A correspondent inquires, “Should children be taught to observe the Lord’s Day?” Unquestionably they should. The Lord’s Day, or the first day of the week, gets a place in the New Testament, which no other day gets; and hence, if the New Testament is to be our guide in the training of our children, and in the management of our houses, the Lord’s Day should undoubtedly be honored; not as an iron yoke put upon us by the law, but as a holy privilege conferred upon us by the gospel.
But then we must be allowed to add, that the due observance of the Lord’s Day is but a part, and not the whole of a Christian education. We have no sympathy whatever with a system of training, which seeks to reconcile a week of folly and unruliness, with one day of legal restraint. This we can only regard as a most monstrous anomaly. If our children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they will reverence the Lord’s Day as a necessary consequence. Its exercises, instead of being a heavy burden, will prove a real delight; and instead of being a strained exception to the general rule of ungodliness, will be in lovely harmony with all the habits and arrangements of the week. This is what we understand by a due observance of the Lord’s Day; and oh! that we saw more of it than we do. We long to see the Lord’s Day honored, according to its own real spirit and genius, as the resurrection day—the day on which the Captain of our salvation rose triumphant from the grave—a day of holy and happy elevation above the things of earth and nature.
True, we have done, thank God, with “days, and months, and times, and years” (Gal. 4:1010Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. (Galatians 4:10)). No man has any right to judge us “in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath” (Col. 2:1616Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: (Colossians 2:16)). For all this liberty we bless God. But, let us remember, it is holy liberty. Oh, yes! We say to the legalist, “We are called to liberty;” and we say to the antinomian, “We are called to holy liberty.” We see the two evils working around us. We see the legalism of some, and the antinomianism of others. The former is connected with the grossest inconsistency; namely, six days of folly and lawlessness, and one day of unsightly restraint. The latter, as is always the case, exhibits another inconsistency; namely, high doctrine and low practice. May the Lord deliver us from both the one and the other.