Transcribed from the 1831 Roake and Varty edition by David Price. Many thanks to the British Library for making their copy available.
BY
THE REV. WILLIAM WOOD, B.D.
RECTOR OF COULSDON, AND VICAR OF
FULHAM.
LONDON:
ROAKE AND VARTY, 31, STRAND.
1831.
p. 4LONDON:
ROAKE AND VARTY, PRINTERS, 31,
STRAND.
p. 5TO
THE
INHABITANTS OF COULSDON,
THE FOLLOWING
SERMON,
INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN PREACHED IN THEIR
CHURCH IN THE
AFTERNOON OF OCTOBER 23rd,
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED,
AND PRINTED FOR THEIR
INSTRUCTION,
BY THEIR FAITHFUL PASTOR.
The Sermon here presented to the Public is below all criticism. It makes no pretensions to novelty, or to merit of any kind; it is only one of the thousands which are preached every week by men, who, in the midst of evil report, labour, nevertheless, with an anxious zeal for the salvation of souls. It was composed in haste, with no intention of printing it, for a sequestered parish, where much remains of ancient simplicity; but where the author lamented to see, as he thought, a neglect of public worship, not occasioned by infidelity, or by profligacy, as in great towns, but by ignorance of the subject, or thoughtlessness of conduct.
The inclemency of the weather having prevented him from preaching it at the time intended, and no other opportunity being likely to occur for many months, he determined to print it at p. 8once for the use of his parishioners; but some other little tracts of his, with the same limited object, having been called for by persons desirous of doing good in their several spheres, and on a larger scale, he thinks it possible that they may wish to have this also, and therefore he publishes it.
The subject of the sermon, in these days especially, is a momentous one. May God bless it, for the sake of the subject, to his own glory, and to the benefit of men! The author has no other wish.
Exod. xx. 8.
“Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy.”
This command, to remember the Sabbath-day, in order to keep it holy, was given by Almighty God himself to the Jews. I say, it was given by himself. He did not order any prophet, or other holy man, to give it in his name; He gave it himself in his own person; He spoke it aloud, in the ears of all the people, with his own voice. And this voice, as we are told, was so terrible, that the hearers of it were smitten with intolerable fear and trembling, and began to entreat, with the most humble and urgent supplications, that God would vouchsafe, in future, to make known his will to them by the voice of Moses rather than by his own.
p. 10No doubt, we also, who are assembled here, should think it a very awful thing, and should tremble in our whole frame, if we were to hear the voice of the great God of heaven and earth speaking to us from a cloud, or from a mountain-top; and we should naturally desire to hear the gentler, the more familiar voice of a man, like one of ourselves; to whom also we might listen, and with whom we might talk and reason, without any dismay, or even alarm. However, in this case, we may presume, the mighty terror of God’s voice was increased tenfold to those who heard it, by the accompanying hoarse blast of the brazen trumpet, waxing louder and louder; by the continual crash of tremendous thunderings; and by the red, fiery flashes of direful lightnings, which burst around them, whilst God was speaking, out of the thick, dark smoke that covered the top of the mountain “where God was;” the whole mountain itself, too, shook from its very foundations, and seemed to be all in a flame, burning with fire.
Now, what was the reason of this unusual manifestation of the Divine Majesty, but that God wished to give the command in the most striking, impressive manner, so that it should never be forgotten by that generation of men; and to show p. 11them a terrific instance of his power also, that they might tremble at the very thought of disobeying him, and of profaning, or neglecting, the Sabbath-day, which he thus commanded them to remember, to keep it holy.
But this was not all. God was not satisfied that He had done enough, even when He had uttered this command with his own voice, and with all that show of his terrible power and majesty; He wrote it also on a tablet of stone with his own finger; and He ordered the sacred tablet to be preserved with the utmost care, in the most sacred place—in the very ark where his whole covenant with his chosen people was preserved also. One generation alone could have heard that voice, and have seen those miraculous signs; but many succeeding generations, to remote times, might see the tablet of stone, and read the writing of God’s finger, and learn the Divine will for themselves with a more reverential awe; whilst every other supernatural circumstance of the history was taught by one generation to another, and was handed down from father to son through all generations.
