None
Sir,
It is gratifying to learn from the correspondence in your columns that the LDOS has the support of keen motorists in its endeavour to preserve the Christian Sunday in our land. This must surely be an eye-opener to those who ignorantly suppose the Society and its supporters to be spoil-sports and kill-joys !
Your correspondent, J0 Stansfield, thinks it unreasonable that those without religious beliefs should be compelled “to observe a religious law which has no meaning for them.” Does he apply this reasoning to the other nine of the Ten Commandments, which are all “religious laws” ? Evidently, this friend has not considered the fact that the arrangement of one day’s rest in seven is more than a purely ceremonial religious institution—it is a necessity of life. This has been proved beyond all doubt—doctors, psychologists, economists, and sociologists admitting its vital importance to every human being. Cannot Mr Stansfield see that if, in the much-misused and illunderstood name of freedom, Sunday motor races are permitted, a serious wedge will have been driven into this vital institution of the Rest Day ? Where will it end ? As Mr F Parker points out, all forms of sport will follow, and why stop there ? Sunday entertainments of every conceivable kind will claim like “Freedom,” and there will be no answer to Sunday trading demands from commercial enterprise. Thus, in the dear name of Freedom, abject slavery will have been won for the people of Britain !
No one surely will maintain that the Creator of men is not interested in the social aspect of the subject, but there is a spiritual side to it also, which affects every person. We spend six days making a living —one day a week is provided that we might live. Motor racing may be excellent for the body and mind (if not taken in overdoses !), but it has nothing to offer the spirit. Let us keep Sunday free of it and remember God has given us an immortal soul, for which Christ died.
In the State of Israel, Saturday is kept as the Sabbath and Christians are rightly not allowed to interfere. In our own country, which is professedly Christian, Jews and Moslems are debarred from interfering with our Sabbath, kept on Sunday, while they are given complete freedom to observe their own days.
Mr Stansfield favours the so-called “Continental Sunday.” Does be also favour Continental instability, unrest and insecurity ? We are not concerned with titles of this kind—they may mean anything. We visualise an utterly God-less, restless, secular Sunday, with a consequent pagan Britain, if the present trend continues. Let all true Britons guard our Sunday for worship, rest and works of Mercy, and we shall again be the envy of the world.
I am, Yours, etc,
HJW Egerton, General Secretary, Lord’s Day Observance Society, 55, Fleet Street, 1
[Mr Stansfield’s letter embodies most of the opinions expressed in the many letters received and with the reply from the LDOS this correspondence is closed.-Ed]