POPULAR' MISUSE OF SUNDAY

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 162, 27 March 1923, Page 5

POPULAR' MISUSE OF SUNDAY

THE DRIFT TO PLEASURE In his “hot-point talk/’ preceding the sermon in the Vivian Street Baptist Church on Sunday night, the Rev. F. E.\ Harry dealt trenchantly with tlie popular misuse of Sunday. The preacher said ho was filled with alarm at tho increasing desecration of the day of rest. A fair test of any man’s quality was how does he spend the Lord’s Bay? If in his life there was no reverence, no worship, no real consciousness of God, lie was lop-sided and disproportionate. It was a shallow or callous soul 1 that never worshipped. “The drift from God’s house to pleasure on Sunday,” continued Mr. Harry, “is ominous, and boded ill for the nation. Tho rigid Sabbath of our fathers, with its austerities and prohibitions, has passed away for ever. Flow the young disliked it!' But the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. Sport,' pleasure, idleness, on God’s day can mean nothing else than ultimate decay of moral fibre. ‘The nations that forget God are turned into hell,’ not a hell of final fire, but one of earthly calamity and loss. Working men (and that should include all, for an idler takes up too much room) should bo alarmed lest the Continental Sunday bo introduced here, for that would, mean seven days of toil every week for many. Could not our politicians occupy their Sunday nights in any better way than in discussing party politics, with all its bitterness and antagonisms? Rapid transit, by the multiplication of motor-cars,’ and the week-end habit, ars perilous to the morals of our country. Has (God no claim on the lives of men? His benefits are lavished upon them freely day bv day, and yet they ignore or flout Bis expressed will. ‘Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is.’ Gardening, house repairs, unnecessary duties on the Lord’s day mean poverty of soul, dishonour to God, irreverence, and social injury. Any man who ponders earnestly the problems of life will frequent tho house of God to get light on them from God’s word. The attitude of the modern mind towards sacred things is frivolous, if not piofane. To treat worship with flippancy, purity with a sneer, and Christianity with jocose satire, is to betray a shallowness of mind and a depravity of soul which prophesy national decay. Give the big things of life and enternity their true place and value. When over seventy, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to a friend describing a little village service he had attended the previous Sunday, and added: ‘There is a little plant "called reverence in a corner of my soul’s garden which I like to jiave watered about onoo a week.’ We shall ba wise if we jealously guard the sanctity of tho Lord’s Day, with its rest, worship, and general religious observance; for “ ‘A Sabbath well spent Brings a week of content.’ ”