A Few Words on the Crystal Palace Question

A FEW WORDS ON THE CRYSTAL PALACE QUESTION.

No Clergyman who values his own ease will write on either side of a question connected however remotely with that of Sunday observance. If he takes the one side, the world accuses him of bigotry: if the other, his brethren stigmatize him as a Latitudinarian. What is worse, he runs the risk of either furnishing a handle to the irreligious, or perplexing and depressing the thoughtful and serious.

Nor is the danger removed by his occupying a position of the utmost possible moderation, acknowledging the strength of both sides, and endeavouring to adjust with all evenness their conflicting claims. The only result is, that he becomes the prey of both parties: each holds on its way, and the voice of candour is silenced by the uproar.

Yet the truth must be spoken. No personal considerations ought to suppress it. No anxiety for the cause of good can justify a timid compromise with error.

It is impossible to reflect without a sense of deep disquiet upon the present position of the Sunday question in England. It is a point on which men’s professions are at war with their conduct. It is a point on which traditional ideas are held in forced conjunction with altered practices. It is a point on which Christian teachers will not speak out. It is a point on which popular prepossessions are accepted as a convenient fact, even where they are felt to rest on insufficient grounds, and to lead to a most inadequate result.

And what is the consequence? Men’s consciences are perplexed. They ask—and there is no audible answer—Why do I observe the Sunday? Is it on the ground of the Mosaic commandment? If so, who has relaxed the strictness of its terms? Where is the permission to do, what we all do, but what Israel did not, on the Sabbath day? Who taught us that in this one instance the Christian rule of keeping the spirit of God’s commandments implies the licence to break the letter?

Questions such as these are left to answer themselves as they can. There remains a large amount of Sabbatical observance: but it is associated with no little bondage of spirit in what is done, and with no little embarrassment of conscience in what is left undone.

And where, meanwhile, is the Christian teacher, wise enough and bold enough to proclaim from his pastoral watch-tower the yoke with which Christ has bound us, the liberty wherewith He has made us free?

Where is he who can encounter, even as St. Paul encountered it, the obloquy which assails in every age the exaltation of the everlasting Gospel, as, not the summary merely, not the expansion merely, not the interpretation merely, but the END—in every sense of that term—of every earlier Dispensation? who ventures to declare that not the fourth Commandment only, but the whole Decalogue, has ceased to be, as such, the rule of our life? that, although Christians commit neither idolatry nor murder nor perjury, it is not because God forbade these crimes by Moses, but because they are contrary to the spirit of Christ? that, in short, their obedience to the unchangeable precepts of God’s moral Law is a homage rendered not to Sinai but to Calvary; so that, if in any point they find in their own Gospel a limitation or a modification or an extension of any earlier enactment, they are conscious of no embarrassment in the regulation of their allegiance—forasmuch as the later is their law, even as the earlier was that of others?

And thus with reference to the observance of the Sabbath, and to every point of moral duty, the appeal lies now, primarily to the Scriptures of the New Testament, and secondarily to any other records which we may possess of the practice of the Apostolical age.

Nor can it be pretended, when the question is fairly examined, that the perpetuation of the Jewish Sabbath is either enjoined, or by implication encouraged, in the words or the writings of the first disciples and Apostles of our Lord.

How shall we account for the total omission, amidst precepts so multiplied upon every point of Christian duty, of all reference to the obligation of the Sabbatical rest? From whom, if not from the Apostles, could the Gentile Christians derive their knowledge of its existence? Yet no direction is anywhere to be found for its observance, nor yet any reproof for the neglect of it. In the only passages in which a clear reference to it occurs in the Epistles, the language employed is that either of indifference to its retention, or even of rebuke for its revival.

We do indeed find traces in the New Testament of the existence of another day of weekly observance; a day on which the disciples came together to break bread; on which it was natural to collect their offerings; to which (before the last of the Apostles was called to his rest) was already appropriated the title of the Lord’s Day.

But that this day was neither identical with the Jewish Sabbath, nor substituted for it by any formal act of transfer, is sufficiently proved by the remarkable circumstance, that there were in the primitive age Churches in which both were observed—Saturday in remembrance of the Mosaic Sabbath, Sunday in commemoration of the Redeemer’s resurrection. By what right shall we assume that, when the former observance died out, the latter was invested with its distinctive attributes? or that, in congregations where the former had never been practised, the latter had been, all along, synonymous with an institution with which (to judge from existing records) they had never been made acquainted?

