SUNDAY OBSERVANCE LEAGUE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 249, 30 March 1875, Page 4

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE LEAGUE.

The following is the paper on the “ Relationship between Sabbath Observance and Spiritual Religion,” read by the Rev A. F. Douglas, at a meeting of the league, held on Thursday evening last:— That the Sabbath is necessary to the existence and progress of true religion is a proposition so self-evident that it is difficult to prove it. We can only adduce a few illustrations to set forth the recognised and vital connection that subsists between them. I. And in the first place, we ask, who are they that rejoice over any public violation of the Sabbath law, and cheer most heartily any efforts which may be made to break through established usages with regard to it? Listen while I read an extract from a letter from a gentleman in England which a short time ago appeared in one of our public prints. “ The recent movements in parts of New Zealand for the opening of museums, See, on the Sundays, have raised the hopes of Mr Bradlaugh and his friends in England. These persons rejoice that the thin end of the wedge has been got in, and they will not lose an opportunity to starve out the spiritual nature of man by handing over the Lord’s Day to secular employments. That the Church colony of Canterbury should ignore the Church teachings and turn the solemn prayer said after the Fourth Commandment into a mockery of God is indeed a matter of congratulation to these opponents of spiritual religion, but should be a matter of deep grief to the true friends of Christianity.” Who, then, are rejoicing over the opening of our Museum on Sundays? Bradlaugh and his friends. Who is Bradlaugh ? An atheistic lecturer, who, because of his violent tirades against religion, has earned the soubriquet of “Iconoclast.” Who is Bradlaugh ? The leader of the lowest mob that England can boast of—a mob so lawless that it was found necessary the other day, on the occasion of their hero’s rejection by the citizens of Northampton as their member of Parliament, to call out a body of artillery to restrain their violence. That is the man, and these are his friends, who see in the movement we here oppose the signs of a better time coming for them and their opinions. There is something comic in the conjunction. Canterbury is a High Church settlement. High Church must, of course, mean extra pious. This is moreover a province distinguished by blue blood. But lo! who is blessing us ? Bradlaugh, the “Iconoclast;” Bradlaugh, the orator of the men whom respectable people do not delight to honor, Canterbury ought to thrive now, and all of us to feel highly honored by the flattering distinction we have earned. This illustration makes it sufficiently evident that the Sabbath is the most important outwork of religion. The enemies of religion see clearly enough that to abolish the Sabbath would be to abolish religion. Hence if we value true Christianity and seek to extend its blessings to the world, we will be zealous to preserve its sanctity. 11. Again, look at the argument which is paraded ad nauseam in support of opening museums on Sunday. It is this, the people must have opportunities of recreation and intellectual culture. You provide this by exhibitions of works of nature and of art. You thereby enable them to obtain rational enjoyment and artistic and intellectual tastes But this is an argument that proceeds upon the theory that men have no souls. The Mahomedan doctrine is that women have no souls. But our would-be philanthropists take a step farther than the Musselman doctrine, for their theory proceeds upon the supposition that neither men, women, nor children have souls. If this theory be' correct, then we admit that we are wrong in urging men to keep holy one day in seven for communion with the skies. If men are only beasts of burden and reasoning animals, then by all means amuse them to the top of their bent, and give them every opportunity of intellectual culture that they may make the best of this poor life. But this is precisely what we deny. We say men have souls. We say that to cultivate the body without the mind would be to make of man a powerful beast; to cultivate the mind without the soul would be to give him the education of a fallen angel. We say that the immortal part of man is the most important, and must at all hazards be attended to, and that in the first place. If we possess souls we must have a religion, and if we must have a religion we find both by the law of God and the experience of man that we require the one day in ■even for religious purposes. 111. Again, the Sabbath is confessedly a memorial of the creation. It proclaims to us that this world was created and created by a Being above it, and independent of it. But these truths, so simple and elementary, are the very truths which, apart from Divine revelation, men are ready to deny. The false philosophies and false religions of the world proceed upon one of two assertions; that of the atheist who makes matter eternal; or that of the pantheist who makes matter God. The theory of the atheist, or something which it is impossible for ordinary minds to distinguish from it, was announced only a few months ago by Professor Tyndall at the British Association meeting at Belfast. But here we have the Sabbath a perpetual witness to the Creator God, a standing testimony to the existence of a Being whom it becomes ns to worship, and after whose fellowship we are bound to seek, Here, again, the institution of the Day of Best tends to the promotion of true religion, inasmuch as it is a standing testimony to the very foundations upon which all religion rests. IV. We remark again that Sabbath obserance has ever been a characteristic of Christians. On whatever grounds they believed in the duty, the fact remains that one day in seven has always been consecrated by the followers of Christ to His worship. In ancient and in modern times, among the heathen as well as among professing Christians, wherever the gospel takes root, the Sabbath follows. We find from the New Testament, that on the first day of the week the early disciples met statedly to worship and celebrate the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor ii. 23,1 Cor xvi, 1,2, and Rev i. 10.) The well known letter of the heathen magistrate, Pliny, to the Emperor Trajan, affords us the same testimony. “ The Christians,” he says, “ were accustomed on a stated day to meet before daylight, and to repeat among themselves a hymn to Christ, as to a God, and to bind themselves by a sacred obligation not to commit any wickedness.” So well known was this as a characteristic of Christians that the question which the persecutor put to the martyr when he wished to ascertain whether he was a Christian was “ Bominicum servastiV ’ — “ Hast thou kept the Lord’s Day ?” And the imawer is surely most significant to our

