possessed of no means of religious instruction."1 It has been said that no class of men are more frequently before the magistrates than the London cab and omnibus drivers, who are employed every day from thirteen to sixteen hours in their calling. Habits of intoxication and profane swearing prevail to a great extent amongst both classes; and the same characteristic attaches to them as to others who are deprived of the privileges of the Lord's day, namely, demoralization and degradation.2 Mr. Edge, of Manchester, observes, respecting the London bakers, that "the low mental and moral condition of the trade generally in London at the present time is notorious."3 Mr. Henry Ellis, a master baker, says of them, "Those good and moral impressions which they first received in their early days are entirely lost, from the continual practice of working on the Sabbath day."4 The city and metropolitan police, numbering 5000, although guardians of the public peace, as a body live almost without regard to religion, or thought of another world.5 In four years, 1849-1852, 54 of that body were convicted of offences, 970 were dismissed, and 524 were suspended; 2495 were fined, 64 were reduced in rank, 3151 resigned. The value of the property stolen during that period was £153,942, of which £34,032 was recovered. The want of a day of rest and moral training is found to corrupt a class, who from their circumstances in life might be expected to rise superior to deeds of villany. We refer to servants in our post-offices, who number 14,000, and labour in many instances from six to ten or even twelve hours on the Sabbath. It is stated in a Report of 1843 by a Committee of the House of Commons, that, from January 5, 1837, to January 5, 1842, the immense sum of £322,033, contained in letters, was lost in passing through the post-office. Whatsoever, therefore, impairs the authority of a sacred resting day tends to quench virtuous feeling, and to obliterate from the world the truths, laws, and blessings of religion. In referring to the public teaching of Christianity on the Sabbath, Dean Prideaux 2 Ibid. p. 84. 1 Baylee's Facts and Statistics, p. 64. $ Quoted in Address on the Evils of Sabbath Labour, p. 11. 4 Evidence before the House of Commons' Committee in 1832, p. 159. • Christian Times (1853), p. 379. remarks, that "It is not to be doubted but that if this method were once dropped among us, the generality of the people, whatever else might be done to obviate it, would in seven years relapse into as bad a state of barbarity as was ever in practice among the worst of our Saxon or Danish ancestors."1 If along with the pulpit the Sabbath itself were set aside, we should require to take a worse state of society than that to represent the woful result. The weekly day of rest and worship may in some imperfect form survive the extinction of Christianity, but Christianity has never existed without its Sabbath. Let this be lost to our country or to any land, and the religion which employs it for its own preservation and advancement must, with all the blessings of the highest civilisation, disappear along with it. And it is lamentable to reflect that so many of the inhabitants of Great Britain are employed in strenuous endeavours to pull down that fabric of religion, morality, and social happiness, which by means of the Sabbath has been reared and consolidated in these lands, and which has for centuries been no less the envy and admiration of the world than the blessing and glory of our people. 1 Old and New Testament connected, etc. (1720), part i. p. 391. CHAPTER III. ECONOMY OF A WEEKLY HOLY DAY. "If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest, but the axe, the spade, the anvil, and the loom had been at work every day, during the last three centuries, I have not the smallest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and a less civilized people than we are."-LORD MACAULAY. It is a remarkable fact, that, while the multiplication of holidays impoverishes individuals and communities, the opposite effect is produced by a weekly day of sacred rest. The labourer receives the same amount of wages for his six days' work that he would receive for the work of seven.1 The institution, therefore, brings to the working classes once in the week a clear gain of a resting day, which they can apply to the husbanding of their strength, to the cultivation of their minds, and to the instruction of their families. By means of the wise and merciful appointment of a Sabbath, they are enabled to spend fifty-two days of the year most profitably to their own interests, physical, mental, and moral, and beneficially in various ways to their kindred and neighbours, not only without lessening the amount, but with the effect of enhancing the value of their marketable time. That the Sabbath is a financial benefit is manifest from its sanitary power. The natural result of the more uninterrupted health and greater physical strength which it secures, combined with the pleasure and hope suffused by its rest over the engagements of the week, is an increased amount of human labour in every grade of society. Dr. Farre has told us that men of whatever class who must necessarily be occupied six days in the week would, in the course of life, gain by abstinence on the seventh. One class would by the increased vigour imparted, accom 1 "The workmen are aware, and the masters in many trades admit the fact, that were Sunday labour to cease, it would occasion no diminution of the weekly wages."