"NOT HELPFUL."

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 193, 17 August 1939, Page 18

"NOT HELPFUL."

TO PUBLIC WORSHIP. FIVE-DAY WEEK INTfEW ZEALAND. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. "In our land the five-day week, whatever may be its virtues in other directions, has not helped the practice of public worship. Saturday, the day of sport, must be left inviolate; Sunday, the day of God, may be used for military manoeuvres and union meetings."

Thus writes the Rev. Brian Kilroy, of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Wellington, in a foreword to the annual report of the church.

"In a wider sphere than that of our own congregation loyalty is becoming increasingly necessary," he says. "So far as certain European countries are concerned, that is obvious to all; but the tendency to paganism is by no means confined to Europe. Merely to protest is of no value, but loyally to adhere to what we hold sacred is a powerful weapon. After all, it was that, loyalty to the fellowship which made the early Church so strong in a hostile world.

"If our task to-day seems difficult, the task of the founders of this congregation was certainly not easy. Their determination and ours may be one, for their faith and ours are one. As we look forward to a new century, we shall do well to remind ourselves of the text from which the Rev. John Macfarlane preached at the first service: 'If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.'"