The Goodness has various degrees and is of more than one kind. Lord's Day requires the highest good. Recreation is good; is it the highest good? It is often taken for granted that the fine arts and the "great out-doors" lead to a virtuous. life because they are good. But aesthetics are not religion and play is not virtue. The worship of the beautiful is not the worship of holiness always. We need the best good and the Lord's Day is the best time to seek it. The art of noble living is a fine art and a high and difficult one. One day in seven for its distinct cultivation is none too much to give to it. To use the Lord's Day for such purposes, to separate it from the usual toil and eagerness for money, to devote it to thinking and acting for others, to use its opportunities for the cultivation of the art of fine living would make it a day of the Lord's reign in a most happy kingdom. WHAT WE MAY EXPECT FROM THOSE WHO KEEP THE LORD'S DAY sermon Quoted from a. post-election "The Noise and the Voice," (1 Kings 19:11-12), delivered in the Universalist Church, Caribou, Maine, Nov. 10, 1912. Rev. Harry Adams Hersey "Let us, standing as Elijah stood, listen to the 'voice' which comes to us now in the comparative quiet of these post-clection days, and particularly in this place and on this day, this place to which we come not alone to worship God, but to learn if we may, what attitude godly men and women, trying to apply the principles of Christianity to the life of to-day, should take towards the great issues which confront us, not only in the presidential campaign, but all the time. "The only attitude for us, my friends, is the unselfish attitude. We may expect, perhaps, that men and women who profess no faith in God, who care nothing for Jesus Christ, who habitually forsake the assembling of themselves together in God's house, to whom the music of the church bell is but the signal for hunting, and fishing, and doing always the thing which is easiest and most pleasing at the moment, without regard to its quality or effect, who spend the Lord's Day wholly for their own personal pleasure, whose abstinence from spiritual exercise has withered their spiritual faculties, and closed and barred the door to moments of noble vision and high moral impulse, men and women with no passion for righteousness; who are without God, and without the great incentive to battle for the right, and without sure faith in the success of that battle, men and women whose sole ambition, in many cases, is to gratify the passions and get the most out of life that can be got by ways that are evil,-we may expect, we must expect, from these men and women, a selfish attitude towards the great questions of the day. They will favor that which most surely and directly favors their way of life and their means of living. We cannot expect them to favor legislation which would either curtail their profits or drive them into other fields, or limit their pleasures. 'Every man for himself, is their slogan, 'Put money in thy purse,' their motto. "But we may expect, we must expect, yes, we must ultimately demand, that those who are to-day in the churches, and of the churches of this land, shall take the unselfish attitude. when they know what it is. When the challenge rings out: 'Choose ye this day whom ye will serve,' may we not expect them to answer: 'As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."" A MUSICAL SUNDAY AFTERNOON The Sunday afternoon Organ Services at the City Hall, Portland, Maine, find their counterpart perhaps nowhere else in the world. ing in it at which he could possibly take offense. The organ music is chosen with the view of pleasing many tastes. One classical number is given and the remainder of the programme contains good music of more or less popular nature. It would seem as though the Music mission had through the medium of these Organ-Services attained the impossible, that of pleasing everybody. The musically cultured find enjoyment, likewise the non-musically cultured; the religious and non-religious find the same inspiration; rich and poor, young and old sit side by side and equally contribute to the tremendously forceful moral uplift of these citizen gatherings. No one attending these services can for a moment feel that an attempt The programme, lasting one hour, is being made to convert him to any consists of an opening organ number, belief, religious or otherwise, except the singing of "America," an invocathat his belief in his brother-man will tion, a familiar hymn. An address, be greatly strengthened by the fact not exceeding ten minutes long on that the auditorium of the City Hall moral or ethical lines, another is being taxed to its utmost capacity familiar hymn and then forty minutes by men, women and children eager of organ music. These Organ Services were designed by the Music Commission in order to give the citizens of Portland an opportunity each week of hearing free of charge the wonderful organ presented to the city by Mr. Cyrus H. K. Curtis in memory of the late Hermann Kotzschmar. Sunday afternoon being the most convenient time, the Music Commission decided that the organ-music should be preceded by a short service, this service however to be non-sectarian so that each citizen, no matter what his nationality, creed-or lack of creed-might be, would find noth for the uplift which comes from wisely-chosen words and beautiful music. AN APPEAL TO THE CHRISTIAN W. S. MacIntire We are in great danger of degrading our Christian ideal of Sabbath observance to the continental level. Many strangers are among us who have lived on a much lower plane of morals than our fathers and they are inoculating our people with a poisonous virus. If we are to retain for ourselves and our children something of the old time quiet, restful and worshipful character of the Day we MUST arouse ourselves to greater diligence in educating our people in the fundamentals of a Christian civilization. We must place the emphasis in our preaching on the sovereignty of God and the necessity of a Christian observance of Sunday. If you have not preached on this subject recently, will you not do so in the very near future? If you need literature write to The Lord's Day League, 520 Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass., and it will be sent to you. May I suggest that it be done at once, certainly on Lord's Day Sunday, March 30th, and warn your people of the danger to themselves and by their influence on others, of a careless use of the Day that is intended to be the best one of the week. THE SABBATH LAW OF CONNECTICUT