The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-02-26 00:00:00

A MODEST REPLY TO A LETTER FROM
THE REV. VERNER M. WHITE.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE NORTHERN TIMES

Sir—ln your contemporary the Mercury, of the 16th inst.,
I observe a letter which bears the signature of Mr. White. In
this he complains of some things; he asserts others, and brands
as infidels those who have the misfortune to differ from him
on the question of Sabbatarian observance,

I shall address myself to the several categories of cOmplaint;
assertion, and calumny.

Mr. White lament's that he has invested the Bum of one
shilling sterling in the purchase of a pamphlet. I will not
deny that he has cause to regret an unfortunate speculation.
He has not been convinced by the arguments he has perused ;
he has not been able to confute them ; his outlay has been
unprofitable; his vanity has been mortified.
Under these circumstances, it is rather unreasonable that he
should con.plain that the privilege to purchase the pamphlet is,
by the high price in question, denied.to his less wealthy fellow-
townsmen.

This grievance is easily dispoted The pamphlet was not
intended to be circulated among them. The authors appealed
solely to the Ltelligence of the wealthier, and more educated,
classes to obviate the mischief which might result to all classes
if the false and superstitions doctrine promulgated in St.
George's Hall were allowed to pass without protest and without
refutation. Mr. White's outlay proves that they had not
miscalculated the price that sincere Christians of an educated
class would be willing to pay for the "production."
It is true that the writers concealed their names. They
imagined that truth would recommend itself without the aid
of personal influence. They may have been mistaken. They
may have refrained owing to a false delicacy from the publica-
tion of names not unknown nor unrespected. They may have
feared lest they should seem distrustful of their arguments if
they relied on such adventitious aid. But if they be mistaken
they may console themselves when they observe the little
regard the world shows for the very respectable signature of
Verner M. White.

Mr. White twice asserts that:the Sabbath was instituted at
the Creation, and observed by the Patriarchs. If repetition
proved assertion, parrots would be the greatest of logicians.
Mr. White does not owe allegiance to my church. I shah,
therefore abstain from quoting Isaac Barrow (Barrow's Works;
vol. ii, p. 571), and the cloud of Fathers cited by him to shell
that" the Patriarchs were not obliged to the Sabbath, nor'did

actise it."

In the Holy Scriptures We meet on ground ho cannot
decline. In Exodus, c. xxxi, v. 17, occur the words, "It is
a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever." In
Ezekiel, c. xx, v. 12, we find, " I gave them my Sabbaths to
be a sign between me and them" (the house of Israel). Now
it is evident that the Sabbath could pot be a sign between God
and the people of Israel unless the observance of it was
peculiar to that people, and designed to be so. Therefore
it UM not general to any others, nor to the Patriarchs:
Thus it appears that from a necessary inference that Mr.
White's assertion is not only rash, but wrong. Which was to
be demonstrated.
Mr. White believes that no parent would tell his child that
there were formerly ten commandments and now only nine.
I hope what Mr. White believes-. I hope that no Christian
father will try to bewilder the brains of a child with any
precept so untrue and so absurd. Nobody denies that the
Decalogue was delivered by God as an ordinance to the
Israelites. Nobody can affirm- that it is binding upon
Christians, except so far as it was re-enacted by our Saviour and
his Apostles.
The most important passages in which portions of the
Decalogue aro again ordained are Matt. c. 19, v. 18 ; Mark,
c. 10, v. 19 ; Mark, c. 12, v. 29 ; Luke, c, 18, v. 29. These
all indicate the moral commandments. The Sabbath is
invariably mentioned by Christ as of infinitely less importance
than a moral duty, and, as if to leave no 'doubt, he declares
that he is Lord of the Sabbath ; has power over it, to abro-
gate it as a type already fulfilled, and therefore superfluous.
That such was the belief of the Apostles, I have shown in my
former letters, by quotations from St. Paul. These have not
been answered by Mr. White.
"Mere fault-finders have never done any good to society !'
So says Mr. White ; and, to prove his position, finds fault
with an anonymous pamphlet, because it is anonymous.
He also finds fault with alleged Continental immorality.
On this subject, he appears to know as little as he does of the
authors of the pamphlet. His falsification of the numbers of
suicides in Paris, is, in the first place, ridiculous ; secondly,
has been refuted from official documents, by a writer in the
Daily Post; and thirdly, has nothing whatever to do with the
question.

Another assertion of the same kind is, that "drunkenness
and crime prevail most in the places where so-called Sunday
recreations most abound." If this were true, it would be no
argument. Some connection must be shown between two
occurrences, to mark that they stand in the relation of cause
and effect. It is, however, the falsest of falsehoods. There
is no recreation in Glasgow on a Sunday, except the illicit
whiskey shop, and yet Glasgow is the foulest sink of iniquity
in Great Britain.
The illicit whiskey shop is the practical answer to Mr.
White's very philanthropic, but very foolish, proposal to close
public-houses on a Sunday.
I will now proceed to Mr. White's calumnies. In spite of
"the Evangelical Protestantism" of this country, it is a re•
cognised fact that great numbers of the poorer classes are in a
most degraded state, and that the absence of permitted recrea-
tion on Sundays, is ono of the causes of their resort to drunk-
enness, as a pastime.
The authors of the pamphlet desired that there should be
something better, something more rational, something more
Christian, than such brutish sensuality. They advocate the
extention of sober and rational entertainment for the
working classes ou Sunday, as far as it can be given under the
control of government, and local municipalities. They attack
nothing whatever. They take away no man's Sunday, be it
English, be it Scotch. But they are indignant at the uncha-
ritable spirit in which the poor man's innocent Sunday pas-
times have been calumniated and denounced as sin, and they
resent, as aggression on English and Christian liberty, all
demands upon the Legislature to enforce by law a Pharisaical
observanee of the Lord's day. They have learned from the
past that the practice of piety is seldom well propounded by
Acts of Parliament, or successfully, promoted by policemen.
For urging these views they are branded as "Infidels,
Atheists, Papists, Jesuits, and SOcinians," by Mr. 'White. I
can afford to smile at such impotent and senseless invective.
But it is painful to see religion brought into contempt by the
association of its name with vulgar outrage; and it is deplor-
able to witness the union of such feeble intellect, with such
foul-mouthed malignity, in a Christian minister as has been
exhibited in the controversial' writing of Mr. Verner M.
White.--Yours, &c, A elm R CHUAN.
20th February, 1856.
P. S.—From antediluvian Sabbaths to Parisian suicides,
Mr. White deals copiously in unfatinded assertion. In a letter
of the Courier of this date he repeats his foolish figments
about the latter, in the face of conclusive testimony, to the
contrary. If truth be golden, such perseverance in false asser-
tion can only be characterised by an epithet derived from
another and a baser metal.