SUNDAY WORK AND THE WAR.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 173, 12 May 1916, Page 3 (Supplement)

SUNDAY WORK AND THE WAR.

BY THE RT. REV. BISHOP WELLDON, D.D. (Dean of Manchester). The institution of Sundays answers to two great human needs —the need of rest, and the need of religion. Man cannot be always at work. If his labour is continuous, it becomes ineffectual. Experience in the dark days of the French Revolution proved, not only that he could do more work, but better work, if a day o f rest were assured to him than if it werj not, and if the day of rest were one day in seven rather than one clay in ten. In other words, human nature demands a week of seven days, and a day of rest in every week. "We are not poorer," said Lord Macaulay, in his speech on the Ten Hours Bill, in the House of Commons, " but richer because we have, through many ages rested from our labour one day in seven." But man needs religion as well as rest: or he needs the rest which is itself religious. He has been created by God and for God. It is in God that his peace, that his happiness, that his virtue resides. If he is cut off from the knowledge and the worship of God his nature degenerates, and ho falls short of the highest moral and spiritual excellency. It is necessary, therefore, or in the highest degree desirable, that he should possess some sure and settled periods of leisure for cultivating the graces of the soup by worship, both public and private. For if the present war has taught any lesson, it, has taught that no gain of wealth or power of territory is comparable with the loss of the personal or the national soul. It has lent an emphasis unknown before to the Divine question, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" It was thus that Emei'son wrote once in his Journal: "The Sabbath is a respite from the importunity of pass'on. from the dangerous empire of human anxieties, a pious armistice in the warfare of the world, a point of elevation, like the Pisgah of the man o,f God. an observatory whence we measure backward the Avilderness we have traversed, and forward the interval that is yet to be trodden by us, ere the solemn shadow descend upon our path, bevond which the magnificence of other worlds is towering into the distance."

When the weekly day of re=t w;as first Divinely instituted as the Jewish Sabbath, its' observation was guarded by narrow, definite, inexorable rules. Such rules were appropriate, and, indeed, indispensable, to an early stage of human history. For man in the childhood of the human race needs, liko the individual child, to be told in exact terms, upon unquestionable authority, what he may and may not do. So it was onlv hv the prohibition of all work that the Sabbath could be kept as a dav of rest at all. The Fourth Comandmcnt, then, although in it.-, snirit it is a permanent obligation, yet in its letter is adapted to the circumstance.- of the pcotile for whom it was originally designed.

CHRIST DTD NOT ABOLISH THE SABBATH. Our Lord did not abolish the Jewish Sabbath; He seems to have regularly observed it in His own practice. But in His teaching He went back to the original principles underlying the institution of the Sabbath. "The Sabbath," He said, ''was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." It must be a day of rest and a day of religion, but not" a day in which the literal interpretation of an ancient law could be suffered to override the dictates of mercy and charity. He taught—nay, He went out of His way to teach, by example even more forcibly than by precept, that the benefits of rest and religion are the true objects of the Sabbath, but that neither the law of rest nor the law of religion forbids the relief of suffering or the rseponso to the summons of duty. The Early Christians kept both the Sabbath and the Sunday: but when the Sabbath, or the last day of the week, gave place to Sunday, which is the first day of the week—the day of the Lord's Resurrection—the change was at once felt to be an emancipation from the burden of the Jewish law, as enforced by the Pharisaical school of thought, and a return to the original principles of rest and religion. But there have always been, and today, perhaps, there are more than ever, social and industrial forces which militate against the weekly day of rest. Competition dislikes it; the lust of wealth contravenes it; the selfishness of pleasure protests against it. The world of Labour, no less than the Church, is concerned in resisting these forces. It is not improbable that the maintenance of Sunday will, in the future, prove to be the principal bond between the Church and the great working population. But'however clear may be the human need for rest, and, to many minds,\for religion also, it must be doubtful whether Sunday, as an universal day of rest or religion, can be ultimately maintained, in Great Britain or in any other country, except upon the sanction of a Divine command.

