042. Abolition of Sunday

Abolition of Sunday

Exo_31:13 : ’93Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep.’94

While the evangelical denominations put especial emphasis upon the sanctity of the Sabbath, I am glad to know that the wisdom of resting one day in the seven is almost universally acknowledged. Men have found out that they can do more work in six days than they can in seven. The world has found out that the fifty-two days of rest in a year are not a subtraction, but an addition. It has been demonstrated in all departments. Lord Castlereagh thought he could work his brain three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and he broke down and committed suicide; and Wilberforce said in regard to him: ’93Poor Castlereagh! this comes from non-observance of the Sabbath.’94 A prominent merchant of New York said: ’93I should long ago have been a maniac but for the observance of the Sabbath.’94 The nerves, the brain, the muscles, the bones, the entire physical, mental, and moral constitution cry out for Sabbatic rest.

What is true of man is true of beast. Travelers have found that they come sooner to their destination if they stop one day in the seven. What is the matter with some of these horses attached to the street cars as the poor creatures go stumbling and staggering on? They are robbed of the Sabbatic rest. In the days of old, when the sheep and the cattle were driven from the far West to the seacoast, it was found out by positive test that those drovers got sooner to the seaboard who stopped one day in seven on the way. They came sooner to the seaboard than those who drove right on. The fishermen off the banks of Newfoundland have experimented in this matter, and they find that they catch more fish in the year when they observe the Sabbath than in the year when they do not observe the Sabbath.

When I asked a Rocky Mountain locomotive engineer, as I was riding with him, ’93Why do you switch off your locomotive on a side track and take another?’94’97as I saw he was about to do’97’94it seems to be a straight route.’94 He replied: ’93We have to let the locomotive stop and cool off, or the machinery would very soon break down!’94 The manufacturers of salt were told if they allowed their kettles to cool one day in seven they would have immense repairs to make; but the experiment was made, and the contrast came, and it was found that those manufacturers of salt who allowed the kettles to cool once a week had less repairs to make than those who kept the furnaces in full blast and the kettles always hot. What does all this mean? It means that intellectual man and dumb beast and dead machinery cry out for the Lord’92s day.

The Sabbath comes, and it soothes the nerves, and it puts out the fires of anxiety which have burned all the week. The fact is, we are seven-day clocks, and we have to be wound up once a week or we will run down into the grave. The Sabbath is a savings bank into which we gather up our resources of physical and mental strength to draw on all the week. That man gives a mortgage to disease and death who works on the Sabbath, and at the most unexpected moment the mortgage will be foreclosed and the soul ejected from the premises. Every gland, every cell, every globule, every finger-nail, cries out: ’93Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy!’94

While the flail and the axe and the yardstick have not been able to destroy the Sabbath, and the vast majority of people, from sanitary reasons, have about concluded it is best to rest on the Sabbath, there is an attempt to destroy the Lord’92s day, on one side by the grog-shops, and on the other side by secular amusements. We have a law in this State most positively forbidding the sale of intoxicating drinks on the Sabbath day. That law is every Sabbath broken. Some say: ’93Let it be repealed’97a law on the statute book not executed, better drive out the law.’94 Instead of that we say we want the law to continue on the statute book, and we mean to have it enforced. There are three thousand liquor dealers in Brooklyn banded together to put down this law, and they are moving upon the State Legislature, and they propose to have that law broken down and cast out from the statute book.

When one of our reformers comes up before a justice of the peace and reports some of these Sabbath-breakers, the justice of the peace looks over, and in almost every case excuses the criminal. Why? Because he knows there are three thousand liquor dealers in Brooklyn who have their eyes on him, and they will remember it at the next election. Now, what we want is, on the other hand, to have ten thousand good, honest, upright citizens banded together in some excise league, demanding the enforcement of the law, so when a justice of the peace with the criminal before him remembers there are three thousand liquor sellers who want him to discharge the criminal, he will have a vivid remembrance at the same time of the ten thousand honest citizens who demand the enforcement of the law; and these reformers who have been roughly jostled and caricatured and kicked out will be differently treated in times that are to come from the way they have been treated in the times that are past. It is time for all good citizens, whether they are temperance men or not, and all men who have a pride in their homes, to rise up and put down this infamous business, at any rate one day of the week. Certainly, if they have full swing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, they ought to give us at least one day of rest from this awful evil which is abroad amid the nations.

