The Sabbath for man, a study of the origin, obligation, history, advantages and present state of Sabbath observance, with special reference to the rights of workingmen, based on scripture, literature, and especially on a symposium of correspondence with persons of all nations and denominations

Front matter

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Introduction To Enlarged Sixth Edition, 1892

This book has been revised* and republished in the very thick of the fight over the proposed Sundayf opening of the World's Fair.

It is passing strange that our people have not all seen, in the recent turmoils of the French and Spanish republics, captivated by such adventurers as Boulanger and Balmaceda, each of whom nearly led his republic to suicide before he took his own life, that a people who spend their Sabbaths in toil, and play, and politics, can never develop enough intelligence and conscientiousness to safely and permanently govern themselves.

But humanitarian and patriotic reasons for the Rest Day, strong as they are, cannt>t save it. Continental history proves that conscience must also be enlisted. God alone is a match for greed. We must preserve the Sabbath as the Lord's Day or we cannot save it as the Rest Day, the Home Day, the weekly Independence Day. This book is issued just on the eve of the World's Annual Week of Prayer for the Sabbath, the first week of April. The same week the Columbian Commission at its Spring meeting in Chicago will probably decide whether the World's Fair shall defy or obey the Sabbath laws of God and of our country. Surely this is a loud call to prayer, and whatever the decision shall be, we shall need to be instant in prayer to defeat defeat or to complete victory.

* So far as the statements made in the former editions of this hook are not still appropriate, they have been changed or supplemented. To find all that the book contains on any topic, the alphabetical index at the end of the book should be consulted.

_t While we recognize the proper use of the word " Sunday" in characterizing such things as are not in harmony with the law and design of the Sabbath, as, for example, " Sunday amusements," " Sunday excursions," " Sunday newspapers," we put on record our conviction that the proper designations of the day of rest and worship are, the Sabbath and the Lord's Day. — Resolution o/ the Western Pennsylvania Sabbath Association.

THE KIND OF REPUBLICS HOLIDAY_SUNDAYS MAKE.

12 OUTLOOK.

Introduction To Seventh Edition, 1894

The Sabbath has won its Waterloo in the official votes at Washington and Chicago on Sabbath-closing of the World's Fair, and if this victory is promptly and properly followed up in Congress §* and in our States and cities, the Continental Sunday of toil and dissipation, the worst of foreign invaders, will soon be driven from our land. Some have attached undue importance to the fact that after the Fair had begun with gates closed on the Sabbath in accordance with the Act of Congress and the agreement of the Chicago directors, the latter opened them in defiance of law, of contract and of commercial honor, and were subsequently allowed and finally compelled to continue the opening through shameful legal technicalities. When the great events of this best of centuries are reviewed at its close, seven years hence, there will be few triumphs of Christianity in the field of politics or of commerce that will tower so high as the six victories in the Sabbath-closing campaigns, namely : (1) the Sabbath closing act of Congress, passed by a' three fourths vote in August, 1892 ; (2) the defeat in Committee, during the following Session of Congress, of a desperate effort to repeal the law ; (3) the decision of the federal Court at Chicago, through Judges Woods and Jenkins, June, 1893, in favor of the Sabbath on the only occasion when the main question was before the courts; (4) the confessed failure of Sunday opening, the greatest victory of all, for which we are indebted to " our friends the enemy ;" (5) the vote of the National Columbian Commission on July 11, against Sunday opening, 54 to 6 ; (6) the vote, on July 15, of the Chicago directors to the same effect, 24 to 4, another reversal of previous opinion. The writer was privileged to be at hand at the consummation of all these victories except the court decision, and felt beyond words their significance as indicating that the American people really value the Sabbath more than pessimists or even optimists have supposed. He found by circulating a petition among exhibitors that even more than the three-fourths that covered their exhibits were opposed to Sunday opening. This in behalf of the rich, and the Sunday non-attendance of more than three-fourths of the poor that were expected, together declare as did the act of Congress, the appreciation of the Sabbath by America's ruling majority.

