CHAPTER IV. INFLUENCE OF THE SABBATH ON THE RESPECTABILITY AND HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. "They who always labour can have no true judgment; they exhaust their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark."-BURKE. OUR attention has been occupied with the evidence which appears to demonstrate the peculiarly beneficial bearings of the Sabbatic institution on the interests of health, wealth, intelligence, morality, and religion. The testimony, however, of reason and experience to the practical value of the institution would be incomplete without some consideration of still further results which by means of these interests, and otherwise, it is fitted to secureresults in personal, domestic, and national good. On the benefits that accrue to individuals let two remarks suffice. First, The Sabbatic institution is a means of elevating them to true respectability and honour. Every deduction from physical evil, every accession to mental improvement, and especially every advance in piety and virtue-attainments, as has been shown, all dependent in a great measure on the Sabbath-are so many contributions to respectability of character and condition. A man to be in his proper position must be free. It is certainly unworthy of their nature that human beings should be in the situation of the slaves of Cuba or the Carolinas, of the serfs in Russia, of "the puppets of the Pope," or of the men and women in this country who are doomed to excessive toil. But degraded above all is the man who, considering himself free, is the victim of his guilt and passions, of his prejudices and errors, of his fears and follies. Such a state of things is the source of all slavery. What but sin has ever made one class of men tyrants, and another, bondsmen ? All attempts at human aggrandizement must fail where sin continues to condemn and rule human beings. Without peace with Heaven, and a heart that loves God and man, not only will a moral vassalage remain which no form of civil freedom can countervail, but its bitter fruits in abject dependence of all kinds will continually be reaped. And what has ever been found capable of giving liberty to such captives but the good tidings of Revelation? "He is the freeman whom the truth makes free, And all are slaves beside; he has wings, that neither sickness, pain, Nor penury, can cripple or confine. No nook so narrow but he spreads them there In It is And what more than the Christian Sabbath is tributary to the knowledge and influence of the expanding, emancipating truth? This institution is an essential means of removing the cause of all bondage, and of thereby destroying or preventing the effects. its absence or neglect there is no security against the power of one class, and the depression of another. How manifest is it from the principles and facts set forth in previous chapters, that if all possessed and rightly used the weekly holy day, neither the oppressor nor the oppressed could exist in any part of the earth! only when men want, or, like the Jews, despise the Sabbath, that they can be made captives, or at least so crushed as that the spirit of liberty shall not survive and struggle till it win for itself a complete deliverance. It is the men in our own land who have no regard for the institution that subject their brethren to the degra dation of perpetual labour, and it is the workmen who despise their birthright that can be so degraded. The employer who values, cannot but allow his servants to enjoy, the rest of every seventh day, as he respects its authority, knows its advantages to himself, and has learned by its means to honour all men, and to do to them as he would be done by; and the labourer or mechanic who breathes the spirit and relishes the repose of the sacred season, who has been taught by its lessons to economize his earnings and respect himself, will be prepared to negotiate from a higher platform with the dispenser of work and wages. Whatever promotes efficiency in the business of life contributes to respectability and honour. But he who obeys what he holds to be a Divine law will be dutiful to men; and he who has been physically refreshed by the rest, and morally braced by the instructions of the Sabbath, will proceed to the work of the week, "rejoicing as a strong man to run a race.” The influences which operate so favourably from week to week on his whole nature and condition impart, as the united result, energy to his character and proceedings. Some of the most remarkable men have been thus formed, as, for example, Sir Isaac Newton, who said that if in anything he excelled others it was by virtue of his power of application, which, we know, was invigorated by the hebdomadal rest and worship; and Howard, Wilberforce, Clarkson, Chalmers, and Buxton, none of whom allowed anything to bend him from the great purpose of his life and soul, and all of whom highly. valued the Lord's day. The early Christians, the Reformers, the Puritans, and the Covenanters sanctified the Sabbath, and they were the most resolute of men. And what but the collective might of many individuals, nurtured by the same institution, has imparted an activity, enterprise, and determination, beyond all modern nations, to Britons and Americans, whose energy may be read in reclaimed wastes, in extending commerce and civilisation, in national wealth and comfort, in the cultivation of science and letters, and even in the prowess of the battle-field? The man who is the object of respect and confidence among