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SUNDAY HARVESTINC.
To the Editor of the “ Free Sunday Advocate.”
October, 1881.
I am glad to see that in your paper for this month you
have copied the letter of a South Oxfordshire “ Landlord and
Parmer,” inserted in the Times of the 1st Sept., in which he
forcibly points out how much better the Clergy would have
been employed on Sunday, the 28th August, if, instead of
offering up the weak prayer of their well-meaning, amiable
Primate, they had given their parishioners words of en
couragement, bidding them gather in the harvest while yet
it could be saved. To those who like myself believe that
no divine commandment has ever been laid upon man to
abstain from work on any day; that neither Jesus of Nazareth
nor any of his Apostles ever said a word to enforce the Sab
bath which Moses, the lawgiver of the Jews, promulgated as
a command emanating from their God; and more particularly
believing that no God “answers prayer” in the ordinary sense
of these words, and which if they mean anything, mean this,
—that an almighty, all-wise, all-beneficent Being is to be
stirred up by a few of us puny mortals, (a mere handful out
of the teeming millions of the inhabitants of this earth) into
altering at their dictation or persuasion, the fixed laws of this
Universe,—Sunday harvest work in seasons like the present
would be a matter of course. But that this ‘ Christian
liberty’ may be accepted universally we must first break
down that rigid Sabbatarianism so naturally engendered and
kept alive by the reading out in solemn form, in all our
churches Sunday after Sunday, the Fourth Commandment
of the Jewish Decalogue.
It may help to this end if I summarize the grounds upon
which Christians should hold themselves unfettered by that
commandment, as well as the grounds for my assertion that
it was no divine commandment but a mere piece of human
legislation, by Moses or some other J ewish Legislator.
The introduction to the Ten Commandments £ I am
the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt’
__ the reason given to the Jews in the Fourth Command
ment, as written in Deut. V.15,‘ remember that thou wast
a servant in the land of Egypt ’ —and ‘ It is a sign between
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me and the people of Israel for ever ’ (Exod. 31, 17) prove
conclusively that it was not designed for observance by
any other people.
Next, note how little respect Jesus had for Moses’ Sab
bath law. He went out of his way on many occasions to
offend the Jews by needlessly “ breaking ” it and never
denied that his acts were breaches. (See Mark II. 23, allow
ing his disciples to pluck corn on the Jewish Sabbath—Mark
III. 5—Luke XIII. 14—LukeXIV. 4—John IX. 16) while
as above stated, not one word is to be found in the New
Testament, attributed to him or to his Apostles, in favor of
or urging its observance. On the contrary, what an oppor
tunity was lost by Jesus of enforcing a Sabbath had he so
intended—when asked (MarkX. 17) what we should do to
inherit the kingdom of God and he repeated only the fifth
and other moral commandments of the Decalogue; and again
St. Paul in well known passages in his Epistles, while unwil
ling to interfere with his disciples’ liberty, as nearly as
possible forbids sabbatizing and the observance of days.
‘One man esteemeth one day above another; another
esteemeth every day. alike. Let each man be fully assured
in his own mind.’ (Romans XIV. 5) ‘Let no man, there
fore, judge you in meat or in drink or in respect of a feast
day or a new moon or a sabbath day ’ (Colos. II. 16) ‘ 0 foolish
Galatians . . Ye observe days and months and seasons and
years. I am afraid of you lest by any means I have bestowed
labour upon you in vain’ (Gal. III., 1 and IV. 10-11)
When Jesus, healing a man of a long standing in
firmity and telling him to take up his bed and walk, was
properly accused of sabbath-breaking, he replied ‘My Father
worketh hitherto and I work,” and thus used words in express
contradiction to the reason assigned in the Fourth Com
mandment for keeping a Sabbath, namely, that God had
‘ rested the seventh day.’ This singular and absurd sugges
tion of a God Almighty taking rest afterthe labor of creating
our little globe, put forward as a ground for human beings
keeping a Sabbath, ought to satisfy both Jews and Christians
that the Sabbath of Moses was a mere human institution.
