Sunday.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume VII, Issue 7, 1 April 1917, Page 76

Sunday.

Judging from the answers of children at the last Sunday School Examination, most erroneous ideas are taught on the subject of Sunday Observance. One can excuse newspaper editors who constantly call the Lord's Day the Sabbath, and census compilers who ask how many children we have m "Sabbath" School — because these are sometimes North Britons, and do not know that the Sabbatarian heresy which they hold is not universal ; but churchmen ought to know better. Easter Day is the Sunday par excellence — the great and glorious day of Our Lord's Resurrection — and every other Sunday is a weekly commemoration of that feast. Sunday was observed by the Apostles and all the primitive church as the day for meeting for the Eucharist or breaking of bread m the early morning. It was not a day of rest, though it was sanctified by prayer and worship at various hours of the day when this was possible. It was not observed m obedience to the Fourth Commandment, and has nothing to do with it. The first Christians, including the Apostles, were also Jews and personally observed the Jewish law including that of the Sabbath, but the attempt of some judaistic teachers to impose circumcision, Sabbath observance and similar Jewish customs on the Gentile converts was vigorously condemned by St. Paul as a flagrant contradiction of Christian freedom and was forbidden by the council of the. Apostles at Jerusalem. The Fourth Commandment as part of the Jewish ceremonial law has been suspended;

a certain observance of the Sabbath, (Saturday) as well as of Sunday, continued m some parts of the Church for nearly five centuries, though even there it was not kept according to the old Jewish rule of the Fourth commandment but as a Christian festival. Hymn 235, A. and M., "0 what the Joy," is an old Saturday hymn and is quite inappropriate for Sunday use ; its use on Sunday m Anglican Churches is the result of widespread ignorance on the Sabbath question and the leavening of the Church with the peculiar ideas of the. Puritans and other British Calvinists. Before Oonstantine (312 A.D) it was generally impossible to abstain from ordinary labour, on the Lord's Day but Oonstantine, as part of his scheme for establishing Christianity as a favoured religion m the Empire, gave the Church Basilicas for churches and made Sunday a public holiday, so that Christians might have more opportunity for worship and the propagation of their faith. We shall never succeed m persuading people to observe the Lord's Day m a Christian manner so long as teachers appeal to a ceremonial law obsolete m the Christian Church which would make Sunday a fast day and impose a yoke upon Christians utterly inconsistent with the significance of the Christian weekly festival. Judaistic Sabbatarianism was condemned by St. Paul, by Ignatius and by most of the early fathers and councils and we must not allow it to be taught m our Sunday Schools to-day. Sunday is the Lord's Day, a day of gladness and rejoicing, a day of devotion and charitable work, above all the day when the Lord's children meet at the Lord's table for refreshment and holy worship and^hanksgiving for His glorious victory. . These are the essentials ; abstinence from ordinary labour and from pleasures that interfere with or are inconsistent with devotion, follow as a matter of course, but primarily Sunday is the day of worship, and the strictest abstinence from work or pleasure will not compensate for absence from public worship on the Lord's Day.