his fellows has attained true elevation and fame. Need a word be said to show that the infidel, the irreligious, and the immoral inspire no such feelings in their own or any other class of minds? Voltaire, who must be allowed to have been free from temptation to traduce his own creed, confessed that he avoided the utterance of infidel sentiments in the presence of his servants, lest, adopting and acting on them, "they should cut his throat." No less well known and generally believed is the trust-worthiness of Christian men of all ranks who are observant of their own religious institutions. Nothing more ennobles a human being than the combined disposition and power to be useful-to be one of the world's benefactors. Every one who " labours, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth," and every person of substance and influence who employs them for good, occupy stations which the general voice pronounces to be honourable. And these "posts of honour" are usually filled by the men who are distinguished by their religious observances. It might be expected to be so. The lessons of benevolence, of brotherhood, of economy, of obligation and responsibility, of which others do not avail themselves, are from week to week set before them, pressed on their attention, studied and wrought into their minds; and the convocations of the sacred day, which others abjure, bring them into stated impressive intercourse with their neighbours and families, give them a deeper interest in both, allay prejudices and animosities, and continually remind them of the circumstances and claims of those whom but for such associations they would but slightly regard, or entirely forget. These lessons and associations, in creating a desire of usefulness, contribute at the same time to a mental and moral character which is necessary to give one power over others. "The writer has seen a town and neighbourhood kept in peace and good order at a time of high political ferment by the influence and mutual co-operation of some half-dozen poor men who observed and kept holy the Sabbath."1 If it were not for a day of disengagement from ordinary labour, millions would be precluded not only the means of having a spirit of benevolence formed and cherished, but every opportunity for its exercise in their own families and among their neighbours. Let the Sabbath cease, and even in one department of education the injury would be vast and irreparable. As the greater proportion of 250,000 Sunday-school teachers subsist by daily labour, their self-improving and selfelevating instructions would be no longer possible, multitudes of children would be destitute of their sole means of education, and it could not in future be true, that "thousands of the working classes, now moving in a respectable sphere of life, owe their position in society to their attendance at the Sabbath-school."2 Thus it is that the great ordinance of the Sabbath raises a man to his proper place in society. How peacefully, righteously, and surely does it accomplish the object! No violence, disturbance, or 2 Ibid p. 87. 1 Prize Essays by Five Working Men, p. 142. It is "the Of all other failure attends the application of this mighty lever. cheap" elevator of individuals as of "nations." schemes for advancing a person to respectability and honour it may be said that they are either unrighteous, or, without this one, incompetent. Secular education may do much, but mainly as the handmaid of moral principle. The economy and industry which are not guided by benevolence and wisdom, will either fail to secure wealth, or amass it to the hurt of its owner. There are many who attempt to raise themselves by illegitimate means, but they cannot, as they ought not to succeed. Such are our gamblers of various classes; our professional men who deviate from their line, and make haste to be rich by foolish speculations; our fraudulent tradesmen, and those working men who squander their earnings on their appetites, subject themselves to continual toil, or attempt to force the price of labour. The disappointments and woes that have ever followed such measures are incalculable. Among the working classes how disastrous, for example, has been the lastnamed expedient! The strike of the Glasgow cotton-spinners in 1837, when, besides other unjust proceedings, they appointed "a persecuting committee, to persecute to the utmost" their recusant brethren, lasted for seventeen weeks and five days, and ended in their "giving in," not, however, without involving unspeakable hardships to many families, a fearful increase of immorality, crime, and disease, and a useless expense of £194,540. Similar were the termination and effects of the Preston strikes of 1836 and 1854 (the latter causing a total loss to the community of £538,250); of that among the Lanarkshire colliers in 1837, and of others too numerous to be specified. Let us attend to the wise words of a working man, whose remarks might well be pondered by persons of every rank: "We have listened to every nostrum, and tried every scheme that has been propounded by every demagogue, and set forth by every scribe; we have witnessed great changes in the State; we have seen the House of Commons reformed; the fiscal code revised, and restrictive laws repealed; we have expected much from all and from each of these great changes and many others. But our hopes have not been realized. The social condition of the working classes is still deplorable. . . There are no evils to which we are subjected but |