^ Principal Alexander Whyte, in giving a New Year exhorta- tion in 1913, testified: "If my experience of the Lord's Day is of any value or any interest to any of you — well, here it is. I have had a long lifetime's experience of, on the whole, a somewhat scrupulously kept Lord's Day. And that day, so kept, has been to me one of my chief blessings in a life full of such blessings. I can testify, and that with the most entire integrity, that from my
REVELATION i. lo 39
childhood down to this hour, I have greatly loved and greatly valued the seclusion, and the silence, and the rest, and especially the reading proper to the Lord's Day. And at the end of a long life, I look back and bless God for those who brought me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord's Day. Especially do I recall my Lord's Day reading before my teens, and during them and after them. Speak for yourselves. But it would ill become me and it would be very unsafe for me if I were to be silent about the Scottish Sabbath, or were I to do less than all that in me lies to secure such a Sabbath to my own household and to yours."
^ Alexander M'^Laren's upbringing would now be called rigidly Puritanic, but instead of its having left on his mind any unhappy impression, all through life it was recalled with feelings of gratitude and pleasure. As for " Sabbath day " employments, no recollections were more lovingly dwelt on than their " unvary- ing round." " When I was a boy," he would say, " I was taken regularly to two services long before I was old enough to listen attentively to the sermon, but no remembrance of wishing the service to be over dwells in my memory. There was no evening service in those days. Parents were expected to teach their children then, and they did. In my father's house, after an extra good tea, the lesson began, very often with the repetition of the second chapter of Ephesians, each member of the family, including father and mother, repeating one verse. I, as youngest, brought up the rear. I knew nothing of 'dreary Sundays,' so often spoken of as being the rule in Scotland, especially long ago." ^
0 day to sweet religious thought So wisely set apart.
Back to the silent strength of life Help thou my wavering heart. Nor let the obtrusive lies of sense My meditations draw From the composed, majestic realm Of everlasting law.
1 know these outward forms, wherein So much my hopes I stay,
Are but the shadowy hints of that
Which cannot pass away.
That just outside the work-day path
By man's volition trod,
Lie the resistless issues of
The things ordained of God.^
* E. T. M'^Laren, Dr. M'^Laren of Manchester^ 8. * Alice Carey.
40 THE LORD'S DAY
6. A set day kept in the spirit goes far to hallow all our days. Christianity is not satisfied with one-seventh of our time. It lays imperious claims to the whole, and in our settings forth of the duty of Sunday observance, we may not stoop in her name to contract for a fraction, on the understanding that the residuum may legitimately be given to the world. It behoves us to bate not one jot of the sacred claims of Him who " desires not ours but us " for His purchased possession. In abandoning Egypt, " not a hoof may be left behind." If " the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath," we will bear in mind that this appropriation on His part does not imply the ceding of His lordship over all our days. He is Lord over the Sabbath, to interpret it, to preside over it, to ennoble it by merging it in " the Lord's Day," breathing into it an air of liberty and love, necessarily unknown before, and thus making it the nearest resemblance to the eternal sabbatism. But, in doing this as its Lord, He claims the first-fruits as holy only that the lump also may be holy, thus to secure that —
The week-days following in their train The fulness of the blessing gain, Till all, both resting and employ. Be one Lord's day of holy joy.
^ It is said that those who serve a battery on the battlefield are obliged at intervals to pause in calm self-possession, heeding not the awful excitement, that the guns may cool ; yes, and that the smoke may lift to enable them to take accurate aim; and further that they may replenish their stores of ammunition. And so no Christian can truly fight the battle of the week without the quiet Sabbath to cool his guns, to lift off earth-lowering shadows, and to replenish his stores of strength from the secret place of the Most High.
^ Through the week we go down into the valleys of care and shadow. Our Sabbaths should be hills of light and joy in God's presence ; and so, as time rolls by, we shall go on from mountain- top to mountain-top, till at last we catch the glory of the gate, and enter in, to go no more out forever.^
fl A conscientious observance of the Sabbath brings a double blessing — release from the pressure of outward business, and escape from the tyranny of a man's own strength. All unvaried activity is apt to become engrossing ; and the best thing a man can do, in order to preserve the completeness of a rich and well-