s balm and bay;
The week were dark but for thy light,
Thy torch doth show the way!”
V. There are _pleas urged on behalf of this movement which demand our
notice_. It may be said that “there are already laws on the Statute Book
which license the opening of public-houses, the running of railway trains
and of steam-boats, and that the sale of Sunday newspapers, and of a host
of penny publications, many of which are most noxious in their tendency,
is also sanctioned.” We reply that all such laws are unholy, Popish and
not Protestant in their spirit and tendency, and that they directly
assail the authority and perpetual obligation of the Divine law which
says, “Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.” It was in the true
spirit of the Reformation that the Founders of the Church of England
instructed the minister to rehearse publicly the fourth commandment, and
the people to respond, “Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts
to keep this law.” It was not from Puritanical strictness or Scottish
bigotry, so called, but because the Bible was their pole-star, and the
glory of God their aim, that the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, in
their “Shorter Catechism,” taught the child to say, “The Sabbath is to be
sanctified by a holy resting _all that day_, even from such recreations
and employments as are lawful on other days, and the spending _the whole
time_ in the public and private exercise of God’s worship, except so much
as shall be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.”
But we may be told, again, that “the Sabbath is a Jewish institution.”
We marvel that any should practically forget that the law of the Sabbath
occupied a place on those tables of stone on which the Great Lawgiver
inscribed a law with His own finger, which had nothing ceremonial,
Jewish, or national in their aspect, which was constituted for all time,
and which the Great Author of the New Testament dispensation declared
that He “came not to destroy, but to fulfil.” No merely ceremonial
institution, no “_positive_” and transitory law, could have had penalties
so awful, or blessings so precious annexed to it, as we find attached to
the Sabbath, and that before the advent of the Messiah, and throughout
the whole course of Jewish national history. Born as the institution
itself was, so to speak, in Paradise; recognised by patriarchs from Noah
onward, as indicated by the division of time into weeks; lost and
trampled down under the hoof of slavery in Egypt (as it has ever been
where slavery has prevailed), but experiencing a resurrection in the
wilderness, where Israel was free to serve and sacrifice, to worship and
give praise to their fathers’ God—Sinai’s thunders but gave awful
sanction and permanent establishment to a “law” which from the beginning
had its moral claims over the whole race, and which, irrespective of all
typical institutions, was intended for the race as such, and was thus
emphatically “MADE FOR MAN.”
Under the Christian dispensation, the seventh portion of time is still
consecrated to God, the change of the day but adding a higher and holier
lustre and sanction to the Sabbath than it ever possessed before, because
it commemorates the resurrection of Him by whom Paradise is to be
restored, and who has declared from His throne, “Behold, I make all
things new.” His own example and that of His Apostles, as well as of the
churches formed by them, and the honour put on “the Queen of days” (as
Justin Martyr calls it), by the primitive Church, reminds us that the
Lord’s-day claims _our_ homage, _our_ devout and holy observance, too;
and that just in proportion as we hallow it, shall we “sanctify the Lord
God in our hearts,” and conform our practice to the pristine model of all
that is “pure, and lovely, and of good report,” as well as bring down
upon our families and upon our country the blessing of Him who is the
Governor of nations. No human government, no earthly ruler, therefore,
can set aside, or abrogate, or modify the requirements of this law, so as
to limit its sacred hours virtually to the half of the scriptural
standard, without pouring contempt on the very statute-book of Heaven!
It may be further said that, under the Gospel Dispensation, “the
strictness of its observance is relaxed because capital punishment is not
to be inflicted on its transgressors, as of old.” We reply that, in the
instance cited, capital punishment was inflicted under a theocracy (by
God Himself, as the IMMEDIATE GOVERNOR of Israel), and that this was an
emblem of that sore and everlasting punishment—that death eternal, which
will surely overtake the impenitent transgressors of the Sabbath.
Again: the apologist for the relaxation of Sabbath observance may take
shelter under the authority of the Apostle to the Gentiles, and plead
that we are free to act as we please, because Paul says, “One man
esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let
every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” But we reply, that this
passage has special reference to the _feast days_, which some Jewish
converts to Christianity thought binding, and others did not; and which
the Apostle, in a catholic spirit, left to the discretion of each
individual, as conscience might dictate. In the same spirit he says to
the Colossians, “Let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect
of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a
shadow of things to come, but the body is Christ.” Now, the Sabbath days
here mentioned as not imperatively binding were the _seventh-day_
Sabbaths, and not the _first day_ of the week, the Christian Sabbath,
commemorative of the _New Creation_, when God the Son finished the work
of Redemption, as God the Father on the seventh day ended the works which
He had made.
