(Slightly abridged).
By Rev. J. KENNEDY, D.D.
Delivered at Dingwall, September, 16th 1883.
(Continued from p. 218).
And the leading newspapers of the country add their influence to all that tends to remove the authority of the Fourth Commandment from the conscience of the people. One of these is never more earnest and envenomed in its paragraphs than when it utters its ignorant sneers at all Sabbath-keeping, and pours out its abuse on those by whom the Sabbath law is defended. On some minds this must tell. The reiteration of its sceptical mockery of what is scriptural must, to some extent, affect the feeling of those who are unacquainted with the Word of God, and care not seriously to consider any subject to which their attention may be directed. And the number of such may be counted by thousands. What infatuation the conduct of our aristocracy and of our rulers indicates, when by the example of the former, and the guilty indifferentism of the latter, the peasantry of this country are induced to treat with contempt the claims of the Fourth Commandment!
But how is the Sabbath observed among, and by ourselves? This is a question which each one of us is bound to consider, for on each of us rests an obligation to do what the Fourth Commandment requires. Of this obligation you cannot by any possibility get rid. And the obligation is divinely imposed. Some may imagine they are in a position up to which the claim of the Sabbath law does not rise—that it is something to which the vulgar alone are called to have respect. And the poor, amidst the pinching straits of their lot, may think to them Sabbath-keeping is impossible, and is therefore not required of them. Others still, found among the highest and among the lowest in rank, may imagine that, by the aid of men of advanced opinions, they have reached a conclusion which entirely disposes of the Sabbath law, and relieves them of all responsibility in connection with it. And besides all these, there are many who think that any seemly measure of outward respect for the Sabbath is a full discharge of all that is dutiful; while there are some whose official work is such that they cannot refrain from seeming to respect it. But to each one of all these classes the question is addressed, and to it an answer must be given, if not earlier, most certainly at the bar of the great court of assize at the last day.
How are you affected towards the Sabbath in your heart? do you rejoice in prospect of it, not because its rest from toil is craved by your weary body, and by your mind from worrying business, but because it is a day “holy to the Lord, and honourable?” Are you on that account really disposed to call it “a delight?” Does the prospect of enjoying communion with the Lord, and of enjoying “peace” in “His ways,” give you gladness? does your desire for this induce you to pray to God in prospect of the Sabbath for His presence and His blessing?
And when the Sabbath comes how are you employed in your closet? Is there any true spiritual worship there? Do you imagine that there can be any genuine worship in public if there be no true worship in secret. If you seek God at all you will seek Him in your closet. True godliness is not a bit of gaudy patchwork for the eyes of men to observe, it is a spiritual living with God in secret prayer, in which there are wrestlings for His blessing, sighings under the hiding of His face, gladness in the hope of His favour, joy in meditation on His glory and His love as revealed through Jesus Christ, and glimpses by the eye of faith of the coming glory, and foretastes of it such as cause fervent longings for the time when that glory shall be reached. What know you of such exercises as these in your closet on the day of God?
And how is it as to family worship on Sabbath? Is there an altar to God in your household? do you enjoy the service of compassing it? do you in that work seek the face and strength of the Lord? O, how sad it is to think of families that never take part in any such service! and sad too, is the case of all heads of households who regard family worship as an uninteresting routine which, if they dared, they would altogether omit!
And how is it as to household duties on the Sabbath? Is unnecessary work avoided? Are such arrangements made and observed, as will admit of as many members of the household as possible attending in the place of public worship? What is done by parents in the religious instruction of their children? This is a duty binding on every parent, and it must fare ill with every community in which this is neglected. The home is the nursery of the church and nothing else can supply the place of parental instruction of the young. The tendency in these days is to delegate this work to the teachers in our Sabbath Schools. Many parents feel as if the opportunity of sending their children to be instructed elsewhere, had relieved them of all responsibility in connection with their being taught at home. But this is an utter mistake, and is an evil which ought to be carefully guarded against.
And what is your Sabbath reading? There never was a time when so many books for Sabbath reading issued from the press. Sunday—the heathenish name for the Lord’s Day—is put on the title-page of some of these, and this is almost all that is Sabbathic about them. Tales and illustrations are mingled with singularly light religious pap, in order to gratify a taste that says of the Sabbath, “when will it be gone?” and to which searching the Scriptures is a weariness. There is nothing that ought to take the place of the prayerful study of the Word of God; and let your other reading be confined to works which have been approved by the Church and blessed by the Lord.
