The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-31 00:00:00

Excommunication for Sunday Work.

On Monday the Free Church Assembly at Edin-
burgh were engaged with an appeal from a judg-
ment of the inferior courts, by Mr. James Robert-
son, compositor in the Herald-office, Glasgow,
against the Rev. R. Bremner and the Kirk Session
of Gorbals Free Church, Glasgow. The minister
and Session had refused to admit Mr. Robertson to
the Communion on account of sin in following his
ordinary labour on the Lord's-day, and in their re-
fusal they have been supported by the Presbytery of
Glasgow and the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr. Mr.
Robertson admitted that he went to his usual la-
bours at half-past 1 p.m. on Sundays, but pleaded
that the work was exacted from him by necessity
and social usage, and that he had his 24 hours' rest
which the Fourth Commandment enjoined by doing
no labour on the Saturdays. He also pointed to
many cases of persons engaged in Sunday work as
systematic as his, but whose conduct had not evoked
the discipline of the Church. His conduct was, on
the otherhand, represented to be " an offence throw-
ing deliberate contempt on the law• of God as well
as the law of discipline of the Church." It was also
maintained that his plea of necessity might be
stretched to meet any case of Sabbath desecration ;
that there was no necessity at all but the self-im-
posed necessity of the votaries of Mammon ; and
that if his conduct were sanctioned by the Church
of God it could only lead to cruelty, oppression, and
wide-spread demoralisation.

Mr. ROBERTSON appeared at the bar and stated
his case with great ability. He acknowledged the
standards of the Church and the obligation of
the Decalogue, especially the Fourth Command-
ment, which he observed so far as it was in
his power. It was on the plea of necessity for
his labour on Sundays that he rested his ease,
and, going into the history of the " 'West-
minster Confession," he showed that the divines
who framed it were liberal in their interpretation
of such necessity. His case was commoa to thou-
'sands of members of the Free Church. There was
not a scrvaat girl iu Glasgow who had greater rea-
son to complain than he had. From the morning
of Saturday to the afternoon of Sunday he was
exempted from labour, and had opportunity for re-
ligious improvement and exercise, including the
attendance of forenoon worship on Sunday, which
he esteemed and used as a great privilege. Such
domestic service might also far more easily be dis-
'pensed with than a Monday newspaper. A large
number of the Herald men of different denomina-
tions enjoyed church privileges ; and why should he
be debarred ? Grooms and coachmen were not re-
fused church privileges, though they worked at their
week-day employment on Sunday ; and why should
he be debarred ? And if, said the appellant, the
matter is to be judged by the measure of necessity
or mercy involved in each case, which is the most
necessary—the publication of a newspaper, the
suppression of which, in the present constitution of
society, would paralyse the whole social, political,
and mercantile arrangements and requirements of
the community, or the baking of bread in a public
establishment, the cooking of hot dinners, and per-
formance of all the drudgery of week-day work in
a private house, or the employment of carriages and
horses, involving, too, as the last does, not only
labour by grooms and drivers, but the depriving the
horse of that Sabbatical rest which is as much en-
joined and to which it is as much entitled as we are?
My own conscience does not condemn me in the
matter. On the contrary, after the most full and
prayerful consideration, I feel that I am in the path
of duty. After adverting to the case of sailors and
other Sunday workers, who were freely admitted
as communicants, Mr. Robertson went on to say that
his true employers were not the Herald, but its many
readers, including ministers and members of the
Free Church. He also remarked that he had known
Free Kirk Ministers sending their sermons on Sun-
day night to be set up for the next morning's paper.
He reminded the Assembly that in the early days
of the Reformation the Kirk Session of Glasgow
ordered the day to be kept from sunset to sunset,
and that in New England that practice still pre-
vailed. lie concluded by an appeal to the charity
and forbearance of the Assembly.
The Rev. Dr. GIBSON was heard for the Synod of
Glasgow and Ayr. He said that, so far as necessity
was concerned in this case, it was a necessity for
gain, for the appellant had left a place where he had
275. 6d. a week for the Herald, where he got 355.,
and he had refused to go back to his old place, where
there was no Sabbath labour. He, like many
others, took his rest from labour on Saturday, when
there were trains and steamboats going, and when he
could make it a holiday, and when he was under no
obligation to do otherwise ; and he did not only a
full day's work on Sunday, but a heavier day's work
than he did any other day in the week. As to do-
mestic servants, they did not, at least in religious
families, do anything like their ordinary work on the
Lord's-day ; and with regard to all those other cases
to which reference had been made, it was so much
the worse if there were so many violations of the
Lord's-day—so much the more reason for the Church
sending out no uncertain sound in this matter. As
to the arguments about social and mercantile ar-
rangements, it was just the same as saying the laws
of trade are such that we cannot observe the laws of
honesty. The Church was asked to comply with
the requirements, and accommodate her procedure
- The papers that did
to the world.. The plea was that as the world re-
quired so and so, they must compromise the law of
t
naGmoo
worn
noagrnnt dhoe nm theirt_ the
ewONsev
ranebtestimony,pa rt Sabbath—
f notablyrequired the Daily Review
to be done on the Sabbath-day in order to produce
a Monday morning newspaper. With regard to
charges against others, let them be clearly made, and
he would apply the same law he now applied to Mr. •
Robertson. He would do his best iu such
a case to