SABBATH DESECRATION.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 16 April 1913, Page 2

SABBATH DESECRATION.

TO THE EDITOR. (Continued from last week). _ The Sabbath as a day of rest recognises the discipline of work. A man made in the image of Crod in a life of active and purposeful usefulness and benevolence. But it also recognises that a man must occasionally rest, if he would work at his best and longest. Two extreme views of the Sabbath are current. One is the Pharisaic view that the day is to be observed with an exacting and wearisome round of religious services, which even the saintliest find anything but a means of grace, and never cease to reproach themselves because they cannot feel otherwise. The other is the secular view, which makes it an occasion of frivolous idleness, if not more vicious dissipation. If one of the two had to be chosen, there can be no doubt of the immense superiority even of the Pharisaic Sabbath to that of the secular. The best use of the Sabbath is that which makes it best for the manifold man —regarding his body, his mind, his heart. A wholesomely religious Sabbath is our salvation ; religion is the only efficient sanction for morals, the only power which can make us better men and women, the only offset to the eternal grind of of material interests, the only efficient discipline of character, by which man is able to reach and maintain. " The measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."—Northwestern Christian Advocate. At a meeting of citizens in Adelaide, in favour of the retention of Sunday as a Day of Rest, the Rev Dr. Beavan said a certain class would keep the Sabbath if it were the fashion, to do so, but its importance lay in consider- : ations of bodily health, intellectual activity, and moral life .... The law of rest lay right at the basis of social life. He did not care what day they took, or what sanctions they surrounded it with. A nation without its rest was a nation that would grow weak; but a nation which re cognised the spirit of the day would be strong to resist wasting forces. One of the speakers, the Rev H.Webb, said—" Instead of feeling that Sunday is burdensome, regard it as your greatest privilege, and resolve to guard it for the reason, that otherwise in time to come it may be lost altogether." A motion in favour of strict observance of the Sabbath was carried. The Rev T. Albert Moore, General Secretary of the " Lord's Day Alliance," in Canada, recently at a meeting in Winnipeg (Manitoba), emphasized the fact that true national greatness of any country lay in the character of its citizens. To build up a great nation he said it was absolutely essential that the Lord's day be observed. He noted that no nation had risen to greatness, and maintained its position which had desecrated the Sabbath. As soon as a nation disregarded its rest day, its glory waned. G. J. To be continued.