supply of water, wrote Hamilton.
113Rather, it was like a land-spring well that contained a
limited supply. Once depleted, it was harmful to continue trying to extract water because
the pump suffered damage. Hamilton explained, “There is a difference of intellectual
activity, but the most powerful mind is a land-spring after all; and those who wish to
preserve their thoughts fresh, pure, and pellucid, will put on the Sabbath padlock.”
114Thus, for those with intellectually demanding jobs, intellectual employment must cease
or the mind will suffer from overexertion.
gloom and not of gladness.”
116The Sabbath was designed for supreme pleasure, insisted Richard Winter Hamilton.
117Wallace observed that the Sabbath was “designed as the festal day of Paradise itself; the day in which man in innocence should rest from his work.”
118Nonconformists insisted that Christians should anticipate the Sabbath just as they eagerly wait for heaven. In fact, a person’s view of the Sabbath reflected his or her opinion of heaven. Unfortunately, not every Christian longed for the Sabbath’s
appearance. Baines learned that some persons felt the Sabbath was boring and
116John Weir, The New Crystal Palace and the Christian Sabbath (London: N. H. Cotes, 1852), 17. Ivimey added, “Surely I need add nothing to prove, that if the pious Israelites under the ceremonial law, experienced such high and distinguished enjoyments in the worship of God on the
Sabbath-day, that Christians now, if they are ‘in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,’ may expect to participate still higher delights, because we possess that in reality which they saw only in prospect—the spiritual benefits secured to believers by the resurrection of Christ” (Ivimey, The Duties and Privileges, 14-15).
117“O Sabbath! Needed for a world of innocence—without thee what would be a world of sin!
There would be no pause for consideration, no check to passion, no remission of toil, no balm of care! He who had withheld thee would have forsaken the earth! Without thee, He had never given to us the Bible, the Gospel, the Spirit! We salute thee, as thou comest to us in the name of the Lord—radiant in the sunshine of that dawn which broke over creation’s achieved work—marching downward in the track of time, a pillar of refreshing cloud and of guiding flame—interweaving with all thy light new beams of discovery and promise—until thou standest forth more fair than when reflected in the dews, and imbibed by the flowers of Eden—more awful than when the trumpet rung of thee on Sinai! The Christian Sabbath! . . . It is a day of heaven upon earth! Life’s sweetest calm, poverty’s best birth-right, labour’s only rest!
Nothing has such a hoar of antiquity on it! Nothing contains in it such a history! Nothing draws along with it such a glory! Nurse of virtue, seal of truth! The household’s richest patrimony, the nation’s noblest safeguard! The pledge of peace, the fountain of intelligence, the strength of law! The oracle of instruction, the ark of mercy! The patent of our manhood’s spiritual greatness! The harbinger of our soul’s sanctified perfection! The glory of religion, the watch-tower of immortality! The ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reacheth to heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending on it!” (Richard Winter Hamilton, “The Law of the Sabbath, the Proper Statute of Religion, Identical in Principle and Invariable in Force through all Times and Dispensations,” in The Christian Sabbath Considered in Its Various Aspects [Glasgow: The Religious Tract and Book Society of Scotland, 1856], 344-45). Ivimey stated that if “the Sabbath-day is properly observed in the worship of God; high spiritual mental enjoyments shall be experienced, and that these blessings are infallibly secured by the faithful promise of the infinite Jehovah”
(Ivimey, The Duties and Privileges, 8).
118Wallace, Man and the Sabbath, 5. Noel also noted, “Meditation on the Scriptures, prayer, religious conversation, the thought of God, are all irksome to irreligious persons; and you might as well do away with all these duties to please such persons as do away with the Sabbath. The remedy for each man who finds the Sabbath burdensome, is to turn to God, and to take delight in His service, not to ask Government for pleasure. Christians do not find the Sabbath burdensome, and every man ought to be a Christian” (Noel, Music and Pleasure on the Sabbath, 34).
melancholy.
119So, he responded, what could supersede meditating on the character, word and patterns of God while thinking about the responsibilities and dreams of man? Ivimey agreed and added that the Sabbath was worthy of man’s whole heart and energy.
