Sunday.

In many ways this is a disquieting age in which to live, and yet it is also markedly hopeful. It is true that the power of authority and of custom is crumbling on many sides, but surely this should lead to the laying of deeper and truer foundations. In this very question of Sunday, the Fourth Commandment used to settle the question, whereas now we investigate its origins and claims in a way which sounds rebellious and unfilial. Yet it may be nearer the mind of Christ than unthinking obedience, for the servant accepts with blind obedience this or that rule spoken by his master; the friend, the son, strives to understand "his father\'s innermost mind." He may or may not be convinced that certain words spoken on Mount Sinai, about the Jewish Sabbath, were intended to refer to the Christian Sunday; but, in either case, he realizes the nature of the spiritual life, and perceives that worship and thought and time are essential to it. He sees that the old Jewish rule tends to develop this spiritual life, and therefore, until he finds a better way, he feels it morally binding on himself; not because it was a Jewish rule, but because it assists his own growth.

Suppose a master admired a bed of lilies and said, "Let me always find some here;" if a landslip destroyed that bed, a slave might feel absolved from further trouble about lilies, but the son would say, "No; we can give my father what he wants by growing them elsewhere—it was not so much the bed, as the lilies, that he really cared for."

God will look in us for the lilies of peace and spiritual-mindedness, which only grow where there is what the old Babylonians called "a Sabbath of the heart." Are we to feel absolved from responding to His demand because old Jewish ways have vanished? When St. Paul speaks so slightingly of "times and seasons and Sabbaths," does he mean that the worship and meditation belonging to such seasons were valueless? No; he is rather saying, "How can you think that our Father values, not the lilies, but only the fact of their growing on this or that bit of earth?"

Every day, landslips are altering the features of God\'s great garden—this present world. We can no longer rely on definite instructions to plant in this or that place; many circumstances, as yet unborn, may hinder it. But we must get it well into our minds that the Master will certainly come down into His garden to ask for lilies, and that we must plant without delay; tools and methods may be improved upon, certain aspects which are now favourable may be deprived of sun by future buildings, but let us clearly realize that the end and object of having a garden is to grow flowers, though ways and means may vary with the times.

It is much easier to follow rules than to be inspired with the burning desire to produce flowers and the moral thoughtfulness which uses the best methods of the day.

But you can less well afford to do without moral thoughtfulness now than you could have done a generation ago. Thirty years ago a woman\'s path was hedged in by signposts and by-laws, and danger-signals, to which she attended as a matter of course; to-day, she has to find her way across a moorland with uncertain tracks, which she may desert at will. She needs to know something of the stars to guide her now—she needs nobler and deeper teaching than in the days of convenances and chaperons.

At present you have your home ways to guide, but you will find Sunday vary in almost every house you stay in, and when you marry you will have to set the tone of a household; if you are to keep Sunday rightly in the future, you must learn now to value it rightly, and that means moral thoughtfulness,—a realization of our need of an inner life and of what that inner life requires for its sustenance, and an appreciation of the teaching of the Church Catechism, which tells us that our duty to God begins with Worship.

What can we say as to the positive duty of keeping Sunday? We can hardly say we are literally bound by the Jewish Sabbath, since, for Jewish Christians, the Sabbath and Sunday existed for some time side by side, as separate institutions; Sunday being a day of united worship, while the Sabbath supplied retirement from the world.

Gentiles kept Sunday only; but gradually there were incorporated into it all the spiritual elements of the Sabbath. In this point, as in all others, the underlying eternal meaning of the Law was recoined and reissued by Christianity; no jot or tittle of its spirit passed away.

In "The English Sunday,"[4] by Canon Bernard, you will find a short sketch of the history of the day; its universal acceptance through the decree of Constantine, which organized the popular custom of a weekly holiday; the resistance of Luther and Calvin to any idea of being bound by the Jewish Sabbath; the Anglican idea of Church Services combined with the Book of Sports; the Puritan idea of a day of retirement from worldly business and amusement; and, finally, the gradual acceptance of this last idea by the English national conscience, so that High Churchmen, like Law and Nelson, echoed the Puritan ideal, and the average business Englishman accepted it as the right thing.

I am convinced that the vigour of the nation and the health of our own souls depends on keeping Sunday,—not only by going to Church, but by so arranging it that we get into an unworldly atmosphere, and have leisure for the thought and reading which develop our spiritual nature.

Such a Sunday is the development of the Fourth Commandment, keeping it in the spirit though not in the letter.

I am inclined to think that the Fourth Commandment is the most important of all: if that is faithfully observed—if we spend due time in God\'s Presence looking at things as He does, judging ourselves by His standard—then the rest of our lives must in time get raised to the level of those "golden hours;" we are as certain to improve as a person who regularly goes up into bracing air is certain to grow stronger.

Bishop Wordsworth\'s hymn suggests the highest lines on which to take the subject, and I would ask, are you specially careful to come to breakfast full of sunshine on Sunday mornings, as on a "day of rest and gladness"? Is it a cooling fountain to you? Do you soak yourself enough in good thoughts to be more soothed and peaceful than you were on Saturday? Was last Sunday a Pisgah\'s mountain?—did you cast so much as a glance at the promised Land, at what will make the true joy of Heaven, the being like Christ? did you seriously think over where you were unlike Him and where you could be more like Him in the coming week? "New graces ever gaining:"—did you gain any grace at all last Sunday—or would this week have been exactly the same if Sunday had been wiped out? Make up a prayer, for Saturday\'s use, on the ideas in this hymn, or use the hymn in your prayers, as inspiration on Saturday night and as self-examination on Sunday night.

Sunday should, as the Warden of Keble says, be a day of new plans for using the coming week better than we did the last, and this implies quiet time for thoughtfully considering both the past and the coming week. On Sunday we should breathe different air and see weekday vexations from a Sunday point of view.

Our Sunday reading may well include all that is referred to in Phil. iv. 8: "Whatsoever things are noble." I would not say this or that book is wrong on Sunday—a book which is good on Saturday does not become bad on Sunday, but, as is the case with many excellent weekday employments, it may very well be a misuse of Sunday time, because we could be doing something better. I strongly advise you to make your Sunday books—and as far as possible all your Sunday habits—different from those of the week, if only to give yourself a chance of getting out of grooves, of getting that complete change of air which is so conducive to a new start in one\'s inner life and mental vigour. Lord Lawrence\'s Life would be splendid Sunday reading, but if you are reading it in the week, you would be wise to put it away on Sunday in favour of a change of air.

It is quite possible that you are busy on Sunday, sometimes a father or brothers............