Thoughtful Moments

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 157, 19 September 1941, Page 2

Thoughtful Moments

(Supplied by Lhe Whakatnne Ministers' Association)

(Continued from last week) But Smith Ims another reason —or rather excuse—for not going to church. He needs rest. He works hard all the week. He is shut up in the city in a study office or a cramped factory, and he wants relaxation. Sunday is the only day he can get it. So lie* turns to the golf links or the tennis court; or he goes ofi on hi; cycle or motor car away to the country to enjoy hunsell, taking lib wife and family and friends along with him. He will * probably quote our Lord's saying that "the Sabbath was made for man." It was. But of Him Who said that it is recorded that, "as His custom was,, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath T>aj r ." Why does Smith decline to follow His example? "The Sabbath was made for man." 1 rue! But it was not made for man to use 1 it as he pleases. The body was made foi man, but it Avas not made for man to treat as he likes. When he does thai he loses both it and himself. We 1 do not presume to say how Smith should spend his Sundays. What may be right for one may be wrong for another. He has only to consult his own body and. soul, and they will tell him. His body is a six-day clock, and needs another day to wind it up. That is the 1 law of the body. Science says so. At the Paris Exhibition a medal Avas awarded for the best essay on a weekly rest day. It was given to Dr Hacgicr, of Basle. As the result of careful scientific experiments lie showed that the night •> rest does not fu'.ly restore the day's waste. A man breathes \rom one to. two cubic inches less at each b/eath when at work than at rest. Ihere will therefore be a loss of some 12.000 cubi- inches in eight hours of work as compared to. the same length

of rest. Meantime he is using-more oxygen than he breathes. The debt of Nature thus made in a fair day's work is one ounce. He takes a, full night's rest (how many do?) and gets back only live-sixths of his losi ounce. So by the time Sunday is 1 reached lie is six-sixths of an ouncc short —a whole day behind. Nature thus say imperatively to the bod.v you must rest. But while a man has .i body he is a scul. He has mind,

emotions, aspirations, imagination, etc. The springs and keys of musical instruments get dusty and slack Tlicy need periodically to lie eleanee and tuned. Man is a spiritual organ Its strings 1 and keys of goodness, faith, courage, reverence, love, etc.. all grow less vibrant in us every day. We are not always conscious of it. But it is the busincs of the church to make us conscious of it. and retune the lceys to the true pitsli. Every sensible man will admit this. The only question is which is the more likely way to attain these desirable needs, whether by joining in a worship that lifts man into the regions of the spiritual and the eternal, or by turning the daj T into one of sport and pleasure that often tire out the body and rarely [line the scul. Those who take tho latter may find themselves often at the day's end, like Norah in Ibsen's drama. Hehner asks: "Have you not

OUR SUNDAY MESSAGE

been happy here?" Norah: "I have never been happy.. I thought I was, but I was never really." Helmer: "Not—not happy?" Norah: "No;, only merry." lint Smith has more to consider than himself. He has Smith junior, and Smith junior may be his own boys and girls, or those other multitudes of less-instructed ones upon whom his influence will tell. A; sixfoot man may wade safely through a river five feet deep, but if a child half his size is, tempted to follow his example the issue is fatal. And so Smith has to consider how his non-churchgoing will affect others. No man liveth unto himself. We are all bound together. No man has a right to live a life that he would noit wish toi see made 1 universal. We have been told that Sunday schools find the motor car one of their greatest difficulties. Parents take the children with them in the afternoons—the younger ones for the pleasure, the older ones often to drive the car. So the ranks of both scholars and teachers are broken into and the power and influence of the school disrupted. Smith Avill do well, therefore, to ask himself how his attitude towards the church and the Sunday school will affect Smith junior; how far it Avill help or hinder the latter towards a better knowledge and, appreciation o,f Him ] who redeemed childhood and casts' its destroyers with a stone about their necks onto the depths of the sea. Smith is usually a decent, wellmeaning, and often a learned and educated man. Were he asked if he would wish to see the churches abolished and the Sunday schools dissolved and the Sunday turned into a day of pleasure, he would probably reply in the negative. Yet he is going the right way to accomplish it. He would probably repudiate the establishment of a Bolshevist creed and government in this try; in his saner moments he guesses what the results would be. Smith would probably say he would not like to see the Bolshevist creed and government established in this country, yet without intending it he is helping to create the very atmosphere in which their set-ds germinite and tlieir crimson fruitage is caped. Lady Astor said recently hat a curious thing about human nature is "that everybody is trying ro get rid of themselves." So they crowd theatres, cinemas, games, motor cars, etc. That is the secret urge at the back of all these things. But she went on to insist that when people try to get rid ol' themselves they want to find a better self, not a poorer ami worse, one. That is surely true. And, on the whole, twenty ccnturies' experience are behind the assertion that the atmos-> phere and outlook which created find sustain the church are the surest way to find this higher .and better self for Avhich everybody is on the scarch. If Smith "knows of a bet- ' ter 'ole let him go to it." Meanwhile ' it has not yet been discovered, and ! is not likely to lie in Smith's ways : of being and doing.