You may readily now understand, then, of what vast importance this command must be in the eye of God, and how necessary the observance of it is p. 12for the welfare and happiness of man. For, if this were not so—if it made no difference, either to God’s own glory, or to our welfare and happiness, whether the Sabbath-day were remembered to keep it holy or not; it is difficult to conceive that God should have taken so much pains, as it were, to establish a Sabbath-day at all; by descending, as He did, from heaven upon the Mount, in the midst of lightnings, and thunderings, and an earthquake; by proclaiming it to the astonished, trembling multitude with his own voice; by writing it, besides, with his own finger; and by ordering it to be laid up in the ark as a divine ordinance for ever.
But how does all this apply to other nations, and to us, of this nation, and of this age? God gave the command in this miraculous manner to the Jews only; how do we know that He intended that we, and all mankind, should observe it to the end of time?
This is a very reasonable question, and it may have a very satisfactory answer; namely, that the same causes for a Sabbath-day, and for remembering it, to keep it holy for ever, concern alike all the rest of mankind as well as the Jews; and that we Christians, above others, have especial cause for hallowing our own Sabbath-day; such as neither p. 13the Jews, nor the rest of mankind, until they become Christians, can have for hallowing their’s. If it were their bounden duty to hallow Saturday, or any other day, much more is it ours to hallow Sunday.
In truth, the ordinance of a Sabbath, to be kept holy to the Lord, is of the same age and antiquity with the creation of the world itself. It was not first established amongst the Jews; it was only renewed and re-established amongst them, when they themselves, like the heathens, had forgotten, or neglected it. It was established as early as with Adam, the first man, even in Paradise; and, therefore, all the sons of Adam—that is, the whole race of mankind, and not the Jews only, are equally bound to keep it. By proclaiming it to the Jews, as He did, God shows to us how awfully we ought to think of it; but all the nations of the world, which existed before, were bound by it before; and all which have existed since, and exist now, have been, and are, bound by it, in consequence of their common descent from Adam, to whom it was declared in the beginning, and made a law to his whole posterity for ever.
Nevertheless, if God himself had said nothing about it, it would have been the duty of man, the p. 14rational creature of God, and indebted to God for so many blessings—for so many noble powers and faculties, to have set apart some portion of the time which God gave him to the especial honour of the bountiful Giver—to have employed that time solely in thanking him for his precious gifts and his gracious providence—in meditating upon his glorious perfections and his marvellous works—and in serving and worshipping him by all other means, with such peculiar, extraordinary tokens of love, and gratitude, and veneration, as would not have been possible, or not suitable, at every time, and in every place; but only at the appointed time, and in some appointed place.
This, I say, would have been the duty of man, if left entirely to the use of his own reason. But no individual could have determined for himself, and still less were all men likely to agree with each other, what the portion of time to be set apart for this purpose should be; how much the beneficent Author of their being, and of all their enjoyments, would expect of them to consecrate to him; and how often the consecrated time should return, so as to please God, and draw down from above his further blessings upon them.
This, then, which we should have been quite unable to decide for ourselves, God has decided p. 15for us. He has himself, in his infinite wisdom, determined what is fit and proper both for us and for him. He has not put us under the necessity of reasoning upon so important a matter at all; from the very beginning He appointed it for an everlasting law, that the portion of time to be dedicated to his especial service and worship should be one day out of every seven days: that six successive days should be ours for labour of body and of mind, and for all the needful business of this present life; that the seventh day should be his, for a holy rest unto the Lord—for celebrating his wondrous works—and for a more quiet, undisturbed consideration of our own immortal concerns, and all the spiritual business of the life which is to come hereafter.