Introduction to Tenth Edition, 1902

This edition appears when the Sabbath is more attacked and less defended than ever before in our land. In a recent tour of our central States the writer found no place, not even small college towns, where anyone claimed that saloons were closed on the Sabbath. Conditions were worse farther West, but slightly better in the East and South. Even in Canada, Sabbath observance is losing ground. But wherever Christian citizens have made vigorous effort, this rising tide has been checked, notably in New England. Greatest of recent victories was the conditioning in xoor, of the Congressional appropriation to the St. Louis Fair on Sabbath closing, secured by "contract," aprovision drawn by The International Reform Bureau, which will prevent an exhibition of the French Sunday in celebration of the Louisiana Purchase, and substitute, as the best of exhibits, The American Sabbath.

Index

Sabbath Map of the World \ 6

Outlook 9

I. Is the Sabbath Surrendered ?. .„. 21

1. Hopeful Facts from Pagan Lands 24

2. " " Continental Europe 50

3. " " the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches 60

4. Hopeful Facts from Great Britain 65

5. Hope in the Attitude of the Great Men of To-day Toward

the Sabbath 75

6. Hope from the Survival of Sabbath Laws in U. S 82

7. Hope from the Predominance of Evangelical Churches

in U. S 83

8. Hope from the Predominance of Rural Districts in U. S. go

9. Hope from the Sabbath Observance in some large Cities. 91

10. Hope from the Religious Conservatism of the Southern

States 92

11. Hope from the Improved Sabbath Observance in some of

the Western States 94

12. Hope from the Growth of the Prohibition Movement. ... 96

II. Is the Sabbath Imperilled ? 99

1. Perils of Legislatures 101

(1). Repeals 101

(2). Amendments 104

(3). Ambiguity. 107

2. Perils of Courts 112

(3). Lawyers 118

3. Perils of Enforcements and Non-enforcements 119

4. Peril from National Habit of Law-breaking 124

'5. Peril from Continental Sunday 126

Continental Sundays in Russia 127

" European Turkey 130

14 INDEX.

Continental Sundays in Bulgaria j * * * **.*.**.,**.. . 128

" " Greece 132

Italy i 32

the German-speaking Nations and

Denmark 133

Continental Sundays in France and Belgium 147

'" " Spain and Portugal 152

The Continental Sunday in Mexico and South America 160

41 Western Cities of U. S 165

Sunday Opening of Museums 178

III. Are Sabbath Laws Consistent with Liberty? 189

1. Sabbath Laws Compared with those against Cruelty to

Animals 198

2. Sabbath Laws Compared with those for the Protection of

the Public Health 199

3. Sabbath Laws Compared with Appropriation Laws 214

4. Sabbath Laws Compared with Educational Laws 223

5. Sabbath Laws Compared with those for Protecting the

Home 228

6. Sabbath Laws Compared with those in regard to Labor

and Capital 231

7. Sabbath Laws Compared with those for Prevention of

Crime 236

8. Sabbath Laws Compared with Laws recognising and regu-

lating National Holidays. 247

IV. What of Sunday Trains, Sunday Mails, and Sunday

Newspapers ? 267

2. Sunday Trains (including Steamboats) 289

(1). What Railroad Employees say 293

(2). " " Managers say 298

3. Sunday Newspapers • . . . o 322

V. What Degree of Sabbath Observance can be Realised

in 19111 Century Cities ? 351

1. The Ideal Sabbath 353

The 4TH Commandment shown to be not for the Jews

alone,

(1). Because it is a Law of Nature 353

(2). (3). (4).

(5). (6). (7).

in the Decalogue 357

" was first given in Eden 360

binding on foreigners in Palestine 363

ancient nations had " weeks," etc 364

Prophets declared it was tc be Universal. . 365 Christ taught it was " for Man " 366

INDEX. 1 5

Apostolic Sabbaths 37°

2. What Degree of Sabbath Observance has been secured in 19TH Century Cities ?. . . 385

(1). Sabbath Observance in San Francisco, New Orleans, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago 386

(2). Sabbath Observance in Philadelphia, Boston Baltimore, Brooklyn and New York 390

(3). Sabbath Observance in London 390

(4). " " Edinburgh 391

(5). " " Montreal and Toronto 393

VI. What can be done by Christians for the Improvement

of Sabbath Observance ? 411

1. By Ministers 415

2. " Church Officers 418

3. " Private Christians .- 427

4. "Churches 439

5. " Sunday Schools 450

6. " Christian Homes 455

7. '' Being in the Spirit on the Lord's Day 477

VII. Appendix.

Notes to Section I, II, III, IV, V, VI, Reference Numbers 1 to

198.

