Sabbath Cars in Edinburgh.
On Saturday morning, the 30th November, Sabbath-loving citizens in Edinburgh got a most painful surprise. It was intimated in the press that the Tramway Company intended the following Sabbath day to run the cars. The notice was remarkably short, and so the event came with all the greater shock. It appears that the relations between the Company and the Corporation of the city have become strained, and that the Company are in financial difficulties. As lovers of the world more than lovers of God, the latter decided to start Sabbath cars with the view of helping their funds. We are glad to say that a considerable proportion of the citizens are entirely opposed to the innovation, and we sincerely hope that any efforts they may make to get it thrown out may be attended with success. The press in general, but especially the Scotsman, defends the new and unholy venture, and employs every carnal argument it can lay hands on in its favour. The Edinburgh Evening News, a small paper, we are glad to see speaks out strongly on the right side. It might have been expected, however, that the clergy would have risen up as one man against the new form of desecrating the Lord’s Day, but should the expectation have been cherished, it has been doomed to disappointment. With very few exceptions, the professed ambassadors of Christ, and defenders of God’s commandments, are totally apathetic and inert. They are affording a new proof that in general they are nothing but compromisers and trimmers, not leading men in the right path from a sense of duty, at all costs, but shaping their views and conduct according to what is likely to be the opinion of the majority.
Principal Rainy has spoken. He delivered himself at a meeting of the United Free Presbytery; but he wrought no deliverance for the city of Edinburgh. With unfailing consistency he showed himself to be a trimmer to the times. Of course, he was opposed, or at least appeared to be opposed to the cars on Sabbath, but his opposition was based on the most flimsy grounds; he never mentioned the Fourth Commandment from beginning to end of his speech. In fact, he made the whole matter to turn upon the will of the people; it was the working men’s day, he said, and he advised them to look after it. He condoned the practice of Sabbath cars in other and larger cities. Principal Rainy’s utterance, instead of helping the cause of the Sabbath, only dragged it into the mire. In fact, he exhibited the kind of conscience he possesses, after a fashion that should have an awakening influence upon the minds of people who look up to him as a religious guide. The man, who can take such low and unworthy grounds upon the claims of the Lord’s Day, is not to be trusted in any matter where the interests of truth and righteousness are concerned.
The question, as between the Corporation and the Tramway Company, is at present in the Court of Session. We sincerely pray that the Lord may in infinite mercy defeat this latest effort of Satan’s agents to destroy the sanctity and peace of the holy Sabbath in our country.
High Church Fanaticism.
The following extract from a letter written to the Dundee Courier by Rev. F. W. Davis, Episcopalian minister at Blairg. wrie, commenting upon the King’s action in attending the service at Crathie Parish Church, well illustrates the moral coarseness of the author and the ridiculous bigotry of his views:—“He (the King) is attempting the impossible, and is posing as two distinct personalities—viz., as a member of Holy Church when in England, or, in fact, anywhere but in the region of unfortunate Balmoral, and a member of the sect Presbyterian—the sect founded but yesterday in ignorance and presumption by the greedy and ambitious, and unrefined in taste and in longings, when in Scotland. He does wrong not to go to church (I oppose the word church to kirk) when in Scotland. Does he act a lie when he goes to a temple of the Lord God in England, or does he act one only when he trusts himself under the roof of a kirk? His Majesty cannot, at one and the same time, be a Churchman and a Primmer man, and so I conclude that he is a Churchman everywhere and at all times, but that when in Scotland he must really do a little business political on Sunday, and where better than in a political preaching shop adjacent to his temporary sojourning place, Balmoral? But how he must abominate the having to transact business political and temporal on Sunday, when he would rather be joining in the worship of God in a building free from Calvinistic-cum-Lutheran-cum-Knoxian-cum-Melvilleistic associations such as attach to all structures of the schism, legalised only, and not approved of God, in poor Scotland.”