Part 4

Should your Lordship, or any of my readers, be doubtful respecting the physical evils arising from Sabbath labour, I may again refer to the Blue Book, containing the Parliamentary Evidence respecting Sabbath occupations. The testimony of the medical men and especially of Dr. Farr on this point is particularly worthy of notice. I may also quote the following words of another well known London Physician of long experience and great practice. The venerable Dr. Conquest of Finsbury Square, in a letter to the churchwardens of St. Luke’s, says,

“I regret my inability to be at the vestry this evening. Had it been in my power to be there, I should have endeavoured to prove, as _a medical man_, that it is _absolutely necessary_ for the _human constitution_ to have _one day in seven for rest_, because _without it_, its _powers_ become _enfeebled_ and _impaired_.—_Daily exertion_ and _excitement_ and _fatigue_ during the week, without this one day’s rest, _prematurely break down_ the _strength_ and _vigour_ of the _animal system_, _shorten life_, and _deprive old age_ of that _energy_ and _cheerfulness_ which usually attend it in _those who have rested from mental and bodily toil on the Lord’s-day_.”

There is not a physiologist or medical man in the country who understands the physical and metaphysical nature of man, but would subscribe to these sentiments. Here then you are shown that health, corporeal, mental and moral energy, and longevity, depend upon the rest of the Sabbath, and consequently that disease and premature death will arise from Sunday labour, and yet we are told that we must not legislate on this subject because it is a religious question. We grant that it is a religious question, but then it is a physical and social question also. Are not legislative enactments on murder, theft, on the cholera, factory labour and poisons, physical and religious questions at the same time? Yea, are they not religious because they are physical? Is it not a social, a physical, and a religious duty to preserve life and protect the rights of the labourer from the injustice of the oppressor? No one has a greater dread of over legislation, or legislation where conscience is concerned, than the writer of this Letter, but then who would say that legislating against murder and robbery must be shunned out of deference to the consciences of murderers and thieves; or because the duty to avoid these crimes is a religious duty; and therefore in making any laws respecting them we should violate the great principles of Religious Liberty, as though it was a part of Religious Liberty to grant to all sorts of assassins, plunderers, and speculators, the liberty to defraud and slay their brethren and dependents? Dr. Conquest, Dr. Farr, and many other skilful and experienced physiologists have proved, and are prepared to prove, that Sabbath labour shortens life, and this fact alone renders legislation on the subject the solemn duty of every humane government, whether that government consists of pagans, Jews, Turks, infidels, or Christians.

The remarks given above from Dr. Conquest have been borne out by all history and observation. Some years ago, Mr. Wilberforce endeavoured to persuade certain lawyers and barristers that Sunday occupations and consultations would shorten their days. They laughed at his fanaticism, sneered at him as a “_Saint_,” and were quite ready to “_Charivari_” him; but all these mockers died before their time. Some of them became melancholy imbeciles, and more than one committed suicide. We cannot, my Lord, violate the laws of God, whether written on the digestive organs, muscles and brain, or in the Bible, without having to pay the dire penalty of rebellion against the benevolent regulations of our heavenly Father.

We have heard a great deal of late concerning the Anglo-Saxon race, and its native vigour, enterprise, intelligence, &c. All our greatness has been attributed to physical causes, and these causes have been supposed to originate in the purity of our race. But the argument is absurd, because we are the most mixed and mongrel people under heaven. We have all sorts of blood in our veins. We are a compound of Ancient Britons, Romans, Scots, Irish, Saxons, Danes, Normans, French, Germans, Phenicians, &c., &c. And yet we boast of being Anglo-Saxons!! There is more scepticism than science in this vaunting. Men are unwilling to do homage to Christianity, and “to render to God the things that are God’s.” We owe all to the Bible and the Sabbath. The former, by circulating sound principles among us, has given us vigorous minds, and the latter by the repose of one day in seven, has imparted to us healthy physical constitutions. The rest from toil and worldly anxiety; the soothing associations of leisure, home, moral principle, and religious hope, have wrought wonders on our muscles, nerves, brain, and digestive organs, and thus have given us vigorous bodies; intrepid, enterprising, and persevering minds; moral courage; and honourable, humane, and philanthropic sentiments. What made the sturdy men of the Reformation and of the Commonwealth, but the Bible and the Sabbath? And if Anglo-Saxon must be a synonym for physical vigour and moral courage, then history, science, philosophy, and religion allow us to say, that the Bible and the Sabbath would make Anglo-Saxons of the Celts, the French, the Germans, the Chinese, and of all the world. Our venerable ancestors, both Episcopalians and Puritans, who built up the British constitution and rendered it the wonder, the glory, and terror of the world, saw that man must have a day of rest, and therefore made it a statute of the realm that labour should cease on the Lord’s-day; and we owe our national preeminence to their wisdom and piety. You ought therefore, my Lord, to hesitate before you remove those “ancient landmarks which your fathers set up”; for you may rest assured that as soon as you break up the good old Sabbath observance habits of our forefathers, and introduce, in its stead, Sunday labour and dissipation, you will hear no more of the vigour of the Anglo-Saxon race; for with a continental Sabbath you will have continental frivolity, effeminacy, fickleness, and revolutions; and it may be well for your Lordship to consider whether under such a change the nobility of England will share better than the clergy, the gentry, the nobles and princes of France under the reign of terror. The Bible and the Sabbath, if duly studied and observed, would have saved that country from all the melancholy and frightful calamities which it has had to suffer during the last sixty or seventy years.