Concordance of New Testament References to Old Testament

Laws, Reference Number 199.

Sabbath Commentary, Reference Numbers 200 to 248. Ancient References, Jewish and Pagan, to the "Week" and the

Sacred " Seven," Reference Number 203.

Sabbath school Concert on the Sabbath, Reference Number 249. Testimony of the Fathers as to the First and Seventh Days of

the Week, Reference Numbers 250 to 274.

Classified Table of Sabbath Laws Past and Present, Reference

Numbers 275 to 400.

Denominational Declarations on the Sabbath, Reference Numbers 400 to 425.

What Noted Men say of the Sabbath, Reference Numbers 500 to

Sabbath Literature, Topically Arranged and Briefly Described.

Reference Number 700 List of Active Sabbath Societies, Reference Numbers 795 to 808. Alphabetical Index, Reference Number 999.

"Of all the phenomena which exhibit the loyalty and affinity of Christians, what compares in significance or in sweep of influence with that institution which every week begins to bear the Lord's name in the far-off Pacific, awakens believers in Japan, in Australasia, in China and on through every meridian in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, and in America, away to the island kingdom of Hawaii and beyond ; until it ceases in the sea where it began, — calling the whole Christian host of every nation and language and race, under the whole circuit of the sun, to that day's common, united worship of Jesus the Lord ! What ubiquitous consent like this has the world ever known ? In what other associated action do all divisions of man participate ? After all her centuries, what has Christianity now or ever to show in evidence, not of her wise charity, nor of her consistent morality, nor of her triumphant civilization, — but of that which is her supreme characteristic, — of that which surpasses, includes, guarantees all these others, — of her loyal devotion to her Lord— so public, so impressive, so convincing, as the world-round worshipping assemblies of the Lord's Day ?" — From " Eight Studies on the Lord 's Day" pp. 28, 29.

Introduction To Sixth Edition

A RECORD AND REVIEW OF SABBATH REFORM, 1885-92, SHOWING THE ONLY DEFENSIBLE GROUND OF SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

While the Lord's Day everywhere proclaims the deity of Christ, it also embodies, more than any other visible institution, the humanities of Christianity, " Christian Socialism/' that is, the application of Christianity to this world, which is the special demand of our times. The Lord's Day brings rest and cleanliness to the body, change and culture to the mind, fellowship to the heart, as well as re-enforcement to the conscience, and joyous uplift to the soul. It benefits man as an individual — yet more in the social relations of the home and the State.

This divine pillar, the Lord's Day, shows " the way out" of " Darkest England," and " Darkest New York," and " Darkest China," and " Darkest Africa." Wherever the Sabbath is well kept it lessens both the selfishness of the rich and the shiftlessness of the poor, the twin roots of poverty and vice. It furnishes .the conscientiousness and justice and benevolence necessary to all schemes of social, as well as moral reform.

Even more than in the United States, Continental agitations against Sunday work have originated in labor organizations. Socialism is leading a renaissance of Puritanism. These movements are a striking illustration of that Scripture saying about God's laws, " His commandments are not grievous." Christians tunneling from one side of the mountain for the glory of God, and working men tunneling from the other side for their own good, meet at the Fourth Commandment, which is found to be as fully in harmony with the nature of man and the necessities of society as any other of the Ten Commandments, on which, it should be remembered, Christian civilization rests — Justinian, Charlemagne, and Alfred having based their legal codes on the Decalogue.

One reason why the Sabbath law and other Bible laws are often considered burdensome by many is that they fail to understand that religion is only living in accordance with nature ; conversion being like the setting of dislocated bones, restoring them to their proper place and functions. The Fourth Commandment, at least, is a " natural law in the spiritual world." A restful change one day in seven from one's usual labors and amusements is found to be required,

For full particulars of Sabbath observance at every period and in all parts of the world ? chronologically arranged, see Appendix notes (200-404) and indexes ; also my ** Civil Sabbath" (35 cts.) - -

I§ INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH EDITION.

not only by religious and civil laws, not only by the laws of the Old Testament and the New, but also by the laws of nature. Sabbath rest is good, not only for our spiritual nature, but also for animal nature in man and beast, and even for machinery.