To many of our citizens the best day is the worst day! They get their salaries, and they get their wages on Saturday night, and then they are inveigled into these places, and that which ought to have gone for the livelihood of the family goes for their own destruction. Who are you, the men who deal in cloth and hosiery and hardware and groceries, who are you who sell bread and shoes, that you should bow down to the liquor traffic? Your places of business closed up today, theirs open. Will you take off your hat to them? Is their business better than yours? Why should the law give especial privilege to these men who are trafficking in the bodies and souls of men? If a baker should sell bread he would be very apt to be arrested. It is not safe to have loaves of bread going through the streets on Sundays. If a man should sell shoes and boots it would be a very dangerous thing; he might be arrested. But all the liquor saloons are open on the Sabbath. If the front door is not open, the back door is open. Now, I tell you, fellow-citizens, there is something awfully wrong in this town when such things are allowed. Then, there is an effort being made by secular amusements to destroy our Sabbaths. In many of the cities, nearly all the places of theatric and operatic entertainment are open. There are thousands of pens busy trying to write down the Christian Sabbath, and it is a question whether we are going to have pluck and grit and consecration enough to hand down to our children the Sabbath we got from our ancestors. I am opposed to all these invasions of the Sabbath because they run against the divine enactment. God says: ’93If thou turn away thy foot from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, thou shalt walk upon the high places.’94 What does he mean by ’93doing thy pleasure?’94 He means secular amusements. A man was telling me how he was affrighted when during the time of an earthquake he heard the bellowing of the cattle in the field, and even the barnyard fowl screamed in horror. It was in time of earthquake, and when the mountains were full of fire, that God sent forth the enactment: ’93Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,’94 the agitators of nature emphasizing the divine injunction.

Some say, ’93We ought to have, as they have in other cities, sacred concerts!’94 I saw a man who had attended one of these grand sacred concerts. He said interspersed amid the music they had a dance and a tight-rope walk and a trapeze performance. I suppose it was a holy dance and a consecrated tight rope. I do not know about that, but I am certain it was a ’93grand sacred concert.’94 Will a man rob God? Yes, he will; and every place of secular amusement that is open on Sabbath in any city is grand larceny against the Lord God Almighty. The sailor was right. The captain discharged all his crew because they would not work on Sabbath when they were in port. The captain went out to get another crew. He said to one man: ’93I should like to have you on my ship.’94 The man said: ’93I should like to be employed.’94 ’93Will you work on Sunday?’94 ’93No.’94 ’93Why not?’94 ’93Because a man that will rob God Almighty will cheat me out of my wages.’94

Have you ever looked at the meanness of the desecration of the Sabbath. Suppose you were a poor man, and went to a dry goods merchant, and you begged for some articles of clothing, and he should say to you, ’93I will give you now six yards of cloth,’94 and while he goes off at one end of the counter to bind up the six yards of cloth, you slip in behind the counter and steal another yard. That is what every man does when he breaks the Sabbath. God gives us six days, and we want to steal the other.

Some one says, ’93Have you not any regard for the people’92s rights?’94 Yes. I believe in the people having their rights, but has not the Lord any rights? You govern your family, and the Governor rules the State, and the President rules the United States. Do you really think the Lord Almighty, who made the heavens and the earth, has a right to rule the universe? Had he a right to make the enactment, ’93Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy?’94 There is no higher court than that. I declare it now, in the presence of all the people, whether it be a popular or an unpopular thing to say, the people have no rights except those which the Lord Almighty gives them.

I am opposed to all these infractions of the Sabbath because they are attempting to introduce in this country the Parisian Sunday. Suppose now while I am speaking you should hear the gun of a foreign ship coming up the harbor. Suppose a bombshell should be thrown from a foreign frigate into this city. How soon the churches would be cleared, and we would be all ready for the contest, and where there was a gun it would be brought into requisition, and all the ships in the Navy Yard would be swung from their anchorage, and we would all be ready to confront such a foreign enemy. Now they are trying to introduce into this country the Parisian Sabbath. How do you like it? Ye who were born under the shadow of the Adirondacks or the Catskills’97ye who were born on the banks of the Tennessee or the Savannah, how would you like to have the Parisian Sunday introduced into this country?

We say to all who come from other lands, Come, come. I would have all the gates of the continent swung open. I would have the gates of San Francisco swung open toward Asia, and the gates of the Atlantic swung open toward Europe. If next year there should come eight hundred thousand from foreign lands, I would say, Let them come. If you have any idea of the vast reaches of this country yet unoccupied, you are willing they shall come, and the more that come the better. But among those people who will come there is a division, the same as among people in this country’97the law-abiding and the law-breakers. The law-abiding people, we want them to come. The law-breakers, we do not want them. We do not want the monarchies of Europe. We do not want the Parisian Sunday. We do not want the Brussellian Sunday or the Dresdenian Sunday. We want to keep the quiet of our Christian Sabbath.

