• Sunday Trains

  Contributed by Sermon Central on Dec 31, 2008 (message contributor)

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  Tags:  Commandments Sabbath

SUNDAY TRAINS

William Barclay tells this story:

The first Sunday train from Glasgow to Edinburgh ran on the 13th of March, 1842. Our contemporary journalist, wrote that it was filled with peaceful and respectable persons, gliding quietly away on its mission. The Presbytery of Glasgow, however, denounced the running of Sunday trains as "a flagrant violation of the law of God as expressed in the fourth commandment. A grievous outrage on the religious feelings of the people of Scotland. A powerful temptation to the careless and indifferent to abandon the public ordinances of grace, and most disastrous to the quiet of the rural parishes along the line of the railways by the introduction into every Sabbath of many of the profligate and dissipated to inhabit the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh."

In Edinburgh a threatening battery of ministers, (quite an image there, a 'threatening battery of ministers,' picture it in your mind) lined the platforms and informed the detraining passengers that they have just bought tickets to hell.

(From Andy Barnard's Sermon "Keep the Sabbath")