But the seventh day, then, if we will use it thus, is ours as well as his; it is ours more than all the six which go before: it is ours in its own sublime, peculiar sense, to give us a foretaste of eternity by withdrawing us from temporal things; in short, it is one of the best gifts of God to man. O taste and see how gracious the Lord is! The Sabbath is to his own glory; but what would man be without it? The most wretched of beings in every way; worn out before his usual allotted time with unintermitted toils; brought p. 16down to the grave by a premature old age and decay; and, what is still worse for him, with diminished hopes of happiness in another and a better world. The Sabbath, thanks be to God! brings with it, if we will, a sweet, a tranquil, a refreshing rest: it repairs and renews the languishing, the broken powers of body and of mind; it sends us forth again to our duties on the following day with new strength, and a new spirit, more adequate to the performance of them; cheerfulness sits upon our brow, instead of a perpetual gloom; health, instead of the sad hue of a thousand maladies, which never-ending, never-pausing labour must have necessarily produced. And if the Sabbath has been spent as God intends that it should be spent, no small advance has been made towards some happy mansion in our eternal abode. We have heard, we have read, we have thought much about our blessed Redeemer—about our own salvation—about the bliss and glory of heaven. We have put ourselves into every way, private and public, of receiving every grace of which we stand in need, and which God, through Christ, has promised to bestow. We have prayed more at home than the business of the world will permit us to do on any other day; we have assembled in the church, as often as the church was open, to receive p. 17the mercies to which we are entitled, by God’s gift, only as we are members of the church; we have confessed our sins there with bended knees and a penitent heart; we have said with heartfelt thankfulness, “Amen,” to the covenanted pardon of God announced by the minister of Christ; we have partaken of all the divine ordinances blameless; if the holy table was decked, we have feasted upon the heavenly banquet of our great Saviour’s body and blood. These have been the holy deeds of the well-spent day; and holy deeds like these will qualify us for the rewards of eternity, if, under the continued influence of the Holy Spirit, encouraging, strengthening, and sanctifying us, we persevere unshaken in the same course to the end. The Sabbath-day, then, is ours more especially; God, in consecrating and hallowing it to himself, has done so to our present and eternal profit. By means of it we perform the better all the business of men, all the business of Christians, all the business of those who aspire to heaven.
Now, there can be no doubt, but that God, being infinitely wise, and also most intimately acquainted with the peculiar wants and infirmities, and with the whole nature of man, whom he himself created, and upon whom he bestowed what nature he pleased, foreknew, and therefore decided p. 18from the very first, that one-seventh of man’s time was necessary to be, and consequently should be, released from labour, and devoted to a holy rest. But the way which he took to show this to us, and to give us, at the same time, an awful and striking sense of it, is perhaps one of the most wonderful instances of all the wonders of his providential care of us. He himself, in his mighty work of the creation of this world, tasked himself to a six-days’ labour, and rested on the seventh day, in order that man, following his example, might use the same proportion of labour and rest.
And this He has told us in his holy word; He has not left it to us to find it out by our own reason; He has informed us himself. It had been easy for him, for Omnipotence, surely, to have made the world, and all the creatures that fill, diversify, and adorn it, in a single day; nay, in a single hour; yes, truly, in a single minute. As He said, “let there be light, and there was light;” so He had only to say, “let there be a world,” and there would have been a world. In a single instant of time, in the very twinkling of an eye, all the miracles of creation that are visible to us, and all that are invisible, beyond the ken even of our imagination, at the Divine fiat, at the simple sound of the omnific word, would have p. 19sprung into existence at once, and into all the well-being, order, and harmony, by which all things will consist, in the same beauty and perfection, unto the end. But then there would have been nothing in such a proceeding for the moral instruction, or for the temporal and eternal benefit of men. He set bounds, therefore, to his own boundless power; He reduced infinite down to finite; He controlled his own almighty energies, and ordered his work, a whole world, so as to finish it in six days; He knew that a seventh day of rest was needful for man; and, therefore, He bestowed it upon him as a merciful boon, secured to him indefeasibly for ever by the express pattern of his own doings, and by the positive command to copy that pattern throughout all ages.
