A MESSAGE FOR THE TIMES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19438, 26 October 1925, Page 2

A MESSAGE FOR THE TIMES

SHOULD SUNDAY SPORT BE ALLOWED. The following is the text of a sermon on Sunday observance recently preached by the Rev. G. F. Cox, of St. James’ Presbyterian Church, Wanganui East:— Exodus 20, 8 to 10. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” The question before us is one that is fraught with deep moral, social, and economical consequences, far more than many recognise. It is not simply a question of “to play” or “not to play”; it affects in its consequences the happiness and the good of multitudes, the freedom and the welfare of the wage-earner, the moral tone of our young people, the integrity and the honour of our church, and the very existence of religion. Let me quote you a paragraph from the circular issued by the Assembly’s Life and Work Committee pointing out that the deep gravity of the issues at stake. “It is obvious to all “thoughtful men and women that the Lord’s Day, the Christian Church, and the Christian faith stand or fall together. If the Lord *s Day perishes the church cannot long survive, and with the church wili go the faith of which the church is the custodian and herald. At the very least the church will find her difficulties in the proclamation of the Evangel and the furtherance of the kingdom of God, intensified a hundredfold. The church cannot fulfil her divine mission apart from the due observance of the Lord’s Day.

“No competent observer of the habits of the people of this country can fail to realise that the danger of our losing the first day of the week for the uses of religion is extreme. Its secularisation goes forward by leaps and bounds. And the most serious aspect of the situation is not the indifference and hostility of the utterly Godless. To them the day has already ceased to be. Facilities for amusement and sports are rapidly increasing. Sunday evening concerts have dropped the pseudonym of ‘sacred’ at one time adopted to assuage the criticism of the socalled rigid Sabbatarian. Sunday games —golf, tennis, and the rest —are regarded as the correct thing. To venture a protest against such desecrations is to write oneself down a bigot who refuses to move with the times. The holy day has for the multitude become a holiday.” But the most serious feature of the unhappy situation is the increasing neglect of the day by the people of the churches. Religion, as before, is betrayed by her friends. Those whose children are being trained in our Sabbath schools are among the worst offenders. “What hope is there for the Sunday when its rightful defenders have joined hands with its enemies to cast down the barriers between it and the other days of the week; and keeping it holy is regarded as a custom compatible with the narrow vision of the 18th century?’’ To our shame let it be said, the danger in which the Lord’s Day stands of disappearing is chiefly due not to the attack of its enemies but to betrayal by its friends.

The Cause. Is there any more need of Sunday sports and amusements to-day than 20 years ago? It might be argued that there is more strain because more complexity in modern town life, and this is true; but it is also true thatja century ago men, women and children worked from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. without any halfholiday. Much of their work was very similar to that of the present-day, but now factory employees are free, after a week of 48 hours/with a weekly halfholiday and a number of regular holidays each year, which the early factory workers never knew. That being so, why the cry for freedom to dig gardens and play games on Sundays? How many, apart from dairy factory emplovees, are denied a weekly halfholiday? A hundred years ago wages were so low that few' of the workers were able to attend any place of amusement in the evening. Now picture palaces and cheap music halls abound and are principally supported by the working classes. Thus the workers to-day have shorter hours and higher wages; they have a weekly half-holiday for following up their sports, and abundant opportunities of entertainment every evening of the week.

The Moral Aspect. Consider the moral aspect of the question. God gave man six days for himself, to do all his work and enjoy his leisure. He asks in return for all His goodness one day. He gives us freely six-sevenths of our time, He asks for one-seventh only to bo devoted exclusively to Himself, inhere is a plain command that we shall remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. What would we say to a man who was given an hour to eat his dinner by his employer and who took two hours"? We should say he was stealing his employer’s time. What should we say.of a boy who was given permission to cat the fruit of every tree in the orchard but one, and who helped himself from that one tree also? We would consider him both greedy and dishonest. Have we any right to place the man or the woman who robs God of His Sabbath in any other than the category in which these two stand? I ask vou also to consider th 6 effect of wholesale Sabbath breaking upon our boys and girls. During their carl} years children can be made to go to Sunday School. But suppose that on their way backward and forward they meet men and women going pleasuring; suppose they see everywhere evidence of Sabbath desecration, what then? Children are naturally imitative. They tend to do what their elders do. In a very few years they will be Sabath-breaking with the rest, and the work of the Sunday School will be largely undone. The Sunday School trains them to bo moral and upright. The example of the Sabbathbreaker tends to pull down moral restraints and lead them to break the Laws of God. I cannot help feeling that the moral aspect of the violation of the Sabbath is serious in the extreme. In many homes there is no religious teaching, no religious example. The whole burden of the moral training of the boy or girl is thrown upon the church and the school. If our youth and maidens and many of our young men and women absent themselves from all religious instruction, from all guidance upon questions of right and wrong, can we wonder at the low state of public [morals, at the increasing impurity, i robbery and covetousness? “The I people perish for lack of vision. ’ ’ Let I as remember that the preaching of i Wesley and Whitefield saved England | from the horrors of revolution in the 118th century; the lack of Cliristiaii

