THE SUNDAY QUESTION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 3, Issue 756, 30 April 1881, Page 2

THE SUNDAY QUESTION.

LECIUEE BY PROFESSOB BUCKIE. . The following lecture, delivered by Professor Blackie, is taken from the Glasgow Times of January 17th, 1881, and may prove of interest tp many who may be familiar, with.the career of the lecturer:— •'..'.''"' '

Professor Blackie delivered a lecture last night under the auspices of the Glasgow Branch of the Sunday Society, in the Coal Exchange. The hallwas well filled; and Professor RlacJfie occupied the platform alone. Without any preliminaries he commenced his address, and, in the courseof his remarks, said;— His three propositions. he intended to prove by a logical examination of Scripture passages, and by the testimony of the fathers of the Church,and were aB follows:—!; Though the observance of certain recurrent periods' of rest in this working world .is. natural and beneficial, the observance of one day in seven for this purpose is of Jewish and not of Christian obligation, and can in no sense be regarded asadivinelyrapppinted ordinance belonging essentially to the framework: of : Christianity. :;2.,The ; Lbrd's-day is an phsenance pf 4ei nature pfareligious festival, resting on natural ;propriety,';apMtblic : authority, and early

[ mands of the Lord's-day are satisfied by the practice of religious worship and meditation; indirectly, and aB conduciveto the religious end, abstinence from all, unnecessary work is enjoined on this day —notj-however, by divine institution, but 'frorn;,.the'"nature of' the case, first by ecclesiastical, then by oivil authority; but ■■•&■ innocent recreation on thisdayisnotfor« ; '/? bidden"byWy' r law7h"uma"ri : 'bf r divirTe7 : Let them, try their tusks on that; (Laughter. Y Profeasorßlackie went on to, quote from St Paul's Epistle toihe Qolqs- 5 ' sians—"Let no mat), .'therefore, judge you in meat or in drink, or .in, respect of an holiday, or of the new moon, or of the SibbatK-daya/'andheldithat the . Sabbath was to be coupled, with circumcision, mentioned in another part ofither chapter as an essentially.Jewishiordi-i nance, with which Christians had nothing'.: to do. : If the Sabbath was meant ,to',be, ; a.Ohristian institution these 'words wereV'i directly calculated 'to : mislead;' the whole Ohristian';,Church. ;.;On, no . thei Saviour say anything about | 'theSab-/J bath except in reproving in',the strongest fe terns the: sanctimonious scrupulosity of ; Ijpj the Jewish Pharisees with :regard to' M : Jtl observance—a scrupulosity.which'.mighViW.i be found nowadays possibly in some.partß;'.'; \ of Glasgow, in the most unenlightened,! corners of the Church, and, ; certainly in;; the mistiest and darkest corners of the Northi.West Highlands., In in * the mind; of the Saviour, the keeping'of the Sab;bath had been a point of morality; aVjh ;: the minds of some Scotch theologians,' 1 He would not have omitted the fourth commandment when the young man asked Him whathe would do to be saved. There were only two. external institutions . symbolical of spiritual things laid down in : theNewTestament, BaptismandtheLord's Supper, but the others were not laid down, and could not be laid down.' There being,: therefore, nothing in the NewTestameht in favor of keeping the Sabbath; but, on the contrary, directly in the teeth of it, those who maintained that the Sabbath was originally a Christian institution by Divine ordinance, took their refuge,in the Old Testament, and there they had in the first place to encounter the Ten Commandmentß, If he said anything strange or startling they had.to remember Scotland was a small country, the people had . narrow ideas, and were.-pajticulariyigv! liorant of Church history, ancl if they just,; thought over what he said they: would find ' he was right, go was ari.p|d boy, severity years of ago, and he bad been studying these subjects for fifty yearß, and he knew whathe was talking about,. (Laughter.) The Fourth Commandment hadL nothing to do with preaching or praying or ministers, To make them employ the whole Sunday in religious worship was contrary to the letter.'and spirjt p£.t]ip Foprtj) Commandment. A man worn out all day with working was not to be wearied oh' the Sundays with eternal preaching; but he who lay, back and smokod his pipe or sang his song was keeping his Sabbath in the intention of those who laid down the ' Fourth Commandment. '(4pp]außg and. hisses.) His dearly-beloved' brethren might reserve, their, hisses till 'they had heard the conclusion of his discourse, as he had not come to the Lord's day, but was only touching on the Sabbath, which was a very different thing. They had - heard Professor Robertson. Smith, with, .; whose peculiar heresies he entirely and cordially agreed; in fact, every scholar did. There was no scholar in Europe who did not agree with Robertson Smith, and acoording-to iim the Bible was not a book, but a literature, Professor Blaokie went X on to say that the world came.forth frW A reason, as ho believed, and not from' } nothing, or something very like nothing, as some of our modern philosophers indicated. The modern idea that man must have como in a straight line from the monkey, was a purely scientific fancy. • (Laughtor.) Tl)e, idea tljat a command' had been pMd down tor flip observa'p'fe 'pf Sabbath was a pjiir'e fancy 1 oftUojo'gTajur, If it liad been laid down friim : fhe begins ningas a command to all mankind, why was there nothing at all about if before Moses? The Lord's day, he maintained', was not.to be confounded wilh Sunday; and he pointed'out that it was fixed for the weekly ptjrigj! of tjiose pre'acting together for a cornnm'n purpp'se'a'pd teaching each other.. l; So the; first Ch'ristTarig had their weakly meetings, but they purposely avoided Sabbath, as that ps tamperjng with the Jews, and made their, wepkjy nfeetlng or, thp .qr tj}g first day pf the. week, appordipg to thp Greekß. They met on the first day pf the. week to pelobratp the resurrection of W ■ Lord apd partake pf the s'acramept, but ' it -was jnsre.suppratit.lop that because they did ao we should do thp'same. 1 In Jesus Christ there wore neither Sundays nop Saturdays, but a new creature, and to the Christian every day was a.Sabbath of rest from Biii. : (Applause,).. This was the dootrine which all the Apostles preached, and if Scotch, theologians would study a little Greek, and remember that the history of the Church for the first 300 years, up to.the Council of Nice, was the history of the Greek Church, and that all our :cre§ds .werp formed' Wer Greek influences', theyniight.thpn come.anjjght with' Blackje-'on ! .theological subject*, No doubt hd was one of those whey' believed that nature, oarne from' God, and the moment the law- of nature was known it was our duty to submit to it absolutely. (Applause.) Therefore, he said, there waa Divine sanotioh.to,.observe days of rest, and this day in particular because it was most convenient for the worship of God and alao for the recreation of the body ; but' if any body told him this was part of Christianity, with special Divine sanction for it, any more than, keeping, his feet warm and his head cool, he would Bay it was all nonaonae. (Laughter'spdapplause.) Professor Bkckje said he would conplud's by laying down'certain rules as to jiow tij spend Sunday :-'i, In all Christian coun'r tries a considerable part ■of the Lord's Day ought to be devoted "to' religious exeroises, religious worship in the church, and religious training in the family. 2. Advantage will wisely be taken of the general tone and temper of this'religious festival in a religion so essentially moral as Christianity to apply pait of'this day for the purpose of moral self review—is to say, on Sundays a map might make a serious survey, retrospective an'pL prospective, of the part which he is playing'in, the groat drama of life, and specially deayor to repent heartily of follies of the past week,'and firmly rei6ry|.> v*Bp do better in the next week to come. I* |hink it an excellent plan also to map out on Sunday evening the general-course pt action for the week following, and resolve/ emphatically that the week shall, not run its course at random without some, wellmarked point of progress being registered. (Applause.) I hope Mr Cowley will not object to that. 3, Next to the study'of the Bible in a more broad, continuous, and intellectual fashion than is necessary for.purpqses of- devotion and■• adificajjqp. the best sort 'of reading 'for Sunday pquostionably is biography—biographies, of course, of great, noble, .generous, and fervid men who ; have deyotedtbeir lives to the service of humanity and the progress of society. (Applause,) Along with this, of course, all!poetry and philosophy might be profitably jpaaLwhioh tends to purify the patsj^^lhd, to elevate the platform' ■; "aa the works, of Antonim, Epippetuß, Dante, Tennyspp, ? ' Milton, Wprdßprth, \ and,.others. v.jtK The rest and repoVe^hich'tlieVacticeoT Christians countries; lenjoinßv; on 'thp, Lord's day as" it-'dosarf-Dartlv -■ : -a ; J

