Part 1

Transcribed from the 1852 Wertheim and Macintosh edition by David Price, email [email protected]

[Picture: Pamphlet cover]

OUR SABBATHS IN DANGER:

A SERMON,

DEPRECATING THE CONTEMPLATED OPENING OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE ON THE LORD’S-DAY,

PREACHED ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1852, IN CAMDEN CHURCH, CAMBERWELL.

BY DANIEL MOORE, M.A., INCUMBENT.

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LONDON: WERTHEIM AND MACINTOSH, 24, PATERNOSTER-ROW. G. W. MEDES, CAMBERWELL.

1852.

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WERTHEIM AND MACINTOSH, 24, PATERNOSTER-ROW, LONDON.

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A SERMON.

MARK II. 27:—“And he said unto them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

THE discriminating symptoms of hypocrisy or profaneness in a nation, it has been well said, are, that, by the one, outward ordinances are raised to an exaggerated importance; by the other, they are disparaged, depressed, and set at nought. In the words just quoted, the aim of our Lord appears to have been to put these institutions in their right place,—to enunciate a great principle, by which we could always distinguish between certain moral ends for which _man was made_, and certain outward appointments which were instituted and _made for man_. To obey God, to resist evil, to fulfil a providential designation, to strive after nearer conformity to the Divine image, to fit and capacitate the soul for a higher condition of being, these are ends,—man was _made for these_. But holy times, pious commemorations, solemn assemblies, the temples where we worship, and the sacraments whereof we eat, these are only subsidiary and divinely appointed means; they are not among the final objects of man’s creation. They were ordinances _wade for man_.

This argument, it will be perceived, would be addressed with much fitness to men, whose error, in relation to the Sabbath, leaned to the side of an over-strained and impracticable severity; and who had just been urging it as a complaint against our Lord’s disciples, that, in passing through a field on the Sabbath-day, they had relieved their hunger by plucking a few ears of corn. These cavillers are reminded, therefore, that, in the economy of salvation, all outward ordinances are to be viewed in the light of things secondary and subservient; their mode of observance to be interpreted in harmony with the ends for which they were ordained; and that, with regard to the Sabbath especially, care must be taken to avoid both the hypocrisy that would make the day to be honoured by a rigid ceremonial exactness, and the presumption that would overlook its eternal sanctity as standing in the will of God. It is in this last view that all the ordinances of religion, when clearly of Divine appointment, acquire a character of deep and momentous interest. Their foundation is in the will of God; but that will, as we know, has, as its ever-guiding and controlling rule, a sacred regard to the highest interests of man. Nothing can be more dishonouring to God, or more untrue, than to speak of outward ordinances as if they were mere arbitrary appointments, without significance and without benefit, as only so many meaningless enactments designed to test the willingness of human subjection; so far otherwise, they are means framed upon a wise and loving regard to all the aptitudes of our moral nature, and calculated, in their reverent use, to help man through all the difficulties of his course and to educate his immortal spirit for the employments of the world to come. _The Sabbath was_ MADE FOR MAN.

Brethren, you are aware of the reasons which induce me, at the hazard of going over much of familiar argument, formally to review the grounds on which we hold that a PROPER MORAL SANCTITY does attach to the CHRISTIAN SABBATH:—that the institution itself has an origin, an object, a typical significance and value, which are independent of all economies, and will endure to all time; and, therefore, that any nation which shall presume to tamper with its unalterable sacredness, is drawing down upon itself those awful maledictions which, by an undesigned coincidence, have been so often recited in our ears this morning as the just retribution of POLLUTED SABBATHS. {5}

I. In trying to arrive at correct notions upon what may be due to the sacred day, and how far it may be lawful that churches and places of amusement should share its hours between them, our first thoughts are naturally directed to the Old Testament accounts of the Sabbath institution itself. Was its origin paradisaical, or patriarchal, or Levitical? And if it were either of these, were the reasons given for commencing it such as would pass away, when the dispensation under which it was given passed away? This question is important, because there is a current way of speaking of the Sabbath as if it were a mere festival of the Jewish Church, deriving its whole sanctity from the Levitical law, and only taken up by the Christian Church at second hand,—as among the _useful_ things of the old economy which it would be as well to perpetuate, though not one of the _binding_ things we were under any obligation to observe.