Some later lawgiver of the Jews, probably seeing this ab
surdity, rewrote the Fourth Commandment and substituted
the other reason for the Jew keeping it, that ‘ thou wast a
servant in the land of Egypt.’ But thus with two varying
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versions, it is impossible to say we even know what the
Fourth Commandment was, for both versions cannot be
correct and we know not which to choose.
I conclude with words of St. Augustine’s, 4 Qui labored,
orat.‘ 4 He who works prays.’ Your obedient Servant,
W. Henry Domville.
It is also interesting to note that the Roman Emperor
Constantine, the first recorded lawgiver to the Christians
who ordered any abstinence from ordinary work on the
first day of the week—‘the venerable day of the sun,’
as he terms it—in his Edict (a.d. 321) expressly reserved
to the dwellers in the country the free use of the day
for agriculture, lest haply the crops “ bestowed by
heavenly provision, should perish,” in this respect showing
greater wisdom than those 44 foolish Galatians,” and, let
me add, greater reverence, than those modern Sabbatarians
who would rather see the whole harvest perish than lift
up a hand to save it on a Sunday. The Act of 29 Charles
2nd c. 7 in more general terms excepts 4‘ works of
necessity and charity ” from its penal clauses.
The letter above quoted of 44 A Landlord and Farmer ”
on the subject of Sunday harvesting, is as follows :—
44 Many country congregations who last Sunday on
their way to church passed acres of cut corn, which
through the last three weeks of bad weather has been
ready for carrying, must have thought of the second
lesson (Mark II. 23) they would hear read in their churches,
and have wondered why the saying of Jesus 4 the Sabbath
was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath ’ was not
applicable to the present time. As the precious hours of
sunshine—sunshine for which the Archbishop had
ordered a prayer to be offered up in all congregations—
passed by, how many in the congregations must have
thought of the proverb 4 God helps those who help them
selves,’ and have longed for words of encouragement from
their clergy, bidding them gather in the harvest while it
could yet be saved. No such words of practical religion
came, I fear, from any pulpit in the country; and the
rain, which recommenced on Monday, has injured and
destroyed thousands of quarters of corn which, but for the
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bitter observance of the Sabbath, might have been saved.
In the face of the bad seasons we have now had for so
many years, is it not a question for the country to decide
whether or not the superstitious, and I might add
un-Christlike, views entertained with regard to Sunday
labour should be allowed to endanger the capital and
industry of our country? Daring the present season
could the fine Sundays that have come between days of
rain have been utilized, a large portion of our crops
would have been saved, and the harvest thanksgivings,
which have become a general institution in the Church,
would have had more of genuineness in them than they can
have had of late years. In this county finer crops of wheat
and oats have seldom been grown, and the peas and beans
have been fairly good. Of the former crops only a small
part is housed in any condition, the remainder, still lying
in the fields, is day by day becoming less fit for food.
The crops of peas and beans still out will serve only as
food for the pigs, which will be turned into the fields to
pick up the seeds shed abroad through the wet weather.
That landlords, farmers, and labourers must suffer in
consequence of this needless waste of their capital and
labour every one will see at a glance; but all do not
recognize the fact that an insufficient or bad harvest
means depression to every trade and industry in England.
It is for the press to point this out; and if you, Sir, will
use your powerful influence in teaching that it is no more
a sin to save the hay and corn crops from needless
destruction on a Sunday than to lift an ass or an ox from
a pit they may have fallen into, you will confer a
material and moral benefit on this country.”
Copies of the above will be forwarded on receipt
of a ready directed pre-paid wrapper, enclosed to
W. Henry Domville, 15, Gloucester Crescent, Hyde
Park, W.
The Second Volume of the late Sir Wm. Domville's
work on ‘ the Sabbath,' (now out of print) is entitled
i An inquiry into the supposed Obligation of the
Sabbaths of the Old Testament ’ and comprises an
elaborate statement of all the arguments on this subject.
Women’s Printing Society, Limited, 21&. Great College Street, Westminster, S.W.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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Sunday harvesting
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Domville, William Henry
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 4 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: Letter to the editor of the Free Sunday Advocate, October 1881. Author's name handwritten in pencil on title page. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Women's Printing Society, Limited
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1881
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N198
N199
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Christianity
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Sunday harvesting), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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Text
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Farming
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Sunday Observance