“SUNDAY SMASHERS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 853, 23 December 1929, Page 14

“SUNDAY SMASHERS”

THEIR LOGIC ANALYSED MAN NOT ALL BODY Preaching in the Xew Lynn Method-*, ist Church last evening on the subject ot "The Sunday Smashers' Logic,” the Rev. C. B. Jordan pointed out the necessity of “clearing the air” before the Sunday question could be rightly dealt with. First there was the question of man's precise nature. The best philosophy of today was at one with religion in declaring that man's religious nature was a perfectly legitimate part of him, said the preacher. No tribe or people had yet been discovered od earth that was entirely devoid of religion. We had as much right to consider this one of his legitimate senses and activities as, say, sight or hearing, eating or drinking. The fact that man Is “incurably religious” was a never-failing evidence against all phases ot Materialism. If man's religious nature is an illusin. then a "whole-hog” agnosticism was the only logical attitude, and we could be sure of nothing. True, man's religious nature was often crude and always needed development, but it was always there. Secondly, there was the question of what was the best way of cultivating man’s nature as we find him to be. Certain hours of the six days were practically fixed; we were almost the victims of necessity during those hours. But we had the few remaining hours, scanty enough usually, plus the Sunday, to use in accordance with our own preferences.

What ought those preferences to be? Just here we joined issue with the “Sunday-smasher.” We maintained that man should exercise on that day pre-eminently the part of his nature that had been neglected on other days. One would suppose, by the “Stindaysmasher’s” behaviour, that he was all body. True, he was not a purely spiritual entity, “without body or parts,” but neither was he to live “by bread alone.” This conclusion follows altogether apart from Divine revelation, or God’s word to man, Mr. Jordan said. When we came to consider, however, how God had spoken to man and told him that the first day was a resurrection day, "a day of resurrection from earth to things above,” the case against the “Sunday-smasher” became overwhelming. Weighed in the balances, his logic is found to be lighter than vanity itself. The Christian position was that of the seer of Patmos, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day.”