teaching m the same ug« precipitated I rance into a carnage of blood and horror. Has the, deplorable condition of back-sliding England, with her acute unemployment problem, no message for us? It is written: “The nation that forgets God shall be turned into hell.” God has specially hallowed and blessed the Sabbath Day, and historv is absolutely unanimous upon this P o [°t : v -J n ever X land where the Sabbath hi.s been kept holy unto the Lord, His blessing has descended, blessing of God has been withdrawn blesing of God has been withdrawn and sorrow upon sorrow has fallen upon the people.

Assyria was a mighty land, her armies ruled the world, but where are they now? Babylon has fallen, her palaces, her temples, her houses are rums; her cities arc buried beneath the sand of the desert; her people are despised. The Hittites were once a mighty people; their art and their architecture were wonderful and beautiful, their warriors were invincible.

Now where are they? Until recent years, when Hittite cities and inscriptions were unearthed in the East, it was doubted whether they ever existed. And so we might go on with Egypt and Rome and Greece and Spain—it was a broken law, a violated Sabbath which was the downfall of these nations. The Economic Aspect. A broken Sabbath means an unrested body and mind, and consequent loss, of vitality and efliciency for the tasks of the week. It is no good for the employer; it means that the employee has failed to make a proper use of the rest day his master has allowed him and consequently cannot give him the quality of service he has a right to expect. It is no good to the employee, because it means a violated conscience, and impaired abilities for his work. It has been truly said, “He who gives his mind no rest, brings up in the madhouse or the grave.’’ There is a scientific reason for this. A man vrho habitually overworks at last comes down with typhoid fever, and that fever runs seven, fourteen, twenty-one or twenty-eight days, changing every seventhday, as do other diseases w r hich result from physical exhaustion. Why is this? It is because man is built on that plan. His pulse changes every seventh day. He needs a weekly rest as much as an eight-day clock needs a weekly winding. Man cannot escape the universal law. nor the eye of the one Lawgiver. This law of sevens is inwrought in our very nature, and holds us health and sickness from life’s earliest origin till its end. Neither Jew, nor Christian, sceptic nor heathen, can escape its po'wer. The consequences of Sunday sports will not stop here. They will result in the loss of the Day of Rest altogether. Some time ago it was proposed to hold a railwaymen’s picnic upon a Sunday. The reason was this was the men’s only free day. Mr John Ramsay, a Presbyterian elder, took up the cudgels for his church, and wrote:—“l go more deeply into the matter and show the danger ahead. If by such actions the barriers around the day of rest are removed, and the general public follows the example of Sabbath last, what will happen? The railwaymen will be the first to suffer. Even at present when other people get holidays the. railway is abnormally busy. If every Sabbath saw the great mass of people on excursion bent, our railway friends would not have even Sunday to go with their wives and children: If our railwaymen consulted self-interest they would be the last to advocate Sunday picnics. Even as it was, I . believe some coach-drivers were deprived out of their right to have one day in the midst of their families.”