Mr. B. B. Bassette, New Britian, Ct. Connecticut and Pennsylvania have the best type of Sabbath law in the land, being good for all time and conditions and likewise being fairest to all religious elements (including seventh day people) as well as to all humanitarian claims. This law prohibits secular business and diversions, exception works of Necessity or Mercy. That is the whole story. There is no need to itemize. Itemizing in laws like this is one of the chief tricks of those who would "liberalize" the Sabbath, for it is comparatively easy to invent a new diversion or an old diversion with a new name that the items will fail to specify and thus by inference make legal. Anything can be done under above law where it can be shown the court that humanity requires it. Even baseball can be played on the Sabbath where the court can be shown that it is necessary. But there are those in the state who do not want to be limited to necessities. For the most part they want profits, and there are some, from quarters where we least expect it, who would change the law for their accommodation. Above law revised dates back only to 1897, yet these agitators do create some ignorant sympathy by referring to it as an old blue law. It is especially regrettable that a professor in Yale University, founded by Christians and richly endowed with Christian money, should line up with the sporting crowd rather than with the humanitarian interests which have profited so abundantly under this just law. Again it is regrettable that our General Assembly gave way to the crowd in next to the last session and actually passed an itemized bill which would be our law to-day but WHY NOT COMPETITIVE SPORTS ON SUNDAY? Martin D. Kneeland While a rational use of secular sports and games on week-days is legitimate, healthful and socially, economically and morally beneficial, their indulgence on the day set apart for rest and worship is injurious and destructive of the best interests of the individual and of society. While in one case they should be encouraged by parents, schools, communities and governments, they should, in the other case, i. e., occurring on Sunday, be shunned and opposed by the friends of law and order and righteousness, and should not be encouraged by government. The grounds on which the distinction between Sunday and week-day sports and games rests, are three-fold,first, economic; second, moral; third, religious. Let us glance at the first two. The last needs no proof, as the open Sunday always means eventually the closed church. I. The economic argument rests on the vital necessity to human life, progress and happiness of one day's rest in every seven. It has been found that rest is interfered with, not only by different commercial interests, but also by Sunday amusements. They are often as wearisome and detrimental as Sunday toil. Besides this, they almost always necessitate the labor of a number of people in order that others may indulge their pleasures. The competitive nature of most Sunday sports, especially baseball, is a repetition of the competitions of the week, from which the weekly The rest-day should give relief. intense pressure of modern life demands at least one rest-day in every week, else we become a nation of insane and idiotic. It has been stated that the Sunday excursion train, as a rule, requires the assistance, in some form of work, of about one hundred people. The Sunday boat, with its crowd of pleasure-seekers, or its loading or unloading of freight, drafts into service from a score to several hundred men. The Sunday entertainment requires the presence and help, not only of regular six-day's employees, but also of actors, singers and members of the troupe, who are entitled to their weekly privilege of home, rest and church. In fact, every form of public sport and amusement on the Lord's Day demands, in order to make it possible, a violation in letter and spirit of a fundamental economic law, and is therefore injurious in character. It destroys the virility of nations, lowers the physical standard of the army, as twice in modern France, and reduces the value of property and life. II. The moral argument against Sunday amusements is imperative, and has been emphasized by the statesmen of every age since the time of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, whose famous proclamation recognized it. Blackstone spoke in behalf of the English law, which guards against the foes of the state, when he declared that "A corruption of morals generally follows a profanation of the Sabbath." The proclamation of George Washington had this thought directly in mind, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that natural morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles." The great statesman, Count Montelambert, traces these religious principles to their fountain head, when he says: "There is no religion without morality, and there is no morality without Sunday." Gladstone emphasized the truth in many statements as well as constantly, in his Sabbath-honoring life. His great rival, Lord Beaconsfield, said of Sunday: "I hold it to be the most valuable blessing ever conceded to man. It is the corner-stone of civilization." This remark of Beaconsfield and another of Emerson very similar, calling the Sabbath "the core of civilization," opens a most interesting chapter of history. Recent statistics in criminology are startling in their teachings with reference to the value of the weekly day of rest and worship, as a police agency a moral bulwark against crime. Sabbath-keeping nations as well as cities, have a far stronger and more efficient guard than battalions. of trained soldiers and countless battleships. The holiday Sunday does not recreate; it dissipates and vitiates; it is an eating, wasting cancer in the body politic. The student cannot fail to connect Rome's spectacular holiday Sunday with Rome's decline and fall. Again, the student of history cannot ignore the fact that England's book of sports, which officially opened the sacred day to games and sports and frivolities, indicates the low-water mark in English History. The Parisian Sunday, with its one hundred thousand soldiers to keep order, the day of sport and toil and trade, in distinction from the quiet Sunday of London, twice as large, but guarded by one-tenth the soldiers, the Parisian Sunday, which has so recently, under the lead of the infidel socialistic wing, on humane and economic grounds alone, partly freed itself from the shackles of secularism, is only one illustration out of many in history, of the moral curse of Sabbathlessness. |