BY THE LATE REV. ANDREW SYMINGTON, D.D., REFORMED
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PAISLEY.*
* This article is taken from a volume entitled “The Christian Sabbath,” published in 1850. The general argument is equally applicable to the present time.—ED.
IN arranging a series of treatises on the Sabbath, it was impossible, with any consistency, to omit one on the Sabbath Mail—the sin being manifest on the grand principles on which we advocate the Sabbath cause, and the evils being great and widely spread. Since the treatises were announced, the interest of the public mind has been awakened to the great argument in general, and to this practical part of it in particular; and movements have been made in several quarters, which have given expression to public opinion on the evil of the Sabbath mails, and the press has given forth publications on the subject, of less and greater extent, as almost to supersede the execution of the task we had prescribed to ourselves. Though unable to present the subject in new or stronger lights, or to give strength to the argument, or to make appeals of even equal power, we feel our obligation to redeem our pledge.
We are fully aware that we encounter, in the outset, a strong prejudice from the universally felt and acknowledged benefits of the Public Post. We entertain a high estimation of these advantages, and regard with admiration the pitch of improvement which the postal establishment has now reached. In despatch, punctuality, diffusion, and safety, it exceeds anything that could have been anticipated, and meets almost everything that could be wished. Persons prevented intercourse by local separation and other causes, can now communicate daily, and even oftener, at a trifling expense; and intelligence in business, science, literature, politics, and in every matter of public interest circulates widely and gratuitously, like the light of day or the air of heaven. Nor is this confined to a favoured locality, but spread over the length and breadth of the land—we may almost say the world; for persons sundered by the globe’s diameter can now correspond in comparatively a brief period of time. Any attempt, therefore, to place the mail under restriction, is ready to be regarded with apprehension and offence, as the individual would be who would maliciously shut for a time the sluice which supplies a large community with water; or the person who, to indulge some capricious freak, or cover some selfish or resentful purpose, would stop the supplies of a gasometer, and place the streets and dwellings of a great city in midnight darkness. We deprecate every unjust interference with the operations of the Post Office, and we hope to make it evident that the restriction for which we have to plead is not only required by high moral considerations, in deference to an authority which should not be questioned, but contributes in no small degree to the interests of individuals and of society. Regulations are necessary to efficiency and safety, and restrictions promoting these and other objects are not to be disregarded; as in the supplies of water and light, just alluded to, regulations are not to be scouted which are required to purify the water and improve the light, and, withal, to prevent and provide against the causes of inundation and explosion.
To come to our subject. Our argument may be conducted upon two principles;—the one is the economical principle; the other by appeal to Scriptural authority. In the one case the question is treated in its bearings upon the temporal interests of individuals and communities; in the other, we view the subject in the lights of morality and religion, and in connection with the duties and interests of our holy Christianity. In this series of treatises, the former of these principles has not by any means been overlooked; but the latter principle of argument is regarded as first, and chief, and last—the main principle according to which the question is to be discussed and settled in the Christian community. At the same time, it is our firm persuasion that the subject of the Sabbatical institute, soundly expounded on the high principle of Scriptural authority, will bring out the argument on the principle of sound economics, and establish satisfactorily that the observation of the Sabbath conduces in a very high degree to the temporal wellbeing of man, individually and socially. We regard it as an axiom not requiring proof, and not to be questioned, that the law which God has enacted for man, the whole moral law, while declaring the divine supremacy, and as such demanding obedience, is calculated to promote the greatest good.
We do not, we dare not, lay utility, expediency, or self-interest at the foundation of moral obligation. “True indeed it is, that conformity to the approving will of God is conducive to individual happiness and the general good, and must produce the highest degree of both. This is, therefore, a sound accessory reason of moral obligation; our objection lies against raising it into the primary reason.” We shall, however, leave the economical utility to show itself, while we deal with the argument on the high principle of the revealed will of God. We are fully aware, that to give our argument conclusiveness, so far as founded on the Fourth Commandment, it is necessary to establish its abiding moral obligation.
“The requirements of the moral law,” it is justly regarded, “are not the dictates of the mere or sovereign will of God, but are the results of the real nature of things and the propriety of relations, and so of immutable obligation. The appointment of a specified time for the celebration of worship is partly positive, but not positive as the ceremonial law. It is founded on the constitution of things as ordained by God, and on the divine procedure in creation; and it is wise and good, while the present system of the world and constitution of man continue.”
