NATIONAL SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.

Waiapu Church Times, Volume I, Issue 2, 1 August 1907, Page 13

NATIONAL SUNDAY OBSERVANCE.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who has taken a prominent part m the movement, preached at Croydon Parish Church on Sunday morning from the text, " No man liveth unto himself." He had ohasen this text, he said, to emphasise the important truth that the Sunday question was. only part of a much wider question which concerned all. In face of the plain facts of contemporary English life it was a grave and difficult question. Speaking for himself quite unreservedly as one to whom people constantly and most legitimately turned for counsel, be could only say it was a most perplexing matter about which to give advice, especially when a detailed, cut-and-dried rule was asked for. Clear, hard-cut rules, he honestly thought, were either an impossibility, burden, or a mistake, except only when they were deliberately thought-out plans of one's own making and not imposed from outside— plans which had thedr relation to the common life as well as to one's personal tastes, idiosyncrasies, and needs. Personally he did not think detailed rules, binding upon them as Christians, were given m the Bible. But something far more sacred was given there, a living principle, divinely laid down with solemn emphasis and iteration, and traceable m all the teaching from Genesis to Revelations, of not living for self alone. There was no stranger distortion surely than that which had somehow made people think of Sunday with reference rather to its prohibitions than its positive use for worship and rest. We ought to dwell upon the "thou shalt " and not upon the " thou shalt not " m order to rightly understand the Lord's Day. It was -simply impossible to exaprffer'ate the responsibility upon every member of the Church to honor Sunday as a day for everybody's good. There had seemed of late to be a peril that this great heritage would become marred. All sorts of new questions and theories had arisen as to its recreative use, and many people who advocated a change from ancient ways were m some things wise and thoughtful men and women. The problems raised by the present-day growth of cycling', sfolf, and tennis, and other wholesome and serviceable amusements, clamor for a solution exceedingly difficult to find. The answer, so to speak, was not all on one side, arid they sorely needed -Christ's help. Some people would like him to try and solve these problems m black and white that day. His whole- object, however, was to show that they

(his hearers) could only solve them m their own lives by falling back upon the big, deep, sacred principle embodied m the text, and asking God to show them the way m which to walk ; to seek Divine help for the right and reverent use of comimon-sense, which was far 'better than any set of precise rules.