And what is your public worship? How are you affected towards it? Are you truly conscious of your need of grace to prepare you for engaging in it in a spiritual frame of mind? Do you feel your need of receiving instruction, and are you “more ready to hear than to offer the sacrifice of fools?” Know you what it is to feel sad in His house when the Lord with-holds His gracious presence? Has a “day in His courts” been to you, in your experience, “better than a thousand?” Or has your coming to the house of God been to you a mere matter of habit—a mere lifeless formality?
These are questions which demand the serious attention of each one of you all. Dare not to make so light of the claims of God as not to care what answers to these questions you can honestly give.
I desire, before I close, to warn you, and especially the young, against examples and misrepresentations from which you may be in danger.
I would warn you against the example of Sabbath walking.
Such an example is presented to you, though certainly not by any who, in their practice, are entitled to your respect. Still, the very habit of seeing others doing what, in your conscience, you cannot approve, may have an evil influence, and as the observed transgression of the law of God increases, in that measure is the volume of the current which endangers your steadfastness.
I know few more excuseless things than this Sabbath walking. If the plea of health is used to justify it, how can men expect that to benefit their health which they dare not ask the Lord to bless! And if they can only plead that they do it for recreation, because they feel the Sabbath to be dull, how can they dare to act in a way which so plainly indicates their dislike of the day and of the Word of God? And surely what ought chiefly to be sought on the Sabbath is what would be of eternal benefit to the soul; and, if so, what possible advantage, in order to the acquisition of this, can be found in the society or the surroundings of those who go forth on His day, openly to exhibit their contempt of the Lord. This way of profaning the Sabbath has often been the beginning of a career of crime. Beware of it, my young friends.
Beware, too, of following the example of those who cannot dispense with having their letters and newspapers on Sabbath.
No one can listen to the plea of necessity in favour of sending for letters to the Post-office on Sabbath, or of requiring that these be delivered to them.
And be not cheated with infidel objections to careful Sabbath-keeping, however smartly and sneeringly these may be uttered. As the tide of declension is moving on, an impression is produced in the hearts of those who are adrift that all things which they are leaving behind them are but relics of darker times. Adherence to what is antiquated is all that is implied, they say, in the conservatism that cleaves to “the old paths” and the “good way” in which our fathers walked. It is characteristic of young men that they do not like to appear to be behind the age. They must be abreast of the intelligence of a century so enlightened as this is. To minds of this cast access is easy to the idea of the Sabbath and of Sabbath-keeping being things of the past, and therefore not to be respected. But, my young friends, be not led away by this affectation of progress with its contempt for what is past. There never was a time when in science there was more utterly baseless speculation; and in which more structures of lies were reared within the religious sphere than now. There never was an age of more hasty thinking and of more hazy utterances than the present in all things affecting what is divine and spiritual. But God is unchanging. On that truth firmly plant your feet in faith. The law of God is unchanging. That truth is another strong foothold. On these be “steadfast and unmovable” in the midst of all present unsettlement of thought and practice; and all influence which may be brought to bear upon you will not suffice to cause you to regard Sabbath-keeping as a thing which any generation should leave behind.
And careful Sabbath-keeping will be represented to you as a gloomy thing. And by whom? By those who always carefully refrained from trying what sort of thing it was. If you would wish to know whether Sabbath-keeping is gloomy work, ask those who have tried what it is. They will tell you that it is “a delight.” They would not exchange one moments’ gladness, such as they have enjoyed on the Lord’s Day, in His fellowship and service, for all that the world could bestow of its dissipating pleasures. The Sabbath requiring to borrow from the world in order that it may not be a gloomy thing to observe it! Can men talk more insanely than when they speak thus? A man happier because he forsakes “the Fountain of living waters” and betakes himself to “broken cisterns!” Men gloomy, whose joy is to be enlightened with the glory, and touched by the love of God, as compared with these who have no more to make them glad than what can be won in a service whose wages is death! Neither let the enemies of God nor your own evil heart give you your estimate of the Sabbath. Take that only from the Word of God, and seek from God a heart that will love what He commands, and move you to walk as He commands, and then certain I am that you will cease to regard the Sabbath as a weariness, or the keeping of it as a thing of gloom. Then will you find as much of gladness in Sabbath-keeping as will enable you to disregard the sneers of those who would fain mock you back from the ways of righteousness, and to despise the pleasures by which they would tempt you to desecrate the day of the Lord.
“That man never saw the corruption and plague of his own heart, who dreams of working out for himself a righteousness in which he may appear faultless at the bar of judgment.”—Rev. William Romaine.