Nonconformists viewed recreational sites prior to the 1850s with concern because they created a precedent for other businesses to open on Sunday.
97In the 1830s and early 1840s, amusement locations such as tea gardens, zoos and botanical gardens opened on Sundays. These were all dangerous, argued M’Owan. He feared that theatres hosting Sunday entertainment would be next to open in London.
Let the Metropolis throw open her wonders and her beauties to the nation on the Lord’s day, and our public institutions will soon present the spectacle of our
Railway Stations on that day, and the comparative Sabbath quiet of our streets be as much disturbed by the influx of provincial sight seers, as the stillness of many a
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1841, Joseph Bush was an Anglican and Curate of Long Ashton, Somersetshire, but his publication helps understand the times.
94“Hitherto those institutions being of a secular nature, have been closed on the Lord’s-day, and it is sought to have them opened. They have been closed in deference to the religious character of the day. They cannot be opened without infringing that religious character” (Baines, A Letter to the Right Hon.
Lord Palmerston, 10). The Patriot added, “Of this, however, we feel quite sure, —that, unless a stand be made, it will not stop, until the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Crystal Palace, and every place of amusement and recreation, public or private, have been rendered as accessible on Sunday as on other days” (“The Sabbath-Observance Question,” Patriot [August 15, 1855], 80).
95On the Crystal Palace, see below, pages 155-62.
96Jeffrey A. Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display (London: Yale University Press, 1999), 1: “According to traditional accounts, it symbolized ‘peace, progress, and prosperity,’ and boldly asserted Britain’s position not only as the first industrialized nation and as the
‘workshop of the world,’ but also as the most powerful and advanced state, a paragon of liberalism.”
97“Would not recreation itself, without intelligence and morality, rapidly degenerate into brutal licentiousness?” (Close, “Lecture IV,” 65).
rural neighbourhood is now by the outpouring of London revellers.
98As the number of venues open on Sunday increases, the number of people removed from Sabbath observance grows.
99M’Owan argued that just as it would be absurd for the Emperor of Russia to share control of England with Queen Victoria, so it would be with Sundays half dedicated to worldly affairs and the other half devoted to God.
100In this unstable state of affairs, growing numbers of businesses would participate in Sunday openings. Paris and Vienna already witnessed this practice.
Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of such institutions might be named in London, and tens of thousands throughout England. Every philosophical, literary, and mechanics’ institution, every public library, reading-room, and news-room, every debating society and lecture-room, every gallery, museum, and pictorial exhibition, every school and college, every public garden, shooting-gallery, billiard-room, cricket-ground, and race-ground, every concert-room, theatre, and circus. All places of these descriptions are open in Paris and Vienna; and why not here, if the principle of the religious Sabbath be abandoned in England?
101Recreational attractions, Nonconformist writers argued, posed the further problem of tempting Sabbath observers from the country to come into towns and cities to pursue
98M’Owan, Practical Considerations, 11.
99“We are satisfied, that the Legislature must interpose, if the rights of the labourer and of the small shopkeeper are not to be utterly ignored and trampled down; and the more so, inasmuch as every measure promotive of the so-called recreations of the people, tends, in its degree, to multiply the number of those who, in one way or another, must sacrifice their day of rest in order to minister to the restless rest of others” (“The Sabbath-Observance Question,” 80). Baines noted that if parks were allowed to open it would be impossible to prevent other businesses from opening: “If one kind of secular amusement is allowed, why not every other kind?—why not Sunday evening concerts, Sunday operas, Sunday theatres and circuses, Sunday games and sports of every description? It is a mockery to pretend that there is any ground on which resistance to these things can be based, if Government is to set the example of providing Sunday amusements for the populace of London” (Edward Baines, On the Performance of Military Bands in the Parks of London on Sundays [London: Seeley, Jackson, & Halliday, 1856], 10).
100M’Owan, Practical Considerations, 10-11.
101Ibid., 11.
pleasure.
102Amusements also threatened to secularize the Sabbath by steering society’s hearts away from God. They only offered temporary entertainment. They had no power for promoting good. Baines explained, “Science, letters, art may refine the manners and cultivate the intellect; religion alone can purify the soul.”
103Nonconformists believed that opening recreational venues on Sunday would have a devastating effect on the nation and its families. Baines explained,
My object in addressing your Lordship was to lay before you a most simple
argument, and the plainest and most practical view of the case. I wished to show that the House of Commons cannot pass Sir JOSHUA WALMSLEY’S resolution
without secularizing the Sabbath, —that to secularize would really be to destroy it, —that either to secularize or to destroy it would be one of the greatest evils to England and the world.
104Baines wrote a letter to Lord Palmerston informing him that the “thousands and millions in the land” opposed opening these sites on Sundays.
105The most astute, devout, genuine, and productive members of society opposed transforming Sunday into an irreligious day, he wrote.
106He added, “But, my Lord, it would be an enormous error to allow pursuits and recreations, which, however innocent, are still purely secular, to intrude upon hours set apart for the service of God and the sacred duties of religion.”
107Baines believed these national attractions did have value because they heightened the
102Robert Wallace, Man and the Sabbath (London: Judd & Glass, 1856), 20.
103Baines, A Second Letter to B. Oliveira, ESQ. M.P., 8.
104Edward 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), 9.
105“I am sure there are thousands and millions in the land, from the peer to the peasant—
including Members of Parliament, magistrates, ministers of religion, Sunday School teachers. . . . who will raise their united voices in support of our English Sabbath” (Baines, Value of the Sabbath to the Working Classes, 7).
106Baines, A Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Palmerston, 3.
107Ibid., 5-6.
public’s knowledge of history and pleasure. In fact, he had openly supported these venues as an educational tool for the working class.
108But, it was a grave mistake, he insisted, to permit them to open on Sunday because they diverted man’s attention away from God.
Further, Baines explained that if Sunday became a secular day, it would lead to
something worse. “What possible hope can we have, that if the Sabbath is made a secular day, it will not become a working day?”
109Nonconformists, who supported Sabbath legislation, encouraged others to petition Parliament in order to prevent these venues from opening. If the public refused to lobby its lawmakers, England would soon become like Paris.
110Once the Sabbath
command was ignored, Sunday would be open for all labor.
111Given this pressing
danger, Baines pleaded for every congregation and Sunday school in the United Kingdom to petition Parliament and implore it to end the evil of Sunday music in the London parks immediately.
112Christians must not rely upon Members of Parliament to initiate a
movement against Sabbath desecration; Christians must lobby Parliament to do so.
108Ibid., 5: “Let me here declare my warm approbation of all institutions like the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the Crystal Palace, which tend to popularize science, diffuse
knowledge, and improve the taste of the people, by exhibiting the admirable works of nature and some of the choicest productions of art.”
109Baines, Value of the Sabbath to the Working Classes, 3.
110“I cannot but feel that the argument is ridiculous. Does the thing work so in Paris?” (Baines, On the Performance of Military Bands, 12).
111“[T]o expect this steadfastness on the part of the poor, when the Government of the country has set the example of desecrating the Sabbath, is wholly unreasonable. We must at least anticipate a lamentably general falling off. When the Divine authority for consecrating the day to religion had been set aside, it is hopeless to expect that it would be preserved as a day of rest” (ibid., 14).
112Baines provided a sample petition at the end of his document: “TO THE HONOURABLE THE COMMONS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND IN
PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED: The Petition of the undersigned Humbly sheweth, That your petitioners view with equal sorrow and alarm the orders lately issued for the performance of military bands
accompanied by the sale of refreshments in Kensington-gardens, and other places of public resort on the