Andrew Thomson

“ To our minds it stands sacredly associated with the greatest events in human history, and in the intercourse of God with man—the completed handiwork of Almighty power, when God looked around Him upon the young and unfallen world, and pronounced all to be good—the giving of the Divine law from the sacred mount amid the signs of the present Deity—and the rising of our Redeemer from the grave, and the rising with Him of the hope of our world. ”

“ One writer, presuming, we suppose, on the safe distance of his readers from the scene which he describes, gravely informs them that in the city of Edinburgh all the window-blinds are kept carefully closed during the whole of the Sabbath, as if to attemper the gloom of the house to the gloomy state of mind of its inmates, and describes the little children as cowering under a vague sense of awe, and dreading to indulge even an innocent smile. ”

“ The gin-palace soon plants itself around these places of public entertainment and amusement, and finds in them a smooth and fascinating pathway to its snares; and few spectacles in our land are more riotous, more debased, more miserable, or more alarming as regards the future of our country, than a Sunday excursion-train, when it comes back and empties upon a city its pleasure-seekers and worshippers of nature. ”

“ Nothing will save a people in such a community from an undue mental strain unfavourable alike to intellectual and moral health, and even from being wrought in great numbers to death, but the weekly recurrence of a day which is fenced off and guarded by Divine prescription, and attachment to which is deeply rooted in the religious convictions and the gratitude of the people. There are tens of thousands of our industrial classes, and even multitudes among our men of business, who seldom see the younger members of their families, except on Sabbath-day. ”

“ And if there is need for such a Sabbath in any country, and among any people, even were they as pastoral and contemplative in their daily habits as Abraham in Canaan, or as Moses when tending the flocks of Jethro, it is immeasurably more indispensable to the intellectual and religious wellbeing of men living in old countries such as Scotland or England, where over-population has unduly crowded the market of labour, and given rise to an unhealthy competition, in which men often need to strain their wits and their energies to the utmost in order simply to live. ”

“ I am prepared to affirm that to the studious especially, and whether younger or older, a Sabbath well spent—spent in happy exercises of the heart, devotional and domestic—a Sabbath given to the soul, is the best of all means of refreshment to the mere intellect. ”

“ But man is not a mere animal: what is best for the ox and the ass is not best for him; and in order to degrade him into a poor unintellectual slave, over whom tyranny, in its caprice, may trample roughshod, it is but necessary to tie him down, animal-like, during his six working-days, to hard, engrossing labour, and to convert the seventh into a day of frivolous unthinking relaxation."
But we believe that the heart of Scotland generally is sound and enlightened on the Divine authority and the inestimable value of the Sabbath-day. ”

“ And there is surely something of high moral sublimity in the sight of a whole people, once in every week, ceasing from their business and their toil to celebrate the great facts of Creation and Redemption—"the plough left to sleep in the furrow," the loom motionless, the anvil silent, the mine and the factory tenantless, and the whole monotony of common life turned and elevated into a kind of sacred praise. ”

“ Of all the bold pictures in which certain of our modern novelists have indulged, there is none in which they have allowed their imaginations a more wild and unwarranted licence, than in the pictures with which they have entertained their readers of a Sabbath in a Scottish family. ”

“ It is true, then, that our ministers and Christian people in Scotland, almost without exception, believe in the Divine authority and perpetual obligation of the Sabbath-day.—They base their respect for it, not upon any ecclesiastical appointment, however venerable, or upon any time-honoured custom, however ancient, but upon the conviction that it is a benignant and unrevoked gift of Heaven to the human race. ”

“ As they have beheld the streams of our church-going people crowding along the streets of our cities to our numerous temples, they have failed to reflect how even the best gifts of heaven, the Sabbath and the sunlight, are the most ready to be abused, and that, at that very moment, there were thousands loitering at home in indolence, and even not a few, perhaps, rioting in intemperance. ”

“ The family once more re-assembles at the evening meal, and the Sabbath is closed with family worship, meditation, and secret devotion; and as the members of the household pass away to their nightly rest, it is felt that its hours have not been wearisome or unprofitable, but that they have in truth been all too short for the blessed work that was to be done in them. ”

“ The religious traditions of our community proved in most instances too strong for the cupidity of men who seemed prepared to sacrifice the highest interests, and to trample on the most sacred feelings of a whole community, for the sake of a larger annual dividend. The majority of our railways in Scotland do not run trains on Sabbath at all ”

“ The argument for this insidious and perilous exchange is sometimes put in a kind of religious phraseology, as if these visits to beautiful scenes in nature were only the introduction to another kind of worship, and as if gazing upon the master-pieces of human art in painting, or sculpture, or architecture, exercised a purifying and elevating influence on the mind ”

“ There is an unwonted stillness in the streets, and in the fields all around him, which that day only brings. The care of the body is not unheeded, and there is even a double attention to cleanliness and to taste in his attire; secret devotion is more prolonged than on other days, as it is more undisturbed ”

“ A great writer on natural religion has founded a beautiful argument for the existence and unity of God, on the adaptation of day and night to the physical nature of man: might not an argument of equal soundness and force for the Divine origin of the Sabbath, be founded on its adaptation to our physical, intellectual, and spiritual nature? ”

“ Men who write thus may safely be affirmed never to have spent a single Sabbath-day in a religious family in Scotland. That the Sabbath is in no instance presented in a repulsive form before the young, by their rather being told what they are not to do, than of the blessed work to which the Sabbath summons them, it would be too much to affirm; for what institution of heaven does not occasionally suffer from human handling? ”

