PLEA FOR SUNDAY.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13812, 25 January 1909, Page 3

PLEA FOR SUNDAY.

By Clarence Hook.

This is by no means a denominational religious plea, for it took me some live and twenty years to get over my hatred of Sunday, which in the days of childhood was dismal, strenuous, confined : Mustn't play on Sunday, Because it is a sin; To-morrow will be "Monday,' Then we may begin. • So w;e., whispered with anticipation, as the toys were solemnly upon Saturday night locked into the nursery cupboard. Tlien came the hateful day, when nothing nice could be done.

'HATEFUL" OR OTHERWISE. : The Old Testament engaged us after breakfast, as we sat and solemnly read chapter by chapter aloud. Then" morning service—and is there anything a child hates so much as a threequarters of.an hour sermon, especially when.it is addressed by a learned Dissenting minister to the "converted"? I fidgetted in my seat, and wondered as to the distinction between justification and sanotification. Then the. happy interval of midday dinner, marred sometimes by the sight of the visiting preacher filling himself with meat for the evening sermon. In the afternoon there were no toys, but two small children set to read verse by verse from the New Testament, while a sly peep from the window brought visions of dreadful sinners coming from country walks with wild flowers in their hands. There was the relief of tea: —with the Sunday cake—but there was also the half-past six service to be faced, and another sermon, during which the preacher thundered against the unconverted sinner for another forty-five minutes, while the little sinner watched the clock, and broke into a cold sweat of fury against tne people who were frightening his ignorance of God. Then —to bed, with the happy consciousness that the horrible day was over and the cupboard door would be unlocked to-morrow —which would be Monday. . . . And, after some years of experience and reflection, 1 am not sure that Sunday should not be a better day than Monday. ■We are in danger of sacrificing that Sunday which Lord Beaconsfield once described as the pivot of civilisation. It it not necessarily a matter of religion. Rather it is the religion of necessity. Just a year before Mr Millage died—he was the Paris correspondent of "The Daily Chronicle" for many years—l was talking with him of the Continental Sunday. He was no Puritan, but a Catholic. He was furiously in favour of a Sunday; and when 1 i>icadcd for fun on Sunday, in Paris or elsewhere, he indicated the note of rest. Every man must have the collar off now and again, and his theory was that the peculiar "nerviness" of the Parisian was due to the absence of the day off. "Sunday gives a man time to turn round when he is in difficulties," was the comment; and, having read that a Police Weekly Rest Day Committee of the House of Commons has heard that hundreds of London constables are never off duty one day in the year, I am sympathetic with the man who never has time to cool his feet or clear his head. ONE DAY IN SEVEN.

For every man wnnts his Sunday—as George Stevens once said, one day in seven —one week in seven —one month in seven —and so on. Rut one day in seven. As a selfish person 1 greet Sunday, though as a journalist I find the Sunday is a Saturday. Hut the,glory of Sunday is the waking in the 'morning to the knowledge that tliere are no letters, that 1 cannot date cheques, that 1 may not be arrested for the penny I owe my newsagent at the opposite corner. lam apart and safe for a whole day. > If you go down to the country you will find your Sunday morning letters, brought by the Sunday morning postman. London has achieved its rest. Bather odd that London;!-not-the smallest of villages, should have taken its postal Sunday off, until one remembers that everybody wants to know what London is doing; and the Londoner /wants the day off. I may add that t£ie postal rest of a Sunday in London is horribly disturbed by the newspaper offices, which arrange for a special off-license of let ters. And having waked in the morning of Sunday with the delight—"ha! ha! no letters!" having seen the streets filled with people who are taking their bath in silence —or fun—have been to church —are mating—l forsee the plunge of letters that will help to make up your Monday paper. ]t would be jolly to close down the world of work once a week, and send everybody out to have his fun or make his soul." and in the millennium, one supposes, we shall all take our Sunday off in prayer or golf, in feeding or fasting, and be fed —or eaddied by ravens (who will then demand their rights). But unfortunately we have so complicated the social structure that we cannot shut down the world's activity on the same day every week. We can no longer obey the simple command thundered from Sinai and bleated in our churches —-"no manner of work''; we cannot stop the steamer in midocean, the train, the food supply, the cable that is talking from Saturday to Sunday. More speedily and more vociferously does the world spin than when the- raised hand of a prophet could stop the sun in its course. THE NEED OF IT. But—"there remaineth a rest." There is not a man on earth who does not' desire fnat weekly rest. And his desire has circled the world. There is no day in the week which the Catholic/ the' Anglican, the Orthodox, the Mohammedan or the Buddhist has not set* aside as the day of rest from labour, all of them knowing that the man must have a holiday in order to do his work. But hero we are but a little country, and we are concerned onlv with certain persons who want, a rest and certain persons who want change. It 'is obvious that if so many people want rest, so manv other people must look after them. The mere demand for conveyance to church keeps another man from Church,, and the demand lor conveyance home may keep the same man from his Sunday dinner. You cannot close down the whole world on a single day, worse luck, and a universal Sunday has become impossible. But the sufferer from the. silly Sunday would welcome the sensible one, in which the workers—th;>inevitable workers—should be given a bonus. Tliere must be tramear men, and railway men ; waiters, sowerers, ti lephone operators, publicans. As we cannot go to rest or pleasure at the same tune, our Sundav must be split—and Sunday lis a necessity. Unless you could stop thejsun, hold up the turn of the market and prevent the latest marriage ot an actress to a peer, the world cannot be closed down on one day of the week —for evervone. But the individual Sundav maV be achieved. For example, the publican's Sunday should certainly, in iny opinion, not come on Sunday, hut on Monday. . , , Yet —if we could achieve it—what a welcome closure of the world's worries and'.incursion into the joys ol the spirit' One dav a week in which it were absolntelv forbidden to worry about the thins* of this world between the JeveK of golf or bridge and a soul. We all want a Sundav—but we cannot all get it teethe" Bishops get their Sunday on Monday.