The failures and successes of workingmen in their recent efforts to secure a "more restful Sabbath, point out clearly the only defensible ground of Sabbath observance, which it is all-important for both the friends of God and the friends of man to hold and fortify. They show what this ground is, not by Scripture, not by abstract theorizing, but by "the philosophy that teaches by examples."

Some one has. said that the Sunday question is not Sunday amusements versus work, but Sunday amusements versus worship, but the two questions are one. Sunday amusements involve the work of amusement vendors and open the way to all other kinds of Sunday work. As a permit for the sale of beer only always admits whiskey in its shadow, a permit for Sunday sport always admits Sunday work. So reads the newest page of European history.

The " Sunday rest movement" is being urged all over Continental Europe — the suspension of industry, without any restraint of Sunday vices. Thoughtful men, who know that Sunday dissipation is more exhausting and more demoralizing than Sunday work, will not expect any valuable results from a law that empties the factories into the beer-saloons. That movement, however, serves one purpose, at least — it stands as the Continent's confession to the world that the Continental Sunday, the holiday Sunday, is to many a day of needless toil. Those who know the Continental Sunday best, it will be seen, have the same opinion of it that t,he Quaker had of a bad neighbor, of whom his opinion was asked; he replied: "He would make a tip-top stranger." Surely we should not welcome on our front steps what Europe is kicking down her back stairs.

Even in our own West and Southwest, where the holiday Sunday prevails only in a varioloid form, workingmen are asking emancipation from the ever-increasing Sunday work. But all efforts of workingmen to resist the invasion of tl.e Sabbath by toil, while admitting amusement, have been and must be in vain, for the ground of the holiday Sunday is indefensible.

Its central position is too low — namely, that the Fourth Commandment is abrogated, and that Sabbath observance has no higher authority than the State, or at most the State and Church and apostolic example. God and conscience, the mightiest of all defenders of the true Sabbath, are thus left out of the battle, and it is made a mere contest of human opinions. Whether a recognition of the Divine authority of the Sabbath law is put into the public statutes or not, it must be put by the Church into the public conscience, or the Sabbath can not be successfully defended even against needless toil. This much of the art of defense has been taught us by defeat in many costly lessons. Where even the pulpit teaches that the Sabbath has no higher authority than Church or State, and no law of observance more definite than apostolic example (which is wholly silent on the two burning questions of Sunday labor and Sunday amusements) ; where the teachers of religion get their only proof-texts for Sabbath observance out of the human gospel of utility or selfishness (of whose ///utility its child, the holiday Sunday, is a shining example) ; by what bulwark can the

Introduction To Sixth Edition. 19

charge of galloping Greed be repelled from the Sabbath ? If the Sabbath is only a human holiday, it is impossible to show that one man has not as much right to use it for work as another for sport. This right is not denied by Protestants on any other holiday. The battle being wholly on the ground of expediency, Greed defends its Sunday excursion in our country, and its Sunday factory in Germany, on the ground that each is better than Sunday saloons. If Sabbath rest be only a matter of expediency, the argument for the Sunday factory rather than the Sunday saloon is sound, though the similar argument applied to Sunday excursions is not, for Sunday excursions are mostly only Sunday saloons on wheels.

While the center of the holiday Sunday's position is weak in the lack of Divine authority, its flanks are weak in their permission, on the one side, of some public amusements ; on the other, of some forms of needless labor. The labor and business which the holiday Sunday permits by law are mostly those which are supposed to be essential to public amusement. In order that others may be amused, railroad men, newspaper men, bakers, butchers, tobacconists, confectioners, barbers, bootblacks, drivers, florists, and, in many cases, liquor-dealers, are allowed to work their employees seven days in a week. It is on the heels of these exceptions, and through the same breach in the wall, that every other form of toil comes into the Sabbath. And why shouldn't it? If a man. cannot buy his Sunday cigars and caramels overnight, why may he not insist on having bis new shoes and new hat also on Sabbath morning, " hot from the griddle ?" It is a fact of history that wherever a breach has been made in the wall of the Sabbath to let in Sunday concerts and the Sunday opening of museums, not only worse amusements, but work also, has come following after, because there is no defensible line of battle by which one public amusement (legal on other days) can be kept back, while another public amusement, which stands on no higher footing before the law, though it may before the Church, is permitted. Nor is there any place for defending the Sabbath against one form of needless work for gain while another form of needless work for gain is permitted. " Twice is he armed that hath his quarrel just." The holiday Sunday is not thus- armed, for it is not impartial either in what it forbids or in what it permits.

