THE following Protest by the Sabbath Observance Committee of the church has been forwarded to Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, against the Sabbath opening of the “Britain Can Make It” Exhibition, recently held in London. It is an ominous sign of the laxity displayed in Government quarters on this question that official sanction should have been given to the opening of this Exhibition on the Lord’s Day. It is estimated that on a recent Sabbath about 7,000 were admitted to the Exhibition while thousands were turned away. Some facts given by the Lord’s Day Observance Society for England—23,000,000 circulation of “Sunday” Newspapers, 4,000,000 boys and girls, the citizens of to-morrow, outside the influence of Sabbath Schools and Bible Classes, 95 per cent. of the population in many areas neglect God’s House on Sabbaths, 3 public houses to every 1 place of worship open on the Lord’s Day in England alone—makes depressing reading. The attitude of open disregard for the Sabbath, shown by a Government department, is likely to raise our country to fresh levels of irreligion.
“We have learned with surprise and regret that the ‘Britain Can Make It’ Exhibition, at present being shown in London, is being opened to the public each Lord’s Day. This action appears to us to be a flagrant violation of the Sabbath law which demands that the whole day should be devoted to the Lord’s worship and service alone and in peace time there is no emergency of necessity which can possibly justify this desecration of the Lord’s Day.
Our protest against this disregard for the sacred character of the Sabbath is based upon the Word of God and is not the outcome of personal predilection. The Sabbath in its original institution is divine, for we read that when the Lord rested from His works of creation, ‘He blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it,’ which accounts for the place this day has been assigned in the Moral Law as an integral part of it. That law, including the Sabbath, is universal and perpetual in its obligation, and requires rulers and their subjects to observe its provisions carefully. It is not a temporary expedient, or part of the Jewish law, or a humanly inspired ordinance, but the Sabbath has been appointed by the Lord. ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.’ Such a demand allows no relaxation for Government officials or the ordinary individual to profane its sacred hours by visiting public exhibitions or displays.
This decision of the authorities to keep open the Exhibition on the Sabbath augurs ill for the nation’s recovery in post-war years. A compromising attitude on this question will have disastrous consequences which may be felt far beyond the spiritual issues involved in the matter, for once a weakened church, whose very existence is bound up with the spiritual observance of the Sabbath, ceases to preserve the moral and spiritual standards of the people, the rapid decline of our nation will follow. A recent writer has stated: ‘A soulless commercialisation has clutched at the throat of our holy things and is throttling the nation’s soul.’ We listened with pleasure to your heartening war-time talks over the radio in which you emphasised and appealed to the inherent religious sense of our people, and we were accordingly grieved to learn that this Exhibition, promoted by your department, was to remain open on the Sabbath. The forces of materialism have already grown so strong in our land that the religious character of our people is undergoing a corresponding deterioration; your action in countenancing this flagrant desecration of the Lord’s Day will serve to hasten that process.
This question has also a national aspect and we feel alarmed at the prospect which the attitude of your department has made apparent. Soon we will have the British Industries Fair and the precedent set in this Exhibition of Sabbath opening may be followed on an even greater scale. We appeal to you to reconsider your decision in the interests of priceless blessing of an entire Sabbath Day of rest and worship being preserved in our midst and close the flood-gates now, before it is too late.”