The antiquity of the Sabbath, as instituted before the entrance of sin—the occasion and reference of its first institution, in God’s creating the heavens and the earth in six days, and his resting on the seventh—the position which it holds in the midst of unrepealed moral statutes—its benevolent design, as providing a season of rest from labour—its recognition in the history and predictions of the Old Testament, and in the doctrine and practice of Christ and his apostles, and the history of the Christian Church—supply material for satisfactory argumentation on the subject. These and other arguments have been elaborated in former treatises, and we do not feel ourselves called to reiterate what has been already written. We now assume the moral obligation of the Fourth Commandment, and deal with persons acknowledging it.
God has spoken, and he has written, and caused it to be “written in a table and noted in a book for the time to come”—”Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy; six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work; but the Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work.”
We revere this as the law of God, obligatory wherever it is made known;—a law obvious to the most feeble capacity; authoritative and majestic to command the attention of the most heedless; impartial and comprehensive, embracing the whole circle of superiors, inferiors, and equals; withal, at the same time, so benevolent, as to be regarded not merely as the utterance of absolute moral sovereignty, but as a grant of Divine goodness, to be received and highly appreciated. They judge falsely as presumptuously, who place their own will and pleasure in opposition to the authority, and wisdom, and goodness of God. Great as are the advantages of the postal establishment, it is under law to society and to God. It is under law to society, and cannot, must not, under any pretext, infringe upon the liberties of men, trifle with their lives, or inflict cruelties upon the mute creation. In the hands of moral and accountable beings, it is under law to God, and men cannot, in conducting it, violate innocently and with impunity the wise, benevolent, and authoritative legislation of the most high God. We are constrained to regard Sabbath mails, in the ordinary circumstances of society, as a violation of the letter, the spirit, and the design of the Divine law; and because “sin is the transgression of the law,” we must speak of the sin of Sabbath mails.
According to every just interpretation of the Fourth Commandment, civil labour, not required by necessity or mercy, or the observance of religious ordinances, is interdicted on the holy Sabbath. “Thou shalt not do any work.” But the systematic and regular running of the mail is ordinary civil labour, and, when not specially required as above, is a violation of the law of God. The carrying of mails by men on foot or on horseback, by gig or coach, boat, steamer or locomotive, is ordinary civil work, required and lawful on six days of the week, but forbidden, and therefore unlawful, on the Sabbath. By the persons employed in the various services of the Post Office on the Lord’s day, there is an appropriation of time in direct contravention of the law of God. Thus occupied, they are performing their everyday secular work by which they provide for themselves and their families. Attendance in the place of civil business, receiving letters and mails, sorting and stamping letters, sealing bags, despatching mails, and delivering letters, newspapers, and small packages of various character, form the ordinary work of the Post Office; and in many cases the work is onerous and exhausting. The work done within the Post Office, the work of the persons carrying letters and packages, or conveying them by coach or train, is not distinguishable, by the persons engaged or by others, from the work of the other days of the week.
God has said of the Sabbath, “On it thou shalt not do any work;” and in the things of which we complain, the authority and goodness of God, thus interposed, are resisted and set at nought. The lightnings, it is true, do not flash in our eyes as in the eyes of ancient Israel; the thunders are not reverberating from the trembling mountain; the voice is not giving forth the audible utterances which made those who heard it entreat that it should not be spoken to them any more; yet the commandment stands on the sacred page unrevoked by the authority by which it was enacted, and by which alone it can be repealed, and is recognised by prophets and apostles, and by Him who came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil and establish them—the Lord of all, and the “Lord also of the Sabbath.”
The civil labour in the matter in question is in disobedience to the authority of God; it is breaking down that reverential acknowledgment of the Deity which the rest of the Sabbath is expressly designed and admirably fitted to cherish and maintain, and treating that honour which is due to God, and required by him, with neglect and contempt. Is there obligation in the commandments, “Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal,” and the other precepts of the Decalogue, and none in the precept addressed, with no marked specifications, to the parent, to the child, to the master, to the servant, and to him that sits in the gates to administer righteousness? Is no heed whatever to be given to the Divine caveat which introduces this commandment, “Remember the Sabbath-day?” Is no deference to be paid to the Divine Wisdom, in distributing the time of labour and of rest? Is no grateful return to be made to the Divine Benevolence, in granting us six days for our own work; nor reverential obedience to be yielded to the Divine Supremacy, in challenging a special proprietary in the seventh portion of time? Is there to be no sense nor acknowledgment of the Divine Mercy, in instituting a day of rest from labour and toil to man and to cattle, and giving opportunity to man of moral and spiritual improvement? Is the Divine Benediction, which was conjoined with the keeping of the Sabbath when God first consecrated it to his special service, to be treated as a thing of nought? Is there no fear of the blight or moth of the curse on the work of the six days, in treating with neglect the day which He who blesses and it shall be blessed, has specially blessed and hallowed? Is there obligation in the commandments of the second table, in which God has set the fence of His high authority around our honour, life, substance, and character, and no obligation in the precept in which God has appointed a season for the special acknowledgment of His being, the celebration of His worship, and the hallowing of His name; and in which, while consulting His own glory, He has at the same time regarded the true interest of man, ordaining that this portion of time shall be a season of relief to the body from laborious toil, and escape to the mind from engrossing secular care? We are, of course, addressing ourselves particularly to persons acknowledging the obligation of the Fourth Commandment, and find it utterly impossible to reconcile the practice condemned with such acknowledgment.