argument—“ Christianas sum; intermittere non jpossume”— that is to say, “ I am a Christian ; I cannot omit it.” And as “ one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” no sooner does Christianity take root on the soil of heathenism than Sabbath keeping becomes a habit. Our missionaries in China for instance remark it as one of the tests by which that sturdy race—the Anglo-Saxons of the East — evidence their faith in Christ when they turn to God. They instinctively deem it their duty, despite their keen trading propensities and the competition of their heathen neighbors, carefully to observe the Lord’s Day, and that without any more special teaching on this subj ect than on any other doctrine of scripture. And the rule is the same everywhere. Wherever the gospel comes, the Sabbath follows in its wake. Whence we assert that one of the tokens by which the disciples of Christ have ever been known to the world has been the observance of the Sabbath.

V. From the fact that Sabbath observance is a characteristic of Christians we may well gather that they have regarded this day not as a burden but as a delight, not as a weariness but as holy of the Lord and honorable. The weariness and gloom which some will persistently associate with the Lord’s Day is the very antithesis of its spirit, and the opposite of the memories which in Christian eyes cluster around it. The ninety-second psalm, which is a Sabbath song, begins, “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy name O Most High, To show forth thy loving kindness in the morning and thy faithfulness every night. Upon an instrument of ten strings and upon the psaltry ; upon the harp with solemn sound.” And if this was the spirit of the Old Testament Church much more must it be of the new. Consequently, it is the oasis in the desert which the Christian pilgrim delights to anticipate, and on which he rests with thankfulness and joy. It is a rest delightful in itself, and delightful because it is the Lord’s saying to His disciples, “ Rest awhile.” Its special memory is a risen Saviour, a finished redemption, Its sun seems to the eye wearied with the sights of the work-a-day world, to rise higher and to gleam more softly. It gilds with a divine glory this sin-stricken earth, speaking of a better and brighter world than this, where the sun never sets and the storm never comes. It fills the heart with hope and happiness, since it brings the announcement that the gulf which separates the sinful world from the world above, has been bridged across, and Christ’s gracious invitation to walk on it. And what reasons pertaining to the life of his soul has the Christian to love it? He feels that that life would die but for the privileges of the Lord’s day. The closet, the sanctuary, prayer, reading, meditation, the communion of the saints, are all needful to his spiritual health, and but for the Sabbath these would be impossible. It is the day when he washes his soul afresh from the sins of the week. It is the day when he renews his vows to his God and Redeemer. It is the day when he obtains renewed strength for facing the labors, cares, and temptations of the coming week. It is the day when he looks beyond to the end of his journey, and endeavors to lighten the darkness of time and earth by importing into them by anticipation the rest of eternity and the joys of heaven. And to him also it is a day of labor as well as of rest, for it affords him opportunities of which he delights to avail himself for pouring out the pent up beneficence of his heart, which he has learned in Christ’s school, into the souls of his family, the church, and the world. O ever sacred and sublime, The Sabbath rest, a festal time, God’s mercy richly gave. The peace he has eternally, To-day be pours out as a sea, In which our souls may lave. Gladly Willi There revive me, This will give me, Fresh strength anew, My daily labors to pursue.

