The present Free Church takes pains to identify how very extreme they find the position on the use of public transport on the Lord’s Day adopted by the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. A recent Facebook post by a Free Church minister, I am reliably informed, castigates the Free Presbyterian position as extreme, legalistic, cultic and selfish. Much could be said in response to this tirade of personalised and unpolished abuse by a professing Christian minister towards a whole body of fellow-believers. Perhaps that can be dealt with another time. However, the following extract from a more godly Free Church minister of a past generation exhibits what the true Free Church view of public transport on the Lord’s Day is. Written when this sinful breach of the Sabbath first troubled the nation, this call went out from a minister who then represented most evangelicals and certainly all Reformed ministers on the subject.
“DEAR FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN, As a servant of God in this dark and cloudy day, I feel constrained to lift up my voice in behalf of the entire sanctification of the Lord’s day. The daring attack that is now made by some of the directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway on the law of God and the peace of our Scottish Sabbath – the blasphemous motion which they mean to propose to the shareholders in February next – and the wicked pamphlets which are now being circulated in thousands, full of all manner of lies and impieties – call loudly for the calm, deliberate testimony of all faithful ministers and private Christians in behalf of God’s holy day. In the name of all God’s people in this town, and in this land, I commend to your dispassionate consideration the following…”
There then follow reasons for loving the Lord’s Day and an exhortation to defend the Lord’s Day. The reasons for defending it include the following solemn charge against those who promoted the introduction of Sabbath public transport:
“A majority of the directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway have shown their determination, in a manner that has shocked all good men, to open the railway on the Lord’s day. The sluices of infidelity have been opened at the same time, and floods of blasphemous tracts are pouring over the land, decrying the holy day of the blessed God, as if there was no eye in heaven, no King on Zion Hill, no day of reckoning. Christian countrymen, awake! and, filled by the same spirit that delivered our country from the dark superstitions of Rome, let us beat back the incoming tide of infidelity and enmity to the Sabbath. Guilty men! who, under Satan, are leading on the deep, dark phalanx of Sabbath- breakers, yours is a solemn position. You are robbers. You rob God of His holy day. You are murderers. You murder the souls of your servants. God said, “Thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy servant;” but you compel your servants to break God’s law, and to sell their souls for gain. You are sinners against light. Your Bible and your catechism, the words of godly parents, perhaps now in the Sabbath above, and the loud remonstrances of God-fearing men, are ringing in your ears, while you perpetrate this deed of shame, and glory in it. You are traitors to your country.”
There then follow “serious questions” proposed to all readers:
(1) Can you name one godly minister, of any denomination in all Scotland, who does not hold the duty of the entire sanctification of the Lord’s day?
(2) Did you ever meet with a lively believer in any country under heaven – one who loved Christ, and lived a holy life – who did not delight in keeping holy to God the entire Lord’s day?
(3) Is it wise to take the interpretation of God’s will concerning the Lord’s day from “men of the world,” from infidels, scoffers, men of unholy lives, men who are sand-blind in all divine things, men who are the enemies of all righteousness, who quote Scripture freely, as Satan did, to deceive and betray?
(4) If, in opposition to the uniform testimony of God’s wisest and holiest servants-against the plain warnings of God’s word, against the very words of your catechism, learned beside your mother’s knee, and against the voice of your outraged conscience-you join the ranks of the Sabbath-breakers, will not this be a sin against light, will it not lie heavy on your soul upon your death-bed, will it not meet you in the judgment-day?
Praying that these words of truth and soberness may be owned of God, and carried home to your hearts with divine power. I remain, dear fellow-countrymen, your soul’s well-wisher, etc.”
Rev Robert Murray M’Cheyne, ‘I love the Lord’s Day’
(taken from http://www.reformation-scotland.org.uk/articles/i-love-the-lords-day.html)
By the way... 