-Report on the Sabbath (1832), p. 8. For a plish more mental work. Every student would find, like Hey of Leeds, that the complete suspending for one day in the week of all his secular pursuits would prepare him to "resume his studies with renewed ardour and alacrity."2 The lawyer would experience a greater facility in transacting business on the Monday morning, and would feel the relief, afforded by a weekly day of rest to be beneficial in every-point of view. And those who are called labouring men would, in like manner, do more work. To the sentence employed as our motto, Macaulay adds, "Of course I do not mean that a man will not produce more in a week by working seven days than by working six days. But I very much doubt whether, at the end of a year, he will generally have produced more by working seven days a week than by working six days a week, and I firmly believe that at the end of twenty years he will have produced less by working seven days a week than by working six days a week."4 If a labourer had no regular day of rest, his ability for exertion would continually decrease. time he might do more in seven than in six days, but this, as a few facts will make certain, could not continue for a course of years, or even of months. Wilberforce, writing to Christophe, king of Hayti, October 8, 1818, and referring, besides other means for the welfare of his people, to the proper observance of the Sabbath, says, "I well remember that during the war, when it was proposed to work all Sunday in one of the royal manufactories, for a continuance, not for an occasional service, it was found that the workmen who obtained Government consent to abstain from working on Sundays executed in a few months even more work than the others."5 Similar trials were made in the public service of the United States and of France, and the practice was abandoned in both instances because, from less work being done, it was not profitable to the state. Mr. Bagnall, an extensive iron-master, discontinued the working of his blastfurnaces on the Lord's day, and in 1841, about two years after Report on the Sabbath (1832), p. 119. Life of W. Hey, Esq., F.R.S. 2d Edit. vol. i. p. 153. Evidence of James Bridges, Esq., in Report on the Sabbath, p. 201. 4 Speeches (1854), pp. 450, 451. Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 275. • Permanent Sabbath Documents, No. I. pp. 33, 34. the change had been adopted, stated to a committee of the House of Lords, "We have made rather more iron since we stopped on Sundays than we did before." After a seven years' trial of the plan, Mr. Bagnall wrote thus, "We have made a larger quantity of iron than ever, and gone on in all our six iron-works much more free from accidents and interruptions than during any preceding seven years of our lives." 1 Such facts as these prepare us for crediting a statement which has been made, that the amount of productive labour in France was diminished by the change from a seventh to a tenth day's rest,2 and for rejecting the policy of Arkwright and others, which, in the spirit of the Egyptian taskmasters, and of slavery wherever found, and blind no less to the material than to all the higher interests of society, would cancel the Sabbath as if it were a day of idleness and loss, and condemn the great majority of mankind to one monotonous course of grinding toil. The arrangement which thus secures to the workman every seventh day for rest and mental profit without any pecuniary loss, and to the employer a larger return for his capital, has this other great advantage to both, that it favourably affects the quality of labour. Work, in the circumstances which the want of a weekly day of rest supposes, must be carelessly and improperly performed. It is observed that at the close of a day's employment the men become less efficient, and the work is more imperfect. A falling off in excellence, as the consequence of exhaustion, has been noticed also in literary performances. When labour is continued over the Sabbath, the spirits and strength flag. A steamer on the Thames having blown up some years ago, the foreman and stokers laid the blame on Sabbath work, which "stupified and embittered them, made them blunder, and heedless what havoc they might occasion." Mr. Swan, the intelligent superintendent of machinery to the Eastern and Continental Steam Packet Company, states that when the engines were getting constantly damaged, the mischief was instantly repaired by giving the men the rest of each seventh day.3 It is thus evident that we cannot 1 Baylee's Statistics, pp. 88, 89. 2 Spring's Obligations of the World to the Bible (Collins), p. 215. |