Does it not seem a fitting judgment that if men desecrate this God-given holy day by turning it to their own pleasures, that having neglected the duty of piety, they should lose also the privilege of rest?" Be sure that this will be the fruit of Sunday pleasuring. On one pretext and another the restday given men by Christian teaching is being taken away . During the war the excuse made to bring about 7 days ’ work a week was the need of munitions; now many business concerns run over Sunday and keep some or all of their men employed; drivers of tramcars, ferry-steamers, coaches, and taxis count it one of their busiest days. Thus more shop-assistants are now needed on the Lord’s Day to supply refreshments for the pleasure-seekers and more police have to be on duty. To an alarming extent the day of rest is being taken away from the workers, and that, primarily, through their own neglect of their religious duties. How much better, how much wiser, to “remember the day to keep it holy.” Spiritual Aspect. Man needs the Sabbath because he has a soul. A great lawyer once said “In this strenuous age, instead of making light of one Sabbath, we ought to have two each week, not only to repair our jaded nerves but to tone up our moral sense.” We have not fulfilled all the command, when we have rested the body and diverted the mind. The soul has its rights, and not to recognise them is to leave our nature with the highest, finest part left undeveloped. The Sabbath Day did not begin primarily as a rest day, but as a holy day. The name “shabatu” or “the day of the appeasement of the heart” has been found in ancient Babylonian inscriptions, proving that the very earliest thought of the Sabbath arose from the craving of the human heart for that healing balm a well-spent. Sunday always brings. When Sunday is spent as it should be spent then it is indeed:—■ “A Day of rest and gladness. A day of sweet delight. A balm of care and sadness. Most beautiful, most bright. ’ ’ We read of Jesus that “He went, as His custom was, into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day.” Why? That His soul might keep its tryst with God, have larger breathing space, clearer light, and be renewed in power and holiness for the daily fight.

Dr* J. R. Miller tells us of a Christian woman, a busy editorial writer, whose eyes began to trouble her, until she was obliged to go to an oculist to see what was the matter with them. The oculist told her that what she needed was not new glasses, but rest for the eyes. That, she answered was impossible. Her work compelled her to sit all day bending over a desk, reading and writing. The wise oculist asked■ where she lived, and found that she ; was in sight of the Blue Ridge mountains and the Alleghanies. ‘ 1 Go home” he said, “and do your work as usual, but every hour or so leave your desk and stand and look at the mountains. The far-away look will rest your eyes after the long strain of reading manuscripts and proof-sheets.” That is what Sabbaths are for—the far-away looks. We all need them, and the hours of Sunday are all too brief to relax the strain of the soul, to restore its poise, and recover its gladness. What ia the cloud that looms over

every man’s path every day? Not sorrow, not poverty, not sickness, not business reverses. The cloud that looms over every path is temptation. Some time ago a man who had not been in church for many years secured a seat in his old church, and is now one of the regular attendants. Someone asked him the reason. He said, “I have a growing family of sons and daughters. I have been watching my boys with some anxiety. I am alarmed at what I read in the daily capers about the ways of the. worldj tho case with which men under temptation go down like reeds before the wind, the frequency with which husbands and wives break up their homes. I am convinced there is only one place to bring up a family of children, and that is in the church.” Who will question that father’s judgment? He does not want his sons to grow up without moral courage; ho does not want his daughters to marry those who will play fast and loose with honour, and he knows that the church with its worship is the place where ideals are burnished up, where the dust is cleansed from the soul's wings, where false standards are corrected.

What is the best way to remedy the deplorable situation which has arisen? Make the laws more strict, say some. Make it illegal to do any kind of work on Sunday. Do not think we can solve this problem by Act of Parliament. Parliament may do something, but it cannot safeguard the Christian Sabbath unless the united will of the people is behind it. You can drive a coach and four through any Act of Parliament. The remedy is in our own hands. When the Christian church was set down in the old Pagan world to win it to Christ, there were no laws to safeguard its interests. The reliance of the first believers was in’ themselves, or rather in the Lord who had redeemed them. They overcame Paganism by their living faith in Christ and their devotion to His will. It is often said that we are facing a new outbreak of Paganism. Tho remedy is in our hands. We can preserve the day by ourselves reverencing it and keeping it holy. An ounce of practise is worth a ton of argument. If Christian folk will only honour the day and devote it to the purposes for which it was given they will preserve it for the world. Wo appeal then, to every thinking man and woman to face the facts, and to act from a high and noble point of view. For the sake of the growing boys and girls, for the 'welfare of our land, for the blessings it will bring to our souls, let us “remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. ’ ’