Now, to expose the absurdity of this notion, we have only to take the earliest Scripture notices of the institution which come to hand. In the second chapter of the book of Genesis, at the close of the account of the creation, we read,—_And on the seventh day God ended his work which He had made_; _and He rested on the seventh day from all his work which He had made_. _And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it_: BECAUSE _that in it He had rested from all his work which God created and made_. If this passage stood alone, one conclusion only could be drawn from it; namely, that the institution of the Sabbath succeeded the creation immediately in order of time, and that it was sanctified for reasons which must be binding on all mankind alike. But other notices in the writings of Moses follow, which might seem to militate against this view, and even to favour the erroneous notion I have adverted to, of the Sabbath having only a temporary or dispensational sanctity. Thus, in the thirty-first chapter of Exodus, we read,—_Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual covenant_: _it is a_ SIGN _between me and the children of Israel for ever_. Whilst, further, in the book of Deuteronomy, at the fifth chapter, we find Moses exhorting the people to the observance of the holy day, with this added reason: _Remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt_, _and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and stretched-out arm_; THEREFORE _the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath-day_. Now, whether we are able to give any satisfactory account of these additional reasons for the institution or not, the revealed fact will remain the same,—namely, that the Sabbath was _not_ Levitical in its origin, and was not even _first_ made known to the Jews, at the giving of the law. Nothing can be plainer than that the Sabbath was both known and observed before the Jewish Church had any existence. For, besides the incidental notices both before and after the deluge,—such as Noah sending out the dove again “after other seven days,”—we find the Jews actually keeping a Sabbath in the wilderness of Sin, before the covenant of Sinai had been entered into. Thus, at the giving of the manna, we have Moses saying unto the people, _To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord_: _on that day ye shall not find it in the field_: _for the Lord hath given you the Sabbath_: _therefore He giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days_:—language plainly implying that, at that time, the Sabbath was an established observance of the religious life. What shall we say, then, of those _subsequent_ reasons for the institution which connect it with a peculiar national covenant? or with the deliverance of the Israelites from bondage? Why, not that they are meant to be reasons for the institution _itself_, but reasons for a particular time and form of its _re-promulgation_. The children of Israel, it is to be remembered, had been for several hundred years under captivity in Egypt. Many of their ordinances, it is likely they would have forgotten; and their Sabbaths, it is all but certain, their task-masters would not permit them to observe. On their Exodus, therefore, it became necessary that there should be a formal _re-enactment_ of the holy day; not only by a repetition of those moral considerations, on account of which the Almighty had originally set it apart, but also with a recital of such other arguments as should make the sanctity of the day especially binding upon _them_ as a nation; namely, that in their revived and perpetuated Sabbath, they were to keep up a grateful commemoration of their deliverance from Egypt, as well as behold a standing pledge or seal of the covenant into which God was then entering with his people. To infer that mankind had never observed a day of sanctified rest until the Sabbath was made a sign of the covenant with Moses, would be as unreasonable as the inference that the sun’s light had never been refracted in the rain-drops, until God set his “bow in the clouds,” to be a sign of his covenant with Noah. It pleased God to take an existing moral fact in the one case, as He had taken an existing physical fact in the other, to be a perpetual and visible memorial of his own gracious purposes. And, surely, to the Israelites, in all ages, it must have been a great encouragement to see the promise made unto their fathers guaranteed by a seal, which was honoured as the first token ever made to human kind, and hallowed by considerations which could never change, and never lose their force.

I say never lose their force;—for what could a sanctified commemoration of the rest of the Great Creator, a commanded acknowledgment, from the creatures He had made, of their subjection and dependence, a periodical pause in their other employments that they might hallow and bless his name,—what, I say, could such reasons for an institution have to do with one age more than another, or with one economy more than another? Plainly, the obligation presses equally on the first man Adam, and the last born of his degenerate sons. In this respect, the Sabbath was not made for Noah and the patriarchs specially, to commemorate the world’s second birth; nor for Moses and the Israelites specially, to celebrate the triumphs of the wilderness and the sea. It was made neither for Jew, nor Christian, nor Church, nor age;—_The Sabbath was made_ FOR MAN.

II. Other reasons for the original and indelible sanctity of this institution, I must note more briefly. Thus, what other inference can be drawn from its place in the law of the ten commandments,—that great summary of human duty,—that searching code which, in its Gospel spirituality and breadth, becomes the rule of all outward and inward holiness; that eternal transcript of all creature obedience, which, when heaven and earth shall have passed away, shall stand out as the reflected will of God? _Think not_, said the Great Teacher, _I am come to destroy the law or the prophets_, _I am not come to destroy but to fulfil_. Will any raise a question as to the law here intended being the moral law given to Moses? or conceding that, will they say that when our Lord declared neither _jot nor tittle_ should pass from this law, He meant to say, _men shall keep all the commandments except the fourth_?