And here an objector may say, “if the command is to be strictly
fulfilled, the _seventh day_ should be observed.” That such an objection
should be put forward by any professing Christian is indeed strange. For
the change from the seventh to the first day of the week, we have the
example of Christ and the Apostles, and the command is in spirit and in
truth obeyed by dedicating to the service of God a _seventh portion of
time_, that portion in the Christian Church being the first day of the
week. In point of fact, it is impossible that identically the same hours
can be set apart for Sabbath observance in every part of the world. The
sun that sets on Calcutta rises on the towers of Quebec. If two ships
leave England, and sail round the globe by different routes, they will
have lost a day in their reckoning; the seventh day of the one will be
the first of the other. But amidst these variations, arising from the
earth’s motion, the Sabbath remains an immutable institute and ordinance
of Heaven. It still continues of Divine authority and of perpetual
obligation. Under the gospel it is accompanied with fresh claims on our
reverence and regard, and it is set apart under the most solemn sanctions
for the worship of Jehovah’s name.
Further, it may be pleaded that “it is unjust for those who have leisure
and opportunity during the week, to object to the opening of the Crystal
Palace on part of the Sabbath, while the masses have no other season for
relaxation from daily toil, or for inspecting the wonders of nature and
art.” Still we urge the command, “Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it
holy.” The day, the whole day, belongs to God; and he has solemnly said,
“I hate robbery for burnt offering.” The Lord of the Sabbath day has
declared that “the Sabbath was made for man”—yes, and emphatically for
the poor man. It is his, as an immortal and responsible being, and his
devout observance of it can alone make it to him a blessing and not a
curse. It is thus that the poor of this world are to be made “rich in
faith, and heirs of the kingdom which God hath promised to them that love
Him.” _In the estimate of God_, _one day in seven is not too much for
either poor or rich to prepare for eternity_.
But in truth this plea is the subterfuge of eager covetousness. While we
honour the character and labours of many Christian philanthropists among
our merchants and men of business, it cannot be denied that this is a
mammon-getting age, and that it is culpably careless of the poor. We
desire and plead for fresh air and relaxation for the poor. But it is
not by this new plan they can be rightfully secured. Let us see the poor
man’s home made comfortable and cleanly; let us cheer on the
philanthropic labours of Sabbath-schools, Ragged-schools, and City
missions; let us have our workmen’s wages paid on _Friday_, and not at
public-houses; and (as was once the case in Scotland, under the sanction
alike of custom and of law) let labour cease early on Saturday afternoon.
The poor man will thus have ample leisure furnished him to survey the
works of nature, or the wonders of art, and breathe the fresh air. Let
this be as the preparation for the Sabbath, on whose enclosure neither
labour nor pleasure may intrude, because it is “holy ground.”
Another plea remains to be considered. “The tendency of this exhibition
(it is said) will be to elevate and purify the mind. Art, and science,
and taste, will educate and reform; they will empty the public-houses,
and wean the people from gross indulgence.” Still, we say, the day is
God’s, and we are not to do evil that good may come. Shut up the public
houses, and they cannot be filled. Close those railways, and stop those
steam-boats from plying the river, which now allure multitudes from the
house of God on the Sabbath. Let us _abolish unscriptural laws_, instead
of filling up the measure of our iniquity by a crowning act of guilt.
“The sights of the Crystal Palace will educate and purify!” Why, when
vice loses its grossness, has it necessarily lost its power? Is it true
that statuary and painting, and works of art and genius, can refine and
regenerate men? In their own place we despise them not. They bring
honour to the great Creator, who is the source of all excellence in
genius and skill. But they cannot change the heart, or quicken the
conscience, or prepare for eternity. And be assured, that if the Crystal
Palace be opened on the Lord’s day, and fifty or sixty thousand
spectators be admitted, the nation’s morality will be undermined more
surely and more rapidly than ever it was before. What though the use of
spirituous liquors be strictly prohibited _within_ the grounds,
facilities for obtaining drink _without_ will increase on every hand.
Sunday trading will receive a fresh impetus, and the afternoon spent by
tens of thousands in these excursions of pleasure, our churches will be
emptied and our domestic circles broken up; while, in the train of these
evils, personal demoralization will inevitably follow. In this downward
career we may, ere long, descend to the position of France. There public
galleries are thrown open on the Sabbath, and the multitude stands
entranced in admiration before the sculptures and the paintings of the
great masters of art. But this people, so polished, and so joyous, are
strangers to that deep-toned earnestness and gravity which makes a nation
great through the inspiring hopes of a life immortal and divine;—they are
“filled with all unrighteousness,” and, in times of political excitement,
amid scenes of cruelty and savage violence, they give awful proof that
“they have no fear of God before their eyes.”
