CHURCH AND THE AGE.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18873, 17 February 1933, Page 6

CHURCH AND THE AGE.

SUNDAY HOLIDAY MAKING

THE RAILWAY DEPARTMENT.

MINISTER’S CRITICISM. (Special to Times.) AUCKLAND, Friday. "It is passing strange tnat it is only on Sunday that one can get a cheap ride on a railway train,” said the ltev. A. J. Seamer, president of Hie New Zealand Methodist Church, when ciiucising the policy of the Rahway Department in the matter of Sunday excursion trahlc, during his inaugural address last evening at the opening of the ChlUYh’s annual conference in Auckland. The right use of Sunday, remarked Mr Seamer, had much to do with character building, and grave loss would result to themselves and to posterit) if it were misused. While conceding the right of all to decide how they should observe the day, provided they did not spoil it for others, the church ad not thereby imply that everything that people did on that day was right. "Probably one of the most unsatisfactory developments of late years in our Dominion use of Sunday," the speaker continued, "is (the flagrant way in which our Government Railways, of which after all the Christian public are part owners, have used public money in the placarding of towns and other widespread publicity efforts, to advertise Sunday galas and excursions. This criticism is not directed against legitimate Sunday traffic where the need and demand really exist, but it is opposed to the deliberate adoption of up-to-date advertising methods in order to create the demand. The Railway Department’s policy was undermining that spirit of selfdiscipline that was essential to character formation, by popularising the taking of the easier way in conduct, and Its action constituted a grave disservice to the young people and to the moral forces of the community. It was the church’s duty, while avoiding bigotry and compulsion, to conserve the heritage of Sunday, and prevent the commercialising of that day of leisure which, but for religion, would not have become available to the people.

Gambling Spirit Decried. What he described as "the gambling habits of the community" also received attention in the president s address. These were designated as a perversion of the spirit of adventure and sport. Gambling was something quite distinct from that noble willingness to take a risk, come victory or come defeat, which was so universally admired. True risk must have a worthy objective, and sucoess involving loss and failure to others was too dearly bought. Nor could it be pleaded in extenuation that all me is a gamble; and the principles controlling insurance and friendly society operations were the very reverse o those operating in totalisator and art union gambling. In the latter instances the principle adopted was the seeking of profit without service, and purely through the loss of others. Unfortunately in days of economic stress the gambling method made a strong apeal to people to seek an easv, though demoralising way out of their difficulties. But that method, it could not be too strongly affirmed, was antisocial and anti-Christian, and Christian people could not be associated with it without denying the essential principles of true sooinl and spiritual well-being. Commending the work of the New Zealand Alliance for the Abolition of the Liquor Traffic, Mr Seamer referred to the beneficial effects of that work among the Maori people in particular, and said Christian ethics demanded’ the promotion of sane legislation to counter such arch destroyers of national character as Sabbath vulgarisation, gambling and the liquor traffic. Bible In Schools.

The Bible-In-Schools’ League propaganda was approvingly mentioned by the president, who said that at a time when the future of this young nation was at stake, because religion, the first foundation principle of education, was ignored in the curriculum •of their State schools, they had nevertheless the amazing and absurd spectacle of one great church unwilling to co-operate in the attempt to place in the schools a prepared reading comprising scripture extracts. For it only In the scriptures that the true basis of ethical and spiritual character was to he found. The exclusion of the Bible from the school meant the banning of the greatest literature in the world, and the ignoring of its greatest character, in an education system professedly encouraging the study of great literature and great men. It must be emphasised that the alternatve to the balancing and improvement of the curruiclum proposed bv the League was, without doubt, the advent of the future of State-sup-ported denominatonal primary schools. Concluding with an appeal for the church’s support of the literature department's endeavours to circulate sound and wholesome literature in the Dominion, the speaker urged that members of the conference proceed to their tasks with sure confidence in God and in the righteousness and far-reaching issues of their cause.