Lord Beaeonsrie'd was not far wrong in his striking statement: "Of all Divine institutions, I maintain the most Divine is that which secures a day of rest for man. It is the religious principle which, to a certain extent, is admitted by all—at least by all classes that have influence and number in this country; it is that principle we must take care should not he discarded, if we wish to maintain that day of rest which I hold to be the most valuable blessmg ever conceded to man.' - ' The value of Sunday remains as great in war as in peace—lt may even be felt to be greater—but the observance ot Sunday necessarily undergoes a considerable change. The Christian Powers have not agreed upon the duty of keeping Sunday free from hostilities. The Duke of Wellington fought and won most of his great battle., on Sunday. But it is cvidi nt that if one Power chose, and another refused, to do battle on Sunday, the Power which so gave its enemy the advantage would, or might, as a consequence of giving it, suffer"defeat, as indeed the Jews are said, at different tines, to have exposel themselves to attack by their rigid insistence upon the letter of the Sabbatical law. Five minutes, as Nelson used to say, make the difference between victory and defeat: and jl it is impossible to lose five minutes in war without grave danger, how can it he safe or wise to lose a whole day 2 But modern battles arc not won and lost entirely, or perhajw childly, on the b.-n tlefield. The men at the Front need munitions; and the country, which semis them to fight her battles without adequate munitions, might almost as well not -end them at ad. WHAT I SAW AT THF. FKOXT. It perm-., then, to follow that, if war nay law r iT 1 c waged on a Sunday, so may tie' munitions of war be lawfully iuHC'ifa- furcd on Sundav. The nvper 1 ture <>, r didls on a Sunday jusH fie* Ml : : .Manufacture then. Both the (*;*, I'diHro and the manufacture ~* V ' n.i!' ntfi hie noccesit'es; hut these neecsitie* are inseparable from warfare, nnd in ■ <h a war fw the present, where tlio issues a* stake are justice, honour, freedom, and the mora! and

spiritual welfare of humanity, it may well seem that labour on Sunday is not inconsistent with our Lord's principle of subordinating the strict law of the Sabbath to the welfare of humanity. But none the less the demand'of human nature for rest and for religion is an abiding demand. If it is impossible to hold in an army Divine service at the regular times, yet the chaplains may claim, and the commanders will usually concede, all possible opportunities for public worship, and particularly for Holy Communion.

If there are workers who are inevitably employed in workshops and factories on Sunday during war, yet it is desirable, as far as possible, to save them from the burden and the peril of working at too high a strain, and the workers of one shift can easily be free while those of another are plying their task during certain hours of every Sunday, they will turn out all the more and better arms if they enjoy periodic intervals of rest, and spend part of those intervals in Divine worship. For it is a main interest of the community that such labour ns take-; place on Sun days should be confined within the narrowest possible points. It has been my fortune to sec something of the soldiers at tiie Front. 1 know iiow their hearts are solemnised by intimacy with scenes of suffering and death. I know how welcome to most, or to many, of them are the service, from which they often go straight into the trenches. I have myself taken a long motor journey to confirm one soldier in the afternoon, when he could not wait even until the evening for his conrmation. The secularisation of Sunday would be felt as a spiritual loss by the soldiers, and surelv not less by the sailors, who need all full strength and the courage at issue from a strong faith in God and in Christ for the due performance of their self-sacrificing dtics.

THE NATION MUST BECOME SERIOUS.

If it is well to keep Sunday holy at the Front it cannot be less well to keep it holy at home. There has been too ranch desecration of the Sunday in Great Britain during recent years. But the war has exercised a bracing, -anctifying influence upon the Liatish people. They have come, or are coni:i:. r . to feel that, if they would rival Die achievements of their forefathers who laid deep and sure the foi'iidjtinn.3 of the Empire, they must not fail to cultivate the religious spir.f which was ever in o'd times the concinitant of British valour. It is difficult, in wartime especially, to rpprove t!u- multiplication of mere worldly entertainments even for patriotic purposes on the day which ought to be set apart for the worship of the Almighty. If such entertainments are permissible at all, it is only when they do not come into conflict with Divine worship that Christian men and women can rightly approve and support them. The paramount need of the nation to-day is that it should recover its seriousness. It needs to recognise its responsibility before God, its frequent lapse from allegiance to His will, its supreme duty of trying to regain its direct spiritual communion with Hun. But it may be that no test of a nation's spirituality is stronger or surer than the way in which it keeps Sunday. For the observance of Sunday is the overt public national acknowledgment of God. It prevents the soul of man from being stifled by material anxieties and ambitions. From week to week, from month to month, from year to year, it keeps alive the realisation of the tilings unseen —the things which alone are eternal and immortal, of God and heaven, and the life beyond the grave. No true Christian, then, can well help hoping that the war. by its many solemn aspects, will so discipline the British people as to make them, not only while it lasts, but long after it is ended, a people who honour, and delight to honour, the Lord by keeping the day holy.