HOSPITAL SUNDAY. Wellington Ministers will have None of it.

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 109, 2 August 1902, Page 8

HOSPITAL SUNDAY. Wellington Ministers will have None of it.

A SIMPLE request from a Citizens' Committee to the Wellington Ministers' Association has been the cause of some resolutions that, from the view-point of the average citizen, appear to be a trifle Pharisaical. The Citizens' Committee want the help of the churches for the purpose of instituting a Hospital Sunday, on which date the churches are asked to help the local hospital. It seems a simple request, does it not ? * * * But the Ministers' Association see in it a snake in the gra-s. The proposal caused one of the clergymen to launch out; with accusations against the citizens of Wellington, that they were already too much disposed to desecrate the Sabbath. The Citizens' Association made a mistake in mentioning the words "band" and •'Basin Reserve." These are the only words in the proposition that could possibly be construed into " desecration." You may play a church organ as much as you like. You may even use a military band to assist a church service. But once get out into the open air and give a larger crowd than any church can hold a little harmless pleasure, and the horror of the tning seems to harrow the very soul of these well-meaning but awfully rigid sort of people. Because the hospital is a public institution the Ministers' Association cannot see any reason why the churches should help it ! It has enough funds, anyhow. That, however, is not the p >int. The p ant is really the advisability of adopting a means which is found very efficacious elsewhere for assisting the sacred cause of charity, by a very direct appeal to the public at large. Surely no stronger claim could be urged on behalf of Hospital Sunday. To collect money for the Hospital on Sunday surely is not a heinous crime. We remember to have seen the churches collecting money on Sunday for objects oftentimes less worthy. The fourth commandment does not tell you to keep rhe Sabbath Day gloomy and nowhere in Scripture is music objected to for Sunday. The Ministers' Association might easily have said that it considered the churches did their share of charitable work in other ways without implying that Wellington was particularly wicked in wanting to raise money by Sunday music. * * * Everyone is aware that this city is growing with great rapidity, that its hospital is not sufficiently large to the population, and that in other cities — notably in those of the Australian ( States — Hospital Sunday is an institu tion that has been (with the help of the churches) an incalculable boon to the sick. The Wellington Ministers' Association seem to have missed almost every point but the " desecration " one, and it certainly reflects on the broad-mindedness of some clergymen. I That Wellington is " par excellence " the Sabbath-breaking city of the colony is, to put it mildly, absolutely ] absurd. ]