Again, in contending for the universal obligation to separate a seventh portion of our time to the service of God, we cannot overlook the plain intimations contained in the earliest records of all nations, that, either with religious sanctions or without them, men have observed this _weekly_ division of time. Chaldeans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, all seem to have known of it;—and the question is how, except as the relic of some universal tradition, those nations should have thought of such a measurement of time at all? For other divisions of time we can find reasons,—obvious, necessary, and natural. The daily rotation of the earth on its axis; the completed cycle of lunar phases; the sun imparting to the revolving worlds the blessings of cold and heat, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, are phenomena quite adequate to explain why we should break up our life into _days_, and _months_, and _years_; but for WEEKS we have _no_ such reason, nor, indeed, _any_ reason to give, except that it is one of the original appointments and laws of God. It is an arbitrary period, the recurrence of which neither nature nor reason seems, in any way, to have marked out for us, but which, on the all-commanding authority of revelation, men have been taught to set apart to sacred remembrances. _The Sabbath was_ MADE _for man_.

III. Thus, as far as our limits would permit, I think it has been shown that, irrespective of dispensations, or Churches, or particular covenants, God did appoint it as an ordinance for the whole human family, that every recurring seventh day of their life should be separated to religious uses. He first “_blessed_” the day, that is, pledged himself to be propitious to the service which, in spirit and in truth, men should offer Him on that day; and then “_hallowed_” it, or, as the word is, “_set it apart_,” intimating that anything opposed or foreign to such religious service, was to be strictly forbidden. If this ground have been made good, I shall be less careful to adduce all that could be said in favour of the next question which might be raised; namely, on the supposition that God has made this claim upon all men of a seventh portion of their time, is _that_ seventh which has been set apart by the Christian Church the _right_ seventh; in other words, have we sufficient reason for believing that the change of day, from the _last_ day of the week to the _first_, is agreeable to the will of God? Now the only reasons, it would seem, which could justify such change, must be found either in an express revelation, or in the ascertained practice of those, who having for three years had the Lord of the Sabbath to guide them, must have known on what day He designed it should thenceforth be kept. A change of the actual day, it has been conjectured, from some expressions in the history, was made by Moses, at the time of the Exodus, transferring the holy day to that which first saw _Israel’s redemption from bonds_,—what should hinder that, with sufficient authority, a change should not be made, again transferring our Sabbath to the day which, in the resurrection of the Son of God, saw the _redemption of the spiritual Israel from the grave_? Besides, an avowed end of the Jewish Sabbath was as a protest against false religions. The pious Israelite was distinguished from the idolaters among whom he dwelt, by his close observance of the sacred day:—why may not our Lord have ordained a change in the Sabbath of the Christian, as a protest against the continuing obstinacy of the Jew? Of course, these are no more than conjectures, and though sustained by names of great weight, they leave the fact to be judged of only as we should judge of all other facts; namely, by a reasonable and sufficient amount of historic evidence. And this we are thought to have, even in the scattered notices found in the sacred narrative itself,—in the frequent allusions to religious meetings on the first day of the week, in the choice of this day by our Lord for two successive manifestations to his disciples, in the selection of it for the first miraculous effusion of the Holy Spirit, in the special mention of it by Paul as that on which he preached the Word and administered the sacraments, in the directions given to the Churches of Galatia and Corinth to lay by their alms that they might make an offering of them to God on the first day of the week,—all passages proving, as clearly as anything can, that, among the New Testament Christians, a character of separation and sacredness was attached to the _first_ day, which was not accorded to any other.

To these revealed notices is to be added the testimony of other authorities, which, however lightly we might esteem them on any question of _doctrine_, are quite competent to give their witness on a matter of _fact_. Such, for example, are the well-known letters of the younger Pliny, the universal consent of our Ecclesiastical historians, and the constantly recurring allusions to the day by all the Apostolic Fathers, under the familiar and apparently well-understood designation of THE LORD’S-DAY. These proofs seem to bear out the conclusion that, from the very morning of the Lord’s resurrection, the first day of the week came to be held of the Christian world in all sanctity and reverence as the ordained Gospel Sabbath. And as we may be quite sure that the apostles would never have made such a change on their own responsibility, we naturally refer it to some express though unpreserved direction from Him, who, repudiating all unnatural and constrained austerity on the one hand, and yet having regard to the unchanging sanctity of moral ordinances on the other, declared, _The Sabbath was made for man_, _and not man for the Sabbath_.

