THE SABBATH IN HISTORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1090, 3 September 1912, Page 2

THE SABBATH IN HISTORY.

In beginning a short series of discourses on the Sabbath, the Rev J, M. Thomson M.A., last Sunday evening in the Presbyterian Church dealt with it in its historical aspect, basing a powerful plea for reverential consideration and use of the holy day on the ground ot the ancient and honourable and beneficial place it has held in the history of the race and of the world. With many graphic touches and picturesque allusions to critical events in the history, more particularly of the Jewish nation and of our own British Empire, he brought out strongly not only its venerable character, but also its dominant influence in maintaining the vitality of religion and morality and in producing the heroic quality of generations and nations that for their religion dared to attempt and wonderously achieved even the seeming impossible. Very effectively, by dramatic comparisions, he compelled his hearers to realise first the fact of its age long-establish-ment, and then the significance of this endurance and continuance amid all the cataclasms of the changing centuries of the world. It is this fact of endurance that appertains to the aged and the old, and not simply antiquity of such that wins from us the veneration and regard we give and rightly thereto. It is the explanation and the justification of the awesome spell cast upon the spirit of man by the everlasting primeval heights and the untold centuries looking on. Survival was held by Darwin—it is implied in his doctrine at least —to be ipso facto conclusive evidence of fitness lor life. Has not this hoariest as it is the holiest of religious institutions so attested itself ? Has it in this generation lost that fitness and vital beneficence which has brought the Sabbath from the womb of time, itself through all the unnumbered generations since? Countless customs and many creeds have vanished utterly, even philosophies and civilisations have ended and gone, but the Sabbath, older than all. first of all, has continued until this day. It is the day enshrined in the religious history of all the ages of the past, the institution in whrch the Jewish race, nay, mankind, was cradled and nurtured, in which were born the holiest aspirations after God and tensest yearnings for the truth —that which has cherished the noblest ideals of highest civilisation the world has ever known, and has nursed into greatness our own British race and empire. And yet —and yet, continued the preacher, it is most pitiable and sad, there are among men and even in our own small community some so reft of native love and instinct, so chilled and dead of heart and soul as to have little esteem lor the most ancient and most precious of days to which the world at large, and our own British nation in particular, owes all it has attained and kept of pure religious truth and worship of God Himselt. The feeblest historic sense, to mention nothing higher or nobler, should surely secure for this day, so fraught with ricnest spiritual, aye, and physical blessings of old, the utmost veneration and regard. It should, he continued, absolutely lorbid all trifling and mocking derision of it ; it should compel reverence for it and holy use of it in all its sacred hours. It should absolutely forbid the turning it from highest and noblest services and ends to poor, base and selfish purposes to paltry pleasuriugs and aimless amusings of the brief bodv that to-day is and to-morrow returns to the dust whence it was taken. He concluded that it is worthy of higher, nobler and holier use and service than that. “ Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.”