The claims and urgencies of business are brought forward in defence of Sabbath mails. In a manufacturing and commercial country like ours, speedy and regular communications involve deeply the interests of the several classes of the community; and diligence in business is commended by the obligation of virtue and of religion. But let us hear the Divine commandment, “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. On the Seventh thou shalt not do any work.” The hebdomadal rest from civil labour is the law of God, and, wherever this exceeding broad commandment finds man, it demands respect and obedience. It addresses itself with equal authority to the parent and the child, the master and servant, the husbandman, the artisan, the merchant, the rich man and the poor man, the monarch and the subject, the legislator, the judge, the magistrate, and the community at large. This law is obligatory in the city and in the field, in the house and on the highway, in the factory, in the counting-house, and in the shop, on the land and on the water, on shipboard at sea and in the harbour. Rest on the Sabbath is the law of God, and in no ordinary state of things is it to be set aside. The very supposition lays the wisdom of God under imputation. To the man who works with his hands, or otherwise pursues civil business, the weekly rest is matter of duty, right, and mercy; and there must lurk some fallacy or evil principle when, in prosecuting the ordinary business of life, a plea of necessity is urged in opposition to the law of God.
Two facts may be adduced in opposition to this plea, the one of long standing, the other of recent date. The city of London has no mail on the Sabbath. With what plausibility or propriety can provincial towns and rural districts set up the plea of business for Sabbath mails, when the General Post Office of the commercial metropolis of the wide world issues no letters, and employs no servants on the Lord’s day? Is it not matter of fact, that when proposals have been made for opening the General Post Office on the Sabbath, remonstrances have poured in against it from all quarters? As in other cases, so in this, let the Divine command, “On the seventh day shalt thou rest,” take effect over all the land. From midnight to midnight let the Sabbath be a season of rest to man and beast employed in this as in every other ordinary work. There is neither impossibility nor impracticability here; and the importance of the thing demands effort and sacrifice to carry it into effect. Were this arrangement gone into universally, there would of course be no blank day (as merchants have been accustomed to call the day when no mails arrived from London), with the exception of the Sabbath; and this, though a day of cessation from toil and trade, not a blank day, but a business day of incalculable profits to those who rightly improve it. The Sabbath would not be a blank day even to the men of corporeal labour and commercial occupation; for mind and body would by rest be prepared for more vigorous and correct application to business, and work and business would be done better and in greater amount than could be compassed by continuous application. The rest of the Sabbath will not prove lost time to the man of business and work, any more than the time employed in oiling the wheels of a carriage to give it both a sweeter and a swifter motion. This gone into, a public homage would be done to religion over the land; thousands would be released from oppressive drudgery; and the men of business would be relieved from close application, without the fear of being anticipated or overreached, as is done or dreaded, in the eager competitions of mercantile life. But could there be a plea for Sabbath mails on the score of business—a plea that we deem inadmissible—it would be altogether set aside by the recent improvements in locomotion. What! mails from London every day except the Sabbath! twice every day, and oftener in many cases, and yet cry for business letters on Sabbath! There must be something altogether undue and excessive here. Why not urge the same plea for other public establishments? Banks are closed on the Sabbath. Courts of law are shut on the first day of the week. Other business and government offices are shut on the Lord’s day. Might not the plea of business be urged for opening the Exchange for commercial transactions, and warehouses and shops for sales, as in France and other countries in the Continent? Why does the Judge not hold his court, and admit the Lawyer to plead the cause of his client on the Sabbath? Why are the Houses of Parliament not opened on the Sabbath? We can easily conceive of cases involving deeply the temporal interests of parties, their personal convenience, and even their liberty, in which urgency might be pleaded with greater plausibility for opening the courts of law, than for the ordinary despatch of mails on the Sabbath. Why should the distinction of lawful days be kept up in the several departments of legislative, judicial, and civil business, and broken down in the Post Office?
(To be Continued.)