“ The railway system itself, which, with all its other high advantages, has done not a little to disturb the integrity of our Sabbath rest, has strangely supplied us with valuable corroboration on this matter; for during the period in which our principal railways were in course of construction in Scotland and England, it was found that the work which those who laboured on Sabbath executed in seven days was generally less in amount and worse in execution than that done by sober, orderly, Sabbath-keeping men in six days. ”

“ It is well known to masters, that such men, depressed by the reaction of riot and excitement, seldom return to their labours on Monday along with the tradesman who has turned his Sabbath to its proper and sacred uses. ”

“ At the same time, with all these sombre exceptions, that are necessary to be introduced as shadows into any truthful picture of a Scottish Sabbath, we do not wonder that good and intelligent visitors from continental countries have been impressed and delighted by the spectacle of such a day in Scotland. ”

“ On this day, our sons of toil stand erect in the full consciousness of their manhood and of their heavenly birthright; and shall the day which brings such privilege and blessing to man be described as a restraint? ”

“ It is true, then, speaking of the people of Scotland generally, that we rest our Sabbath observance on Divine appointment, and that we cling tenaciously to a whole Sabbath. This is our crown, which I [9] trust no one will ever take from us, and which, indeed, can only be lost in a community of free men, by being voluntarily and guiltily abdicated. But in what I have hitherto said, I have spoken more of our Scottish principles than of our Scottish practice ”

“ And to what a debasing monotony of toil would the lives of these men speedily be reduced, were it not for the anticipation of the coming day of hallowed rest, in which the artisan should know no master, and the master himself should be disturbed by no postman's rap or din of business, and should exchange his ledger for his Bible, and the hardening influences of commercial competition and rivalry for the softening and purifying influences of home and of the house of God. ”

“ And let it never be forgotten, that it is far more easily preserved than recovered, for when any portion of its time is invaded, the habits of a people soon shape themselves to the new order of things. A spadeful of earth may prevent the inundation in Holland, but when once the sea has broken in, the strength of a million of men may fail to roll back its destructive waters. ”

“ It will not be wondered at, after these details, that in Scotland we claim the entire Sabbath for religion, not only because it forms part of our most sacred convictions that it has been so conferred upon us by the unrepealed act of Heaven, but also because we are of opinion that, within narrower limits than this, the Sabbath must ever fail to work out, to its proper extent, all its beneficent designs. ”

“ There must be the preparation and attuning of the mind for [8] public devotion and instruction, by secret prayer and meditation; there must be the recollection and the holy repose of the soul afterwards; there must be the hallowed intermingling of deeds of charity with exercises of piety, and room for the revival and the play of home affections, if the Sabbath is to shed all the good which the beneficence of Heaven has put into it, upon churches and nations. ”

“ And if the history of ancient Greece in its decay reads one lesson to the world more loudly than another, it is this, that refinement of taste may be associated in the same individual and people with the greatest debasement and corruption of morals. ”

“ There never was an argument more triumphantly met by sound philosophy, or more completely refuted by experience. There is no denying, indeed, that visits to high works of art, to objects of curiosity, [15] or to beautiful scenes in the natural world, may at their own time, and in their own place, be beneficial to the busiest and the poorest. ”

“ The statesman or the barrister who does not allow himself the weekly pause in his round of mental labour which the Sabbath of God offers him, soon finds nature punishing him for his disregard of its great laws ”

“ It is in fact a thorough "prejudice," a judgment passed without examination, a prejudged decision without any reasonable foundation. I believe that Scottish views of the Sabbath are scriptural, reasonable, and practical. As a proof of my assertion, I earnestly request the attention of English Christians to the following paper. My own firm conviction is, that, in the matter of Sabbath observance, Scotland has nothing to be ashamed of in her principles, and England has much to learn. ”

“ Some few years since, the moral statistics of certain congregations in Scotland, including a membership of thirty thousand, were collected, and it was found that an average of only two out of every thousand of those members had in the course of a year been charged with the sin of intemperance. And what is thus found to hold in the instance of large communities, is equally true in the case of individuals. So long as a Scottish youth respects the Sabbath and frequents the church, there is good hope regarding him, for he is coming under weekly influences that keep him right ”

“ And our superintendents of police will tell you, that persons who are in the habit of honouring the Sabbath, and frequenting a place of worship, are more careful in their pecuniary transactions, "more careful also in their language, more economical in their arrangements at home, more affectionate and humane, and in every respect superior persons by far to those of contrary habits." Some who do not look with favour upon our Sabbatic rest, are accustomed to point to the drunkenness which exists among a certain class of our Scottish population ”

“ A second distinguishing feature in the Sabbath-keeping of Scotland consists in the fact, that we consider the entire Sabbath to be specially and equally consecrated to religion.—The length of the sacred day we believe to be just the same as the length of common days. We know nothing of the distinction of "canonical hours," as if one part of the day were in any degree more hallowed than another ”

“ Suppose the period of the Sabbath to be restricted, as some would wish, to the hours of public worship, and men suddenly to pass from business or pleasure to the sanctuary, and then to pass with equal suddenness from the sanctuary to business or pleasure again, even the benefit of the season of public worship would be more than half lost. Nature in most men is incapable of violent transitions ”

“ And there have been travellers who have become writers of fiction when they have touched on this subject, and who have quite equalled the novel-writers in the liberties they have taken with the simple truth. ”

“ The fact is, it is rather the æsthetic than the moral part of our nature that is influenced by them at all. They refine, but they cannot transform. They may "form the capital of the column, but not its base." ”