The new Crystal Palace, now in progress in the neighbourhood of this
metropolis, is to be a spacious temple, dedicated to science and art, in
which all that is ingenious and beautiful and rare may be exhibited for
the improvement and intellectual gratification of the people. This is an
object which assuredly every enlightened Christian would applaud and
approve, if confined within the limits which Scripture prescribes. We
consider it most desirable that facilities should be afforded to our
population devoutly to contemplate the works of God, as in glory and
beauty they have sprung from his plastic hand, and to survey the
marvellous productions of that genius and skill of which He is the Divine
original. We believe, science and learning and art, even now, are so
many pioneers preparing the way of the Lord; and that at the period when
the religion of the cross shall triumph, they will bring all their
trophies and lay them down at Emmanuel’s feet. But, my brethren, before
that day can come, science, genius, learning, and art, must be “baptized
and sanctified:” they must be subordinated to the progress of the
Redeemer’s kingdom. And sure I am, that if they are put in the place of
religion—if they are brought into collision with, and antagonism to a law
that is alike immutable and divine—if they arrogate to themselves half
the day which belongs exclusively and entirely to Him who is Lord of the
Sabbath—if, in the language of impious presumption, they say, “we have a
fane as holy as the Christian temple—our claims to impart instruction are
equal to those who preach the gospel to the poor, and who speak of death
and judgment, of heaven and hell”—then, I say, science however profound,
genius however soaring, art however exquisitely skilful, put forward
blasphemous claims; and if we, as a nation, from deference to their
pretensions, sanction the public profanation of any portion of the
Sabbath, “our root shall be as rottenness, and our blossom shall go up as
dust, because we shall have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and
despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”
But it may be further said, “that the working classes should not be
debarred from bodily rest and relaxation on the Lord’s day.” We
cheerfully grant it; but we deny that the opponents of the opening of the
Crystal Palace on the Sabbath seek to deprive the working man of his
Sabbath’s bodily rest from toil. How great the difference between the
two classes of working men—those who “rest according to the commandment,”
who repair in clean and decent garb to the house of God morning and
evening, and spend the intervals of public worship in reading and
meditation, or in the instruction of the young. We ask you by personal
examination to contrast the refreshment both of mind and body with which
this class return to their work on Monday morning, with the jaded
spirits, the shattered nerves of the frequenters of steam-boats, the
occupants of excursion-trains, the patrons of the tea-garden and the
public-house, who go back to labour unrefreshed and unblessed, and too
often the victims of surfeiting, drunkenness, and riotous excess. And
are we to be told that such an argument is invalid in the present case,
because no spirituous liquors are to be sold within the park or the
palace on the Lord’s day; when (as present preparations _without_ the
walls clearly indicate) we know that the gin-palace and the public-house
will thrive and prosper on the traffic of multitudes who will enter them
_first_ and visit them _last_, and without whose unhallowed stimulants
the sculpture, the flowers, and the fountains would lose half their
charms?
And, moreover, instead of Sabbath rest, will not the opening of this
building on the Lord’s day lead to _a vast increase of Sabbath labour_?
Must there not be a large addition to the staff of railway officials, as
well as of police, required, not only on the main line of traffic, but
also to attend to, to accommodate, or to keep in order the multitudes
who, by excursion-trains on other lines, will fill our streets and crowd
our public vehicles on their way to this scene of profanation?
And now, let me conclude by calling on all Christians to come forward
without delay, and to raise a loud, united, and solemn protest against
this iniquitous project.
If this Protestant nation speak out boldly and decidedly, we do not see
that any Minister of the Crown will despise the remonstrance and the
warning. And, most of all, we are strong in the confidence, that if the
_real_ tendency of this measure is fully explained to our gracious Queen,
and if she find that it is disapproved of and abjured by the great
religious bodies of the empire, she will not rashly imperil our safety,
or be the instrument of establishing a Popish and a divided Sabbath.
Can we, I ask, afford to despise the authority of the Supreme Ruler of
the Universe? If He has visited us already with famine and pestilence,
two of His “sore judgments,” why may He not, if we persist in rebelling
with a high hand, permit us to know, also, the horrors of “war,” and that
from the presence of an invading foe? There may be some who trust with
confidence to our wooden walls and to our disciplined armies; but we,
even while remembering their past achievements and undying renown, dare
not do so. If the present ruler of France has boldly resolved to
imitate, step by step, the policy of his great and ambitious uncle; and
if, as is confidently said, he cherishes with bitter hate the memory of
the bloody field where the star of Napoleon’s destiny set for ever; who
can tell (if we provoke God to desert us) whether he may not be permitted
to make an assault on our island home, which for a time would paralyse
our commerce, outrage our liberties, and stain the pride of our boasting
confidence in the sight of the whole world?
May that God, before whom our fathers did walk, save us from the guilt
which would draw down His vengeance. May He increase among us the number
of those whose patriotism is animated and directed by Christian
principle. May He give “peace in our borders, and fill us with the
finest of the wheat.” May He be “a wall of fire around us, and the glory
in the midst!” May he give us grace as a nation so to keep His own Day,
that we may reap the blessing with which he has promised to crown its
faithful observance:
“IF THOU TURN AWAY THY FOOT FROM THE SABBATH, FROM DOING THY PLEASURE
ON MY HOLY DAY; AND CALL THE SABBATH A DELIGHT, THE HOLY OF THE LORD,
HONOURABLE; AND SHALT HONOUR HIM, NOT DOING THINE OWN WAYS, NOR
FINDING THINE OWN PLEASURE, NOR SPEAKING THINE OWN WORDS: THEN SHALT
THOU DELIGHT THYSELF IN THE LORD; AND I WILL CAUSE THEE TO RIDE UPON
THE HIGH PLACES OF THE EARTH, AND FEED THEE WITH THE HERITAGE OF
JACOB, THY FATHER: FOR THE MOUTH OF THE LORD HATH SPOKEN IT.”—_Isa._
LVIII. 13, 14.