SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 142, 2 November 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING

SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. i A Sermon preached recently in St. .Mary's Church by the REV. A. H. COLVILE. ■Due man esteemeth one day above another. Another esteemetb. every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day regardeth it to the Lord; arid he that regardeth not the day to the Lord he doth not regard it. —Ronis. xiv., 5-8.

"The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life," said St. Paul, and that

maxim, a grand rule of life to those who can rise to it, though dangerous, no doubt, for children—grown-up children as well as the young—runs through all his teaching, and. here we find him embodying it in his directions to his converts about one particular thing: the question that has always agitated the minds of religious people of all ages—the question of Sunday observance.

Bear with me a moment while I go back to the early days of the Christian Church and the view which St. Paul took of the subject. After the resurrection of Christ the Jews who became Christians continued to observe the Sabbath. It was a religious institution of great value to them, and St. Paul would not think of depriving them of it. He recognises their perfect right, and even their duty to keep it. But what St. Paul would not have was any enforcement of the rules and regulations of the Sabbath upon people who were not .accustomed to them, and did not feel the need of them. The Gentile converts were not to be compelled to keep the Jewish Sabbath. About this he is as clear as about the other: "He that regardeth not the day, to the Lord He doth not regard it. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." A great disappointment this to the fanatics, to the formalists, to the prohibitionists, to the grownup children, but A GLORIOUS TRIUMPH for the spirit over the letter, a fine assertion of the liberty of the Church of the future. St. Paul can't be always treating his converts as children with the teaching: "Touch not, taste not, handle not" which you are compelled to give to children. Sometimes it is good for children to have some sense of personal responsibility brought home to them. Here he treats them as full-grown men and women. He gives them something to decide, something to think out for themselves. "Let every man be persuaded in his own mind." Xow, in thinking (as we are doing to-night) of the question of Sunday observance, do not let us make the mistake of confusing our Christion Sunday with the Jewish Sabbath. It is quite clear that the early Christians who were not Jewish converts did not keep the Sabbath, nor is there any evidence to show that those same early Christians transferred all the observances of the seventh day to the first day, and that Sunday became a Christianised Sabbath. The only thing we can be certain about the first day of. the week is that Christians met on it for the purpose of worship. Nor is there any positive command about that. If a man says to me: "Where in the New Testament is the command to go to church on Sunday?" it is hard to point it out. There are certainly some severe words of condemnation in the Epistle to the Hebrews about those who "forsake the assembling of themselves together," but no direct command; and why? Surely because it wa-s assumed that the assembly for worship was a natural Christian instinct, a great privilege which no real Christian would wish to lose. What need, then, for a special commandment? And of what use would such a commandment have been? A command to worship! You may lead a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. You can compel thousands of men to go to church, as was done in England in the days of Elizabeth, but you cannot compel them to worship when they get there, for worships is an attitude of the soul, and in the very nature of things

CANNOT BE MADE COMPULSORY, and it is just as far as church-going is a help to that attitude of the soul in yourself and others that it is a good thing. We clergy are bound to point out to the people that it is a privilege of which they should not deprive themselves. To hear some people talk you would think their church-going was a compliment to the clergyman. "If you are nice to me and pay me sufficient attention, well, perhaps, I'll come to church!" —just as there are some people who think they are punishing the clergyman for some fancied neglect or slight by refusing to come to church on Sunday. Really, I often thank Cod that fourteen years in the ministry has not destroyed my sense of humor. The assembly for worship on the first day of the week is A GREAT PRIVILEGE, and those who neglect it are deliberately disfranchising themselves, and punishing themselves as well as injuring the whole body; but as regards rules about keeping Sunday, there arc none, and our Church seeks to impose none. T want ' to make it perfectly clear that in the early days of the Church—l am speaking now of the time of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor—there were no rules about Sunday observance, beyond the fact that the worship of God, which was felt to be a primary duty, cast its light over the day, and the weekly rest, felt to be an untold blessing, marked it as a day of great relief and liberty. The institution of Sunday was not in the nature of a law to be obeyed, like the law of

the Sabbath. Sunday was the free gift of God; something to be enjoyed, something of which people were glad, for which they were naturally grateful. It was never intended to be enforced by any coercion, moral or legal, but to be treated as a great privilege, and so the Church of England treats it, and the tendency of to-day to make Sunday a mere holiday, and "to neglect worship altogether, is the result of A NATURAL REACTION against the Puritanical view that Sunday was merely a glorified Sabbath, and from the vexatious rules and regulations that were the natural outcome of such a view. Some of us remember, perhaps, the gloomy Sabbaths of the past, of the mid-Victorian era, when men were taught to think not of the great privilege of Sunday worship, but of the penalties of disobedience to a law which was enforced in the most wearisome and absurd ways by the most ludicrous prohibitions and distinctions. The scribes of the nineteenth century had got hold of a long list of things which it was wrong to do on Sundays, e.g., you might go for a walk on Sunday, but you mustn't ride a bicycle. It was respectable to slumber peacefully all the afternoon, but disreputable to play a game of tennis. Then there were week-day books and Sunday books, week-day jokes and Sunday jokes, and so on. What would St. Paul, with his great broad mind, have said to these ineffably silly distinctions? He would. lam certain, have made short work of them. But, on the other hand, he would have tried to help men to rise to

