THE OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20582, 4 December 1928, Page 10

THE OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Whatever any individual bishop or clergyman may say, the opinion of the Anglican communion upon the observance of Sunday has been definitely pronounced by the Lambeth Conferences. In the official report of such isauedjunder the directions of the then Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Davidson) the following resolutions were passed by the conference in--1888 unanimously:— (a) That the pirnciple of the religious observance of one day in seven, embodied in the Fourth Commandment, is of Divine obligation. (b) That, from the time of our Lord’s resurrection, the first day of the week was observed by Christians as a day of rest and worship, and under the name of the Lord’s Day, gradually succeeded, as the great weekly festival of the Christian Church, to the sacred position of the Sabbath.

(c) That the observance of the Lord’s Day as a day of rest, of worship, and of religious, teaching has been a priceless blessing in all Christian lands in which it has been maintained. (d) That the growing laxity in its observance threatens a great change in its sacred and beneficent character. (e) That especially the increasing practice, on the part of some of the wealthy and leisurely classes, of making Sunday a day of secular amusement is most strongly to be deprecated. . 1 ■ (f) That the most careful regard should be had to the danger of any encroachment upon the rest which, on this day, is the right of servants as. well as their masters, and of the working classes as well as their-employers (pp. 120, 121). The Lambeth Conference in 1908 unanimously resolved: “The conference desires to cal! attention to the evidence supplied from every part of Christendom as ;to the grave perils arising from the increasing disregard of the religious duties and privileges which fire attached to ,a due observance, both, on the social and spiritual side, of the Christian Sunday. In consequence of this the conference records its solemn conviction that strong and co-ordinated action is urgently demanded, with a view to educating the public conscience and forming a higher sense of individual responsibility alike on, the religious and Humanitarian aspects of the question. The conference further, in pursuance of the resolutions passed upon this subject in former conferences, calls upon Christian people to promote by all means in their power the better observance of the Lord’s Day, both on land and sea, for the worship of God aud for the spiritual, mental, and physical health of man ” (p. 329). The conference of 1920 did not vary from the above position. The encyclical letter of the conference, of 1888 says, in addition to the I‘esolutions above given: “ In the Lord’s Day we have a priceless heritage. Whoever misuses it incurs a terrible responsibility" (p. 199), - The encyclical letter of 1908 says: “The neglect of Sunday we arc bound to resist with all the fhree of corporate opposition in the interests both of the service of God and the service of man” (p. 311), So far for the authoritative views of the Anglican Communion. But as the members of the laity are nowadays proving themselves more loyal to the Church and its teaching than some of the clergy, we will quote a-layman (Colonel Mackendrick, D. 5.0., of Canada —a great Canadian during the war), who says:—“Your Pilgrim Fathers kept the Sabbath, as did the British from whom |they sprang, and the Anglo-Saxon nations are the only nations of the world over who keep it, by the law of the land, as. well as by the general observance of doing, no work, etc. At the Paris Exhibition in 1889 every nation had its exhibit wide open on the Sabbath Day as on the other, six days of the week, save for two exceptions. Both Great Britain and’the United States closed their sections each, Saturday, aud did not open them till Monday morning. Why, I wonder? Israel was to keep the Sabbath throughout Israel’s generations, and 'twns a sign between Him and -us as to whom we are” (“The Destiny of the British Empire and the U.5.A.,” p. 120), —I am, etc., Archdeacon ok Southland. December 1.