Then, if this be so; if the Sabbath is an ordinance of the past; one of those “elements or rudiments of the world,” those “shadows of things to come,” of which “the substance and the reality is Christ;” in what sense do we still read in our Churches the fourth Commandment, and pray for grace to incline our hearts to keep it?

How low and slavish a spirit is betrayed in this anxiety to have an express law to show for our Christian Sunday. How opposite to that which is the distinctive feature of the Christian character—an earnest desire to catch every intimation, every indication, of our Master’s will, that we may do it not as His slaves but as His children. Enough if we found even a human institution, which testified throughout Christendom, by a speaking sign, by an act at once self-denying and beneficent, our faith in realities unseen and future. Even this would bind us to its observance. It would be an ordinance of God’s Providence for us. It would be our duty to submit to it, if it were but an ordinance of man, for the Lord’s sake. And surely it would bear upon its very front the impress of a will more than human: it would bespeak itself the creation of a Divine philanthropy. He who should presume to trifle with it—still more, he who should seek to abrogate or to nullify it for his neighbours or his countrymen—would be seen, even if this were all, to be fighting against God.

But this is not all. We think that we see indications, from the very earliest days of which the Scriptures contain the record, of man’s need of a periodical rest, and of God’s purpose to secure it to him.

We believe that it is essential to the wellbeing of his bodily and mental structure. That it is adapted to the preservation of his health, to the prolongation of his life, to the comfort and efficiency of his work, whether manual or intellectual. That the man who regards every day as equal, who refuses to observe the day of relaxation, will work the worse while he does work, and decay and die the sooner. That the man who rigidly abstains from labour and from excitement during every seventh day, will be a healthier and a happier man for this intermission, more serviceable and longer lived. And all this we believe to have been foreseen by man’s Creator, and provided for by the Disposer of man’s heart.

Thus far, however, we have stopped short of the highest considerations. If no other purpose were answered by the institution of the Christian Sunday, it is undeniable that the nature of the periodical rest might be left wholly to the individual taste and judgment. It would be a matter of indifference—a matter with which conscience would have no right to intermeddle—whether it were to be spent in seclusion or in society, in worship, in novel-reading, or in travelling.

But we believe, further, that the periodical rest which is essential to the health of man’s body and to the vigour of man’s intellect, is yet more so to the wellbeing of his immortal spirit, to his education for that state in which earthly life issues. Surrounded by ten thousand influences drawing his heart downwards and enchaining his interests upon earth, he needs the opportunity which God’s Providence has thus afforded him, of cultivating the thoughts and practising the habits which alone can survive death and occupy his everlasting energies. Without the recurrence, at brief and regular intervals, of his day of spiritual improvement, his soul would be as incompetent to withstand the fascinations of earth, as his body to endure perpetual exercise, or his mind incessant application.

And when we thus transfer the basis of Sunday observance from the region of law to that of privilege and blessing; when we accept as God’s gift to us, for certain high and beneficent purposes, what once perhaps we regarded as a badge of subjection and servitude; how simple, comparatively, becomes every question which can affect its observance—how easy the statement, in words at least, of the principle which should guide our use of it.

The question now is, not, What is it lawful, what is it wrong, to do on the Sunday? how can I so employ it as to avoid breaking God’s Law and incurring God’s displeasure? but rather, How can I derive from it all possible good? how can I turn to the best account, for myself and others, in soul and body, the blessing which God has thus conferred upon me?

And shall those who look back through long years upon their frequent failures to improve this blessing, see no reason for the confession which bewails their past neglect of it, and the prayer which asks help to honour it hereafter?

Whatever tends to refresh the mind and body without the stimulus of an undue excitement, will be, in itself, a desirable occupation for the Christian Sunday.

But, if this relaxation of the body and mind be attended with no corresponding benefit to the soul; still more, if it involve an excitement unfavourable to the remembrance of God, so that, at the end of the day, Heaven shall be more distant than at its beginning; then that relaxation has been of a mistaken and injurious kind; the purposes of the institution have been this day rather defeated than answered; it is not so much that we have broken a law, as that we have missed a blessing; we have been unthankful for a great privilege, we have thrown away a great opportunity of good.

All this is plain enough as respects an individual: few will gainsay its truth.

But we are now concerned rather with the national observance of the Sunday. How are we to apply these principles to the case of others? more especially, if the question be one of government, of legislation?