120Baines felt sorry for those who only gave an hour or two to God on the Sabbath out of ritualism. Most of all, he pitied their view of eternity, which they quickly approached.
121 Hannah believed thatanticipating the Sabbath was like waiting for heaven. In heaven,
Christians will be released from worldly concerns in order to worship God.
122Thompson agreed: “[T]he Sabbath is a blessed emblem of heaven, where that spiritual rest is
enjoyed in its fullness.”
123The Sabbath offered Christians similar freedom from worldly apprehensions.
Listening to the preached word in corporate worship reminded Christians that one day they would sit at Jesus’ feet and worship him. Hearing spiritual songs prompted the believer to ponder the day when he or she will join the throng in heaven to praise to God. Thompson explained,
Can that day, which recalls thoughts like [listening to the Word preached and sung]
be otherwise than dear to the hearts of the people of God? Can they do otherwise than love that day, which brings them as it were into contact with heaven while here
119“When we are told that to devote one day in seven exclusively to religion is to render it gloomy, and that such an employment is only worthy of ascetics or hypocrites, we stand amazed, and divided between indignation and pity” (Edward Baines, A Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Palmerston: on the Attempts Making in Parliament to Secularize the Sabbath [London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1856], 8).
120“As then he has made the Sabbath-day for us Christians, for our observance, our enjoyment, and advantage, let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear”
(Ivimey, The Duties and Privileges, 16).
121Baines, A Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Palmerston, 9.
122Hannah, “The Sabbath a Happy Day,” 167.
123Thompson, “Lecture I,” 18.
below, and reminds them of that eternal Sabbath which shall be the measure of the duration of their full and blissful resting in God.
124Hannah also stated that Christians can honor God daily, but Sunday was unique because all worldly concerns were quarantined in order to focus on God.
125Eagerness for the Sabbath was fitting, wrote Nonconformists, because it awarded refreshment and sheer delight to humanity. Just as the water at Elim revived the Israelites in the desert when Moses led them, so the Sabbath rejuvenated Christians. God blessed Sabbath observers with physical, emotional, and spiritual revival, wrote Wallace.
126Sherman declared, “O blessed day that brings such pleasures! Hail it as the day which the Lord hath made. Call it a delight. To a spiritual mind these are real delights.”
127Since the Sabbath signified a snapshot of heaven, it should be a delightful day.
124Ibid., 19: “When that blessed morn dawns it reminds them of the dawn of the eternal Sabbath of God; and when they go up to the house of God, they remember that glorious day when they who have come out of great tribulation, shall come body and soul into the presence of God and the Lamb; when they sit under the preached gospel, and hear the voice of the shepherd leading and feeding their souls, they are reminded of the day when the Lamb himself shall feed them and lead them.”
125“When that day dawns upon the Christian disciple, he is taught by duty, and invited by privilege, to wake, not to the perplexities which so often beset and obstruct his daily path, but to a season of peace—to a cessation from all that might otherwise embarrass and disturb his meditations on better things”
(Hannah, “The Sabbath a Happy Day,” 169). Hill added, the Sabbath “is a grand instrument in the hands of the believer, by which he may proclaim ‘glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good-will to men.’
It is a fearful instrument, when perverted, of self-immolation at the altar of vice, or of spreading infidelity and immorality among the masses of our countrymen. Deprive the Church of a Sabbath, and the Gospel is dumb, and its powers of aggression are paralysed” (Hill, The Sabbath Made for Man, 176).
126Wallace, Man and the Sabbath, 29. M’Owan acknowledged that “the virtues and self- denying labours of the Lord’s people, the wonders of creation, and felicities of the heavenly rest, should be the themes of our Sabbath-day discourse” (M’Owan, “Several Prevailing Forms,” 156).
127Sherman, A Plea for the Lord’s Day, 36. Glyde added. “The book of God should be our companion, and other books in which the works of God are described, or the lives of good men are recorded, and their hearts speak to ours. An hour thus spent every Sunday will impart tenderness to piety and stability to character not otherwise attainable” (Glyde, “How To Spend Sunday,” 190).