HIKING ON SUNDAY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21295, 23 September 1932, Page 13

HIKING ON SUNDAY

Sir, —I have been keenly interested in the letters appearing in your paper, and I feel that other readers may be interested in an experience I had just lately. My niece wanted my permission to go on a hike with about 20 other young girls. As she was very keen about it, and although it was against my principles of Sunday observance, I allowed her to go. On inquiring how she put the day in, this is what I was told. "After a long walk, and having had lunch, we all sat down and our captain read the Bible. Then we sang three hymns and the captain prayed. The one of the Rovers who had joined the party and who is going to be a minister, gave an address on the ideals of the Guides and Rovers movement." Now, how could I blame my niece, for to my njind it was very beautiful, and made a good impression on this girl. I am sorry for our Churches and the empty seats, but we members of Churches will have to reorganise and adapt ourselves to the present-day conditions, and make things more attractive for the younger members. A Church Member.

Sir.—Bishop Cherrington, in his defence and approval of organised Sunday hiking, maintains that if a Christian attends and partakes of early communion the hiking will not be wrong in the sight of God. By the same token, I presume, he will admit that for those who fail to participate in the early Church service hiking is a sinful pleasure. To many of us such teaching is a travesty of true Christianity, indeed, it is entirely subversive of all that reverent Bible students have held' and believed during past centuries on the matter of Sunday observance. Great divines and millions of rank and file Christians alike have found and still find a quiet Sunday a necessity, yea, a sheer delight, and the regular attendance at Church in the spirit of prayerful expectancy, imparting the joyful feeling of physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. To hurry into a church and take communion before joining a crowd of trampers savours of giving a "sop" to God. To speak of "taking the sunshine" as an absolute necessity for town workers in a country like ours, with short hours of toil, frequent holidays, a weekly halfholiday—many have all Saturday off—and practically no slum conditions of living is surely an overstatement. Thousands of church-goers and their families are seen in the parks or on the country roads and lanes each Sunday afternoon after Sunday schools have closed, taking the sunshine, healthier and happier looking than any crowd of hikers. The most disturbing feature of the whole matter is that girls and boys of tender years, whom devoted Sunday school teachers have endeavoured to lead to church membership and a life of service for Christ, are being lost for good, and all as such, at the most impressionable period of their lives. Surely Bishop Cherrington is. not blind to the danger. We must not let the Continental Sunday get a footing here; let us be serious in our defence of that for which our forefathers fought. They were wise and godly men, and led their young people in the paths of piety and Christian citizenship. J. J. Donnell.