Why Save the Lord’s Day?
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f and mercy. Jesus Himself sets the example of this, and leaves to our enlightened consciences to judge what is necessary, and what is not, to do on His day. The fundamental principle is to be “in the spirit on the Lord’s Day,” to be in tune with our Lord’s mind, to be in harmony with our Lord’s will. So if you ask what rules do you suggest for the proper observance of the Lord’s Day I answer, THERE IS NO RULE BUT THE GOLDEN RULE THAT CAN GOVERN OUR RE LATION TO THE LORD’S DAY. Therefore, before I give a Sunday house party, or travel for my own pleasure, or talk a lot of twaddle at the telephone on the Lord’s Day I will say, “I would not like to be obliged myself to work on Sunday; therefore it is wrong for me to oblige others to work. I will not buy a Sunday paper, knowing that I am forcing a hundred and fifty thousand compositors and press- men to work seven days out o f: seven, and fobbing a great army of men and boys of their right to a day of rest and wor ship. True, that newsboy is poor, and needs the money, but I refuse to take advantage of that boy’s poverty by contrib- uting to his moral detriment. I t is bad that he is poor, it is worse that I should make him a law-breaker.” All over this country a hundred thousand boys are training for manhood with no reverence for the Sabbath, and no respect for au thority, in order to supply a Sunday newspaper for people who would be infinitely better off to have one whole day in which the dust and rubbish of six secular days could not enter. When the attempt to introduce a Sunday newspaper was made in London, the “Evening Post” commented: “The best view which can be taken of our own Sunday newspapers must be that they are a nuisance. They are twice cursed; they curse him that prints them and him that reads them. They add new terrors to Sunday. On purely humanitarian grounds, without allowing theological reasons to have any weight' whatever, we could wish them all away. If there is any more pathetic sight than a man deliberately sitting down p I ' .§ 4^ VJ * * I \ 1 p iJb . I i ’ VV
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