The efforts of workingmen to cut off Sunday work without cutting off Sunday sports proceed on the supposition that the labors that invade the Sabbath on one flank are wholly independent of the lusts that invade it on the other. Closer examination would show that Greed is the commander of both invading hordes, and Selfishness his chief of staff. The amusement vender cries, " The Sabbath was made for man" but he means "for money." " ' The Sabbath was made for man,' but it was not made for man to destroy."

If a rich railroad corporation can use the Sabbath for works of gain, why not a poor hat-seller also ? If men may sell on the Sabbath, cigars, newspapers, and candies, why not purer and more useful things also ? If a man cannot wait for news until Monday morning, why should he wait for shoes ? The law that allows the making and selling of daily newspapers on the Sabbath, and forbids the making and selling of good books, lacks equity, the very heart of true and effective law. Such law is a violation of law. By the law of equitable treatment all trade..

20 INTRODUCTION TO SIXTH EDITION.

all amusements, all work (save works of necessity and charity and private work by those who keep another day) should be prohibited, or none. Theaters are not willing to lose Sunday gains if saloons are allowed to be open. Hatteis and clothiers will soon be claiming the day all over the East, as they have already generally taken it in the West, on the ground that they have as good a right to make money on the Sabbath as tobacconists and confectioners.

The law should not permit me to make another man work on the day of rest that I may be amused. I should be required to find my rest in some way that will not sacrifice another's.

Only the ignorant will say in defense of Sunday trains, Sunday newspapers, Sunday mails, and Sunday sails : "The few must suffer for the good of the many." I find that in the United States fully two millions were in this slavery of needless Sunday work in 1892, and the number is rapidly increasing. Every week some man has to choose between his salary and his Sabbath.

Those Americans who would allow on the Sabbath the running of trains, the making and selling of newspapers, or any other works not clearly works of necessity, or of mercy, or of religion, have taken a position where they are exposed to a double enfilading fire, first, from all who wish to continue other needless work on that day, and, second, from all who wish to continue other public amusements on that day.

You say, " Sunday amusements have come to stay." The same might be said, with more reason, of sin j but Christians do not give that as a reason for welcoming sin to their homes. Some of those who think " the Sunday paper has come to stay" once 'thought the same of slavery. They forget that God has " come to stay,'* and so evil will have to go. The words of Lyman Beecher, in the temperance report which he wrote for the Connecticut Association of Congregationalists in 1812, are equally appropriate at the present stage of the Sabbath reform : " This Association does most earnestly entreat of the brethren in the ministry, of the members of our churches, and of the persons who lament and desire to check the progress of this evil, that they neither express nor indulge the melancholy apprehension that nothing can be done on this subject ; a prediction eminently calculated to paralyze exertion and become the disastrous cause of its own fulfillment." The Evangelical Christians in this land, one-fifth of the population in membership alone, besides twice as many more adherents, can stop the Sunday mail, the Sunday train, and the Sunday newspaper, if they will ; and they will, if led on courageously and hopefully by their ministers, editors, and professors. I say what I do know when I say that it was for lack of just this — there were noble exceptions — that the Massachusetts Sabbath law was in 1887 wangled (not "amended") into an indorsement of what the laws of God forbid, into the most lax Sabbath law that can be found in the United States, except in Louisiana, Montana, and Nevada. A like guilt, with like exceptions, lies at the door of the Christians of Ohio, for the Dow Law, that in one section permitted city councils to repeal the Fourth Commandment, which Cleveland and Sandusky and Cincinnati hastened to do. Although the law has been repealed, the scar remains for our instruction and warning.

There never was a sound argument for Sunday amusements ; but in these days, when the movements for shorter hours of labor and "early