THE SABBATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 158, 6 July 1937, Page 9

THE SABBATH.

MISTAKEN IDEAS ?

WAY OF OBSERVANCE.

"A VOLUNTARY MATTER."

ÜBERTY OF THE GOSPEL

(By Telegraph.— Special to "Star.") NEW PLYMOUTH, this day. "We hear on all sides complaints about the secularisation of Sunday," said Bishop Cherrington at the annual Waikato Diocesan Synod this afternoon. "Are -we quite sure that the common sense of people is not asserting itself and that our preconceived ideas may not be mistaken? Let us try to get to the root of the matter. Are not people realising that they are not Jews, that they are not bound by any Jewish ordinance and do not intend to be? There is not a shred of evidence so far as I know that the Sabbath Day was ever ordained by God."

Bishop Cherrington contended that because people said or wrote that a thing was so it did not mean that it was true. After referring to the contribution of the Hebrews to the theology of the world, he claimed that Christ never inculcated the observance of any day. He treated the Sabbath as He pleased. St. Paul (himself a Jew) included Sabbath Day observances as a return to "beggarly elemente" from which the liberty of the Gospel set man free. For 350 years Christians believed, worshipped and led the Christian life in circumetanee and surroundings in which every day was alike, except for a heathen holiday, and that even when the first Christian emperor ruled that Sunday should be kept free from compuleory labour, agriculture and the law courts (in which most men were then employed) were exempted. Obsession Removed. "The truth is that observance of the Lord's Day was a voluntary matter entirely, and grew up gradually to become an ecclesiastical ordinance, that is a rule for the better promotion of the ♦ 'hristian life," continued the bishop. He said the force of the rule, or ordinance, depended on our view of the Church and of our sense of loyalty to our own branch of the Church. There wae a time when many Christians felt that in some way or other the regulation about the old Jewish Sabbath imposed duties on the Lord's Day, but both common eense and Biblical study had removed that obsession. "It may be that the New Zealand Government is teaching us the true use of Saturday, for the present 40-hour week stops many people from working then, and that is precisely how the Jews were taught to use that day—by doing nothing on it," he added. "By some Christians certain days are called Days of Obligation, i.e., Sundays and the main holy days. A sense of obligation may be useful when one is being trained in Christian habits, but, pushed too far, this, as well a« other rules, runs the risk of destroying that liberty of the fiospel so emphatically taught us by St. Paul," he declared-