Now let us see, then, how we stand as Christians. Do you think it likely, however, that so merciful a religion, as that of Christ, should take this merciful ordinance of the Sabbath from us? Do you think it likely that the same God, who, under the law, ordained a Sabbath, even for the miserable brute creation, that the poor cattle might rest from their labours as well as their rich owners, should abolish it under the gospel? Of all incredible things this would be the most incredible, that God should care so much for beasts, p. 20which perish, as to provide them a temporary repose from bodily toil, and none for man, who has an immortal soul to be saved, or lost, for ever; after having redeemed him, too, by the most astonishing method of the sacrifice of his own beloved Son. O they of little faith, who reason thus! But, blessed be God! it is not so. As Christians, we are still the posterity of Adam; and, if we partake, alas! of all the evils that sprung from Adam, at least we partake of this one benefit. Sin has not deprived us of it, but made it the more necessary for us. Again, as Christians, we are not indeed the posterity of Abraham, according to the flesh; and, therefore, we are not necessarily under any part of the law given to the Jews; except it might have pleased the Author and Finisher of our faith to adopt any part of it into his gospel. But this he most clearly did with respect to the ten commandments, of which the hallowing of the Sabbath is one. He fulfilled and abolished every thing ceremonial, which concerned the Jews only; he retained, and gave a new force and sanctity to every thing moral, which concerns all mankind; and, without doubt, it is in every view a moral duty, that the thing made should worship the great Maker, on solemn days, which shall often return—that they should return, as they do, on p. 21every seventh day, we owe to God’s gracious providence. “The Sabbath,” as our Lord beautifully and mercifully said, “was made for man;” and, consequently, whilst man remains upon this earth, a stranger and a pilgrim, travelling along a weary, rugged road, towards some better country in the distant prospect before him, the Sabbath too remains; on the authority of our blessed Saviour it remains, to refresh us all on our journey; to support and comfort us under the fatigue of it; and to cheer us with the thought of the everlasting Sabbath in heaven, of which it is the type and the shadow.
And this it does the more effectually, because we Christians keep our Sabbath on our own Lord’s day. The Jews keep theirs on the day of their wonderful deliverance from bondage in Egypt; and very properly. But their deliverance from bondage in Egypt was the type and shadow of our grander deliverance from the bondage of sin and death; which deliverance was then most evidently and undeniably accomplished, when our Saviour triumphed openly over both, by rising from the grave, alive and victorious. Well do we call the first day of the week, the revered day on which he did it, the Lord’s day; and well have all Christians ever since, assured of their redemption p. 22by his resurrection on that day, consecrated and hallowed it for their Sabbath for ever. So that now all the reasons which could ever have operated amongst mankind for the keeping of a Sabbath, and still more reasons, operate upon us Christians. We keep one day in seven in memory of the creation, as the rest of men should do; but we keep that day, in preference to all others, which reminds us, more forcibly than any other, of our second creation; of our being begotten again to a new life; of our more interesting creation in true righteousness and holiness, after having fallen from the divine image of the holy Creator himself. And, as our sacred religion is founded upon the religion of the Jews, and was shadowed out and prefigured by it, we are naturally led from the antitype to the type; from the thing prefigured and shadowed out to the thing prefiguring and shadowing it; and we look back with reverence to the Jewish Sabbath, so awfully and terrifically appointed, which commemorated on a chosen day a great temporal deliverance of theirs, prefiguring a still greater spiritual deliverance of ours.
What shall we now say, then, my beloved, Christian brethren? Shall we not remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy? And how shall we p. 23keep it holy, if we employ ourselves on that, as on other days? “The Sabbath was made for man;” but how was it made for him, if he labours, as on the other six days; if he pursues the same worldly objects, and torments himself with the same anxious cares; if he chooses this very day for his journies; for his pleasures; nay, even for his vices; and aggravates every sin by the abuse of that which was intended to heal it; to give him time and repose for self-examination; and to enable him the better to make up the solemn account of every action, word, and thought, between himself and God?
God blessed the Sabbath-day, and sanctified it for his own glory; but how does it promote his glory, whilst the generality of his faithless, ungrateful people, even in this Christian nation, never enter his sacred courts on that day, to give him the honour due unto his name in the presence of their fellow-men. And “shall I not visit for this, saith the Lord?” Much, indeed, very much is it to be feared, that he will visit, with some terrible calamity too, and soon also, this country of ours, so dear to us all, so much our boast and pride, which he has hitherto guarded with an extraordinary protection, and exalted above other nations with unparalleled renown and power. The p. 24breach, the dishonouring of his Sabbaths, he will keenly resent, and unsparingly avenge. What he denounced to the Jews should perpetually sound in our ears—“Verily my Sabbaths shall ye keep for a perpetual covenant; they are a sign between me and you throughout your generations for ever; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. They are holy unto you; every one that defileth them shall surely be put to death.” It is a despite done to God himself, directly and personally; it is a scorn both of his majesty and his goodness, which cannot but provoke him to consume the guilty in his wrath.