constitutip'n, iraDlios—namely, a cessation from all work, or, gontrally, the dailybusineß9 of each man's life; and this not only in outward act, but in inward thought, not only the roruißsion of shop attendance and profefsional work, but as much as possible the dismissal of shop imagination from the thoughts and "ihop disoußsiona from the tongue. A wfy man ought to look onevery Sunday as a golden day of liberation from the narrowing influence and cramping supremacy of uninterrupted professional work. Of course there are certain ministrations whioh society require, which must be performed on 1 Sunday as well as Saturday, but the moreithese ministrations can N Be curtailed on the Lord's day the better Especially must it be borne in mind that Sunday' is the poor man's day, and all employers, of labor should make it a point of conscience to reduce to a minimum the hours of labor exacted on that day from the sons of toil. This consideration, of course, applies also to the recreations which are allowable and profitable on the Sunday, as distinguished from the week dur 'amusements. All recreations and Wuienienta ought to be avoided thattend •job the working classes of that rest wnwn thoir bodily frame requires,, arid leisure which is necessary for a participation, in acts of religious service., Large dinner parties, for instance, ..ought specially to be eschewed; but innocent gamesj such, as cricket, croquet, lawn tennis, cards, billiards, backgammon, or ohflßS, should be free to everyone. (Applause and hisses,) I have given you my text, give me yours, • (Renewed hisses,) If you have nothing but hisses, that is not part of my gospel. (Applause and interruption.) What do yousay, my dear boy 1 Give me your text of Scripture prohibiting innocent recreation on the Lord's-day. (Applause.) Dumb as a door-nail I, (Applause and laughter.) To working men of an active mind and an intelligent turn the pursuit of scientific Btudies in the hours not necessarily given to religious exercise may often be the best recreation, for the works of God are plainly'as worthy of study as the Word of God; and vast numbers of persons who have no opportunity of studying science on the week-days should not be deprived of the opportunity which the Sunday's rest affords for thiß valuable increment to their human culture, In connection with this, of course, it is needless to mention that all public museuniß of science and art, botanic gardens, and other fields of intellectual recreation should bd open to the publjp pn Sunday for a certain limited time. Togriidgeauy slight amount of easily, ministered attendance whioh this might necessitate on the part of the keepers and officers of Buch storehouses of scientific material implies a painful scrupulosity of observance'more allied to the Pharisaism pp reprehended by our Saviour than to the'rational' Christianity 'which' would have approved itself to the great practical intellect of St. Paul—(Applause and biases), The meeting then separated,