IV. And now, brethren, I come to the practical application of our subject, in the apprehended overthrow of all that is dear to a Christian mind by the opening of a great public exhibition on the Lord’s-day. It is a topic which I approach with much pain, not a little heightened by a fear lest strong feeling should betray me into any infirmity—into any word or sentiment inconsistent with the meekness and gentleness of Christ. But I have prayed to be kept from this—have asked of God that I might nothing exaggerate, nothing represent unfairly, nothing set down in the spirit of an ill-tempered and scolding partisan—but rather that, speaking in sorrow more than in anger, I might win _you_ to pray against this threatened evil—to pray against it as you would against the pestilence, or other feared providential scourge. This will not in any degree lead to a slackened diligence in the use of outward means, as you perceive from the first step I have invited you to take, in memorializing Her Majesty’s responsible advisers against this first step to a new “Book of Sports.” But still, remember, the thing to be done is to open eyes that are as yet blind, and to alarm consciences that now slumber; and this is a work to be done, not by might and not by power, not by wrangling and not by wrath, but by the Lord of Hosts pouring out upon our people a praying spirit, and enduing our beloved Queen with a wise and understanding heart.

With a jealousy, therefore, that respects as well the charitable temper required of a Gospel teacher, as the demands of an unbending and unfearing faithfulness, I may not speak of the contemplated opening of the new Exhibition on the Lord’s-day in any other terms than as an impious affront to the honour of Almighty God—as a wanton outrage upon the religious feelings of the surrounding neighbourhoods—as a cruel encroachment upon the poor man’s Sabbath rights—and as a legalized incentive to the most debasing forms of viciousness and crime.

i. Look first, I say, at the _awful impiety_ of this project. The terms of the charter to which a Protestant Queen is expected to set her hand and seal, set forth that all entrance to this great pleasure-house is to be strictly forbidden UNTIL ONE O’CLOCK; but that, after that hour, unrestrained admission will be afforded to that vast living tide, which, fed from tributary streams in every direction, from the river, and from the land, from monster steam-boats and monster trains, will have formed itself into a huge heaving mass of riot and profaneness at the so-called Palace doors. Well, here the first thought which must occur to any reflecting mind is, wherefore this strange bisection of the day into two such antagonistic parts? Whence comes it that this stroke of a time-piece is to transfer us, all at once, from a region of calm godliness, spiritual worship, noiseless acts of beneficence and love, to one of turbid, distracting, and tumultuous revelry? We look, I say, for some revealed warrant for giving to any ordinance of God this two-faced and self-contradicting character. Did the Almighty sanctify half a Sabbath, or did He sanctify a whole one? And if a whole one, where is our authority for allowing His claim to _one_ part of the day, but devoting to the world the other? Brethren, these questions can be answered but in one way. The entire scheme is dictated by that wretched spirit of compromise and double-dealing—that impious endeavour to unite Christ and Belial on the same throne, which has ever been the abominable thing that God hateth. For the Infidel who ignores the obligation of the Sabbath altogether, we have hope. He _is_ a consistent, and he _may_ be an honest man; and if so, who shall say how soon Christ may give him light? But for the man who _has_ light, and who only uses it to serve God by halves—mingling loyalty with his rebellion, professed homage with his insult, in the morning crying, Hosanna to the Son of David; and in the afternoon, exclaiming, Let him be crucified—for him we have not this hope. His is the lukewarmness of Laodicea outdone. And should England lend her countenance, to this dark impiety, what can she expect but to hear from Him who walketh in the midst of the Churches and holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, those awful words, “Because thou hast not kept my Sabbath from POLLUTING it, but hast FOLLOWED THY PLEASURE on my holy day, I will pour out my fury upon thee, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”

ii. Look, in the second place, at the _outrage_ which this desecration threatens to _the religious feelings_ of the adjacent neighbourhoods. It may be said that, in all localities, religious people are the minority; and that if a clear case can be made out of social convenience or benefit to the many, the feelings of the few ought to give way. This principle is one which I think it would be very dangerous to admit. A pious parent may have _nine_ lovers of pleasure in his household, for _one_ that is a lover of God; yet he frames his domestic arrangements in harmony with the right choice of the _one_, and not with the mistaken wishes of the nine. And a Government which would vindicate its parental character must do the same. Besides, it is clear, that with this question of numbers, how many good people we have to legislate for, and how many bad, the powers that rule have nothing to do. If they are the sworn conservators of the Protestant faith, and if that faith regards the Lord’s-day as an institution of perpetual sanctity, the very _listening_ to the plea of expediency is the betrayal of a trust; and the _acting_ upon it a practical confession that they look for a social benefit to the community, by a direct infringement of the law of God!