A REFORMED SUNDAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11650, 11 May 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

A REFORMED SUNDAY.

j HIGH CHURCH CURATE ON "KNEE- ! DRILL." Tm-: Rev. Conrad Noel, curate of St. Mary's, Paddington Green, has written a little book -called "The Day of the. Sun," which is likely to cause a. considerable flutter in ecclesiastical dovecotes.

Mr. Noel, who is, by the way. the son of (lie Hon. Koden Noel,' the well-known post and critic, has no love for the English Sunday.

He wants to see "a free Sunday, a holy day of spontaneous worship, not forced kneedrill; of instruction in the art of life; in political, economic, domestic- science; in poetry, music, anil other arts; of games and spoits; of social entertainment and merrymaking."

_ Mr. Noel is more advanced than the National Sunday League, and he is apparently in favour of all places of amusement being allowed to open as long as the. employees are .safeguarded from winking a seven-day week. The reader is reminded of ,lames .I. and his " Book of Sports," in which, among lawful Sunday amusements, arc mentioned "dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, wrest line. May games, morris dances, church ales, maypoles, and rush-bearing," Mr. Noel significantly adding that in those days churchgoing was compulsory. Mr. Noel declares that Sabb.itism was repudiated by the New Testament, by the early Church. I>v the early reformers, and by the English Church itself.

He is specially severe on the difference that; is often made between "secular" and "sacred" music.

He says:—"A composer may lie so fatbelow Handel as not to have an ounce of spirituality in him. He may not be in any sense of the word inspired, but let him bin label his watery production "Abinada.b in the Desert.' or ' Obadiah's Last Prayer,' and it at once becomes sacred music.''

Mir. Noel is a voting and earnest, clergyman. who held curacies in Manchester and Newcastle hi fore settling in London, and he certainly lias in a. large de-He the courage of his opinions.