I was awakened in Paris by a great racket in the street, and I rushed to the window to see what was the matter. I said to some one: ’93What is the matter?’94 I said to another, ’93What is the matter?’94 ’93Oh,’94 they replied, ’93it is Sunday!’94 Sunday! All the vehicles rushing hither and thither. People talking at the height of their voices and in the most boisterous manner. The Champs Elys’e9es one great mob of pleasure-seekers. Balloons flying; parrots chattering; footballs rolling; Punch and Judy shows in scores of places, each with a shouting audience; hand-organs and cymbals and all styles of racket, musical and unmusical. Sunday! And then as the day passed on toward night I stood and saw the excursionists come home, fagged-out men, women, and children, a great Gulf Stream of fatigue and irritability and wretchedness. A drunken Fourth of July instead of a Christian Sunday. How would you like to have such a Sunday as that in this country? Compare it with the Christian Sabbath in one of our best cities. At day-dawn a holy silence comes down. The business man tarries longer on the pillow because there are no store doors to open, no hard work to be engaged in. The family tarry longer around the table. There is no rushing off to business. After a while there is a song sung. After a while there is a prayer offered, and after a while, about ten o’92clock, there is a long procession churchward, and there they praise God for his goodness, and they contribute to the poor, the suffering, and the wandering. Which Sunday do you like the better?

I will tell you in which boat the Sabbath came to this country, and in which boat it will go out. The Sabbath came to this country in the Mayflower, and if the Sabbath ever leaves this country, it will go in the ark that floats above the deluge of a destroyed nation. If you have ever been in Brussels or in Paris on the Sabbath day it requires no great persuasion for me on my part to get you to pray morning, noon, and night, that such a Sabbath may never come to this country.

Then Sunday desecration is such an outrage on employes. Where do these bartenders get their Sunday? Do they get any more wages? No. The breaking down of Sunday, what does it mean? It means that a few men who toil shall toil seven days and get no more pay than they get for six. Then there are all the employes of the opera-houses and the theatres’97the scene-shifters, the ballet-dancers, the call-boys, the supernumeraries, making up thousands and thousands in this country. Where are they going to get their Sunday? You see them on the stage, with the tinsel and the tassel and the halberds, or you see them in gauze whirling in the toe tortures, and they seem queens or fairies; but after twelve o’92clock at night see them going along the street in faded dress, shivering and cold and hungry, to their garrets or their cellars. It means that these people shall have no rest for the body and no rest for the soul. When you talk about opening places of secular amusement on the Sabbath, while there may be people outside of such establishments who are wanting them, there are many of these employes who are practically praying, ’93O God, let the crushing Juggernaut stop one day in seven!’94 It is a swindling process upon employes. It is a proposition to give no Sabbath to thousands and thousands and thousands of people in this country.

Then all these movements are a war upon our political institutions. When the Sabbath goes down, the republic goes down. Dissoluteness is inconsistent with self-government. Sabbath-breaking is dissoluteness. What is the matter with republicanism in Italy and in Spain? No Sabbath. What is the matter with republicanism in France? France got a republic, but one day the modern Napoleon rode through the Champs Elys’e9es, and the republic went down under the clattering hoofs. France has a republic again, but how often it quakes from end to end, and one of the commune has only just to plaster an insurgent advertisement against a stone wall, and all France is a-quake and in fear of revolution that is to come. France will never have any quiet, happy, and permanent republic until she quits her roistering Sabbaths and recognizes God and sacred things. Abolish the Sabbath, and then you have the commune in America. Abolish the Sabbath, and then you have revolution, and then you have the sun of prosperity going down in darkness and in blood. May the Lord God of Lexington and Bunker Hill and Gettysburg avert the catastrophe! O men and women who believe in Christian things, O men and women in favor of popular liberty, stand in solid phalanx in this Thermopylae of our national history, for as certainly as I stand here and you sit there, the triumph or overthrow of republican institutions in this country will be decided in this Sabbatic contest.

Rally your voices, your pens, your printing presses and all your influence in the Lord’92s artillery corps in behalf of the Christian Sabbath. Decree before high heaven that the Sabbath which you received from your ancestors shall go down undamaged to your children. For those who die battling in this contest we will chisel the epitaph: ’93These are they who came out of great tribulation, and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.’94 But for that man who proves recreant to the cause of God and his country in a crisis like this, there shall be no honorable epitaph, and he shall not be worthy of any burial-place in all this land, but perhaps some steam tug at midnight may take him out and drop him in the sea where the lawless minds which observe no Sunday may gallop over the grave of him who in life and death proved himself a traitor to the cause of God and American institutions. Long live the Christian Sabbath! Perish forever all attempt to overthrow it!

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage