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TRAVELLING.

[ESSAY 2. cates that, when reasonable calls are made upon us, we are at liberty to attend to them. Of the reasonableness of these calls every man must endeavour to judge for himself. A tradesman ought, as a general rule, to refuse to buy or sell goods. If I sold clothing, I would furnish a surtout to a man who was suddenly summoned on a journey, but not to a man who could call the next morning. Were I a builder, I would prop a falling wall, but not proceed in the erection of a house. Were I a lawyer, I would deliver an opinion to an applicant to whom the delay of a day would be a serious injury, but not to save him the expense of an extra night's lodging by waiting. I once saw with pleasure on the signboard of a public-house, a notice that "none but travellers could be furnished with liquor on a Sunday." The medical profession, and those who sell medicine, are differently situated; yet it is not to be doubted that both, and especially the latter, might devote a smaller portion of the day to their secular employments, if earnestness in religious concerns were as great as the opportunities to attend to them. Some physicians in extensive practice attend almost as regularly on public worship as any of their neighbours. Excursions of pleasure on this day are rarely defensible: they do not comport with the purposes to which the day is appropriated. To attempt specific rules upon such a subject were, however, vain. Not every thing which partakes of relaxation is unallowable. A walk in the country may be proper and right, when a party to a watering-place would be improper and wrong.* There will be little difficulty in determining what it is allowable to do and what it is not, if the inquiry be not, how much secularity does religion allow? but how much can I, without a neglect of duty, avoid?

The habit which obtains with many persons of travelling on this day is peculiarly indefensible; because it not only keeps the traveller from his church or meeting, but keeps away his servants, or the postmen on the road, and ostlers, and cooks, and waiters. All these may be detained from public worship by one man's journey of fifty miles. Such a man incurs some responsibility. The plea of "saving time" is not remote from irreverence; for if it has any meaning it is this, that our time is of more value when employed in business than when employed in the worship of God. It is discreditable to this country that the number of carriages which traverse it on this day is so great. The evil may rightly and perhaps easily be regulated by the legislature. You talk of difficulties you would have talked of many more, if it were now, for the first time, proposed to shut up the general post-office one day in seven. We should have heard of parents dying before their children could hear of their danger; of bills dishonoured and merchants discredited for want of a post; and of a multitude of other inconveniences which busy anticipation would have discovered. Yet the general post-office is shut; and where is the evil? The journeys of stage-coaches may be greatly diminished in number; and though twenty difficulties may be predicted, none would happen but such as were easily borne. An increase of the duty per mile on those coaches which travelled every day might perhaps

:

+ The scrupulousness of the "Puritans" in the reign of Charles I., and the laxity of Laud, whose ordinances enjoined sports after the hours of public worship, were both really, though perhaps not equally, improper. The Puritans attached sanctity to the day; and Laud did not consider, or did not regard the consideration, that his sports would not only discredit the notion of sanctity, but preclude that recollectedness of mind which ought to be maintained throughout the whole day.

CHAP. 1.]

PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS-HOLYDAYS.

97

effect the object. Probably not less than forty persons are employed on temporal affairs, in consequence of an ordinary stage-coach journey of a hundred miles.*

66

A similar regulation would be desirable with respect to Sunday papers." The ordinary contents of a newspaper are little accordant with religious sobriety and abstraction from the world. News of armies, and of funds and markets, of political contests and party animosities, of robberies and trials, of sporting, and boxing, and the stage; with merriment, and scandal, and advertisements, are sufficiently ill adapted to the cultivation of religiousness of mind. An additional twopence on the stamp duty would perhaps remedy the evil.

Private and especially public amusements on this day are clearly wrong. It is remarkable that they appear least willing to dispense with their amusements on this day who pursue them on every other: and the observation affords one illustration among the many of the pitiable effects of what is called-though it is only called-a life of pleasure.

Upon every kind and mode of negligence respecting these religious obligations, the question is not simply, whether the individual himself sustains moral injury, but also whether he occasions injury to those around him. The example is mischievous. Even supposing that a man may feel devotion in his counting-house, or at the tavern, or over a pack of cards, his neighbours who know where he is, or his family who see what he is doing, are encouraged to follow his example, without any idea of carrying their religion with them. My neighbour amuses himself,my father attends to his legers,-and why may not I?"-So that if such things were not intrinsically unlawful, they would be wrong because they are inexpedient. Some things might be done without blame by the lone tenant of a wild, which involve positive guilt in a man in society.

66

Holydays, such as those which are distinguished by the names of Christmas day and Good Friday, possess no sanction from Scripture; they are of human institution. If any religious community thinks it is desirable to devote more than fifty-two days in the year to the purpose of religion, it is unquestionably right that they should devote them; and it is among the good institutions of several Christian communities that they do weekly appropriate some additional hours to these purposes. The observance of the days in question is however of another kind: here, the observance refers to the day as such; and I know not how the censure can be avoided which was directed to those Galatians who "observed days, and months, and times, and years." Whatever may be the sentiments of enlightened men, those who are not enlightened are likely to regard such days as sacred in themselves. This is turning to beggarly elements: this partakes of the character of superstition; and superstition of every kind and in every degree, is incongruous with that " glorious liberty" which Christianity describes, and to which it would conduct us.

There is reason to believe that, to the numerous class of coachmen, waiters, &c. the alteration would be most acceptable. I have been told by an intelligent coachman, that they would gladly unite in a request to their employers if it were likely to avail. G

98

OF THE UTILITY OF FORMS, ETC.

[ESSAY 2.

CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS AND DEVOTIONAL FORMULARIES.

If God have made known his will that any given ceremony shall be performed in his church, that expression is sufficient: we do not then inquire into the reasonableness of the ceremony nor into its utility. There is nothing in the act of sprinkling water in an infant's face, or of immersing the person of an adult, which recommends it to the view of reason, any more than twenty other acts which might be performed: yet, if it be clear that such an act is required by the Divine will, all further controversy is at an end. It is not the business any more than it is the desire of the writer, here to inquire whether the Deity has thus expressed his will respecting any of the rites which are adopted in some Christian churches; yet the reader should carefully bear in mind what it is that constitutes the obligation of a rite or ceremony, and what does not. Setting utility aside, the obligation must be constituted by an expression of the Divine will: and he who inquires into the obligation of these things should reflect that they acquire a sort of adventitious sanctity from the power of association. Being connected from early life with his ideas of religion, he learns to attach to them the authority which he attaches to religion itself; and thus perhaps he scarcely knows, because he does not inquire, whether a given institution is founded upon the law of God, or introduced by the authority of men.

Of some ceremonies or rites, and of almost all formularies and other appendages of public worship, it is acknowledged that they possess no proper sanction from the will of God. Supposing the written expression of that will to contain nothing by which we can judge either of their propriety or impropriety, the standard to which they are to be referred is that of utility alone.

Now, it is highly probable that benefits result from these adjuncts of religion, because, in the present state of mankind, it may be expected that some persons are impressed with useful sentiments respecting religion through the intervention of these adjuncts, who might otherwise scarcely regard religion at all: it is probable that many are induced to attend upon public worship by the attraction of its appendages, who would otherwise stay away. Simply to be present at the font or the communiontable may be a means of inducing many religious considerations into the mind. And as to those who are attracted to public worship by its accompaniments, they may at least be in the way of religious benefit. One goes to hear the singing, and one the organ, and one to see the paintings or the architecture: a still larger number go because they are sure to find some occupation for their thoughts; some prayers or other offices of devotion, something to hear, and see, and do. "The transitions from

one office of devotion to another, from confession to prayer, from prayer to thanksgiving, from thanksgiving to hearing of the word,' are contrived like scenes in the drama, to supply the mind with a succession of diversified engagements."* These diversified engagements I say attract some who would not otherwise attend; and it is better that they should go from imperfect motives than that they should not go at all. It must however be confessed, that the groundwork of this species of utility is similar to that which has been urged in favour of the use of images by the Romish

*Mor. and Pol. Phil. b. 5, c. 5.

CHẢY. 1.]

OF THE UTILITY OF FORMS, ETC.

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church. "Idols," say they, "are laymen's books; and a great means to stir up pious thoughts and devotion in the learnedest.' Indeed, if it is once admitted that the prospect of advantage is a sufficient reason for introducing objects addressed to the senses into the public offices of worship, it is not easy to define where we shall stop. If we may have magnificent architecture, and music, and chanting, and paintings; why may we not have the yet more imposing pomp of the Catholic worship? I do not say that this pomp is useful and right, but that the principle on which such things are introduced into the worship of God furnishes no satisfactory means of deciding what amount of external observances should be introduced, and what should not. If figures on canvass are lawful because they are useful, why is not a figure in marble or in wood? Why may we not have images by way of laymen's books, and of stirring up pious thoughts and devotion?

But it is to be apprehended of such things, or of "contrivances like scenes in a drama," that they have much less tendency to promote devotion than some men may suppose. No doubt they may possess an imposing effect, they may powerfully interest and affect the imagination; but does not this partake too much of that factitious devotion of which we speak? Is it certain that such things have much tendency to purify the mind, and raise up within it a power that shall efficiently resist temptation?