Already, indeed, do we feel his wrath in part executed upon us, and in part behold it with terror suspended over us. The nightly incendiary, who prowls about in darkness (but God sees him) and destroys the fruits of the earth, which should have been for the food of man; the open rioter, who, in broad day-light, levels with the ground the temple of God, the marts of commerce, the mansions of the great, and puts to the hazard even the life of his beneficent neighbour; the wide-wasting pestilence, which, with havoc and death in its train, has reached the opposite shores, and now only waits the signal to cross the sea to ours; all these are the avenging emissaries of God; but the last p. 25more apparently; and I pray God, as King David did, that we may fall into his hands rather than into the hands of men—yet He, who stilleth the fury of the warring elements, can also still “the madness of the people.”
But the great question for you, and which you should lay your hands upon your hearts, and answer conscientiously, is this; how much you yourselves, individually, have contributed to increase the mass of the national guilt in this particular, of which God is so jealous. As my sacred office compels me to speak the truth, and forbids every kind of flattery and dissimulation; as I cannot otherwise be useful to any of you, or assist you in working out your salvation, but by bearing witness to the truth; as I am, moreover, now about to leave you for a while, and therefore wish to give you some departing, farewell advice of the most momentous importance; I say it, I confess, with deep sorrow, and with a painful alarm on your account, that, even in this otherwise well-disposed and well-ordered parish, there is a too evident, and a too great, neglect of the Sabbath. In the true spirit of pastoral affection, but in the plain, manly, authoritative language of an Apostle, I say, “I cannot praise you in this.”
p. 26Alas! alas! what correct idea, or right devout feeling of God’s sabbaths, can they have, who are always absent from God’s house, and who, perhaps, profane these sacred days, besides, by drunkenness, or gaming, or some other revelry? None, undoubtedly. But all our remonstrances from this sacred place must, of necessity, be useless to them; they need them most, but are never present to hear them. Of the rest, how few come here with so much regularity as to show that it is an essential part of their system of life—an established principle of conduct never to be departed from but upon the most urgent, extraordinary occasions! And how will God judge of them, who think that they do sufficient honour to his Sabbath by coming once only, and forget that God may construe their coming but once as a proud assumption on their parts, that they want no more of his sanctifying grace than once a day may be likely to bestow! If the help of the Holy Spirit alone can fit them for salvation, and this help is chiefly given by the ministry of the church, how can they be perfectly satisfied with themselves, and think that they have done enough, when they neglect, once a day, an opportunity of partaking of the spirit, which the church is the instrument to p. 27convey? I am not unaware of the circumstances of this parish, which render more sometimes impossible; but how few, how very few, perhaps two or three individuals, lament those circumstances, and the consequent loss of additional means of grace!
But how will God judge even of the most exemplary in any congregation, who never forsake his house, either for pleasure, or for business, or for any of those plausible reasons by which men are too willing to delude themselves to their own ruin; if they spend the rest of the day, nevertheless, as they spend the other days of the week, and do not remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy throughout; if they do not devote the whole of it with a sober, religious awe to God; if they do not send their children and servants to church with the same punctuality as they go themselves; if they do not shun all the resorts of sensuality and gaiety abroad, or admit such inmates at home; if they do not study the Holy Scriptures, and put aside all other books but such as may tend to build them up in faith and piety; and, in short, if they do not live on this one day, in conformity with the sacred nature of the day, so uniformly and so universally, as to throw a sanctity around p. 28the lawful business and the lawful pleasures of every other day, and gradually to make their whole life truly Christian, truly divine, and fit, indeed, for heaven.