YI. We have already remarked that if men had no souls then we might be safely without a Lord’s Day. As it is sufficient to turn the horse to the grass, so would it be enough to provide the excursion, to open the public-house, and to supply picture galleries and museums. But if, on the contrary, men, women, and children have souls, when are they to have an opportunity of spiritual blessing ? The Church, that is, Christian men and women, are zealous to carry out the Master’s commission to preach the gospel to every creature. They require the opportunity so to do. The day of rest supplies it. Then the wheels of industry cease to run, the man of business, and the artizan, as well as the politician and peasant, lay aside their wonted occupations and cares. Here then is almost the one opportunity of the week, of the Church, and the world—-the one to bless and the other to be blessed. Take away the Sabbath, and the possibility of hearing the glad sound ceases, and the world would roll a resistless avalanche down to death without thought or care. But as it still happily is, wherever the English language is spoken, the Sabbath stillness, the Sabbath bell, the quiet worshippers, the voice of prayer and praise—all speak impressively even to the most abandoned and profligate, remind the careless that be has a soul, that there is a Ruler in Heaven, a Judge and Lord of the conscience, a Saviour and the voice of mercy. We do not say that all the enemies of the Sabbath aim at the destruction of all religion, but we do say that if this were their aim no more successful plan could be adopted than by its abolition. The old persecutor was accustomed to drown by the sound of drum and trumpet the voice of the martyr on the scaffold, even so there are those who would in like manner drown the voice of the Church, the witness on earth for Christ, by transforming the holy day into a season of worldly recreation and amusement.

And this leads me to remark, in conclusion, that while we are bound to protest against all invasions of the sacredness of the day, and to set forth its scriptural foundation and the blessings which flow from its observance, the best and most effective method for protecting it is to labour zealously to spread Bible religion. Let spiritual religion prevail, and the Lord’s Day will be prized. Let me here read a slip cut out of a home newspaper “ The other day in a first-class railway carriage, running between London and a suburban town, the following dialogue was overheard by the writer, the speakers being a young gentleman and an elderly man of business:— ‘ Well, sir, I maintain that Sunday ought to be a general holiday, and the people ought not to be kept out o{ such places as

the Zoological Gardens and the Crystal Palace grounds, where they would find both health and amusement. I would have the Sunday used for recreation.’ The elderly gentleman listened attentively to his young friend, and then very quietly replied:— * Recreation! Yes, that is the very word, and quite meets my views. The Sabbath is meant for re-creation, and if some people whom I know were once re-created, they would want very little of the so-called recreation which they now make so much of.’ Conversation on that subject ended.” Even so let us labor to extend the kingdom of our Lord Jesus, let us labor and pray for the prevalence of the Christian faith, not only in its profession, but in its power, and as success crowns our efforts, the occupation of the Sunday League will be gone. The Lord’s Day will need no defenders. Its occupations will become too precious , and delightful for any thought to be entertained as to its being blotted out of the Decalogue. Nay, this is what we are told shall come to pass in the millenial age, “ For as the new heavens and the new earth,” says Isaiah, speaking of the glory of the latter day, “ which I will make, shall remain before me saith the Lord, so shall your-seed remain and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me saith the Lord.”