Even if some benefits do result from the employment of these appendages of worship, they are not without their dangers and their evils. With respect to those which are addressed to the senses, whether to the eye or ear, there is obviously a danger that, like other sensible objects, they will withdraw the mind from its proper business,-the cultivation of pure religious affections towards God. And respecting the formularies of devotion, it has been said by a writer whom none will suspect of overstating their evils, "The arrogant man, as if, like the dervise in the Persian fable, he had shot his soul into the character he assumes, repeats with complete self-application, Lord, I am not high-minded: the trifler says, I hate vain thoughts: the irreligious, Lord, how I love thy law: he who seldom prays at all confidently repeats, All the day long I am occupied in thy statutes." These are not light considerations: here is insincerity and untruths; and insincerity and untruths, it should be remembered, in the place and at the time when we profess to be humbled in the presence of God. The evils too are inseparable from the system. Wherever preconcerted formularies are introduced, there will always be some persons who join in the use of them without propriety, or sincerity, or decorum. Nor are the evils much extenuated by the hope which has been suggested, that "the holy vehicle of their hypocrisy may be made that of their conversion." It is very Christianlike to indulge this hope, though I fear it is not very reasonable. Hypocrisy is itself an offence against God; and it can scarcely be expected that any thing so immediately connected with the offence will often effect such an end.

It is not however in the case of those who use these forms in a manner positively hypocritical that the greatest evil and danger consists: "There is a kind of mechanical memory in the tongue, which runs over the form without any aid of the understanding, without any concur

* Milton's Prose Works, v. 4, p. 266.

More's Moral Sketches, 3d Ed. p. 429.

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FORMS OF PRAYER.

[ESSAT 2. rence of the will, without any consent of the affections; for do we not sometimes implore God to hear a prayer to which we are ourselves not attending?"* We have sufficient reason for knowing that to draw nigh to God with our lips while our hearts are far from him is a serious offence in his sight; and when it is considered how powerful is the tendency of oft-repeated words to lose their practical connexion with feelings and ideas, it is to be feared that this class of evils resulting from the use of forms is of very wide extent. Nor is it to be forgotten, that as even religious persons sometimes employ "the form without any aid of the understanding," so others are in danger of substituting the form for the reality, and of imagining that if they are exemplary in the observance of the externals of devotion, the work of religion is done.

Such circumstances may reasonably make us hesitate in deciding the question of the propriety of these external things, as a question of expediency. They may reasonably make us do more than this: for does Christianity allow us to invent a system of which some of the consequences are so bad, for the sake of a beneficial end?

Forms of prayer have been supposed to rest on an authority somewhat more definite than that of other religious forms. "The Lord's Prayer is a precedent, as well as a pattern, for forms of prayer. Our Lord appears, if not to have prescribed, at least to have authorized, the use of fixed forms, when he complied with the request of the disciple who said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." If we turn to Matt. vi., where the fullest account is given of the subject, we are, I think, presented with a different view. Our Saviour, who had been instituting his more perfect laws in place of the doctrines which had been taught of old time, proceeded to the prevalent mode of giving alms, of praying, of fasting, and of laying up wealth. He first describes these modes, and then directs in what manner Christians ought to give alms, and pray, and fast. Now if it be contended that he requires us to employ that particular form of prayer which he then dictated, it must also be contended that he requires us to adopt that particular mode of giving money which he described, and those particular actions, when fasting, which he mentions. If we are obliged to use the form of prayer, we are obliged to give money in secret; and when we fast, to put oil upon our heads. If these particular modes were not enjoined, neither is the form prayer; and the Scriptures contain no indication that this form was ever used at all, either by the apostles or their converts. But if the argument only asserts that fixed forms are "authorized" by the language of Christ, the question becomes a question merely of expediency. Supposing that they are authorized, they are to be employed only if they are useful. Even in this view, it may be remarked that there is no reason to suppose, from the Christian Scriptures, that either Christ himself or his apostles ever used a fixed form. If he had designed to authorize, and therefore to recommend, their adoption, is it not probable that some indications of their having been employed would be presented? But instead of this, we find that every prayer which is recorded in the volume was delivered extempore, upon the then occasion, and arising out of the then existing circumstances.

of

Yet, after all, the important question is not between preconcerted and extempore prayer as such, but whether any prayer is proper and right * More's Moral Sketches, 3d Ed. p. 327.

+ Mor. and Pol. Phil. p. 3, b. 5, c. 5.