CHURCH PICNICS ON SUNDAYS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22830, 14 March 1936, Page 21

CHURCH PICNICS ON SUNDAYS

TO THE EDITOR Sir, —As no one else has done so, so far, I should like to back up "A Lover of the Sabbath" for I, too, love God's day. Though we keep the first day of the week and not the seventh, we need one day a week for rest and quiet. Even doctors tell us that this is beneficial, and they are merely referring to the natural plane, not the spiritual. The meaning of pansy is tranquillity or hearts' ease. What a 6weet name! And how great is our need of it. But a Sunday picnic 'is hardly the place to look for it or to find it! There is a calm, beyond eye's fitful fever, A deep repose, an everlastinc rest; Where white-robed angels welcome the believer Among the blest, among the blest. There ia a home, where all the soul's deep yearnings And silent prayers shall be at last fulfilled; Where strife. and sorrow, murmurings, and heart-burnings At last are stilled, at last are stilled. Yes, but we need something here and now as well. Some years ago a man heard that all his children had been drowned in a wreck. Yet, after hearing this terrible news, he was so comforted by a sense of God s presence that he was able to write a beautiful hymn. This hymn ig 'number 413 in a hymn book entitled "Redemption SoDgs." Here ts the first verse of it: When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows, like sea-billows, roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to know, It is well, it is'wcll with my soul.

The early Christians set apart Sunday ae a sacred day because on this day our Saviour rose from the dead. It was certainly on the first day of the week that the early Christians met together to worship the Lord. What a tremendous loss the Church universal would have suffered these many hundreds of years if' the Apostle John had gone for a picnic on that eventful Sunday morning when he wae in the Isle of Patmosl Fortunately for himself, and for us, he did not do so, for the Bible would not have been complete without the Book of Revelation. This is what we read in chapted i, 10. John is speaking: " I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day (Sunday), and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet."—l am, etc., Maran-atha.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib,—Letters under the above heading have caused "Lover of Truth" to issue a challenge in your issue of the 13th instant. Your correspondent is to be commended on his appeal to Scripture, yet his naive reference to Daniel, vii, 25, reminds one of the writings of Mrs White, of Seventh Day Adventist memory. On "Lover of Truth" lies the onus of proving that "there ia no authority in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation to keep any day other than the seventh." Such a statement is untrue, pernicious and confusing to the public mind. Christians are not under the law of Moses or they would be bound to ask for the death penalty prescribed in Exodus xxxi, 14, for those who desecrate the Sabbath. " Lover of Truth" cannot produce any command in the New Testament for Christians to observe the seventh day, but will find in the New Testament that the day of the week was observed by the early Church. The reason why the first Christian missionaries—Paul and his companions—went " into the synagogue on the Sabbath day"' is obvious. That was the only dav on which a congregation of Jews assembled and could hear the new message. The legal observance of Sunday in British law (according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica) goes back to the seventh century. Public opinion is necessary for any social advance or legislation affecting social affairs. Christians, if they expect to see the Lord's Day observed , witn honour to God. and unselfish consideration for others, should pray for revival of religion., which, the editor of one of our largest newspapers told the writer, was the greatest need of New Zeanald. Such a revival will be hastened by reverent personal obedience to the commands given in the Book of Books and bv the ending of partv strife among Christians—a state of thinas which is grieving to the spirit of God and injurious to the State—l am. etc.. H. R. Turner. Bpslyn, March 13.