Now, if they do not accomplish all this, whatever else they do, they fall short of a due observance of the Sabbath; and who is there, even amongst the most exemplary, alas! who ever thinks of accomplishing so much? Alas, alas! who is there amongst any of us, who, in some way or other, does not absolutely break the Sabbath, or even profane it? And what wonder, then, that there should be so much looseness, licentiousness, and depravity of manners in our nation; and that so many evils assail us, so many impend over our heads, and threaten us with some mighty ruin? Sabbath-breaking has led to the temporal and eternal ruin of thousand and tens of thousands; it cannot but lead to the deeper corruption of all; to the gradual undermining and ultimate extinction of all religious principle in the heart of man. When a people cast off their respect for God’s Sabbaths, they are prepared to run the full career of irreligion, and of profligacy, and of all the atrocities which scourge and afflict mankind.
There are persons in this congregation old p. 29enough to remember, as I do, a whole powerful nation, our nearest neighbours, casting it off, as it appeared, with one consent, and, by cruelties almost unheard of before, compelling their spiritual pastors and ministers to fly into exile; neither religion, nor the semblance of religion being tolerated any longer among them. And what was the issue? This amazing apostacy was followed immediately by such deeds of horror, by such tragical excesses, as will never be blotted out of the annals of time. But the same impious means have been industriously used to produce the same subversion of principle here amongst us at home; and, God knows, they have but too well succeeded with too many; so that we can scarcely exult any longer with our former honourable pride, that our country is as renowned for religion, for piety and virtue, for good order and submission to authority, and for the deep abhorrence of all atrocities, as she is for freedom, for wealth, for victory, and for power.
Finally, then, in bidding you farewell, I earnestly beseech you all, and through you I beseech the rest who are under my spiritual charge, to ponder most deeply and seriously, and to lay to heart also, what God himself spoke with p. 30such terrible signs of his power, and what his divine finger wrote for an everlasting memorial; what He decreed in the beginning of time when He rested from his marvellous works, and pronounced them good; and what our blessed Saviour, the fulfiller of all righteousness, obeyed in the true spirit of the command, and set the pattern to every succeeding generation of Christians; I earnestly beseech you all to “remember the sabbath-day, to keep it holy.” And let the first proof of your remembrance of it, and the first act of keeping it holy, be your constant attendance here in God’s house—a practice which will lead you on step by step to every other good work. Let your ministers lament no more the thin attendance of their hearers, in the afternoons especially. Come as often as you may, you will scarcely return without being the better and the wiser for it. I speak not of worldly wisdom, but of the wisdom which will save your souls. What blessing is there, of which you stand in need? Come here, and pray for it in concert with the whole assembly—your united prayers, with one mind and heart, ascending to God, will fetch every blessing down. Is there any blessing of which you feel the enjoyment? Come here, and thank God for it before your fellow-men. p. 31Are you ignorant of any of the great gospel-doctrines which are necessary to be known? Come here, and they will be explained, each in its proper season, and you will be instructed to have a due and awful sense of their importance. Have you been seduced into sin; do your devotions become languid; do you neglect any duty; is your benevolence cold? Come to God’s house, and you will hear discourses, it is to be hoped, as well as striking passages of scripture, which will awaken and arouse you; keep heaven always in your sight; fill you with heavenly affections; and prepare you to dwell in some heavenly mansion with the blessed saints of God. We, your ministers, I trust, amidst all the discouragements with which we are surrounded, the entire absence of so many, the apparent lukewarmness of others, preach, nevertheless, with the same zeal as if we preached to multitudes athirst for the word of God, and do not abate one tittle in our fervent desire for your everlasting salvation. The more, indeed, men neglect themselves, the more should the ministers of Christ care for them, and stir up every faculty which they have to rescue them from their dream of false security. Let not this labour of ours be in vain! Labour for yourselves as we labour for you; all p. 32of us alike, however, trusting to a greater strength than our own. And I pray God, that, under the influence of the Divine strength, and guided by his Holy Spirit, you may become the crown of our labours, and enable us to give up the account of our stewardship over you with joy.
THE END.
LONDON:
ROAKE AND VARTY, PRINTERS, 31,
STRAND.