THE GRAND IDEA OF SUNDAY. He would not have encouraged the modern reactionary license. He would have said, i doubt not, "Let not your liberty be a stumbling-block to others." He would have said, 1 am sure, to all: "Do not forget the true and real idea of Sunday—that it is a day when it is your privilege to join in the Communion of Christ's Body and Blood, to worship God and to help others in their worship. To forget that is to injure yourself and others, to cast away the greatest of blessings." Let us try and rise to a principle. Just as the business of weekdays is work first and then recreation as fitting for work, so the business of Sundays is worship first and then recreation as fitting for renewed work and renewed workship. A great broad principle like that will, I believe, help those who really wish to be helped. It treats man as a rational being with a body as well as a soul. It will work itself out in every noble and useful life on- a far higher level than the swaddling clothes of prohibitions. "Touch not, taste not; don't do this; it is wrong to play at that." What is the business of Sunday? Worship and then recreation What is the business of week-days'? Work and then recreation. Recreation holds the same place in both, a subordinate one. NO COMPULSION. It is said, I know, and said with much apparent plausibility, if you leave men

with a principle of that sort, they will use it as far as it suits them, as far as recreation goes, and leave the more serious side out. And there is no doubt that that is what many do at present. They make Sunday a day of recreation and nothing else. But is it right? 13 it honest? Is it useful to try and stem that current by forcing upon men once more the old Jewish prohibitions? Is it honest to tell men that a number of things, arbitrarily chosen out of one's own brain, are wrong on Sunday, merely in order to drive them into a corner and induce them to go to Church by the process of exhaustion, because there is nothing else for them to do? To me it seems far more likely to lead men to a true feeling about Sunday if you say to them: "Worship is a great privilege as well as the first duty of Sunday. Worship is the satisfaction of the deepest instincts of the human soul. It is not indeed an end in itself. It is the scaffolding which supports all that really elevates your life. Do not rob yourself of what is to you one of the great refining, elevating influences of life. AVorship not only lifts you up to God—it brings you into the closest contact, into the highest spiritual sympathy with your fellow-men. Worship is the offering which sanctifies all your ordinary pursuits. As the Master said, "Give alms of your goods, and behold all things are clean unto you." So the same principle ■will hold here. "Worship God, and behold all things on Sunday are clean unto you." Believe me, if ever the duty of worship is to be recognised in these days, it will be by putting THE PRIVILEGE OF WORSHIP forward, by reinstating it on the highest grounds, not by making all innocent pleasures on Sunday afternoon seem sinful, but by setting forward Sunday worship as the offering which sanctifies all else. It is beginning at the wrong end to say, "You shall go to church, and for fear you shouldn't go you shall be induced to think everything else sinful?" The right way to speak to men is to say, "there is this great opportunity; use it and you shall live." The one is Judaism with its prohibitions. It's "touch not, taste not, handle not." The

other is Christianity, with it's "This do and thou shalt live." OPPORTUNITIES FOR REST. One word more. I have said that an intelligent view of the privileges of worship is the key-note to the" right view of Sunday, and that once gained whatever innocent recreation you choose to indulge is your own business just as there is not one kind of morality for the clergy and another for the laity, as some people seem to think, so there is not one kind of morality for Sunday and another for the week-days. If anything is "wrong" on Sundays, you may be perfectly certain that it is wrong on weekdays, too. But there is one exception to this free choice, of recreation. That is the consideration for the spiritual opportunities and the leisure of others. Everyone has a right to opportunities of worship, and everyone, including the animals who are worked hard all the week, has a right to opportunities for rest and recreation on Sunday. I have been told, and I believe that it is true, that in New Zealand as every summer comes round the amount of pleasure is involving more and more Sunday labor upon men and horses. Let me repeat again that when the duty of worship is recognised, there is nothing to be said against amusement on Sunday that does not involve any undue labor on the part of others. No one has a right in Christ's name to say a word against it. But increased Sunday labor for the purpose of ministering to the thirst for pleasure is

A REAL DANGER,

and it is the duty of the clergy to protest vigorously against it in the interests of public servants and animals. Aye; and it is the duty of the ckurch-going laity, men and women, to set their faces against the selfishness of increased Sunday pleasure. I say the church-going laity, for no sermons in church will reach that portion of the people who are chiefly responsible, for the best of reasons: that they don't come to church to hear them. To them Sunday is a name, and church a synonym for something that is dull. But those who do come to church meet such people in society and might sometimes ask them a few straight questions. When next anyone tells you in social intercourse that they are organising a party to drive in a brake up to the mountain house on Sunday, you might say to them: "Do you never tliink of those who have to drive you, and the horses who have to pull you? Are you so selfish as to take the day of rest from them?" People who don't understand what you mean by the sanctity of the Lord's Day do understand what you mean by gross selfishness, and it is GROSS SELFISHNESS that \vc have to fight in these matters, for the evil is increasing. Perhaps we shall never know how great a blessing Sunday is until the selfishness of plea-sure-seeking has marred it and turned it into a common day. Then it will, be seen that it is not a question for the clergy, but for the people. What we can do to stem the tide of Sunday selfishness is to set our faces against it as individuals in our everyday life, and deny ourselves for the sake of others. What we can do in other ways is to try more and more to make our own Sundays days of resurrection, days of worship, days of aspiration and of quiet pleasure and recreation, days when we grow more and more into that which '* the only real discipleship as laid down by the Master—'By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one towards another."