gladly do I join in your proposal that we should write monthly.

Will you send me your proper address in German, for

I do not like directions to you in French.

CCXXXII. TO W. W. HULL, ESQ.

Rugby, March 13, 1840.

I do not often venture to talk to you about public affairs, but surely you will agree with me in deprecating this war with China, which really seems to me so wicked as to be a national sin of the greatest possible magnitude, and it distresses me very deeply. Cannot anything be done by petition or otherwise to awaken men's minds to the dreadful guilt we are incurring? I really do not remember, in any history, of a war undertaken with such combined injustice and baseness. Ordinary wars of conquest are to me far less wicked, than to go to war in order to maintain smuggling, and that smuggling consisting in the introduction of a demoralizing drug, which the government of China wishes to keep out, and which we, for the lucre of gain, want to introduce by force; and in this quarrel are going to burn and slay, in the pride of our supposed superiority.

CCXXXIII. TO W. LEAPER NEWTON, ESQ.

Rugby, February 19, 1840.

It is with the most sincere regret that I feel myself unable to give an unqualified support to the resolution which you propose to bring forward at the next general meeting of the proprietors of the North Midland Railway Company.

Of course, if I held the Jewish law of the Sabbath to be binding upon us, the question would not be one of degree, but I should wish to stop all travelling on Sundays as in itself unlawful. But holding that the Christian Lord's Day is a very different thing from the Sabbath, and to be observed in a different manner, the question of Sunday travelling is, in my mind, quite one of degree; and whilst I entirely think that the trains which travel on that day should be very much fewer on every account, yet I could not consent to suspend all travelling on a great line of communication for twenty-four hours, especially as the creation of railways necessarily puts an end

to other conveyances in the same direction; and if the trains do not travel, a poor man, who could not post, might find it impossible to get on at all. But I would cheerfully support you in voting that only a single train each way should travel on the Sunday, which would surely enable the clerks, porters, &c., at every station, to have the greatest part of every Sunday at their own disposal. Nay, I wou'd gladly subscribe individually to a fund for obtaining additional 'p on the Sunday, so that the work might fall still lighter on each mdaidual employed.

CCXXXIV. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, February 22, 1840.

It would be absolutely wrong, I think, if I were not to answer your question to the best of my power; yet it is so very painful to seem to be arguing in any way against the observance of the Sundor, that I would far rather agree with you than differ from you. I deve that it is generally agreed amongst Christians that the Tease Law, so far as it was Jewish and not moral, is at an end; and it a souming the whole point at issue to assume that the Ten Commandments are all moral. If that were so, it seems to me quie certain that the Sabbath would have been kept on its own proper day ; for, of the Commandments were still binding, I do not see where we'd be the power to make any alteration in its enactwees Batus also true, no doubt, that the Lord's Day was kept fest time immemorial in the Church as a day of festival; and, connected with the notion of festival, the abstinence from worldly Austres naturas "Or followed A weekly religious festival, in which worldly business was suspended, bere such a resemblance to the Sabbath, that the analogy of the Jewish law was often urged as a reasen for its elservance; but, as it was not considered to be the Sabbath, but only a day in some respects like it, so the manner of its observance varied from time to time, and was made more or less strict on grounds of religious expediency, without reference in either case to the authority of the fourth commandment. An ordinance of Constantine prohibits other work, but leaves agricultural labour free. An ordinance of Leo I. (Emperor of Constantinople) forbids agricultural labour also. On the other hand, our own Reformers (see Cranmer's Visitation Articles) required the Clergy to teach the people that they would grievously offend God if they abstained from

*

working on Sundays in harvest time; and the statute of Edward VI., 5th and 6th, chap. iii. (vol. iv. part i. p. 132 of the Parliamentary edition of the Statutes, 1819,) expressly allows all persons to work, ride or follow their calling, whatever it may be, in the case of need. And the preamble of this statute, which was undoubtedly drawn up with the full concurrence of the principal Reformers, if not actually written by them, declares in the most express terms that the observance of all religious festivals is left in the discretion of the Church, and therefore it proceeds to order that all Sundays, with many other days named, should be kept holy. And the clear language of this statute,-together with the total omission of the duty of keeping the Sabbath in the Catechism, although it professes to collect our duty towards God from the four first commandments, -proves to my mind that in using the fourth commandment in the Church service, the Reformers meant it to be understood as enforcing to us simply the duty of worshipping God, and devoting some portion of time to His honour, the particular portion so devoted, and the manner of observing it, being points to be fixed by the Church. It is on these grounds that I should prefer greatly diminishing public travelling on the Sunday to stopping it altogether; as this seems to me to correspond better with the Christian observance of the Lord's Day, which, while most properly making rest from ordinary occupation the general rule, yet does not regard it as a thing of absolute necessity, but to be waved on weighty grounds. And surely many very weighty reasons for occasionally moving from place to place on a Sunday are occurring constantly. But if the only alternative be between stopping the trains on our railway altogether, or having them go frequently, as on other days, I cannot hesitate for an instant which side to take, and I will send you my proxy without a moment's hesitation. You will perhaps have the goodness to let me hear from you again.

CCXXXV. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, April 1, 1840.

I should have answered your last letter earlier, had I not been so much engaged that I assure you I do not find it easy to find time for anything beyond the necessary routine of my employments. I agree with you that it is not necessary with respect to the practical point to discuss the authority of the command to keep the Sunday.

In fact, believing it to be an ordinance of the Church at any rate, I hold its practical obligation just as much as if I considered it to be derivable from the fourth commaniment; but the main question is, whether that rest, on which the commandment lays such exclusive stress, is really the essence of the Christian Sunday. That it should be a day of greater leisure than other days, and of the suspension, so far as may be, of the common business of life, I quite allow; but then I believe that I should have much greater indulgence for recreation on a Sunday than you might have; and if the railway enables the people in the great towns to get out into the country on the Sunday, I should think it a very great good. I confess that I would rather have one train going on a Sunday than none at all; and I cannot conceive that this would seriously interfere with any of the company's servants; it would not be as much work as all domestic servants have every Sunday in almost every house in the country. At the same time, I should be most anxious to mark the day decidedly from other days, and I think that one train up and down would abundantly answer all good purposes, and that more would be objectionable. I was much obliged to you for sending me an account of the discussion on the subject, and, if it comes on again, I should really wish to express my opinion, if I could, by voting against having more than one train. I am really sorry that I cannot go along with you more completely. At any rate, I cannot but rejoice in the correspondence with you to which this question has given occasion. Differences of opinion give me but little concern; but it is a real pleasure to be brought into communication with any man who is in earnest, and who really looks to God's will as his standard of right and wrong, and judges of actions according to their greater or less conformity *.

Rugby, February 25, 1840. With regard to Welsh, I am anxious that people should notice any words which may exist in the spoken language of old people, or in remote parts of the country, which are not acknowledged in the written language. Welsh must have its dialects, I suppose, like other languages, and these dialects often preserve words and forms of extreme antiquity, which have long since perished out of the

* See p. 254, for his further view of the fourth commandment.