CHAPTER XX 



A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION FOR SABBATARIANS 1 



ALMOST all the Christian Churches of Great Britain 

 have adopted the Sabbath of the Jewish lawgiver as a 

 divin'e institution, only changing the day from Saturday to 

 Sunday, though many of the Nonconformists retain the 

 Jewish term, Sabbath. Many, perhaps most, religious 

 persons hold that to work on Sunday is an actual sin 

 comparable in gravity with most other acts forbidden in 

 the Ten Commandments ; and the strong condemnation of 

 Sabbath-breaking in religious tracts and Sunday-school 

 teaching is a sufficient proof of the importance attached to 

 a due observance of the day. 



An impartial onlooker is, however, somewhat puzzled by 

 the circumstance that, notwithstanding this general uni- 

 formity of precept, the practice, even of the teachers, is 

 exceedingly lax, since there is hardly a Christian family in 

 the whole country, not excluding those of the clergy of the 

 various denominations, where the Sabbath is not broken 

 fifty-two times in every year. Now the fourth command- 

 ment, as read every Sunday in oar churches, is either binding 

 on Christians or it is not. In the latter case breaking it is no 

 sin, and any observance of a seventh day of rest is merely a 

 matter of expediency or of human law. It is, however, 

 nearly certain that the majority of Protestant clergy do not 

 accept this latter view, and I therefore propose to discuss 

 the question how Sunday may be most consistently and 



1 This article appeared in the Nineteenth Century (October, 1894) 

 under the editor's title " A Suggestion to Sabbath Keepers." 