Everyone, my Lord, who advocates Sunday labour, is not only an enemy to the working man, but an adversary to the country at large. It is impossible for such a man to be a patriot, because he endeavours to undermine the physical and moral vigour of the empire. It is no use to say, that in opening the Crystal Palace on the Sabbath, you advocate the amusement and not the labour of the masses; because you are going to doom one body of your countrymen to toil that they may enrich and please others. And depend upon it, when it is generally understood that railway directors can have _seven days’ labour_ for fifteen or twenty shillings a week, other masters will exact the same hard terms from their workpeople. They will naturally ask, Who are we that we should pay as much for _six days_, as the railway lords do for _seven_? The certain result to the working classes will be increased labour and diminished wages; and thus under this pretence of giving Sunday recreation to operatives and others, one of the most deadly injuries will be inflicted upon them. They have often been duped by designing demagogues, but now it seems Conservative Lords and Radical Dissenters are to be their deceivers. Of old Herod and Pontius Pilate were made friends when the Son of God was to be crucified; and in our time, we have lords and plebeians, Conservatives, Whigs, Radicals, Chartists, Atheists, debauchees, Episcopalians and ultra-Dissenters—all leagued together to rob the poor brethren of Jesus Christ, of their day of rest, and the ten thousand blessings connected therewith. We congratulate you, my Lord, on your companions, coadjutors, and fellow labourers: though we know that you must not hope much from the certain result of your zeal. It is often said that our Norman nobility have never naturalized themselves in this foreign land, and the present effort to destroy the physical and moral greatness of the nation by Sunday labour will go far to prove that they have not as yet become English patriots. Sabbath amusement for one class will be Sabbath slavery to another; and as this Sabbath labour and desecration increases, the nation will fall and will most certainly involve the nobility in its ruin.

Much is said of recreation and comfort for the working classes, but we must be just before we are generous, and not forget the rights and happiness of those who are to be worked. I have before said that England owes much to its domestic circles and its homes. “Home! sweet Home!” is an air which charms everyone among us; but do away with the Sabbath, and you destroy the English home. “Mother,” said a child, “you seem so happy always on a Sunday, I wish it were Sunday every day.” “You are always better on a Sunday when father’s at home,” said a little girl to her sick mother. Another said, “Oh, we are so uncomfortable to-day, it don’t seem like Sunday, because father has been at work all day, and has not cleaned himself.” “Don’t the sun always shine brighter on the Sunday? and it is never such nasty wet rain on a Sunday as on other days,” exclaimed another group of children. But the sick wife of the railway servant, and the fond children, are to know nothing of these Sabbath endearments. Sunday suns and Sunday rains will be week day suns and rains to them, and this will continue from year’s end to year’s end. Really, my Lord, as a religious individual, and consequently a very feeling, sympathetic, and humane man, you ought to hesitate before you resolve to destroy domestic ties and affections to which your country owes so much of its happiness, prosperity, and greatness. Your good Lady, the Duchess of Sutherland, and others, are calling loudly upon the Americans to pity the poor negro, and we beg your Lordship to have some compassion for these intended Crystal Palace slaves, and not allow their homes to be broken up and their wives to be as widows and their children orphans.

The idea, my Lord, that large numbers of the masses will run down to the Crystal Palace _every_ Sunday is an idle fancy. What will it cost for a man to take his wife and children to Sydenham? In many instances from six to ten shillings will be needed! Will Mr. Mayhew’s Spitalfields weavers be able to spare this sum? How many times a year will they go? How many of them will go? For unless they go very often, we are afraid that their moral improvement will not be very great; and, during the Sabbaths that the people stay at home, there will be no very great diminution of the crowds that occupy the filthy lanes and alleys of London. Will enough on any one Sunday leave their houses to cause any visible decrease of the inhabitants? Will whole families go? or will there not be a separation of its members—some gone to the Crystal Palace, and coming home drunk or ruined, while the poor wife and other portions of the household will be left in solitude at home? One would suppose, to hear some people talk, that as soon as Sydenham is opened, all the miserable wretches in London, all the ragged half starved creatures, and especially all the poor operatives in Spitalfields, will, by some magic or miracle, be well clothed, have plenty of cash in their pockets, and after going to church very devoutly one half of the Sabbath, hurry away in full glee to the Crystal Palace on the other, and thus their future Sundays all through the year will be passed between the celestial paradise of the temple and the earthly Elysium at Sydenham!! No one after this will laugh, if a new body of speculators should arise and propose to take these said paupers and operatives to visit the moon and all the planets every Lord’s-day. And thus, my Lord, for an imagined good, which it would be the most arrant folly to anticipate, you are about to sacrifice the home comforts, the health, the morals, and the lives of a large number of the most valuable of your countrymen. The same principle that led you to legislate respecting cruelty to animals, and to the men, women, and children in factories and mines, calls upon you to interpose the authority of the law, and say to the Sydenham gentlemen, “There shall be no labour on the Sabbath.”

We are told that if the men hire themselves out to this drudgery it will be a _voluntary_ act of their own. Granted, my Lord; but still when a husband and father, who has a wife and family crying for bread, is told that he may have employment if he will break the Sabbath, but that famine shall be the result of his resting on the Lord’s-day, there is great danger that many will prefer transgression to poverty and want. All persecutors are perfect voluntaries. It was quite optional for Stephen to be stoned; for the disciples to be imprisoned; for Huss, Latimer, and Hooper to be burnt; for the pilgrim fathers to emigrate to America; and for the Madiai to go to gaol. Persecutors are among the fairest people under heaven. They generally set comfort and torture, life and death, before their victims, and give them a perfect choice of either. Formerly burning was fashionable; but now starvation is nearly all the rage. We do not burn people in this enlightened day. We are too refined, for we live in the nineteenth century, to be sure. No persecution now, forsooth, we are too humane for that. We only say to the famishing operative or peasant, “You must go to church, or starve!” “you must go to chapel, or starve!” “you must spend your Sabbaths on Sydenham Railway, or starve!” Now I really think, my Lord, if you had your choice, notwithstanding all our boasting of religious liberty and charity, that you would as soon be burnt by Bonner as starved to death, wife, family and all, by these more refined modern persecutors. For say what you will, Sunday labour is not only inhuman and cruel, but it is persecution, and ought to be as much restrained by the hand of the law as any other oppression which would prevent men from worshipping God. I knew one of the best of men in London leave his fatherland and become an emigrant because of the Sunday labour at the Post Office, and thus the government lost a good servant by this persecution. And we shall soon have on a large scale a new race of pilgrim fathers, who will seek refuge in a foreign land that they may enjoy the Sabbath which they are refused in their own Christian country. To turn a man off from work because he fears God and keeps the Sabbath is persecution. The civil government is as much bound to protect the day for worship as the temple in which the man worships.

Again we repeat, we desire no interference with the religious opinions of anyone. Let men spend their Sabbath as they please, provided they do not compel others to any unnecessary work. The laws respecting murder, theft, cruelty to animals, prisons, nuisances, factory labour, do not interfere with the religion of Catholic, Protestant, Episcopalian, or Dissenter. They merely protect the health, the bodies and rights of the people, and on these principles we call on the legislature in the name of humanity, of justice, of health, life, right, and freedom, to prohibit Sabbath labour.

Drowning men catch at straws, and you are in danger, my Lord, of being seduced by certain individuals who call themselves liberal dissenters, and profess to expound the sentiments of their brethren. They will tell you that you must not legislate to prevent the poor man from being robbed and killed by Sunday labour, because it is a religious question!! But you must beware of these gentlemen. They have not the confidence of their brethren, nor do they represent their views. Their sentiments are as outrageous as they are ultra. To say that Dissent allows the working man to be robbed and slain by oppressive masters; to be starved to death, or persecuted into exile, is one of the foulest libels that has ever been uttered. These men have not yet learnt the duties of civil legislation. They have not distinguished between physical and religious—between bodily and spiritual matters; they have not learnt that in some points human and divine legislation must go hand in hand; nor have they ascertained where the one is to stop or where the two are to diverge. A man who holds with a “Ten Hours Bill,” with laws to prevent cruelty to women, children, and animals; with statutes to prevent murder, theft, and swindling, and yet protests that you must not protect the bodies of men from Sabbath labour, is a novice in humanity, and has yet to learn his political alphabet. Sabbath labour is inhuman; Sabbath labour is robbery; Sabbath labour is cruelty; Sabbath labour is persecution; Sabbath labour is deadly; and therefore ought to be restrained by the authority of the law.

Some of them become very religious and tell you that every day, under the Christian dispensation, is to be a Sabbath; but they do not mean what they say. Sabbath, my Lord, signifies REST from labour; and if every day is to be a Sabbath, then we must rest from labour everyday, and never do any work at all! Jehovah has said, “six days shalt thou labour and do all that thou hast to do, but the seventh is the DAY OF REST.” Rest from labour is one of the _essential_ ideas included in the word Sabbath; and these pious people say that every day is to be a _Sabbath_, and therefore a day of _rest_ from toil; for where there is no cessation from labour, there is no _Sabbath_ in the scriptural meaning of the term. But so perverted are these reasoners, that they tell us though Sabbath means rest from labour, yet people are now at perfect liberty to work all the day, and Sydenham adventurers ought therefore to be allowed to rob, demoralize, and kill a portion of the population by Sunday toil!! The reasoning of these gentlemen is as logical as their legislation is liberal and humane.

“Ah, but” they say, “The Sabbath is abolished!” But where, my Lord, is the repeal mentioned? “Oh,” they gravely reply, “The Sabbath was made for man.” That is, it was benevolently instituted for the rest of his physical frame and the edification of his soul. _Ergo_, it is abolished!! Glorious reasoning, my Lord! But still they argue, “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” _Ergo_, the Sabbath is abrogated, and he is the Lord of a nonentity!!

“No _man_ is to judge us in respect of new moons and Sabbaths.” ERGO, the _Lord_ is not to judge us, although he has given us the ten commandments, and told us that they are not abolished, and that the law is not in any point made void by faith.

“The day is changed from the seventh to the first. _Ergo_, it is abolished!!” _Change_ and _abolition_ synonyms!! The Apostles for a while observed the seventh day that they might preach to the Jews, and the _first_ day that they might assemble as Christians, and at length, in obedience to their Lord’s will, these _inspired_ men dropped the seventh and kept the first alone, but retained the spirit of the law by assembling _every seventh_ day, and therefore, to be sure, broke up the Sabbath altogether!! Whether these are “_sequiturs_” or “_non sequiturs_,” I leave your Lordship to judge.

But then we are so spiritual in these Gospel days, that we do not need a Sabbath. ERGO, we show our spirituality by _secularizing_ the Sabbath!! Of course we are more spiritual than the Creator who consecrated one day in seven; more spiritual than Adam in innocency; than Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, the Prophets, our Lord, or the Apostles; and therefore we can do without such vulgar things as Sabbaths or religious instruction. Doubtless the Gospel has given us iron nerves and muscles to labour incessantly; and now forsooth we are all born with instinctive morality, theology, and devotion, and can do without such old fashioned, obsolete lumber as religious edification! And yet, my Lord, we who thus boast are the most Mammon worshipping, worldly minded people under heaven. We are so spiritually minded that we wish the labourer to work _seven_ days instead of _six_; that we open the Crystal Palace on Sundays for the sole purpose of getting money out of the pockets of the people! We are so spiritual that almost everything we do is contaminated with selfishness! We are so evangelical and heavenly that we are robbing and killing our fellow creatures by Sunday labour, and are agitating to increase these hecatombs of human victims offered to avarice. “The Song of the Shirt” is no exaggeration, and therefore what a spiritual and benevolent people we must be! What wicked fellows those infidels are who doubt the divine origin of this cruel caricature of Christianity which we give them in our deeds, and how depraved they must be to say to such spiritually minded souls, “What do ye more than others?” What a blessed proof of heavenly mindedness, that we can rob men of their Sabbath and lives, and then thank God that we are not as other men are!

“But the early Christians did not legislate concerning the Sabbath,” say your new friends. But then you know, my Lord, that they did not ask the government to make any laws against murder or theft; they did not agitate against slavery; for the franchise; for corn-laws, or their repeal; for the Union, or “The Separation of the Church and State,” &c. &c.; and if we imitate them, we shall give up civil legislation altogether. What Paul would have done, if he had been a Member of Parliament, we can hardly say; still, we may safely affirm that he would as soon have voted to keep men from being robbed, persecuted, and killed by Sabbath labour, as he would for a bill to prevent cruelty to men, women, children, or animals, and would hardly have dreamt that in so doing he was violating the great principles of religious liberty.

Another favourite argument which some use and urge, they tell us, “with tears in their eyes,” is that you will draw people from the gin palaces. That is, my Lord, you are “to do evil that good may come.” You have committed ONE great crime by licensing men to poison, corrupt, and destroy the population by strong drink; and now you are to give a royal charter for a second crime, that you may counteract the first! This is adding sin to sin. Why not shut up all public houses on the Sabbath? It is as much our duty to do so as to legislate concerning the sale of stinking fish, or to prevent any nuisance which endangers the health and rights of the people. And then do you think, my Lord, that these gin palace visitors will go every Sunday to Sydenham? Some of them now idle away one, two, or three days a week in pothouses, and spend money enough to pay for sight seeing and a railway excursion every week. Will Sabbath breaking and the Crystal Palace convert them into pious men and women? “Credat Judæus.”