THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 12, 5 September 1919, Page 7

THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE

MAN AND THE SABBATH,

"The present demand for leisure as one of the necessaries of civilised life is certain to revive the Sunday observance question," says the "Spectator." " 'Surely that is settled!' .we hear someone cry; with' impatience; 'Sunday has been secularised.' ' This is to some extent true. Sunday i 9 no longer strictly 'observed' in England; but it'is this very fact which must, we think, reopen the question. if the pleasure,of the people is to 'be provided for. on ft.greater 1 and greater scale, vast'numbers of their fellows must work to provide it. Tho Continental Sunday appeal's to the casual stranger as a scene'of happiness and refreshing gaiety Testing upon nothing. In reality, of course, it rests upon work. "If we use the word' 'rest' in the simple senso ot' physical repose, the Puri-. tan Sunday certainly gave it to as many people as possible. The modern English world, however, desires not so much rest as recreation. Normally active persons in these vigorous days hate inertia, and refuse altogether to conform to w|iat seems to them an ideal of the past. They want a Sabbath made for them; they will not bo made over again to suit the Sabbath, and it is difficult for the most orthodox Christian to deny to the rising generation this right of refusal. "Tho early Reformers, the great authors of the Reformation, made no effort to Judarise Sunday. Take tho most out-and-out of all the Reformers, Calvin. His words on tho subject must have, ibeen n stumbling-block indeed to his Puritan followers.' Ho declares 'that the ancient fathers substituted the Lord's Dny in place of tho Sabbath not without special reason, for it was the day of Christ's Resurrection and which finished all legal shadows; and Christians were admonished' by this alteration ot tho day not to adhere to a shadowy ceremony.' Christians, he goes on, 'should have nothing to do with a superstitious observance iof days.' .

"In England, Cranmer, in his Catechism, published in IMB, takes much tlie same tone:— •

"'Here note, good children,' he writes, 'that tho, Jews, in the Old Testament were commanded to keep tho Sabbatli Oar. But we Christian men in the New Testament are not bound to such commandments of Moses' law concerning differences of times, days, and mea.'.s, but have liberty and freedom to use other ijavs for our Sabbath days, theroin to hear the Word of God and keep an holy rest. And therefore that this Christian liberty may be kept and maintained we no morn keen tho Sabbath on Saturday rus the .Tews do; but we observe the Sunday. and certain other days as tho magistrates do judge convenient. '

" 'U'fi be lords over the Sabbath,' as-' sorts Tvndale. 'and may change it into Monday or any other day as wo need.'

"If the rest, tho worship, tile commomhvn.t\on had been insisted on, and no countenance hud been (,'iven to the superstitious regard for a day, religion might have been less regarded as a thing to be nut on with one's best clothes. Certainly the fact of allowing the two Commandments of Christ to be read instead of the tan of Moses will make tho path of a clercvman ,who desires a Sabbath mado for the twentieth-century man much nlainer and less obstructed by verbal contradiction than has hitherto been the ease."